'From what Magre tells me Herr Rahn is not at all political. Too young really to know anything about the War, I suppose, and from what little he managed to say about himself, I take it he has been working in Switzerland the past couple of years.'

  'Well then. . . drinks with a youthful adventurer who has absolutely no opinion about anything? It sounds as if you have planned a delightful evening for us, darling!'

  Otto Rahn looked the part of a treasure hunter, Elise thought when she saw him from across the room. He was as tall as her husband, easily over six feet in height, but unlike Bachman he was lean and muscular and deeply tanned. Exactly as a man ought to look who had spent the summer out-of-doors scrambling amongst the foothills of the Pyrenees. He had a long, square face and combed his dark blond hair straight back, using oil to keep it in place. The style was common enough, but the effect on Herr Rahn was more pleasing than on most men. It accented his chiseled brow and high cheekbones. She tried to imagine him as a movie star who had come to France to play the role of an adventurer and thought the image perfect.

  When he saw Bachman, Herr Rahn left the bar and walked toward them with an animal grace that stirred something in Elise she had imagined long dead. This was no actor playing a part. He climbed rocks and plunged into caves, and he did it the livelong day! His smile and confidence, which had not a wit of subservience or awe for Bachman or his money, simply left her undone. Otto Rahn was, she decided, an incredibly handsome young man!

  Bachman sometimes brought men of a certain type to meet her. They were artists of one kind or another, all penniless and very eager to please a wealthy patron. She had always imagined he was showing off his conquests, at least the ones he hoped to make, but of course she could not be sure. The issue wasn't something one discussed in a polite marriage, and theirs, if nothing else, had always been polite. If that was Bachman's plan on this occasion - with an excuse to send her back to Sète whilst he stayed on a few days more trying to seduce a treasure hunter - he had gravely miscalculated. Herr Rahn liked women. She could see it the moment he looked at her. After only a few minutes together, she was sure of it. He included her in their conversation, and in doing so he would happen to glance at her hands with thoughtful appreciation, then her shoulders. The next time he was looking at her hair. Once, as she left the table, she saw his reflection in a mirror and realised he was studying her manner of walk! It was not overt by any means. He was certainly not uncouth about it. It was appreciative and gentlemanly. Not exactly flirtation, her husband was sitting before them after all, but very close to it.

  'So you are in Carcassonne for a few days more, I hope?' Rahn asked. Elise imagined he was asking her, but Bachman answered for them.

  'Leaving tomorrow, actually. We have a place in Sète we are renting. We have it for the summer, so I expect we had better get back to it and get our money's worth.'

  Was there disappointment in his eyes? Elise wanted to think so, but then she reminded herself that Herr Rahn might only be making conversation. Perhaps she was no different than Bachman, seeing what she wanted in a handsome stranger's glances.

  'Of course you're welcome to come see us there, if you like,' Bachman added. 'We have plenty of room, and the Mediterranean is especially beautiful there.'

  'That is very generous of you. . .' A glance at Elise. No, not just making conversation. He was thinking, in that quick appraisal of her, about his chances if he travelled to Sète for a visit. There were men who only pursued married women. She had friends who had encountered them and had been tempted or at least they had admitted to that much. Some husbands presumably turned a blind eye to it. Was Herr Rahn imagining that was the game here?

  She looked at Bachman. He was sometimes hovering and protective about her when a man was obviously interested, but not this evening. Herr Rahn excited him too much to let something like jealousy diminish his enthusiasm.

  Politics did not come up until the second round of drinks. Bachman mentioned that they lived in Berlin but had taken to spending the summers away from the city because of the troubles.'

  'Is it really so bad?' Rahn asked him with genuine concern.

  'Have you been to Berlin in the past few years, Herr Rahn?' Bachman asked.

  'It has been a few years, I'm afraid, though I went to university there. I have always loved the city. I hate to see it torn to pieces.'

  'You and every other good German! And all because of the Communists! They are determined to ruin everything!'

