The Negotiator: On Translating Francis Walder’s Saint‐Germain, ou la Négociation Open Access

Why did Walder choose this particular event? In his Author’s Note, Walder implies that choosing a contemporary negotiation might have caused interference arising from the readers’ own knowledge of recent events. Nor did he want to write about an international negotiation, which could also raise issues that would distract attention from his main subject. No, better to stick with one country, in this case France, and at some distance in time: nearly four hundred years. Moreover, the power relationship between the parties in the Saint‐Germain negotiations was one of relative equality. The two sides were what Walder called “matched forces,” and for both, war was a feasible alternative.

The Wars of Religion raged in fits and starts for nearly forty years, and by 1570 France had suffered what is known as the third of these wars. Previously a wholly Catholic country, France was now split into two factions. The traditional Catholic side included the monarchy (the twenty‐year‐old Charles IX and his influential mother Catherine de Médicis), many nobles (notably the influential Guise family), and the city of Paris; the other faction comprised members of the Reformed Church, who were known as Huguenots and were Protestant followers of Jean Calvin.

Previous peace talks had resulted in edicts of varying degrees of tolerance, from limited freedom for Protestant worship to an outright ban on declaring or practicing such a belief. Despite repressive decrees, the Protestant forces under Admiral de Coligny were strong, and the Catholic monarchy knew in 1570 that the damage and huge cost of the war made peace negotiations imperative. However, fundamental disagreement on religious issues made settlement difficult for both sides. After preliminary talks elsewhere in France, the negotiations moved to Saint‐Germain, a royal palace fifteen miles west of Paris (Figure One). (Interestingly, despite the background of war, at this time nobles of both religions moved freely at Court.) The resulting treaty contained many clauses, but Walder chose to focus on two points of the negotiations: the right of Huguenots to worship and the strongholds—fortified towns—they would be permitted to hold.

Avoiding the high‐profile figures in each party, Walder imagines the crucial talks that took place throughout the summer between four noblemen‐negotiators, two from each side. His two Catholic characters were based on real historical figures: one a soldier‐baron and the other Henri de Malassise, who is also the narrator of the novel. Walder admits that he has somewhat darkened the character of Malassise for literary effect, and indeed my research suggests that the real Henri de Mesmes, Seigneur de Malassise—similar in a number of ways to his scholarly acquaintance the essayist Michel de Montaigne—was quite modest, and a model of rectitude.

The parties reached an agreement that was unsatisfactory to the extreme factions on both sides. It was, as the narrator Malassise tells us, a delicate task of “diplomatic lacework,” an “unstable equilibrium” that bought two years of uneasy peace. What followed was ugly. According to the agreement, the Catholic princess Marguerite de Valois was to marry the Protestant Henri de Navarre (later Henri IV). At the time of their wedding two years later, for which many Huguenots had come to Paris, the Protestant leader Coligny was wounded and, fearing retaliation, the Catholics set about massacring thousands of Huguenots in Paris and other cities. Saint Bartholomew’s Day of 1572 remains one of the darkest moments in French history.

Walder’s Saint‐Germain was translated into English soon after publication and became a classic among negotiators (both Francophone and others). The originality of the work from the point of view of content lay not in any innovative method of negotiating but rather its convincing portrayal of negotiators whom the author went on, as he says in his Author’s Note, “to pitch … into the procedures followed since negotiation began, in order to see its workings more starkly than in reality.” The work was also appreciated for its literary qualities. Walder wrote elegantly, often in lengthy and balanced sentences, and with a certain tendency to abstraction (seen more strongly in his later historical novels, where narrative struggles to compete for space with philosophical reflection). Yet his dialogues are crisp, and his descriptions can be witty or lyrical as required.

