They were already engaged when Richard Stern inquired: “Mademoiselle, may I ask what you found so immodest in the quiche-seller when we first met?”

“My dear Monseigneur, do you not think it immodest to shear dogs naked? Nakedness sullies the mind!”

The Marquise des Reaux was a précieuse through and through. She forbade all discussion in her presence of male undergarments, of any aspect of the workings of the gut, or of any similarly scandalous topic. She did not tolerate Richard Stern eating in her company, nor would she dine at the same table as her husband-to-be. In accordance with the Marquise’s wishes, their wedding was held in Nîmes cathedral, the bishop officiating. For the ceremony Borbála arrived in the company of several dozen distant relatives, in a caravan of carts that seemed never to end. When it was announced that the Mademoiselle would henceforth be known as the Marquise de Stern-mar-keys dö störn-from the direction of Borbála there could be heard a full-throated gurgle of Hungarian laughter.

There was but one matter in which Richard Stern would not submit to his wife’s demands: he felt not the slightest inclination to lead the life of the minor gentry in the south of France. Ideally he would have liked to return home to Magyarland, but he saw no possibility of the Marquise accompanying him there. But if it had to be Francaroutier, well, it would be through his own skills and efforts that he would support himself and the six sons that he promised, to general applause, to the well-wishers gathered at the wedding breakfast. He wanted to continue his grammatical studies irrespective of whether they brought home the bacon, for a real man does not live by bacon alone. To the chiding of the Marquise he responded with a bon mot from the Paris salons: Do you expect me to sacrifice Holland for the Netherlands? As the lady showed puzzlement, he was obliged to explain the euphemistic wordplay: Holland referred to expensive lace fripperies, while the Pays-Bas stood for the body’s nether regions. The women of the streets offer the latter for the former.

In addition to his grammatical projects, he also had more lucrative plans, based on an account by one of his Dutch fellow students. The lad described how in Holland there were countless windmills, used not only to grind corn but also to generate some kind of electricity that made possible their use to drive machinery and to produce lighting; in places it had wholly replaced the manual labor of the weavers. Richard Stern did not hold out much hope for the support of this project in Francaroutier; the select few to whom he confided these ideas had burst out laughing. Undaunted he decided to build, beside the hundred-year-old watermill on the des Reaux estate, another, with sails to catch the wind. He had the books needed for the design brought over from Holland; in order to read them he managed in the space of six weeks to become passably proficient in Flemish. He then bought the necessary materials and stood daylong instructing a select few of the more intelligent laborers on the estate in the construction of the sails. He imagined that the New Mill-it was so christened by the villagers as soon as the foundations were dug-would be used alternately for grinding and for generating electricity, by means of an ingenious switchgear of his own devising.

To this day I fail to understand how I came to be so humiliated. My machinery was incapable of even beginning to harness the force of the winds, even though I had spent many hours beforehand carefully considering the matter and working everything out with the precision for which I am known, checking all the calculations several times over. I became the object of general mockery, which the Marquise was never to forgive me.

Richard Stern kept up a lively correspondence with Academician Carmillac and other distinguished scholars that he had met at the University of Paris, as well as with his contacts at the Sárospatak Collegium, particularly Bálint Csokonya, who had gained his laurels as a poet while still at the school. It was from the latter that Richard Stern learned of the dire straits in which the Collegium now found itself. Never had the governors of this prestigious school had to face such a difficult situation: not only books but even writing paper and ink were becoming barely affordable. The field of Hungarian culture is a fallow field visited by drought, he wrote; no one considers it of any importance; the intellectual elite of our country read in German, if indeed they read at all; it would seem that they are loath even to speak Hungarian. The few with the talent and means to cultivate our sciences or our arts prefer to pass their time abroad. The character of the nation is fading fast.

The reproach he read between the lines prompted Richard Stern to think of returning, sooner rather than later, to the land of his birth. He sought out by the most delicately circuitous means the views of Academician Carmillac. The Maistre urged him by all means to visit Magyarland and to travel the length and breadth of the country. While doing so he might usefully take advantage of the opportunity to collect data to see if the Carmillac theory also stood the test in a backward land such as his. This sentence stung the patriotic sentiments of Richard Stern. What French arrogance… and in any event we have not yet proven that the Carmillac theory is applicable anywhere at all. He would gladly have shared his dilemma with the Marquise, but the lady had, since the ignominious affair of the windmill, taken pains to avoid his presence and indeed in recent weeks had denied him access to her bedchamber. Richard Stern was not excessively troubled by this; even in better times his wife permitted only one means of amorous dalliance: through a carefully placed slit in her nightwear.

On the eve of their wedding anniversary Richard Stern was called on by Jean-Baptiste des Reaux, who with a great deal of circumlocutory hemming and hawing finally let it be known that his wedded wife had against him a gravamen that was indeed grave.

“The Marquise? Mon Dieu, not that blessed windmill business still?”

“Oh no, my dear sir, it is a matter much more serious. The Marquise desires a congress… Vous comprenez?”

“I certainly do not!”

“Monsieur Störn knows not what means this congress? I tried in vain to dissuade her, but she will not listen to me; she will lead us all into the vipers’ nest of gossip. I have told her: be patient, the good Lord will assurément bless you with child…”

“Is that the problem? That she has not yet conceived by me?”

“Exactement. She has taken it into her head that she wants a proof of her husband’s impotentia. Whoever heard of such a thing? We are having no congress here for almost fifty years! I know what you are feeling now, Monsieur Störn. Perhaps she will think better of it.”

Richard Stern reeled off in one uninterrupted sequence every curse he knew in the French language. He knew he was mired in the deepest trouble. The Marquise had never in her life been known to change her mind. Since he knew little of Hungarian law and even less of French, he needed help, in the form of good advice. He chose as confidant the reverend curé, who explained to him that in essence a congress was the ordering by the ecclesiastical court of an act of coition to be held in the presence of expert witnesses.

“If that is all she wants from me, she can have it!” swore Richard Stern, blushing crimson. They were on their second bottle of wine. Alas, his confidant did not keep his confidence. By the next day the whole village knew that the Magyar Monsieur was soft in the organ. Sniggers dogged his every step. He affected a lofty indifference in the face of his misfortune.

The Marquise de Stern had indeed petitioned the ecclesiastical court. So convinced was she of the justice of her case that in her application, instead of the statutory four experts, she begged for “ten doctors of medicine and mid-wives with expertise in such matters.” Richard Stern would have liked to discuss the matters, but his wife barricaded herself in her wing of the building. Richard Stern composed a lengthy letter in which he eloquently pointed out that the Marquise could not be in the right, if only because, until she denied him her favors, normal coitus had taken place on no fewer than twenty-four occasions.