  Bachman hated the Communists only slightly more than the present government. A dozen years ago he had been an aristocrat. Stripped of his title by parliamentary decree in 1919, he had wanted to pretend it was no great matter, but the wound ran deep, and when he found others like him mixing with the Nazis, he joined up. With a fortune at his disposal, he had of course been well received by the party's inner circle, and that was all it took for him to become a passionate supporter of the cause. Elise had seen very pleasant evenings such as this plunge into a violent argument for the sake of an ill-advised remark either against the Nazis or for the Communists. Bachman would accept indecision, even reticence - people needed to be persuaded - but when he found resistance the fight was on. As he had introduced the topic for no better reason than to evaluate Herr Rahn, Elise held her breath.

  The topic appeared to make Herr Rahn uncomfortable. He was probably himself a Communist! The worn down heels of his shoes and frayed collar certainly indicated he was poor enough to be one. And why not? Everyone had a political opinion these days, the more radical the better. A middle course had certainly not solved anything! 'Well, of course,' Herr Rahn interposed, 'something has to change. Everyone believes that except the crooks in power, but until it does I don't care to get in the middle of it.'

  'Germany finds itself at a crossroads,' Bachman told him. 'Those who stand off to the side now will no doubt be left behind once things take a new direction! For a young man such as you are that is something to consider very seriously.'

  Before Bachman could work himself up to a full choleric fit, Elise touched her husband's arm. 'We'll have enough politics back in Berlin, dear,' she said. 'I want to hear about all the Cathar gold Herr Rahn has found.'

  'I wasn't aware I was looking for any,' Rahn answered. He gave them both a bemused smile, curious no doubt as to the source of the confusion.

  Elise looked at Bachman as she said to Rahn, 'I'm sorry. I was under the impression you were. . .'

  Suddenly it came to Rahn. 'Is that what Magre told you?' he asked Bachman. 'That I'm a treasure hunter?' Bachman tipped his head. Such had been his understanding. Rahn seemed astonished and maybe a bit irritated, but after a moment he laughed. He had apparently had some dealings with the Frenchman.

  'So what are you doing down here?' Elise asked.

  'I'm researching a book I intend to write about the Albigensian Crusade of the thirteenth century.'

  'Really?' Elise exclaimed. Things began to make sense to her. That he was writing a book explained his natural eloquence and the confidence he wore like a crown. He was an educated man, as she might have guessed! Still, he seemed a bit young for something so. . . well, so utterly stuffy.

  'Another enthusiast of the Cathars!' Bachman announced, after taking a sip of his drink. He looked as if he were preparing to repeat some grand remark he had picked up from Magre the evening before.

  'I have to tell you something very awful,' Elise said, before her husband could trample over the conversation again. Both men waited for her confession with the curious smiles of men anxious to hear 'something very awful' from the lips of a beautiful woman. 'Last night, I sat through dinner listening to our friend Monsieur Magre explain the Cathars to us, and I still haven't a clue what they believed, or for that matter who they were!'

  'Do you want to know why Magre did not make it clear to you?' Rahn asked. He spoke softly, a man with an interesting secret to share with good friends.

  'I should love to know.'

  'It is because he hasn't a clue himself! If you want to know the awful truth,' he added with a smile that pretended to be wicked, 'no one really knows! Neither who they were nor what they believed!' He sat back like a born aristocrat and finished his drink in a gulp. 'Fortunately for everyone,' he announced with quiet authority, 'I intend to change all that.'

  Both Elise and Bachman were anxious to know the essence of Herr Rahn's theory about the heretical Cathars, a people that had quite literally been exterminated in the first half of the thirteenth century, but such a topic, Bachman thought, was best handled over dinner, and so they moved to the hotel dining room where Herr Rahn could proceed to sing for his supper.

  'The first thing you must understand,' Rahn told them, 'is that the Vatican's attack was economically motivated. The Cathar "heresy" was a convenient excuse for war. There was no movement to separate or purify the faith, no quarrel over dogma. The Cathars were simply oriented toward all things spiritual, much like St. Francis of the same era. They were followers of the teachings of Christ, if you will, but did not overtly reject the authority of the Pope. Vatican priests newly arrived to the region encountered a people of faith, so much so that many of them began conforming to some of the local customs of worship. After the war began, of course, lines were drawn.'