If Saint‐Germain was Walder’s first novel, it was also my first literary translation—leaving aside the years at university studying foreign literature and attempting to render passages into plausible English—and the book presented interesting challenges. Although Walder did not attempt to write in the language of the sixteenth‐century court, he tried to suggest its atmosphere by using a slightly more formal style than many a modern novel. For the translator, then, this meant avoiding contractions such as “can’t” or “wouldn’t,” favoring single‐word and often Latin‐based vocabulary (such as “tolerate” rather than “put up with”), and avoiding anachronisms. In the interests of authenticity, for example, before using the words “parlour” and “grandee,” I checked that they were in use in English by 1570. I also asked the helpful staff of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum about specific terms for female costume. (It seemed wiser, too, to opt for the explicit metaphor “That is where the shoe pinches” rather than saying, like Hamlet, “There’s the rub”: even though I found an instance of “rub” used in that sense before 1570, someone would be sure to see it as a quotation and point out that Shakespeare wrote “Hamlet” some thirty years after the negotiation at Saint‐Germain! Maybe I was getting a little obsessive by this point.)

All translators of literature face frequent choices between fidelity and flow, rendering the original meaning and style as closely as possible, yet still producing a text that could have been written by a native speaker of the target language. Some passages translate more easily than others. Curiously enough, I found the first, short paragraph of the book to be among those that raised the most questions. I settled on the following translation:

Should the first two words—“la vérité”—be translated as “truth” or “the truth”? “Truth is not the opposite of lying”? “The truth is not the opposite of a lie”? Should “trahir,” to betray, be left as such, or become “betraying,” or maybe even the noun “betrayal”? Did I dare repeat the ungainly “is not the opposite of” three times, making four in all? (Well, Walder did, and one aspires to translate, not improve!) And was it right to replace his commas with semi‐colons, thereby slowing down the text but conforming more to English‐reading expectations in terms of punctuation? Goodness, there was enough material in that opening four‐line sentence for an entire workshop!

Even the title posed similar problems. The original “Saint‐Germain, ou la Négociation” could be translated as “Saint‐Germain, or Negotiation” (meaning the activity in general) or “Saint‐Germain, or the Negotiation” (meaning that specific event). On the grounds that Saint‐Germain means more geographically and historically to a French readership than to international readers, the ambiguity was avoided by opting for “The Negotiator”—albeit a common title in popular films and fiction—with the addition of “The Masterclass at Saint‐Germain.”

In addition to the translation challenges, bringing the book to readers of English also offered other opportunities. One was to include Walder’s short and enlightening Author’s Note, for some reason omitted from the US‐published McDowell, Oblensky edition of 1959. Another was to write a short introduction to place the negotiation in its historical context, with a map showing where the towns discussed—more familiar to French readers—were located. Then there was the opportunity for illustrations. I included a photograph of the château alongside an engraving from the 1570s; three other delightful engravings of the period; and, for the characters in the book who really existed, their portraits. With one exception! After failing to find a contemporary portrait of the narrator Malassise, I contacted a distinguished historian at the Sorbonne who assured me that no such portrait had survived. This seemed fitting, for Walder depicts Malassise as a rather elusive character who prefers to operate behind the scenes.

There were two other additions to consider. I thought that readers might be interested in having a flavor of the Edict that Charles IX signed after the negotiations, and so added Article 39, where the main strongholds, so hotly disputed by the characters, are mentioned. Finally, I attempted a short summary, under Walder’s phrase “Portrait of the Negotiator”—which in his Author’s Note he uses to describe the book as a whole—of the behaviors, principles, and tactics that the novel appears to illustrate.

We might wonder why Walder opted to use a novel as his vehicle. He could, like François De Callières in his De la Manière de Négocier avec les Souverains (1716), have offered instead a list of precepts, or, as with many books on negotiation, made a series of points illustrated by anecdotes drawn from a wide range of situations. Instead, he opted for a continuous narrative, which allowed him to make specific moments and incidents more connected and memorable, in the way that language learners more easily remember words and phrases if they are learned in context. With Walder’s account we recall the setting, the characters involved, and the emotions aroused at those moments when specific negotiating maneuvers occur.

