I would like to tell you a story. A tale, not quite as old as time itself, but one that has endured for generations. It is about one of the greatest men I’ve ever known. He is my best friend, Jacques. His story begins in a small provincial town in France, where his father, Guy, served as the town’s constable. Guy was a natural selection for this position, having served in His Majesty’s forces for many years. Jacques adored his father, and wanted to emulate him in every way. He was his role model, especially since Jacques never knew his mother. Poor Emile. She was the love of Guy’s life. They were inseparable, totally devoted to each other. They were a storybook couple, the kind they write poetry about. Theirs was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love, the kind that made others happy just to be around them, infectious in a way. But as with so many of history’s great romances, their candle burned out too quickly, and Emile was lost during childbirth. Guy was never the same. He threw himself into his work and raising his son; those were his only passions in an otherwise dismal provincial existence. Guy and Jacques were the best of friends. He taught him to hunt, fish, fight, and to survive off the land. By age 9 Jacques was an expert equestrian, and by 12 had won a myriad of regional marksman competitions with both arrow and musket.
I’ll never forget the time Guy took us on our first overnight camping trip. Jacques and I were warming ourselves next to our roaring campfire when we noticed a glimmer of gold sparkle form his father’s pocket. “What is that, father?” Jacques queried. “Nothing, never you mind!” Guy exclaimed. We could sense pain in his voice, his whole demeaner changed from a guide and sage to one of discomfort and sorrow. Jacques, never one to back down, pursued the inquiry. “Father please tell us”. “Yes, please Monsieur”, I chimed in eagerly. Guy hesitantly revealed a beautiful gilded gold pocket watch. It shone in the night like the twinkle of a newborn star. “This…” he choked out with a sigh of sad nostalgia, “is the last thing my beloved Emile ever gave me. It was her anniversary gift to me, the last one we ever got to spend together before… “. His words failed him as a single tear dripped down his weathered bearded face. “She was wonderful, your mother. So kind, so loving. She never met a stranger, and her compassion for everyone she met was known far and wide. She gave me this watch and told me that not even the great chasm of time itself could keep our hearts apart. We went the next day and sat and for Monsignor Desparte to draw our portrait. He so adored your mother that he made a small sketch for her to keep in a locket that I planned to buy for her that Christmas.” Guy opened the clasp and inside revealed the hand-drawn sketch of Guy and Emile. “This is all I have left of her, son”, he sighed, “and someday it will be yours”. His tales of her beauty we not exaggerated. “Jacques, my boy, you’re the only thing in the universe more precious to me than this watch”.
At this point our story could still be a happy one, but alas, life has a way of diverging our path when we least expect it. At age 14, Jacques was invited to Paris to compete in the French National Sportsman’s Gala. The competition was a test of mastery of all the skills a gentleman would require to serve his king and country. Horsemanship, Marksmanship, and survival skills were among the primary talents on display. Jacques was top of the class going into the final round of the tournament. Unfortunately, Guy fell ill that night. The doctor was called into their tent as Jacques was ushered out. It was everyone’s worst fear, as Guy had fallen victim to the dreaded Black Death. In an instant Jacques was left alone, with no one to care for him. It seemed that everyone he loved or that loved him had been taken away, and it created an emptiness inside his heart that he would spend the next two decades trying to fill. We sat up for what seemed like weeks talking, crying, shouting into the night that had taken his father and my mentor. It was torment seeing my dear friend hurting so badly. Being orphaned myself, I never knew my parents, so it was hard to fathom what he must be feeling. All I could do was just be there for him, which was a job I committed to. He and Guy had done so much for me. They took me in, taught me how to be a man, how to survive, and were the best and only friends I had. They were my family. Several hours passed, and night turned again back to day. The doctor came to check on us, making sure we hadn’t contracted the curse as well. As he was preparing to leave, the doctor turned back and said “Here, I thought you should have this”, and presented Jacques with his father’s beloved pocket watch. Jacques said nothing, he just hung his head as his body was overwhelmed once again with emotion. From that day, neither that watch nor I left his side.
