to the head of the crowd and taken control, there would have been no violence. But, in the absence of such a figure, leadership descended to the most brutal, and it was one of these who first picked up a stone and threw it into the building, then kicked in the door. Half a dozen charged in and only one of these took some embers from the fire glowing in the grate and used them to light the hangings.
It was a small fire, which did little damage in itself; its main effect was to enflame the crowd, who sensed that the thin curl of smoke and little flicker gave the permission to continue. From then the destruction increased and engulfed the whole building. When the real fire, the one that reduced it to ashes, took hold, there was not a piece of furniture, hanging, or book left intact. The noise of the crowd increased to a pitch, then gave way and sank back to silence as the flames blazed, the energy of their anger transferring to the conflagration, and reducing them to mere spectators. Then they simply stood and watched what they had done, scarcely even remembering that it was they who had begun this. And after a while they began to disperse, their anger spent, their vengeance taken, and their lust satisfied.
In terms of violence, it was not a serious business. Compare it with the orgy that convulsed Constantinople a few decades later and left fifteen thousand dead after a week of riots. Compare it to some of the coups and civil wars that had engulfed the empire in the past century. Compare it to the traditional and accepted behavior of troops taking control of a city after a siege. The violence of Vaison killed no one; even Daniel’s brother escaped unscathed, and while Jews felt obliged to stay indoors for a day or so, even they did not consider themselves under great threat. Indeed, their anger was directed not so much against the Christians who had destroyed their synagogue—even though they deeply resented the assault—as against the family that had brought this calamity upon them: the useless Daniel and his equally violent, headstrong brother. Neither of them was worth any loss.
The importance of the incident was not the violence; many communities of all sorts had suffered very much worse. Rather, this lay in the fact that it became woven into the fabric of Christian, Gallic history, embedded in a framework of theological justification, given purpose and meaning, a past and a future, through the words and deeds—misreported and twisted though they were—of Manlius Hippomanes.
For Manlius saw the opportunity finally to make himself the undisputed leader of the town, to put himself in a position where he commanded such love and respect that he was invulnerable. And he took it, grasped it with both hands.
The following day he delivered his second sermon. Less considered and far more effective than his first. Little of what he said was completely new; the desirability that the Jews should throw off their blindness and recognize their own Messiah was something of a commonplace and had been for well over a century. Revulsion at the way they had murdered their own God was not new either. Disdain for—or more properly incomprehension of—Jews was also common, although it was little different in form to the bewilderment that had once greeted the unsocial, uncivil, and coarse behavior of Christians themselves. None of this was innovative; nor did passion give the words their power, for Manlius regarded Jews with no more disdain than he regarded Goths, Huns, slaves, serfs, and townsmen—anyone not of his family or rank.
It was his logic that impressed, that finely honed skill taught to him by Sophia and which he applied to all that he said or did, reaching out to conclusions and stating them because of their rationality. The Jews were disobedient; they had disobeyed their savior, and now they disobeyed those who took their authority from the savior. Consequently, the path was clear. They were to be given three choices. They could convert, they could leave, or they could die. It was necessary for all Jews to be eliminated for the divine plan to be fulfilled, and the church, through Manlius, put its full authority behind this noble plan.
Manlius wished to be remembered as a man of letters, the voice of reason, a philosopher. This he intended to be his immortality. But all of this was buried for nine hundred years until Olivier briefly unearthed his work, and it was then lost again until Julien discovered it in the Vatican archive. Instead, such influence as he had came through a trifle, an instinctive reponse to a political problem that he had largely forgotten about only a few months later. For in one sermon he managed to bind all the diverse elements of disapproval into a coherent polemic. He asserted not merely the right of the church to insist on conversion, but also its duty to eradicate false belief by whatever means necessary. His learning, skill, and eloquence were bent to the task of asserting the church’s right—his right—to absolute control, and he brought all his scholarship, everything he had learned, to the task of weaving the proofs necessary to back up his desires.
Faced with such a call, the reaction was swift. Manlius achieved everything he desired, doubts about him faded away, his advocacy of the treaty with King Gundobad was accepted almost without question. Over the next week, fifty converted, a hundred and four left, and five died. The incident was recorded, passed from mouth to mouth, written about in letters, and eventually, many years later, found its way to Gregory, the saintly and able Bishop of Tours. He recorded it twice—once more or less accurately in a manuscript lost in the fifteenth century, and once less so, transferring the events and the words to Saint Avitus a century or so later, repeating the same story because the simple repetition excited in him not suspicion that his source was doubtful, but joy that the same events occurring twice confirmed the will of God. Through him, and others who borrowed his arguments and turns of phrase, the words of Manlius echoed down the centuries, becoming fainter and stronger by turns, whispering into the ears of Clement, of Olivier, of Gersonides and his servant Rebecca, and on to Julien, Bernard, Marcel, and many, many others. This was his immortality.
JULIEN DROVE BACK to Avignon afterward, ran out of fuel outside the railway station, and abandoned the car by the side of the road. He left it unlocked and walked straight off, looked up at the goods train, immobilized on the tracks above him, puffing pathetically. He sometimes thought all the trains in France had spent the last four years sitting idly at stations, waiting for some order to be given. Nothing moved anymore, except in slow motion.
He headed for the lycée that had been converted into a makeshift prison. His lycée, indeed, where he had enjoyed the triumphs of youth before he volunteered for the army in 1917. Where Bernard and he and Marcel had first met. And he understood the passion that Marcel felt at this moment, how he wanted so much to triumph at last.
He remembered the schoolroom, probably still decorated with the same tables of the alphabet; he remembered the smell of the place, the way the paint peeled in the corridors. The maps, though, would have been changed, taken down so that Alsace and Lorraine would not be shown as French; the bust of Marianne, symbol of republican France, which used to decorate the hallway, had no doubt also vanished, removed and put into storage on Marcel’s order some three years previously. But unchanged would be the teacher’s podium, where Bernard had once taken his pen-knife to the teacher’s desk.
Everyone had watched him do it; a crowd had gathered around, laughing and sniggering. Only Marcel had stayed at his desk, conscientiously working, doing his best as usual to keep up, making best use of his time. Had Julien been one of the crowd? He could not remember. He remembered it only as a filmgoer; the scene in black and white, the giggling children, the sudden hush and scramble as Monsieur Julot the teacher came back into the room; the suspicious look, and then the questioning.
“What has been going on here?”
And how had he accomplished it? How had Bernard managed to get the blame poured onto the top of Marcel’s innocent head? “Julot is a Jew,” Bernard had scratched, and the beating Marcel received was severe, not because of the vandalism, although that was serious enough, but because of the magnitude of the insult. Bernard put his arm around him afterward, said he was his best friend, made him feel better.
“No one here of that name.” He had managed to get into the building, demanded to see the officer in charge, and explained why he was there. He had come for Julia.
“Don’t be absurd. The préfet said she was here. I am to telephone him, and he will sign the order to have her released.”
He shook his head again. “All the Jews were moved out this afternoon; orders of the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs.”
Julien stared. “What?”
The man sighed; a bored sigh of one who has to deal with complaints far too often. “There was a convoy to pick up Jews. It was short of numbers from Marseille. So . . .”
“Who said that?”
The man did not reply. What did it matter? It was not his concern.
