Gilles et Jeanne

Like his best-selling novel The Ogre, Michel Tournier's Gilles & Jeanne is a brilliant fictional appropriation of resonant historical events. It deals with the relationship between Jeanne d'Arc and Gilles de Rais, one of the French nobles who rallied to the cause of the Dauphin and fought by Jeanne's side. After her death, he retreated to his castle in the Vendée and became obsessed with alchemy and the black arts. In 1440, nine years after Jeanne's immolation, Gilles himself went to the stake, condemned as a heretic and convicted of torturing and murdering scores of local children. Shrouded in mystery and dark legend, Gilles has survived the centuries as the historical basis for the figure of Bluebeard.

In the spare, spellbinding language of fable, Tournier reimagines the attraction between the ghoulish Gilles and the saintly Jeanne. “Historians wonder how Jeanne, so lucid, so intelligent, was able to put up with this man who was a monster,” he has said. “My answer is that she made him a monster.” Writing between the lines of the existing historical texts, he engages Gilles and Jeanne in a dialectic of good and evil, positing her martyrdom as the psychological—and perhaps theological—cause of his depravity. In Tournier's hands, the two figures become poles of a stark moral landscape as Gilles, with Jeannes cries from the stake ringing in his ears, turns his life into a diabolical mirror image of hers.

This compelling novel confirms Tournier's status as a writer and thinker of extraordinary power.

Gilles & Jeanne

Also by Michel Tournier

             

The Wind Spirit: An Autobiography

The Golden Droplet

Friday

The Ogre

Gemini

The Four Wise Men 

The Fetishist

MICHEL TOURNIER

Gilles & Jeanne

Translated, from the French 

by Alan Sheridan

  GROVE WEIDENFELD 

  New York

Copyright © 1983 by Editions Gallimard 

Translation copyright © 1987 by Alan Sheridan

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by Grove Weidenfeld 

A division of Wheatland Corporation 

841 Broadway 

New York, NY 10003-4793

First published in France in 1983 by Editions Gallimard

First published in English in Great Britain in 1987 by Methuen London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tournier, Michel.

[Gilles & Jeanne. English]

Gilles & Jeanne/Michel Tournier; translated from the French by Alan Sheridan.—1st Grove Weidenfeld ed. 

p. cm.

ISBN 0-8021-0021-X (alk. paper)

1. Rais, Gilles de, 1404-1440—Fiction. 2. Joan, of Arc, Saint, 1412-1431—Fiction. 3. France—History—Charles VII, 1422-1461 —Fiction. I. Sheridan, Alan. II. Title. III. Title: Gilles and Jeanne.    

PQ2680.083G513 1990

843'.914—dc20     89-71436

CIP

Manufactured in the United States of America 

Printed on acid-free paper 

First American Edition 1990

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

It was at the end of the winter of 1429 ― on 25 February ― at the Château de Chinon that their destinies crossed. Gilles de Rais was one of those country squires from Brittany and the Vendée who had thrown in their lot with the Dauphin Charles in his struggle against the English army. In the name of Henri VI, King of England ― who was still only a child ― his uncle John, Duke of Bedford, ruled as regent. But he also ruled in Paris, had occupied Normandy and was laying siege to Orléans, the gateway to the south of France.

At Chinon there was much talk, but little action. Did those politicians and soldiers, who had had their fill of failures and defeats, still believe in the cause they were defending? Only the Dauphin Charles dared to declare with confidence that he was the son of Charles VI, despite all the infidelities of his mother, Isabeau of Bavaria. A brilliant but heartless society chattered and gossiped under the panelled ceiling of the throne room, lit by the blaze from the huge fireplace.

The court was expecting a strange visit ― one that promised to provide them with some entertainment. A sixteen-year-old peasant girl was on her way from the borderlands of Lorraine, declaring that she had been sent by the King of Heaven to save the kingdom of France. The Dauphin had decided to see her. For the courtiers this visit provided a welcome break: such entertainments were few and far between in that gloomy season of exile. But Charles, fearful, harried by ominous news, surrounded by gloomy prognostications, probably harboured some feeble, secret hope, as a sick man abandoned by his doctors might turn to a quack.

At that late hour, the throne room was crowded.