The court decided with Jacques’s unique skillset that he should be drafted into the King’s Army. With no one to care about and nothing to live for, he began his military training. As his best and only friend, I enlisted alongside him. We became truly inseparable, and always had each other’s backs. Training made Jacques strong, and he grew into a fierce warrior, far greater than anything I could ever hope to achieve. His fearlessness in battle and reckless disregard for his own wellbeing earned him a reputation as being a great and conquering hero, and he quickly rose through the ranks. I’ll never forget the Battle of Versailles, where Jacques was simultaneously engaged against three of the enemy’s generals at once. I saw a devious miscreant sneaking up from behind him and was about to fire an arrow straight into his back. Without thinking, I leapt into the arrow’s path. It pierced my shoulder through-and-through. Jacques dispatched the other fighters and drug me to safety. My recovery was quick and complete, but he never forgot what I did for him that day. He always felt as if he owed a life-debt to me, one that he tried the rest of our lives to repay.
As the years passed, the strain of marching into battle time and again began to take a toll on our bodies and souls. So, we decided it was time to leave that life behind and go back to the small, peaceful provincial town where we shared our childhood, hoping that the serine and familiar setting would quiet the demons that chased away our slumber. Now to this point Jacques had many conquests, both military and romantic. With our new surroundings, his outlook changed. He started to crave the bond and connection that he recalled his father describing in such vivid detail with his mother. He yearned for that bond with a woman, the deep and blessed union he understood to be true love. However, not just any woman would do. Sure, he had his choice of suiters, for what woman could resist his rugged looks, his manly charm, his elevated status. From one to the next, he searched, but none came close to the expectation he had illustrated in his mind’s eye. None could live up to the impossible standard set forth to him by his dear departed father’s rose-colored description. That’s when he saw “her”, and our lives would change forever.
She was the daughter of the local inventor. The moment he first laid eyes on her, he knew she had to be the one. He remembered tales of his mother’s undying beauty, her alabaster skin, curly locks of brown silken hair, deep eyes as windows to her soul. She was the embodiment of everything he’d been searching for, and knew she had to be the one, his true love. Herein lies the rub. For you see, Jacques had absolutely no idea how to win the affection of a real woman, one with culture, class, or even a 3rd grade education. Sure, he could land a wagon load of amoral harlots, but to engage with such a lady as this on a deeper, mutual, romantic level scared him to death. I unfortunately wasn’t much help on the subject, being even less a Casanova than he. So, we did the best we could. He tried to be sweet, bringing her flowers, chatting her up, trying to get to know her, telling her about himself, but he came off arrogant, cocky, and a fair bit juvenile. His first attempt could not have gone more terribly. I hate to even recant it, but for posterity I feel I must. He followed her around like a puppy dog for days, trying to summon the courage to talk to her. Once he finally did, all he could get out was “Bi Hell, meesed to pleet you”, as his voice cracked like a pre-pubescent teenager. Who would have thought the mighty Jacques would be so intimidated by a frail young lady, or that spoonerisms would be his Achilles Heel? I laughed so hard I fell off my horse. This obviously didn’t set the stage very well for amorous pursuit, and I’m sure my reaction to the situation didn’t help matters any. As she walked away, Jacques tried to recover, but in his pursuit stepped knee-deep into the horse latrine. At that point we decided it would be prudent to fall back and formulate a new plan. We decided it was prudent to exude confidence, to speak powerfully, show her that he’s the man that can provide for her, protect her, give her the family she longs for. Unfortunately, his confident dialogue came with sharp edges, not the kind of soft persuasion a woman needs.He couldn’t help it. He wasn’t trying to be boorish, but that was all he knew. Since she was new to town, she didn’t have the advantage of knowing about all his triumphs, his victories, his charity. How does one, in polite conversation, bring up the time you ran into a burning house and saved an entire family from certain demise, or how you gave your entire war stipend to the local orphanage because it breaks your heart to see children with no one to love them. Jacques had too much pride to brag on himself like that, and every time he did try to tell her about himself, she would stonewall him. I thought she was just playing hard-to-get, but her defenses were significant, and he just didn’t have the tools to surmount them.
