“Stop, little one,” cried the painter. “You see, someone likes my paintings. She came in just to look at it. Did you see? Did you see the look on her face? I know that look. Ha!”
He walked over and knelt down beside her. “You do like it.”
She nodded, cautiously. The little painter put his arms around her and kissed her chastely, but full, on the lips; it was the first time anyone had ever done such a thing. She wished she could stop blushing.
“So? Tell me what you think.”
Julia panicked, then forced herself to respond, trying to think of something sophisticated and worldly to say. She could think of nothing at all.
“I think you must love her very much,” she said eventually, and felt ashamed of her reply.
But it delighted the painter, whose dark eyes bored into her in a way she found disturbing. She did not want him to take those eyes off her, ever.
“Yes,” he said. “I did.”
Julia looked sad. “Did she die?”
“In my heart, she did.” He cocked his head to one side and smiled impishly. “She was my mistress, some years ago. I gave her to someone else. She began to tire me.”
“For heaven’s sake,” said the dealer, appalled, “don’t talk so to a young girl. What a shocking thing to say.”
The painter laughed, but Julia looked at him very seriously. “I think she was unhappy already, when you painted this. You made her unhappy, then painted her sadness. That was cruel of you. You can love someone and make them unhappy, I know.”
“Do you now?” he replied uncomfortably. “Then maybe you know too much for someone of your age.”
The owner of the shop looked satisfied. He had never seen his most difficult client made uncomfortable, never heard him challenged so effectively. He would retell this story often.
“She was looking for something I could never give her.” Again his dark eyes bored into Julia’s mind. “You have something of the same about you, young woman. Take my advice: Don’t think you will find it in another person. You won’t. It’s not there. You must find it in yourself.” Then he stood up.
“So that’s me unmasked,” he said. “But at least you like it. Eh? Don’t you?”
“I think it’s the best thing I have ever seen,” she said.
He bowed. “And that’s the best compliment I have ever received. Are you going to complete my happiness and buy it?”
Julia gasped. “I couldn’t possibly. Why, it must cost at least a hundred francs!”
“A hundred francs! Oh, dear me! It is worth millions of francs, my child. But my—dealer—here tells me that in fact a picture is worth only what someone will give for it. How much money do you have?”
Julia took out her purse and counted. “Four francs and twenty sous,” she said, looking up at him sadly.
“Is that all the money you have in the world?”
She nodded.
“Then four francs and twenty sous it is.” He took it off the wall. “And in return I can say I have a patron who bankrupted herself, gave me every penny she possessed, just to have one of my works. Besides, it’s more than this greedy little pig will ever get for it.”
He handed it to her, taking the four francs and twenty sous, counting them carefully before pouring them into his pocket. “You see?” he said over his shoulder. “You see how charming I can be with a real client? A worthy client, rather than one of these self-assured morons with too much money who lecture me about what is wrong with my paintings. Now, my child, you must have a proper receipt. What’s your name?”
“Julia. Julia Bronsen.”
He paused, and looked at her. “A Jew, are you?”
Julia thought carefully. “No,” she said, looking at him carefully. “My father says I am not.”
“A pity,” he said. “Perhaps you should pay less attention to your father. Never mind.” And he scribbled on a piece of paper, which he handed to her with a flourish.
Julia looked at it. “Received, from Mademoiselle J. Bronsen for a portrait of Madeleine, four francs and twenty sous. Picasso.” He signed it with a prideful gesture, which Julia tried to emulate on her own works for months afterward.
IN 1938, Julien read an article published in an English journal of that year on the Italian banking house of the Frescobaldi, who dominated European finance in the fourteenth century. It was not his usual sort of reading, far from it, but a colleague remembered his quirky interest in Provençal poetry and passed it on to him: the story of Olivier de Noyen’s end was well enough known, but the reference to the Comte de Fréjus, Isabelle’s husband, caught his eye. The article was concerned with laying out something of the network of the bankers’ interests, trying to show how international and sophisticated its operations were before it was brought to ruin by impolitic lending to the English king to finance his wars: The king defaulted, and the Frescobaldi, together with most of the international banking system, went down as well, adding extra misery to people already battered by the Black Death.
As part of the argument, the author was at pains to show how important the Frescobaldi were for the smooth running of the church across Europe and, in one example, cited the business they did with Cardinal Ceccani. This included a loan given to the Comte de Fréjus on his behalf, to finance the purchase of land in Aquitaine.
The implications were fascinating and not only because Aquitaine was then owned by the English, against whom de Fréjus had fought only three years previously. More, it demonstrated that de Fréjus, like Olivier, was within the network of patronage controlled by Ceccani; by attacking Olivier the count had attacked one of his own. Initially this confirmed Julien’s suspicion that Olivier must indeed have murdered Isabelle de Fréjus as legend said, for only such a dreadful deed could possibly have prompted such internecine violence. Only later did he reconsider this comfortable conclusion.
The first stage in the events that were ultimately recorded in the article was in fact perfectly simple; the comte came to Ceccani’s great palace for a loan. And in his brusque way, he indulged in no elaborate phrases.
“I have to pay two thousand crowns to the king of England to complete the payment of my ransom and gain the release of my cousins,” he said. “We were all taken captive at Crécy, and the king of France refuses to help us. So we must fend for ourselves. And I do not have the money.”
There was a defiance in his voice that suggested that he anticipated a rejection, that he was used to such rebuffs already. He was a big man, trained to the horse and the sword, used to commanding. He was not one who had ever had to plead. He had no objection to priests, but had never been in their power before. The fact that circumstance had given someone like Ceccani a dominance over him incited him to defiance and petulance. He had in fact been in captivity in the English castle in Aquitaine only a few months, scarcely enough for his pretty young wife to realize how pleasant his absence was. But the cost of his release had been high, and he had promised those relations captured with him that he would not rest until they, too, were set free. He was a man of his word, too straightforward and too uneducated to be anything but honorable. This was why he so bitterly resented the fact that those for whom he had fought had not stepped forward to help him in the same way that he had so dutifully gone to fight for them. In this lay Ceccani’s opportunity.
The cardinal’s eyes narrowed. He had taken the precaution of discovering much about the comte’s finances before the interview took place and knew quite well that he was desperate. Five banking houses had already turned him down, and if he did not find the money within a month, he would have to return to Aquitaine. Those were the rules; no one broke them readily.
“That is about five years’ income for you,” he said. “I would guess. I would not, could not, charge any interest, of course. But a donation to the bishopric’s finances equivalent to, say, one-twelfth of the total each year would be in itself more than you could easily support. How would you ever pay down the principal?”
“You talk like a banker, not a man of God.”
“I talk, I hope, like a man who takes due care of the funds entrusted to me,” Ceccani said severely. “You are not asking to borrow my money, but the church’s. I am charged with its good governance. I have many requests, most of them worthy, still more of them desperate. It is my regrettable task to have to choose. And, sir, I must say you do not seem like the best or most secure way of laying out money.”
The comte was not a man to beg; his dignity was too great to allow such a thing. But the way his jaw
