The Dream Maker by Jean-Christophe Rufin, Alison Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

anything show. As soon as she was sure of my feelings, she took charge of things, with a view to making both of us happy.
    First she had convinced her mother. Then together they had besieged the provost. He had other plans for his daughter, but all with a view to her happiness. If she made another choice and persisted with it, despite his words of warning, he would not have the heart to force her against her will. Léodepart had imposed his ambition upon the three eldest children: they were all well married and unhappy. So he had agreed that the youngest could opt for happiness, at the risk that the object of her love might be good for nothing. Even if I was not a fine match, at least our family was honorable. No one could call it a misalliance.
    We were engaged three months later. The wedding took place the following year, the week of my twentieth birthday. Macé was eighteen. The Duke sent two gentlemen to bless us on his behalf. It was, it seemed, a brilliant wedding. All the merchants and bankers in our town, and even several noblemen who were among my father-in-law’s clients (and who, in truth, were in his debt), followed the procession. I hardly had time to enjoy myself, because all I wanted was for the crowd to vanish and leave us alone at last.
    It had been agreed that we would move into the Léodeparts’s private residence, where we would occupy a suite on the upper floor of the left wing. The apartments had been carefully prepared, decorated with furs from my father. We arrived late in the evening. The wedding party was still in progress in the hall my father-in-law had rented on the outskirts of town, near the mill by the Auron.
    Everything I knew about physical love I had learned from observing animals. I had not gone with my comrades when they visited the whores, and they were too afraid of my opinion to tell me what they did there. And yet I was not worried. It seemed to me that Macé would guide us, that she would express her desires and anticipate my own.
    Our uncertainty gave our bodies a shivering restraint which enhanced our pleasure. I could already tell that Macé was as taciturn and dreamy as I myself was. Our gestures, in the silence and nakedness of that first night, evoked the masked dancing of two ghosts. The instant I possessed her I also realized I would never know anything about her. In the same instant she revealed what she would always give me—her body and her love—and also what she would withhold—her dreams and her thoughts. It was a night of happiness and discovery. Upon waking, I felt the slight bitterness, as well as the great relief, of knowing that there would always be the two of us, but that each of us was alone.
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    In my new family I discovered an activity I had known nothing about: the commerce of money. Hitherto I had never taken the slightest interest in those little discs of bronze, silver, and gold that circulated among the merchants in exchange for their services. I viewed money as an inert thing, and, had they been rarer, the white pebbles in the garden might just as easily have replaced those coins.
    Through Léodepart I learned that money is a thing apart and, in its way, it is alive. Those who deal in it learn the complicated rules governing its exchange, for money is a common species that can be subdivided into innumerable families. Florins, ducats, and
livres
bear the mark of their birth. They are stamped with the effigy of the sovereign who reigns over the land where they were minted. Then they go from hand to hand and into strange countries. Those who encounter them question their value, as one does with servants when deciding whether to employ them or not. Those who work with money—metalworkers, bankers, changers, lenders—constitute an immense network, spread all over Europe. Unlike my father, who was skilled in one particular trade, men who work with money touch no single product but can acquire them all. Those