Weeks went by, and his attempts to woo her were falling unrequited. So, after much debate, and several flagons of ale, we hatched a new plan. Since she was scarcely seen without a book in her hand, we went to the town library. It was small, not more than a couple dozen tomes in all. We found out what her favorite story was Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. With his extensive travels and royal military education, Jacques was intimately familiar with this work. In fact, King Louis had gifted Jacques with an original first edition for his undying loyalty to the crown. It and his father’s gold pocket watch were the only earthly possessions he truly treasured. Our plan was simple. Jacques knew that every morning his beautiful bride-to-be made the same circuit around the village square. He was going to be waiting for her on the balcony of the tavern (that being the only balcony in town) and as she passed by he would recite his favorite lines from the play when Romeo calls out “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and fair Belle is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief that thou her maid art far more fair than she.” How could any woman refute such class and nobility? At the very least this would create some commonality, a jumping-off point. Now that the awkward peacocking was over, she could get to know the true Jacques, the caring, heroic, devoted, cultured man that I knew him to be. Then, Jacques would leap from the balcony, landing on a knee humbled before her and say “For you, my love. For the beauty of these immortal words fade into obscurity in the company of your grace and elegance” and present her the gift of her own copy of her favorite work.
Alas, once again life bankrupted our best-laid plans. The next day we woke before the sun; anxious and with a nervousness I’d never seen in him before. He waited for her to make her rounds. Minutes turned to hours as nerves turned to worry. She never missed a day of making her rounds. But this day was different. The air was heavy with an electricity seldom felt this time of year. The winds turned abruptly as if to signify impending change. Jacques could wait no more for fear of what could have happened to his beloved. He formed a search party and we set off into the forest, praying for the best but fearing the worst. It didn’t take long to pick up her trail, being an expert tracker as he was. We rode deep into the dark wood, to areas unfamiliar even to the two of us. Then as suddenly as her very disappearance, the trail went cold. It simply vanished, as if by some divine intervention. No human could slip away so completely, but we exhausted every trick in the book and could find no trace of her. Days went by, then weeks, with no sign of life. Then suddenly one evening as we were in the tavern discussing our next search, her father comes in, raving like a lunatic. He told a tale of some mythic monster that had taken he and his daughter prisoner. He told us he was holding her in the high tower of a fantastic castle just beyond the edge of the dark wood. “Poor old Maurice must be out of his mind”, Jacques confided. We knew there was no lord in our province, no castle, and certainly no monsters. The nearest manor was six days away by horseback at a minimum. We knew he had to be out of his mind, broken by the trauma of losing his only daughter. Poor Maurice couldn’t care for himself in this condition, so as a community we decided to get him some help. Jacques even volunteered to pay for his care and treatment at the clinic. All he cared about was being there for the family of the woman he loved. Of course, in his diminished state, Maurice resisted. We practically had to drag him to the carriage to take him away for treatment. It was at that very moment that Jacques saw his love riding in on her horse. He was overcome with joy and relief to see her unharmed. He ran to embrace her, to find out who or what had taken her away these many days. She unbelievably confirmed her father’s story, about a monster keeping her locked away. We thought she just didn’t want him to go away to the asylum to get treatment, but she persisted. Obviously, we grew concerned that she had fallen victim to whatever strange magic was affecting her father, so we offered to get her some help as well. That’s when she pulled out this enchanted mirror and said “Show me the Beast!”
The rest, as they say, is history. Jacques met his end that fateful night. He never got to show his beloved Belle his true feelings for her. Misunderstood, unrequited, and sorely missed, his legacy lives on through me, Monsieur Lafue. I tell his story so that he and his father can live on, if only in story. The two greatest men I’ve ever known. My friends, my family; Guy and Jacques Gaston. Au Revoir, mon amie. Repose en paix.
