by Eugène Sue
“And what was the cause of his death — of the terrible death that you say he died?”
“Seeing that father rendered many and valuable services to his master, he finally enjoyed a little more freedom than the other slaves. He utilized it to prepare the means for our escape. At our last interview he said to me: ‘If fire should break out at night and invade the section of the house in which you are kept, be not afraid; seek not to flee; quietly wait for me.’ Do you remember, sister, the shed where the flax was thrown to dry?”
“Yes; the roof touched the bulls’ stable. — Oh, Sylvest! How many times did not all of us of the family spend there the long winter evenings merrily, twisting the flax into skeins! What mirth at our work! — And it ever was our poor father who gave the signal!”
“Yes. In those days he had, like Joel our grandfather, the mirthfulness of all good and brave hearts. Well, as I was about to tell you, I was generally locked up in the flax loft. My cage, which consisted of thick oak planks, was open on one side and that side was furnished with an iron railing. I entered the cage by a door which the Roman himself always bolted from without. One night I was awakened by a thick smoke, and I presently saw a gleam under the door that communicated with the stables. The door flew open and father, free from his chains, bounded in, hatchet in hand across a cloud of smoke and flames. How he managed it I never learned. He rushed to my cage, drew the bolt, ordered me to follow him and leaped down into the heap of flax that the conflagration had already invaded. A few blows with his hatchet opened a hole through the wall. He made me crawl through it first, and he followed.”
“When you got out you must have found yourself on a narrow, round patch, surrounded by a palisade, where the war dogs were allowed to go loose — Did you not?”
“Yes; the palisade was too high to leap over; father fell upon it with his hatchet. The conflagration lighted the place as if it were broad day. The palisade finally yielded. Behind it, you will remember, was a deep and wide moat.”
“How did you clear it?”
“From the ground to the bottom of the moat the distance was twice father’s height. He jumped in, reached out his arms to me and told me to follow him. I became dizzy and took too strong a leap. Our father was hardly able to deaden my fall. In striking the bottom of the moat I sprained my ankle. The pain drew a piercing cry from me. Father smothered it by putting his hand over my mouth. I fainted away. When a long while afterwards I regained consciousness, this is what I saw: You will remember that not far from the wash-house there stood two willow trees, one of which was hollow—”
“Certainly, and we used to tie a rope across and swing ourselves.”
“In the hollow of one of these trees our family relics were hidden. Those very trees, once the witnesses of our childish games, were also to be the witnesses of my own and our father’s torture. After I fainted at the bottom of the ditch I was recalled to my senses by an extraordinary pain. A pricking sensation ran all over my body. I opened my eyes. But a scorching sun that darted its vertical rays upon my shaven head forced me to close my eyelids. I felt that I was naked, that I stood on my feet and that I was tied with my back to a tree. I soon realized that the tree was one of the two willows. Again I opened my eyes. Before me, naked and tied to the other willow, I saw our father. His whole body and face were smeared with honey, as I was myself, and were completely covered by a swarm of large red ants that had their hill at the very root of the willow to which he was lashed. I then understood the myriads of tiny pricks that tormented me. The ants had not yet invaded my face, but I felt them crawling up to my neck. My first cry was to call out to father. It was only then that I noticed that he alternately laughed a weird laugh, and pronounced incoherent words interspersed with piercing cries of pain. The ants had no doubt begun to penetrate his head through his ears, and to devour his eyes. His closed eyelids were wholly covered by the insects. The atrocious pain, above all, the burning sun that had for hours fallen upon his bare and shaven head had demented him. I called out to him: ‘Help, father!’ He no longer heard me. My cries attracted another Roman colonist, a neighbor of my master, and who passed for kind towards his slaves. He happened to be walking in the neighborhood and he ran to me. Moved with compassion, he cut my bonds, dragged me to the nearby stream and threw me in to rid me of the ants. As soon as my first pains were alleviated I implored the Roman to run to father’s assistance. One of our warders came upon us at that moment, and close behind him our master. He consented out of greed to sell me to the other colonist, but in his rage he declared that father, having set fire during the night to a part of the buildings for the purpose of making his escape together with me during the tumult, would have to undergo his punishment to the end. I was taken far away by my new master. Long was I ill, but I was treated with humanity. All the Romans are not equally ferocious towards their slaves. The first time that I could leave the house alone I repaired to the two willows. Lashed to the tree were the bleached bones of our father.”
