The Heirs of the Kingdom Quotes

“Sing, Marie of Arras. Do not forget, Marie of Arras.”
― Zoé Oldenbourg, The Heirs of the Kingdom

“The flies rose in clouds, so thick that the air in the streets was black and buzzing to the height of a man. The men moved through it as if through a storm of black hail coming, not from above, but from below.

All shiny black and green, heavy as ripe olives, swollen to bursting point with rottenness. They circled slowly, as of they were drunk, and settled anywhere, on the living and the dead.

...The bodies burst open, releasing jets of black fluid, bodies covered with a black snow in which green lights shimmered, a devil's snow that lifted in slow spirals and got in the men's hair until it was crawling with them, got under the cloths they had tied across their mouths, they could not see for then--God be thanked, for even that was better than seeing what lay upon the ground.

--pg 464”
― Zoé Oldenbourg, The Heirs of the Kingdom

“Bertin was fair and slightly built with tawny eyes beneath pale lashes. His cheeks were brick-red and almost unmarked. He was the most agile of all the boys; there hardly seemed to be a bone in his body. He had the reputation of being either a liar or a visionary, and after three years only a very few, even among the Picards, remembered seeing him run about in plaits and a skirt. He had once been called Berthe. To keep this a secret, he had begun to wear a broad belt strapped tightly around his chest. Berthe was the daughter of a peasant family, and her mother and father had died of thirst in the desert.

--pg 340”
― Zoé Oldenbourg, The Heirs of the Kingdom

“The truth is that the poor are as ravening wolves, as cunning as foxes and as lecherous as he-goats. I do not say this of all the poor but of a great many of them, for poverty never made any man better. It is easy not to tell lies when you are not afraid, not to steal when you are not hungry, But the person who acquires the habit of lying and stealing soon becomes like a beast.

I have seen mothers sell their daughters. I have seen mothers abandon their newborn babes in the fields. I have seen men mutilate their children to make them better beggars. I have seen sons leave their aged fathers to starve because they themselves were hungry, and ten lepers band together to abduct and rape a girl, and great oafs steal alms from the blind, and cripples torture children and bind them with chains to stop their running off with the takings. I have seen people seek shelter with peasants and then make off in the night, taking with them the last sack of flour. The rich who rob the poor do not know what they do, but the poor man who robs the poor is an eater of human flesh.

-- pg 98”
― Zoé Oldenbourg, The Heirs of the Kingdom

“Oh, you bad servant, would you remain here, tasting the joys of heaven while the Cup that I hold in My hand runs over with the tears of the poor? Know that this Cup is bitter and ever I drink it to the dregs and yet it is always full.

But to whom, Lord, should I take Your letter? To the Pope, to the kings or emperors? To the bishops or the knights? Surely if I take them Your letter their hearts will be touched and they will end the sufferings of the poor.

My letter is not for them, Peter, for truly the rich have eyes and do not see and ears and do not hear, Take My letter to those whom I love best, to the poor and humble: to those who make the corn grow and have not bread, who spin and weave the wool and are not clothed, who tend the vines and yet drink only water; to those who delve in the mines of silver and copper and never see a coin; to those who tan leather shoes and go barefoot, and those who heat the furnaces to make the iron with which the rich kill them. To all these, Peter, you shall carry My letter too tell them their time is at hand. Let them repent of their sins and come to Me. I appoint them to meet Me in Jerusalem. (pg 4)”
― Zoé Oldenbourg, The Heirs of the Kingdom