“If I continue the story”…..
The mirror transformed into some kind of magical gateway, showing visions of a ferocious-looking monster just like Maurice had described. The demon had cast a spell on them both, tricking them into believing he was their friend, making them sympathize with their captor. For their own safety, we locked them up to go and try to break the curse by any means necessary. We marched deep into the woods, using the enchanted mirror as a guide.
I’ll never forget the time Guy took us on our first overnight camping trip. Jacques and I were warming ourselves next to our roaring campfire when we noticed a glimmer of gold sparkle form his father’s pocket. “What is that, father?” Jacques queried. “Nothing, never you mind!” Guy exclaimed. We could sense pain in his voice, his whole demeaner changed from a guide and sage to one of discomfort and sorrow. Jacques, never one to back down, pursued the inquiry. “Father please tell us”. “Yes, please Monsieur”, I chimed in eagerly. Guy hesitantly revealed a beautiful gilded gold pocket watch. It shone in the night like the twinkle of a newborn star. “This…” he choked out with a sigh of sad nostalgia, “is the last thing my beloved Emile ever gave me. It was her anniversary gift to me, the last one we ever got to spend together before… “. His words failed him as a single tear dripped down his weathered bearded face. “She was wonderful, your mother. So kind, so loving. She never met a stranger, and her compassion for everyone she met was known far and wide. She gave me this watch and told me that not even the great chasm of time itself could keep our hearts apart. We went the next day and sat and for Monsignor Desparte to draw our portrait. He so adored your mother that he made a small sketch for her to keep in a locket that I planned to buy for her that Christmas.” Guy opened the clasp and inside revealed the hand-drawn sketch of Guy and Emile. “This is all I have left of her, son”, he sighed, “and someday it will be yours”. His tales of her beauty we not exaggerated. “Jacques, my boy, you’re the only thing in the universe more precious to me than this watch”.
At this point our story could still be a happy one, but alas, life has a way of diverging our path when we least expect it. At age 14, Jacques was invited to Paris to compete in the French National Sportsman’s Gala. The competition was a test of mastery of all the skills a gentleman would require to serve his king and country. Horsemanship, Marksmanship, and survival skills were among the primary talents on display. Jacques was top of the class going into the final round of the tournament. Unfortunately, Guy fell ill that night. The doctor was called into their tent as Jacques was ushered out. It was everyone’s worst fear, as Guy had fallen victim to the dreaded Black Death. In an instant Jacques was left alone, with no one to care for him. It seemed that everyone he loved or that loved him had been taken away, and it created an emptiness inside his heart that he would spend the next two decades trying to fill. We sat up for what seemed like weeks talking, crying, shouting into the night that had taken his father and my mentor. It was torment seeing my dear friend hurting so badly. Being orphaned myself, I never knew my parents, so it was hard to fathom what he must be feeling. All I could do was just be there for him, which was a job I committed to. He and Guy had done so much for me. They took me in, taught me how to be a man, how to survive, and were the best and only friends I had. They were my family. Several hours passed, and night turned again back to day. The doctor came to check on us, making sure we hadn’t contracted the curse as well. As he was preparing to leave, the doctor turned back and said “Here, I thought you should have this”, and presented Jacques with his father’s beloved pocket watch. Jacques said nothing, he just hung his head as his body was overwhelmed once again with emotion. From that day, neither that watch nor I left his side.
