The Brethren by Robert Merle

this reading, for any one of you may at some future date be required to testify as to its contents. Maître Ricou, please proceed.”
    Ricou pulled a scroll from his pocket, unfurled it, and though he read it slowly and distinctly, I couldn’t understand a word of it at the time. As I read it today I remember that the only thing that struck me then was that my father might be killed in the war, a thought that had not yet occurred to me and that overwhelmed me.
    If such an event occurred, Maître Ricou informed us, Monsieur de Sauveterre, Écuyer, agreed to consider Isabelle de Siorac as his own sister and to provide her with food and hearth for the rest of her days. He was also to provide for François, Pierre, Samson and Catherine, whom he would consider to be his own children. On coming of age, François de Siorac would join Sauveterre as lords of Mespech although the latter would continue to assume the management and defence of the household until his death. An appropriate sum of money would be given to each of his younger sons, Pierre de Siorac and Samson de Siorac, as they came of age, so that they might carry out their studies at Montpellier: Pierre in medicine and Samson in law. On her wedding day, Catherine was to receive the same fields, woods and quarry which Isabelle de Caumont had brought in dowry to Mespech. If Monsieur de Sauveterre were to die before the four children had reached majority, the Caumont cousins would become co-tutors with Isabelle.
    Having finished his reading, Maître Ricou invited all present to pose any questions they might have, and my mother asked in a trembling voice whether the fact of naming Samson in the codicil was sufficient to legitimize his birth. “No,” answered the notary, “in order for Samson to be legitimized, a special request would have to be addressed to the king, and in the present case, the child is merely recognized, which,” he emphasized, “in no way undermines the inheritor of the estate.” My father listened to this explanation without so much as a word, a sign or a look in my mother’s direction.
    François de Caumont asked if it might be possible to specify the “appropriate sum of money” which would be allotted to Pierre and Samson for their studies. Sauveterre proposed 3,000 livres for each, to be inflated or deflated according to the current price of grain, a proposal that was immediately accepted by my father and co-signed by Ricou.
    Geoffroy de Caumont wished to know why, at the age of six, Pierre de Siorac was already destined to the study of medicine and Samson to the law. My father replied with a smile that, as younger brothers, we would need a serious profession in order to make our way in life; that he had already been struck by the interest I showed in sick people he had attended, and by all the questions I asked on this subject. As for Samson, he had a precise and practical turn of mind, which, my father felt, would lead him to an interest in the law. He added that, of course, he might be mistaken about all of this, but that, in any case, each of his younger sons should receive the prescribed sum whatever subject he wished to pursue in order to gain an honourable situation in life. François de Caumont requested that this consideration be added to the codicil, which was done. The act was then signed by Sauveterre, Siorac, Isabelle de Siorac, François and Geoffroy de Caumont, the two Siorac cousins, and Cabusse as well, who was the only one of our people who could sign his name, which he did with a great flourish.
    After many compliments, the notary withdrew. Marsal and Coulondre were to accompany him back to Sarlat, armed to the teeth, for the roads had again become dangerous, and it was rumoured that a large band of Gypsies had been pillaging outlying farms near Belvès and even attacking some of the chateaux. As for François and Geoffroy de Caumont, they were to spend the night at Mespech, and set out the next morning with my father towards