What posterity has retained Jacques Heart (1400-1456)? The image of a man of power, of an ambitious financier, such Fouquet early, fell from above, a victim of its arrogant munificence which King Charles VII took umbrage. And legacy, this magnificent palace in Bourges, the richest man of his time symbol. And a motto: "A valiant cuers nothings impossible." Jean-Christophe Rufin grew up at the foot of the palace, contemplating voyages, is a dreaming for as adventurous as that of the king's treasurer. Do not be deceived, The Great Heart is a novel. If it is based on historical fact, Rufin impose a personal vision of Heart, lending her feelings, scaffolding hypotheses, imagining actions where the great history is silent. This is a book about destiny, dreams, duality, power and passion of a man outside the norm, with rare intelligence and sure instinct more than a financial organizer, creator more than a network marketer. His destiny is that of a modest son of furrier who attended the great figures of his time, Charles VII and Pope Nicolas V, among others, whose portraits drawn by Rufin are striking. Then came the fall, trial, imprisonment, flight, fear, as many episodes, it's obvious, less interested the novelist who prefers to dwell on dreams of his hero. During his life and his many travels, Heart fell in love, according to the author of two cities: Florence and Damascus. In the latter, he is on the verge of following a caravan bound for China. His future would have been different and Rufin keeps the show down to earth and head in the stars. License novelist. A duality that makes the great Jacques a Renaissance man in the late Middle Ages. It greatly participated in the end of the Hundred Years War, became patron of painter and Fouquet, especially, put in place a strategy of exchanges globally, the Eastern Sudan, via Italy and Spain. According Rufin, enrichment was not his goal, but it is not obliged to adhere to his thesis. This man, overwhelmed by its success, were among the most powerful debtors, which contributed largely to his decline. The first of them, Charles VII is ambiguous, evil, manipulative, playing his alleged weakness to entangle his interlocutors. It is one of the most fascinating figures of the novel Rufin. Finally, the passion of love is the last and not the least of the book's ingredients. Agnes Sorel invests the life of Heart as a sublime appearance, her soulmate, her half orange whose death left him forever a gap in the ... heart. Written in a language of a perfect classicism, the novel by Jean-Christophe Rufin reinvents a turbulent period in the history of France, close to the medieval layouts, and golds and dark, creating intimacy and complicity with a visionary character, more rich in ideas than goods. Like him, the reader will fall in the net of the seducer who knew the beautiful embroidery tirelessly stuff of which dreams are made.