The court decided with Jacques’s unique skillset that he should be drafted into the King’s Army. With no one to care about and nothing to live for, he began his military training. As his best and only friend, I enlisted alongside him. We became truly inseparable, and always had each other’s backs. Training made Jacques strong, and he grew into a fierce warrior, far greater than anything I could ever hope to achieve. His fearlessness in battle and reckless disregard for his own wellbeing earned him a reputation as being a great and conquering hero, and he quickly rose through the ranks. I’ll never forget the Battle of Versailles, where Jacques was simultaneously engaged against three of the enemy’s generals at once. I saw a devious miscreant sneaking up from behind him and was about to fire an arrow straight into his back. Without thinking, I leapt into the arrow’s path. It pierced my shoulder through-and-through. Jacques dispatched the other fighters and drug me to safety. My recovery was quick and complete, but he never forgot what I did for him that day. He always felt as if he owed a life-debt to me, one that he tried the rest of our lives to repay.
As the years passed, the strain of marching into battle time and again began to take a toll on our bodies and souls. So, we decided it was time to leave that life behind and go back to the small, peaceful provincial town where we shared our childhood, hoping that the serine and familiar setting would quiet the demons that chased away our slumber. Now to this point Jacques had many conquests, both military and romantic. With our new surroundings, his outlook changed. He started to crave the bond and connection that he recalled his father describing in such vivid detail with his mother. He yearned for that bond with a woman, the deep and blessed union he understood to be true love. However, not just any woman would do. Sure, he had his choice of suiters, for what woman could resist his rugged looks, his manly charm, his elevated status. From one to the next, he searched, but none came close to the expectation he had illustrated in his mind’s eye. None could live up to the impossible standard set forth to him by his dear departed father’s rose-colored description. That’s when he saw “her”, and our lives would change forever.
She was the daughter of the local inventor. The moment he first laid eyes on her, he knew she had to be the one. He remembered tales of his mother’s undying beauty, her alabaster skin, curly locks of brown silken hair, deep eyes as windows to her soul. She was the embodiment of everything he’d been searching for, and knew she had to be the one, his true love. Herein lies the rub. For you see, Jacques had absolutely no idea how to win the affection of a real woman, one with culture, class, or even a 3rd grade education. Sure, he could land a wagon load of amoral harlots, but to engage with such a lady as this on a deeper, mutual, romantic level scared him to death. I unfortunately wasn’t much help on the subject, being even less a Casanova than he. So, we did the best we could. He tried to be sweet, bringing her flowers, chatting her up, trying to get to know her, telling her about himself, but he came off arrogant, cocky, and a fair bit juvenile. His first attempt could not have gone more terribly. I hate to even recant it, but for posterity I feel I must. He followed her around like a puppy dog for days, trying to summon the courage to talk to her. Once he finally did, all he could get out was “Bi Hell, meesed to pleet you”, as his voice cracked like a pre-pubescent teenager. Who would have thought the mighty Jacques would be so intimidated by a frail young lady, or that spoonerisms would be his Achilles Heel? I laughed so hard I fell off my horse. This obviously didn’t set the stage very well for amorous pursuit, and I’m sure my reaction to the situation didn’t help matters any. As she walked away, Jacques tried to recover, but in his pursuit stepped knee-deep into the horse latrine. At that point we decided it would be prudent to fall back and formulate a new plan. We decided it was prudent to exude confidence, to speak powerfully, show her that he’s the man that can provide for her, protect her, give her the family she longs for. Unfortunately, his confident dialogue came with sharp edges, not the kind of soft persuasion a woman needs.He couldn’t help it. He wasn’t trying to be boorish, but that was all he knew. Since she was new to town, she didn’t have the advantage of knowing about all his triumphs, his victories, his charity. How does one, in polite conversation, bring up the time you ran into a burning house and saved an entire family from certain demise, or how you gave your entire war stipend to the local orphanage because it breaks your heart to see children with no one to love them. Jacques had too much pride to brag on himself like that, and every time he did try to tell her about himself, she would stonewall him. I thought she was just playing hard-to-get, but her defenses were significant, and he just didn’t have the tools to surmount them.
