Paris: The Novel

just a hundred yards toward the setting sun from the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève, on the broad top of the hill, where once the Roman Forum had stood. Ruined for centuries, its rubble smoothed over to a gentler slope, the Forum was covered with religious houses now. A Roman street down to the river remained, but had gained a new name: since pilgrims bound for Compostela passed this way, it was called the rue Saint-Jacques.
    Roland started down it. There were students everywhere. Recently, as the university shifted from the area of Notre Dame to the Left Bank, the hillside was becoming covered with the small colleges where the students lived and worked. The college of the king’s chaplain, Robert de Sorbon, fifty yards away on his left, was the first; but many others were springing up.
    He continued down the long slope, past the Abbot of Cluny’s palace, and the parish church of Saint-Séverin until, reaching the river, he prepared to cross the old bridge to the island, where the sunset’s rays were turning the western front of Notre Dame into a molten mass of red and gold.
    Roland felt excited. He was going to see another woman.
    His story that he must study tonight was easy for Martine to believe. The university students worked hard. For Roland, however, learning had come easily. Even before he came to Paris at the age of fifteen, a local priest had taught him to speak and read Latin thoroughly—for the university courses were almost all taught in Latin. He had completed the traditional trivium, of grammar, logic and rhetoric, Plato and Aristotle—a syllabusthat dated back to Roman times—in less than the usual time, and moved swiftly on to the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. He did the work so fast that his fellow students called him Abelard. But Roland was no philosopher, and had no wish to be. He had a quick mind and a wonderful memory, that was all. Soon he’d complete the quadrivium and become a master. After that, he meant to study law.
    So tonight he was free to make love to that girl he’d picked up in the rue Saint-Honoré.

    He’d met her three days ago. One of the law professors at the university, a man he wished to cultivate, had asked him to take a letter to a priest on the Right Bank.
    The great Cemetery of the Innocents lay just west of the city’s central line, only three hundred yards from the river, on the rue Saint-Denis. If one followed that street out through the city wall, it led northward for miles, all the way to the great Abbey of Saint-Denis, where the kings of France were buried. But the occupants of the Innocents were of a much humbler sort. Its ten-foot walls enclosed the mass graves of the poor. Beside those sad walls, however, there was a pleasant church, where Roland found the priest, a small elderly man with a scholarly face, who thanked him most gratefully for his trouble.
    On the western side of the cemetery lay a much more cheerful place. The open area of Les Halles was the city’s biggest market. As he wasn’t in a hurry, Roland had wandered about there for a while, admiring the colorful stalls. He’d just been inspecting a booth selling fine Italian leather when, glancing toward a group of merchants talking together under an archway, he noticed that one of them was staring at him intently. He wasn’t large, but he stooped forward in a way that suggested a menacing energy. His face was partly covered by a short, straggly gray beard. He had a beak of a nose, which wasn’t quite straight. His eyes were hard. And they were looking at him as though he were a viper to be crushed.
    It was Martine’s uncle. Roland knew what he looked like because, out of curiosity, he’d waited nearby one morning and watched him leave his house. So far as he knew, the merchant didn’t even know of his existence. But still the eyes glared at him.
    Did the merchant recognize him? How much did he know? He moved slowly away, trying to take no notice of the dangerous stare. He wentbehind another stall from where he could observe the merchant unseen. The man’s piercing stare had been transferred to another part of the market now. As far as Roland could see, Martine’s uncle was looking at that in exactly the same way. He hoped so. But he’d left Les Halles all the same.
    That’s when he’d gone into the tavern around the corner in the rue Saint-Honoré. The girl had been working in there. She wasn’t any relation of the innkeeper, just a servant girl. A bold