According to St. Simone, orders for the Minister of War François Michel Le Tellier de Louvois’s arrest and permanent imprisonment in the Bastille were issued on July 16, 1691. On that day, before he could be arrested, Louvois died suddenly at court, of apoplexy.
Author’s Note
The past is a patchwork of what we know, what we may guess, and what we can never know. As others have said, the writer of historical fiction often works where the known joins the unknown, and I worked in that way in this story when I imagined a reason for the end of the dragonnades in France. I also used what we do know: deliberately created rumors of English dragonnades did help to topple King James from the throne, but I have imagined how they were created. The sixteenth-century Wars of Religion and the bitter fruit they bore in the seventeenth century were also real.
The college of Louis le Grand was much as I have presented it. Now a state lycée, it still stands on the Left Bank’s rue St. Jacques. Until the early 1770s, when the Society of Jesus was suppressed by the pope, the Jesuits produced drama, ballets, and even opera in their schools as part of teaching rhetoric, and many ballet programs survive. The August 1686 performance, with the Siamese ambassadors in the audience, is historical.
Many of the story’s characters are real people. Lieutenant-Général La Reynie is sometimes called the first modern police official. Michel Louvois, Louis XIV’s feared minister of war, directed the dragoons and much else in France. The great Pierre Beauchamps was the Louis le Grand ballet master and Père Joseph Jouvancy was a renowned rhetoric master at the college at the time of the story. The House of Guise and its Catholic League played pivotal roles in the Wars of Religion, and in Charles’s time, Marie of Guise had her “court” in the Hôtel de Guise in the rue Paradis. Père Sebastian Guise, her nephew, is imaginary.
Charles and Pernelle are also imagined, but the du Luc family was real. Charles Gaspard du Luc was bishop of Marseilles and later archbishop of Paris—though his actions in this story are invented. Two boys named Antoine and Philippe Douté are listed as student performers in a Louis le Grand ballet program, though their names are all I know about them. A Père Le Picart was the college rector in 1686, but beyond his name, he, too, is my creation.
Why do these seventeenth-century people, real and imagined, fascinate me? One reason is that they live with one foot in the fading medieval world and the other foot in the emerging modern world. Paris was still in many ways a medieval city, though its walls were going down, “modern” buildings were rising, and what we would call urban renewal was taking place. It was possible to believe whole-heartedly in demons and alchemy, while keeping abreast of the latest developments in telescopes, microscopes, and anatomy, and speculating about extraterrestrial worlds.
I have tried to make the story’s people true to their own century, and not just us in costumes. My hope is that their humanity reaches out and touches the reader, so that the reader can touch the past.
READERS GUIDE
The Rhetoric of Death
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Discuss the significance of the arts, especially dance and the art of communication, as a vital part of education during this period in France’s history. Though Charles came from a family of minor nobility and his education prepared him to take an important place in the secular world, why do you think he ended up where he did, first as a soldier and then training to be a priest?
2. Being new to Louis le Grand, and with a checkered past he’d rather keep hidden, Charles had much to lose by investigating Philippe’s death. What do you think his reasons were for involving himself in the investigation?
3. Discuss the devious characters in the novel. How do some use their duplicitous nature for good, and others for evil?
4. When Charles finds the hidden staircase above the bakery he thinks, “The stairs changed everything” (page 173). What do you think he means by this? Do you think Philippe’s murder could have been avoided had the staircase not existed?
5. This time period (the late 1600s) in France straddled the beginning of modernity and the end of medieval times. How do you think this time of great transition affected the characters and their actions throughout the novel? What seemed especially different to you from what might happen now in similar circumstances?
6. Religious persecution and power are main themes throughout the course of the novel. Discuss why religion, government, and education were so tied together.
7. After ordering Charles to leave the murder investigation to others, Père Le Picart summons Charles to his chamber and orders him to find Philippe’s killer. Why do you think Le Picart changes his mind? When Le Picart asks, “What human action, after all, is completely free of sin?” (page 215), what do you think he means?
8. Charles has participated in untoward acts in his past, but has chosen a life of service to God and the church. Do you think, based on his character and actions throughout the novel, that this is a true calling for him? Why or why not?
9. When Pernelle is hiding in Charles’s chamber, Charles says his prayers but they do not bring him his usual peace, as he listens to Pernelle’s breathing deep into the night (page 320). Do you think it is because he is questioning his calling as a priest?
10. Jealousy runs rampant throughout the novel and is the reason for several characters’ demise. Discuss how the time period might have spurred those feelings.
11. Do you think Charles’s love for Pernelle takes away from his love for God?
12. Toward the end of the novel, when Charles sees the Jeanne d’Arc statue, he realizes that belief in personal truth is better—and maybe stronger—than worldly power. Do you think this idea has been forming in him throughout the novel and influencing his dealings with the power structures of church, college, social class, and government?
13. Do you think the Society of Jesus and the Roman Catholic Church were like the other power structures in France at the time?
14. Do you think Charles will stay with the Society of Jesus and become a priest?
Charles and his Paris will return in late 2011—for updates and details, please check the author’s website at www.judithrock.com.