“Oh, God! Such a death!” cried Syomara wiping her tears. “To die a slave, and die an atrocious death, at that — and then on the very place where one has lived happy and free!”
“My heart, Syomara, has bled like yours at that thought. Although still young, I took upon father’s sacred remains the oath of vengeance. I drew our family narratives from the hole in the willow where they lay concealed. I remained a few years with my new master in the capacity of a domestic slave. During that period I learned to speak the Roman tongue. Unfortunately my master died. Placed under the auctioneer’s hammer together with his other slaves, I was bought by a Roman procurator who happened to be making the circuit of our country. He was of violent temperament and cruel. My life now was even more miserable than ever before. He sold me. Passed from hand to hand, I was finally sold to seigneur Diavolus, one of the most wicked masters that it has yet been my misfortune to belong to. Almost two years ago, having accompanied Diavolus to a villa near that of a grand Roman dame, whose intendant has under his charge a large number of female slaves at work in a factory, I met there a young Gallic girl from Paris who was sold as a slave after the siege of that city. We loved each other, and one night we pledged each other our troth before the sacred planet of the Gauls — the only form of marriage allowed to the slave. The gods have blessed our love. Loyse, my wife, expects to be a mother. Finally, night before last, learning by the merest accident that the woman much spoken of as the ‘Beautiful Gaul,’ recently arrived in Orange, was you, my sister, I feigned to subserve the profligacy of my master in order to find the means to reach you. During the night that I spent here I witnessed shocking mysteries. For a moment they affected my reason. Aye, for a moment I was a dupe of visions or of witchcraft. Your specter appeared before me and chilled me with horror. Now, sister, in the name of the memories of our childhood, that touched you so tenderly — in the name of our father whose cruel death you have just wept, fulfil your promise to make clear those mysteries that are now unexplainable to me. Feel assured that I have pardon and pity for the shame in which you live and into which you have fallen despite your better self. Alas! What else could you have become, being bought as an infant by Trymalcion — that monster of debauchery and cruelty!”
“Trymalcion was no monster!” interjected Syomara with a sweet smile. “No, indeed, he was not!”
“What say you? That horrible old man—”
“Oh! ‘He was ugly to the point of horribleness — he even inspired me, at first, with fear — that lasted a few days. After that,” she added ingenuously, “my sentiments for him became quite different—”
“Do I hear aright! You, my sister! You, hold such language?”
“Would you want me to be ungrateful?”
“Just gods! What is that!”
“You, dear brother,” resumed Syomara redoubling her tender caresses, “you, who from childhood were subjected to a hard yoke, and who had nothing under your eyes but the spectacle of the sufferings, of the trials of our father — yo
u can not choose but look upon slavery with hatred and horror. Nothing more natural. You contrast your present life with the peaceful days of our infancy in our humble home — but as to me, Sylvest, what a difference!”
“Sister! Sister! Is it thus that you refer to slavery?”