Using the format of a novel gave Walder other opportunities as well. It allowed him to raise issues and express views without our knowing whether they were his views or those of his characters. Take, for example, the question of whether a negotiator representing his country is exempt from the moral constraints that play upon us in everyday life. Malassise observes: “After all, our work is dissimulation, trickery, guile, and, let us say it, deceit: all of which are not usually admired but rather resented in normal life. Can we be excused for using and developing such skills?” (61). The Baron d’Ublé replies: “Yes, in the interests of a just cause.” He later asserts: “We do not need to recognise or uphold the laws of individual morality” (70). Who is speaking here, Walder or d’Ublé? If d’Ublé, does he mean it, or is it just part of his attempt to throw Malassise off balance? There is much mileage in this ethical question involving a negotiator’s credibility and trustworthiness, but, through his characters, Walder can raise the issue, leave it with the reader, and move on with the narrative.

Walder’s narrator, dictating his memoirs twenty years after the events, also reflects on other negotiation‐related questions that may not have been raised in a more prescriptive, less descriptive work, such as the extent to which disinterested friendship can exist between negotiators. Malassise and his preferred counterpart d’Ublé appear, in the former’s eyes, to have experienced the beginnings of a real friendship in their encounter in the garden. Soon after, d’Ublé’s attack catches Malassise off guard, and the latter looks back on the earlier encounter with some uncertainty: “How far had we been sincere, how far had we been acting, he preparing his trap, I playing the game?” (72). Likewise, Malassise looks back and still does not know the nature of his cousin Eléonore’s apparent affection for him, nor the true extent of her power within the Huguenot ranks. The uncertain nature of human relationships teases both the narrator and the reader.

In the end, Walder has written an atmospheric historical novel with entertaining characters and a fair degree of tension, narrated with a gentle wit. Yet Walder states that his aim is to write “a portrait of the negotiator” and how well he does that must be the measure of his success. To what degree does he succeed in his portrayal? We might also ask how useful for negotiators his novel is today, and how relevant.

Any reader of the novel is struck by the number of times that reciprocity in negotiation—also referred to as balance or mutual sacrifice—is mentioned by the characters. They all invoke it, and the principle is shown in action again and again. Malassise discusses related ideas as well, such as demanding a concession when granting even those requests that “cost” nothing to concede (22), and the limited chance of success of any agreement perceived to be unbalanced (71). If reciprocity is one principle evident in the novel, another is preparation through consideration of the other party’s situation. Malassise prepares for the negotiations by putting himself in the shoes of his Huguenot adversaries, even to the extent that he would feel equally comfortable negotiating on their behalf instead of his own (17). He explains that his approach then is not to impose his will on others, but rather to argue in terms of the others’ interests.

What we find in The Negotiator is a demonstration of such negotiating principles in action. Other principles include negotiating on interests as opposed to positions (26), leaving everything open to some extent until the end (69), and the advantage of having limited authority (56). Below such overarching principles, the tactics used—what Walder in his Author’s Note calls the “tricks and subtleties”—are aimed at maximizing the value obtained and minimizing what is surrendered. They include avoiding early concessions (19), the bid for further concessions at the eleventh hour (93), and whether and how to make the first move (38, 88).

Walder’s negotiation is not, however, just the trading of concessions, for he also shows his characters using various styles of influencing. One is persuasive argument, which Malassise uses early on with the Huguenot leader Coligny in order to get the latter’s party to the negotiating table at Saint‐Germain. It is interesting too to see Malassise influencing his superior, the Queen Mother: he uses a step‐by‐step approach to accommodate her decision‐making style and prevent her losing face, and at the same time suspects that she is amused to see him playing this game that her temperament has imposed upon her subjects. We also see attempts at influencing through emotion: the attractive Eléonore appears to test Malassise’s susceptibilities, and the Baron d’Ublé’s apparently angry tirade at the Catholic delegation has the effect, as Malassise admits, of winning the Huguenots a fourth stronghold. Finally, there is influencing through the calculated use of strength, illustrated by the narrator’s intransigence in the later stages of the negotiation and the escalating threat of war at the end.