  'According to what I've read,' Bachman said, 'the Cathars were Gnostic dualists. . . Manichaeans. . . whatever you want to call it.' He had got that from Magre. 'God and the Devil on equal footing. That sort of thing.'

  'A world divided between God and Satan?' Rahn answered with a genial nod of his golden head. 'Two powerful deities fighting for the souls of men and women?'

  'Exactly!' Bachman answered. Just as Magre had described it.

  'That was the position of the Church in the thirteenth century, not the Cathars.' At Bachman's look of confusion, Rahn continued, 'St. Augustine had guided the Church away from the Manichaean heresy early in the fifth century, but by the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Devil had made a comeback. You have only to examine any medieval text to see the universal dread of the Evil One. If one did not know better, one could almost imagine Christ fared a sorry second behind the Prince of Darkness. People spoke so often of Christ and the angels and the saints that they had transformed into benign spirits who might help one in need, but only so long as the sun shined. When night fell a more potent force took over the earth, and absolutely no one was foolish enough to whisper the dread name of Satan, lest they inadvertently summon him.

  'The Cathars, by contrast, had no interest in the Devil, not even a healthy fear of him. They understood evil as Augustine had defined it, a turning away from the light of God. For them, that happened whenever one came to be too much in love with the pleasures of the world, which is to say, the pleasures of the flesh. The contest for one's soul amounted to a struggle between the desires of the flesh and those of the spirit. They understood of course that we owe our existence to the physical world, but they knew as well that even our physical needs, what we require for survival, diminish our thirst for the world of the spirit. The notion is natural enough in our own time; even the Church preaches Cathar beliefs today, and we are certainly not reduced to dread that a thoughtless remark might summon a legion of devils, but I can assure you that in the poorly educated world of the thirteenth century the Cathars were the exception. Still, no one thought to call it heresy until the French king began to lust for the wealth of the region.'

  'Correct me if I am wrong,' Bachman ventured, 'but the Cathars were against marriage - and sex in particular?'

  'That is the first thing anyone will tell you about the Cathars,' Rahn continued, 'and pretty much the last.'

  'Magre said as much to us,' Bachman interjected, pleased that he had got something right.

  'All perfect nonsense,' Rahn told them. 'The truth is the Cathars invented romantic love. We call it courtly love now to distinguish it from romantic trysts between lovers, but it was hardly the tame stuff of polite society as people these days pretend it was. For the Cathars a love affair was not about adoration and purity and good manners, and it was not platonic. On the contrary, it burned with desire. In fact, its sole purpose was to stir the desire of two lovers to a white-hot pitch. But here is the thing: they refused to surrender to it. Once a knight offered his love and a lady accepted it the two carried on an affair of the heart - quite literally of the heart - for the rest of their lives. It did not come easily. Many knights would vie for the affections of a particularly extraordinary lady, but once she gave her heart, the affair was sealed and sacrosanct. Denied fulfillment at a physical level - sometimes even denied a chance to be alone - the lovers ultimately discovered a profound spiritual bond through their feelings for each other, but it was not friendship, not even the friendship of a comfortable married couple. It was the real, earth-shaking, dynamic of lovers at the moment before consummation, all of it carried out without touch, certainly without a kiss, and it burned for a lifetime — into eternity itself. Or so they believed.'

  'What you're saying,' Bachman muttered, 'is that they celebrated a kind of love that was doomed to failure and disappointment.'

  Rahn smiled cheerfully at the assessment. 'To modern thinking, I suppose that is a fair statement. To their thinking such affairs left them inspired. You have only to look at Dante's love for Beatrice to understand the sublime effect of his passion. He did not simply elevate Beatrice to some implausible level of beauty and goodness. He chased after that image until by virtue of his love he became worthy of her affection. Before the Cathars, passion was sin. It ruined marriages, and that in turn had economic and political repercussions. This was a new idea. It offered a socially acceptable romantic intimacy between a man and a woman that did not threaten in any way the practicalities of the institution of marriage. A woman might bear the children of her husband and stand beside him as his political ally and even his confidant and friend, all the while carrying on a correspondence with the one true love of her life.'