“Slavery? I?” and she laughed such a sincere laugh that Sylvest shivered. “You should, on the contrary, say, that before a week had expired, I, a child in her ninth year, had for my head slave the old seigneur Trymalcion. All his slaves were mine. I know not what philter rendered that old man, so feared of all, a veritable lamb to me. Besides, you can not imagine the marvels of his galley that took me from Vannes to Italy. Imagine — my private chamber, the finest of all — it was Trymalcion’s before he passed it over to me — was wainscoted with ivory panels incrusted with gold; charming pictures covered the ceiling. The carpet, which consisted of the feathers of the rarest birds in point of the splendor of their many-colored plumage, was as brilliantly shaded as the rainbow. My bed, together with all the other appurtenances of my chamber, was chiseled by the Greeks and its material was of purest gold. The down of young swans filled my mattress of Tyrean silk. As to my linen, such was its whiteness and fineness that, beside it, the web of the spider would seem coarse, and snow, grey. Ten female slaves, assigned to my service, worked night and day and prepared for me the most charming clothes out of priceless Oriental materials — and every day placed, at my disposal, a new outfit before my enchanted eyes. Collars, bracelets, jewelry of all descriptions glittering with precious stones filled my caskets. Exquisite dishes, delicate wines covered my table, and the aged seigneur Trymalcion amused himself with officiating as my cup-bearer. If I had a mind for sport, Persian dogs no larger than your fist were brought in to me, or quaint monkeys in funny clothes, or little Moorish girls of my own age to be used by me as dolls, or, in their silver cages with gold bars, little green and blue parrots that had been taught to say ‘Syomara.’ When I was tired of these amusements, the aged seigneur gave me little boxes filled with pearls and other precious nicknacks that I loved to throw into the sea. This sport alone probably cost Trymalcion ten thousand gold sous every time I indulged in it. Upon our arrival in Italy, the gorgeous entertainments and pleasures that awaited me there almost made me look back with disclain upon the childish and costly amusements on the galley.”
Sylvest had not the courage to interrupt his sister. Never until then had that monstrous side of slavery occurred to him — its infamous seductions, infinitely more shocking to a proud and just soul than the heaviest labors or most excruciating torments: the latter only broke and killed the body.
“What!” he said to Syomara, his eyes filling with tears and pity. “What! Unhappy child! So young, and yet you had not one sad thought for your lather — your mother — your relatives! Your thoughts never went back longingly to the innocent life of your early years?”
“Oh! They did! At first I did weep! I wept for you, for my mother, for my father. But tears dry again. Then also, childhood is fickle. Moreover, brother, I really could not long regret my coarse robes of grey wool, my heavy leather shoes, my cloth head-coverings, our games of pebbles on the beach, while I reigned as a sovereign on board the galley of seigneur Trymalcion. I found myself dressed like the daughter of an empress, and amused myself casting pearls into the sea—”
“Merciful gods!” cried Sylvest. “I bless you for having rendered bondage so cruel to me! For having clapped an iron collar to my neck instead of one of gold! I would undoubtedly, like this unfortunate woman, have borne the collar of infamy with joy. So, then, opulence, idleness, pleasures were worth all else to you? Family, shame, country, liberty, gods — none of all that existed any longer for you?”
“What would you have had me do, Sylvest?” replied Syomara languidly stretching out her arms as if an inexpressible sense of weariness and satiety still burdened her spirit. “How else could it be? When barely fourteen I was the queen at the gigantic bacchanalian feasts that old Trymalcion gave once every month in order to amuse me in his immense underground villa on the isle of Capri, where, obedient to an odd whim of that noble seigneur, ten thousand torches of perfumed wax substituted the light of day. Whole provinces could be bought with the gold that each of these saturnalia cost, where young and handsome female slaves were drowned in porphyry basins filled with the rarest of wines, or where children and young virgins were smothered under mountains of petals of roses and of jasmine and orange blossoms, not to mention a thousand other whimsical contrivances of Trymalcion, who only lived to invent wherewith to please and entertain me, and to drive away my increasing weariness. Oh, Sylvest! The people of Orange talk of the orgies of Faustina — these are but