The Dream Maker Read Online Free PDF

of my years of schooling—although to his death we hid from him the fact that I had rebelled against Latin.
    Late in the year that followed the siege of the town, I heard my parents speaking in hushed tones of grave events: Paris was a bloodbath. The butchers had rebelled, led by a certain Caboche, whom my grandfather knew well. Encouraged by the Duke of Burgundy, they had risen up against the excesses of the court. A learned assembly of jurists had drawn up an ordinance of reform. Under the pressure of the butchers and the rebellious population, the king was made to listen to the one hundred and fifty-nine articles comprising the new constitution, and approve it. At that point he was in a period of lucidity, and had clearly found it most unpleasant to be faced with his subjects’ censure. The reaction came swiftly thereafter. The Armagnacs now claimed to be the defenders of the peace, in opposition to the unruly butchers—it was their meat, henceforth, which hung from the gallows in the streets of Paris. Those who escaped the massacre had fled. One of them reached our town. As butchers were under suspicion, my grandfather sent the fugitive to us for refuge.
    The man’s name was Eustache. We hid him at the back of the courtyard in a shed where goatskins were stored. In the evening he sat outside the kitchen, and when we came home from school we gathered around him to listen to his stories. We found him very entertaining, because the way he spoke was different from us and he used very colorful and unfamiliar expressions. He was, in fact, a mere shop boy. His work consisted of unloading the meat driven every morning by cart to the kitchens of the great houses. Although he had probably only ever seen the servants’ quarters, Eustache gave us a detailed description of the princely residences in Paris—the hôtel de Nesle, which belonged to the Duke of Berry, its doors and windows wrenched off by the crowd to prevent him from staying there; Artois, which was the property of the Duke of Burgundy; the hôtel Barbette where the queen lived, and on whose doorstep Louis of Orléans had been assassinated. His eyes glowing with hatred, Eustache delighted in describing the luxury of those houses, the fine furnishings and china, the beauty of the tapestries. His descriptions were meant to make us feel indignant. He always insisted on the poverty that surrounded such places of luxury and debauchery. I don’t know what my brother thought; as far as I was concerned, far from making me feel indignant, these tales served to fuel my dreams. With regard to wealth, the only example I had was the Duke’s palace in our town, and I admired it. Every time I went there with my father, I was fascinated by the luxurious décor. Our condition as modest burghers condemned me to a life in a lopsided house. I was not unhappy there, but my dreams carried me into more brilliant dwelling places, where there were walls decorated with frescoes, and sculpted ceilings, and vermillion serving plates, and tapestries embroidered with golden thread . . . I shared none of Eustache’s hate-filled indignation about princely dwelling places.
    On the other hand, I did listen sympathetically when he spoke bitterly of the way the powerful treated the other castes—the burghers, workers, and servants, without whom they could not survive. Thus far I had accepted the painful lessons my father had given me on each of our visits to his rich clients. Nevertheless, I was appalled by his submission to their scorn and insults, and the constant blackmail when they did not feel like paying. My outrage was buried deep, embers beneath the ashes of filial love and obedience. It was enough for Eustache to blow on those embers for my rage to flare.
    Shortly after the fugitive arrived in our home, my father took me with him to the home of a nephew of the Duke of Berry to deliver a large coverlet of white marten. The young man was scarcely twenty