Walder’s “portrait” of a negotiator also contains demonstrations of specific negotiating behaviors. For example, in order to shelter from the King’s aggression, Malassise withdraws “into a state void of feeling, a zone of indifference and insensibility on which his attacks could make no impression, and from the safety of which I would be able to observe, reflect and respond” (12). We also see him expressing some approval of what his counterpart has said before giving his own view (15), and accompanying contradiction “with a gracious smile” (40). Yet elsewhere, we see anger and even invective (68). The behavior demonstrated varies from gentle to aggressive, and indeed, one might choose not to apply every move shown in this novel when negotiating a peaceful, win‐win, relationship‐based commercial agreement!

Walder’s novel is not a manual offering a comprehensive step‐by‐step negotiating methodology, far from it. So was I wrong to subtitle it “The Masterclass at Saint‐Germain”? The book’s 112 pages are a masterclass in the sense that the word is used when a great chef or professional golfer demonstrates his or her skills, talking us through it as they go along. They cannot prepare every dish or play every shot in the one demonstration, but there is much for the attentive observer to learn.

My original interest in negotiation involved training executives (native speakers of other languages) in a “low‐risk” form of English appropriate for handling disagreement while maintaining a positive relationship. By the turn of the century, however, after more reading and further seminars, I was conducting courses in negotiation skills for British and international organizations, drawing on the vicarious experience of my clients’ negotiations and the direct experience of running my own company. Often my thoughts returned to Walder’s novel as a potential resource, but, as it had been out of print in English for decades, access to the text was limited to readers of French.

So how might the novel be used in a training or educational context? A most rewarding individual activity is to identify the principles, tactics, and specific behaviors demonstrated in the novel, which might then be shared and discussed as a group. Another discussion topic could be the characters’ varying degrees of emotional self‐mastery, in three respects: with regard to the enormity of the items under negotiation, to their relationships with their colleagues and counterparts, and to the frustrations arising during the talks. One might also examine the extent to which the negotiation might be considered distributive or integrative, in potential and outcome. What about role plays or simulations? Some participants in a negotiation skills course might express resistance to a simulation from a historical context—even more so if one suggested donning sixteenth‐century costume!—but with well‐drafted negotiating briefs one might challenge the right participants to improve upon the resulting treaty (better still if they have not read the novel first, as knowing the historic outcome in advance could influence their judgment).

Another stimulating group activity would be to discuss the extent to which the book’s insights into negotiation are relevant today, and to consider their application to contemporary situations. Human psychology not having changed much in the 450 years since the negotiations at Saint‐Germain, or the 60 years since Walder wrote about them, it is difficult to deny the relevance of most of the novel’s content. Whatever our personal views on Brexit, for example, we can see that a close reading of Walder’s book could have been useful to the UK team in the early stages of the negotiations. Its seeming lack of preparation for the opening stages of negotiation left European Union negotiators aghast. The Brits’ apparently unquestioning acceptance of the EU’s sequencing of the talks proved disadvantageous. The UK made an early unilateral concession to the EU of some £39 billion, and this was treated as inviolable despite the UK leader’s assertion that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” All of this may be contrasted with the corresponding examples of good practice provided by Walder.

To conclude these reflections, let’s take a look at the ending of The Negotiator, without—I hope—spoiling anyone’s pleasure when reading it. In the very last stage of the discussions, the talks falter and the prospect of a return to war becomes real. Finally, the day is saved by an unexpected intervention quite beyond Malassise’s control. Dictating his memoirs twenty years later, Malassise predictably takes the credit for the overall result. Yet for all his wiliness and experience, he had very nearly sunk the ship by pushing his advantage too far, expecting his counterparts to make a further, final step with little or nothing in return. Reciprocity, which he had earlier described as vital to a meaningful agreement, had been disregarded. It is as if Walder, having let his narrator exhibit his negotiating prowess throughout the book, now gently pokes fun at him for failing both to follow his own precepts and to acknowledge having done so. This is just one interpretation; however, other readings are possible that look more positively on Malassise’s apparently high‐risk maneuver and its chances of success. Such ambiguity is typical of the richness of this slender novel, which, interweaving into a compelling story so many insights into negotiation, continues to intrigue me.