innocent vestal games beside the nocturnal and subterranean orgies of that old seigneur, who prolonged his days to the advanced age of ninety-eight years by taking every morning a magic bath into which was poured the still warm blood of a young girl. The old man died in time, both for himself and others. He was at the end of his powers of invention to combat the sense of disgust and satiety that was slowly and steadily undermining me. Fortunately, two years later I found the remedy for the weariness, the satiety, the disgust with which all things inspired me. Oh, brother!” Syomara proceeded with an exaltation that caused her face to beam with happiness, “if you only knew what tart and intense voluptuousness is found in certain mysteries! If you only knew! But what ails you? Your face grows pale and is stamped with terror! Sylvest, what ails you? Answer me—”
Syomara’s speech was sooth. Her brother’s face grew pale, his features denoted terror, horror. While making to him the abominable revelations that she did, his sister’s face remained unmoved, and even smiling. Her calm and sweet voice grew animated only when she touched upon the tart and terrible voluptuousness that she found in certain mysteries. These words re-awakened in him doubts more poignant than had before assailed him; they recalled to his mind the vision of the previous night. Sylvest shuddered and brusquely drew away from his sister, whose arm lay upon his shoulder. He raised his hands heavenward and cried, unable to believe what he heard or what he saw:
“Oh, almighty gods! And yet, a moment ago, this wretched woman was tenderly touched by the recollections of our childhood! She wept at the account of her father’s tortures and at mine! Merciful gods! Is this another vision? Is this another phantom that assumes my sister’s shape?”
Syomara looked astonished at her brother and moved towards him. He, however, motioned her back with a gesture of horror.
Seeing herself thus repulsed Syomara turned her large and beautiful eyes full upon her brother and said in her tenderest voice:
“Poor brother! What is the matter? Why do you act in that way? You have seen me, you say, touched by and weeping over the remembrances of our childhood — at the narrative of the miseries and of the tortures that you and our father had to undergo—”
“Yes — and when I saw your tears flow my last suspicions vanished.”
“What suspicions?”
“Did I not tell you the horrible vision that I saw last night?”
Syomara relapsed into silence; she remained pensive; after a few moments she addressed the slave without blushing, without fear, and in a low voice as if making a friendly confidence:
“Brother, I can now admit the fact to yon, it was not a vision; it was myself you saw last night—”
At this revelation Sylvest dashed towards the door; only then did he notice that it was locked. He sought to open it — in vain. All the while Syomara repeated:
“No, it was no vision. The Syomara of last night — the Syomara the magician — is myself — she is your sister—”
And she added in a tone of kindly reproach:
“Be not weak-hearted—”
“Merciful gods!” Sylvest exclaimed with a sigh of relief, struck by a sudden thought. “Oh, gods! You have bereft her of her senses — she is insane! Oh, wretched woman! It is no longer horror that you inspire in me!” he added unable to repress his sob
s and drawing near to his sister. “It is pity I now feel for you! Oh! My heart breaks with grief when I behold you so young, so beautiful and yet insane! Aye, I feel my heart break! But it no longer revolts at the sight of a monster — you are only a poor crazy girl!”
“Crazy! I crazy? Crazy because my tears flowed at your sad narrative? Are you astonished at that? I must confess, it astonished me myself. But yet those tears were sincere. Why should I feign them, seeing I was bound to make the revelation to you, and to say — Toast night’s magician was myself?”
“Yea, poor body! It was yourself!” answered Sylvest with the complaisance that one humors the crazy with, so as not to irritate them. “Yes, it was you — yes!”
“Brother, you talk of a disordered brain? It is your brain that is unsettled. You seek to reject what you do not understand. Last night, due to my eunuch’s act of treason, you saw me young and beautiful; before your eyes I transformed myself into a hideous old hag. Do you understand that?
Do you now understand how I could shed tears a while ago? And yet that transfiguration was as real as the tears that I shed before you. Let your astonishment cease.”
At the remembrance of the sorcery that he had witnessed, Sylvest’s spirit was troubled anew. Whether crazy or not, his sister was a witch, one of those monsters who are the horror of nature, of man and of the. gods. He now essayed a last and terrible test. Taking full control of himself he said: —