  'And what did husbands think when their wives enjoyed such affairs under their very noses?' Bachman asked with a tone of quiet indignation. 'I can't believe everyone would celebrate such a condition without. . . well, without a bit of old fashioned jealousy!' He looked at Elise. 'I for one could not stand it if Elise loved another man!'

  'What you cannot stand, if I may be so bold as to say it, is the notion that your relationship might change or be lost because of such an affair of the heart. In the world of the Cathars that fear was irrelevant. Romantic love was never expected to lead to anything more than desire. It played out in the eternal realm of the spirit, ultimately taking the participants closer to God, and certainly closer to the ideal virtues of the faith. It taught them by the hard practice of self- denial to be less dependent on the sensory world.'

  Bachman smiled but shook his head. He was not convinced.

  Neither was Elise, who asked, 'Have you ever enjoyed such an affair?'

  At last Adonis lost his confidence. Rahn's eyes focused on the table. The smile grew wistful. 'We no longer live in such a world. Say what we will in praise of the gifts of the spirit and all the rest, we want to taste our food and wine.' He lifted his glass and let the red liquid swirl to make his point. 'We want our lovers close to us and our money closer. We live knee-deep in sensation and as far as I can see we only want more of it.'

  'Then it is no longer possible to love in such fashion?' Elise asked.

  Rahn looked at Bachman as he spoke to Elise, 'If I allowed myself to write you the kind of letter Cathar knights sent the women they loved, I'm quite confident your husband would shoot me - and be acquitted for it in a court of law!'

  'Even if he knew we were never to touch one another?' Her voice quivered as she spoke, and as she finished she too looked at Bachman. It was a moment of curiosity and challenge and maybe even of hope. Could Bachman bear her loving another man - this man - if nothing physical would ever transpire between them?

  'I don't believe it is possible,' Bachman said at last, almost as if responding to a direct question. 'I think. . . where there are feelings men will act and women will follow!'

  'You are talking about people of our own time,' Rahn told them, as if settling an argument amongst scholars. 'We have been corrupted. Not by our desires but by surrendering so often to them. We need too many assurances, too much comfort. We cannot trust to the love someone may have for us without some physical contact along the way to seal the promise.'

  'Do you really believe it happened?' Bachman asked him. 'People madly in love without ever having physical intimacy? Don't you imagine that they in fact talked a good game and then when backs were turned. . . well. . . ?'

  'Some individuals failed. I don't doubt that. It is the nature of humanity. I am convinced, however, that many experienced a joy and depth of love that for all our sophistication we can no longer even imagine. Think of it as the first sensation of profound desire prolonged for a lifetime. Think of the madness and despair and happiness of falling in love - the world itself in the palm of one's hand - and then add to it the sensation of one who will always remain beyond the gates of that blessed place. Such emotions I think must lead us to a higher plain, to humility and patience, and probably even to prayer, but I can't be sure. For me it is an academic exercise. To be in love like that is to take a journey I have never attempted.'

  'What do you think of Herr Rahn?' Bachman asked once they were in their room again. It was late, but he seemed energised. He wore a wry smile on his face as he asked Elise this question. It seemed to her he was actually reflecting on the practical aspects of Herr Rahn's theories about love.

  Elise blushed guiltily at the mention of Rahn's name, but she answered honestly. 'I don't think I've ever met anyone like him.'

  'So much so that you could fall in love with him?'

  It was tempting to imagine desire transmuted into something beyond reproach. She wanted passion, but not all that went with a married woman making a fool of herself. She had not had very much excess in her life, but she thought to be madly in love with someone must be a wonderful thing. Enough of polite relations! She wanted to burn! But not if it meant guilt and scandal. Berlin society, after all, was still a tightly closed circle. One watched the reckless wives and coquettes taking chances. It was great entertainment to observe them circle ever closer to the flame, but there came a time when such individuals went too close. And afterwards, as she had seen more than once, they were quietly but surely excluded. As one intimate had said to her quite bluntly, if one longed too much for the pleasures of the street, the street was what one got!