Weeks went by, and his attempts to woo her were falling unrequited. So, after much debate, and several flagons of ale, we hatched a new plan. Since she was scarcely seen without a book in her hand, we went to the town library. It was small, not more than a couple dozen tomes in all. We found out what her favorite story was Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. With his extensive travels and royal military education, Jacques was intimately familiar with this work. In fact, King Louis had gifted Jacques with an original first edition for his undying loyalty to the crown. It and his father’s gold pocket watch were the only earthly possessions he truly treasured. Our plan was simple. Jacques knew that every morning his beautiful bride-to-be made the same circuit around the village square. He was going to be waiting for her on the balcony of the tavern (that being the only balcony in town) and as she passed by he would recite his favorite lines from the play when Romeo calls out “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and fair Belle is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief that thou her maid art far more fair than she.” How could any woman refute such class and nobility? At the very least this would create some commonality, a jumping-off point. Now that the awkward peacocking was over, she could get to know the true Jacques, the caring, heroic, devoted, cultured man that I knew him to be. Then, Jacques would leap from the balcony, landing on a knee humbled before her and say “For you, my love. For the beauty of these immortal words fade into obscurity in the company of your grace and elegance” and present her the gift of her own copy of her favorite work.
Alas, once again life bankrupted our best-laid plans. The next day we woke before the sun; anxious and with a nervousness I’d never seen in him before. He waited for her to make her rounds. Minutes turned to hours as nerves turned to worry. She never missed a day of making her rounds. But this day was different. The air was heavy with an electricity seldom felt this time of year. The winds turned abruptly as if to signify impending change. Jacques could wait no more for fear of what could have happened to his beloved. He formed a search party and we set off into the forest, praying for the best but fearing the worst. It didn’t take long to pick up her trail, being an expert tracker as he was. We rode deep into the dark wood, to areas unfamiliar even to the two of us. Then as suddenly as her very disappearance, the trail went cold. It simply vanished, as if by some divine intervention. No human could slip away so completely, but we exhausted every trick in the book and could find no trace of her. Days went by, then weeks, with no sign of life. Then suddenly one evening as we were in the tavern discussing our next search, her father comes in, raving like a lunatic. He told a tale of some mythic monster that had taken he and his daughter prisoner. He told us he was holding her in the high tower of a fantastic castle just beyond the edge of the dark wood. “Poor old Maurice must be out of his mind”, Jacques confided. We knew there was no lord in our province, no castle, and certainly no monsters. The nearest manor was six days away by horseback at a minimum. We knew he had to be out of his mind, broken by the trauma of losing his only daughter. Poor Maurice couldn’t care for himself in this condition, so as a community we decided to get him some help. Jacques even volunteered to pay for his care and treatment at the clinic. All he cared about was being there for the family of the woman he loved. Of course, in his diminished state, Maurice resisted. We practically had to drag him to the carriage to take him away for treatment. It was at that very moment that Jacques saw his love riding in on her horse. He was overcome with joy and relief to see her unharmed. He ran to embrace her, to find out who or what had taken her away these many days. She unbelievably confirmed her father’s story, about a monster keeping her locked away. We thought she just didn’t want him to go away to the asylum to get treatment, but she persisted. Obviously, we grew concerned that she had fallen victim to whatever strange magic was affecting her father, so we offered to get her some help as well. That’s when she pulled out this enchanted mirror and said “Show me the Beast!”
The rest, as they say, is history. Jacques met his end that fateful night. He never got to show his beloved Belle his true feelings for her. Misunderstood, unrequited, and sorely missed, his legacy lives on through me, Monsieur Lafue. I tell his story so that he and his father can live on, if only in story. The two greatest men I’ve ever known. My friends, my family; Guy and Jacques Gaston. Au Revoir, mon amie. Repose en paix.
“If I continue the story”…..
The mirror transformed into some kind of magical gateway, showing visions of a ferocious-looking monster just like Maurice had described. The demon had cast a spell on them both, tricking them into believing he was their friend, making them sympathize with their captor. For their own safety, we locked them up to go and try to break the curse by any means necessary. We marched deep into the woods, using the enchanted mirror as a guide.