by Eugène Sue
“Poor crazy girl! If you are really a magician, tell me, what did you do the night before? Where were you?”
“At Faustina’s, the proud patrician dame’s, in the temple near the canal.”
“How were you clad?”
“Just as I was last night, when I left the chamber to fetch the ingredients for my enchantments.”
“No! No!” cried Sylvest distractedly, seeing his last hope slip from him. “No! It was not you! The magician predicted to Faustina that Syomara would be her victim. Would you have made such a prediction against yourself?”
“Who posted you on that?”
“Oh! Horrible prediction! deciphered by her whom you claim to have been yourself, by your specter, from the white traces left upon a red carpet by the convulsive fingers of a young female slave who was poisoned—”
“Who posted you upon that also?”
“Merciful gods! Have mercy upon me!”
“Seeing that you know all about it, brother, learn then that, in order to deceive Faustina, whom I hate — Oh! Whom I have long hated! My hatred for her dates fully three years back; we were then both at Naples — I sought night before last to kindle in her heart a hope the assured failure of which will be a dagger in her breast. I took on by means of sorcery the appearance of the Thessalian magician whom she summoned to her side. I re-assumed that appearance last night before you when I left the chamber in search of other magic charms.”
“You admit it all! It is yourself who caused the death of the young female slave, a girl not yet sixteen years of age! You inflicted a frightful death upon the innocent creature — and all for the purpose of deceiving Faustina?”
“Yes,” replied Syomara with an inspired air. “Yes, the slave girl died through my sorcery — what her dying agonies revealed to me Faustina knows not. She is lulled into security by my false report, while myself, informed by the traces left upon the carpet by a hand convulsed in death, have been able to read the hidden mysteries of the future. Yes, that girl died as others have died before and will die after her! The agony of death unveils to us the fearful and hidden secrets of the future. The death agony contains treasures for him who knows how to discover them. I therefore seek — and seek again,” she added in an ever more absentminded inspired air, “I seek — I interrogate everything; everything contains a magic power! The flower that sprouts in the crevices of a tomb, the clotted blood in the veins of a young virgin, the direction imparted by the air to the flames of a funeral torch, the bubbling of metals in a state of fusion, the laughter of the child that plays with the knife that is about to smite it, the sardonic smile of the criminal nailed to the cross. I interrogate everything! I seek — I seek — I have found — I shall find much more!”
“What is it you seek?” cried Sylvest distracted. “What do you expect to find?”
“THE UNKNOWN! The magic power of living at once in the past and in the future, and of subjecting the present to our will. The power of cleaving the air like a bird, the waters like a fish; of transmuting the dried leaves of trees into precious stones, sand into pure gold; the power of prolonging my beauty and my youth into all eternity; the power of assuming any shape I wish. Oh! To become at will a flower in the fields and feel my calyx inundated with the dew of the night, and to thrill under the kisses of the little sprites, the nocturnal lovers of the flowers; to become a lioness in the desert and attract the lordly lions with my roar; to become a silvery serpent and intertwine myself with the black ones and shelter ourselves, thus coiled, under the large leaves of the blue-blossomed lotus tree that borders the sleeping waters; to become a turtle-dove with its iris neck and rosy beak and nestle in the sward with the birds beloved of Venus! Oh! To equal the gods in their might. To be able to say: ‘I will it!’ and it happens. That is why I seek and seek — and I shall find! No price will be too dear to me! None! Oh, brother! As I said to you, if you only knew the anxieties, the terrors that accompany these researches, pursued by necromancy! Unutterable and matchless voluptuousness! Listen — this very night — transfigured into the Thessalian witch, I succeeded, by means of a thousand enchantments, to lull the watchers at Lydia’s grave into slumber and keep them steeped in profound sleep until, all alone, and in the deep silence of the night, I was enabled to seize the body of the young virgin in order to accomplish my magic charms upon it. Thus, you see, brother, I have experienced frights, shocks, ecstasies, fruitions that no human tongue knows of — nor ever will know.”
“Oh! Enraged heavens!” cried Sylvest. “You horrify me, Syomara! But a curse upon slavery that has made you what you are! You, the once innocent child of my mother! A demon carried you away when still young; he led you astray; he depraved; he lost you to yourself! From one debauchery to another, surfeited at fourteen by the monstrous profligacy of Trymalcion, you have landed where you now are — searching the unknown and unknowable through murder, the profanation of graves, and the frightful mysteries of a sacrilegious magic! Oh! In the name of my father who died in tortures! In the name of my sister who has become the horror of nature and of the gods — eternal malediction upon slavery! implacable hatred for it! vengeance upon all those who keep slaves!”
“Yes, brother! Hate! Execration! Vengeance! These kill! These kill! — and dead bodies are useful to sorcery! Listen! There are powerful enchantments, infallible, say the Egyptian women, provided they are invoked by a son and daughter of the same blood and both have sacrificed at the secret shrine of the goddess Isis. Be you that brother — I shall have you affiliated, and shall purchase your freedom from your master.”
Sylvest was about to spurn the offer with indignation when the conversation was interrupted by the eunuch’s voice. He beat against the door and cried:
“Open, Syomara — open! The sun is high. A magistrate has entered the house with soldiers. They are seeking for a slave who is hiding here, and who has run away from the house of seigneur Diavolus after taking possession of a casket full of gold! Open — open — or they will break in the door.”
“I shall ascertain where your master lives,” Syomara said to Sylvest. “I do not wish to be separated from you again, my good and tender brother! I shall buy your freedom at any price. Moreover, Diavolus is in love with the Beautiful Gaul — what could he refuse to her!”
Such a disgrace had never crossed Sylvest’s mind — to be redeemed from slavery by his sister’s shame! Ready to parry that last blow, he said to Syomara while the eunuch continued beating against the door:
“Raised in the faith of our fathers, magic seems to me abominable. That notwithstanding, I might perhaps second your designs if you promise to put in my hands, through your magic art, the means of wreaking terrible vengeance upon my master and his fellows!”
“Brother, let us not separate again. Thanks to my sorceries, you will have but to choose among the most atrocious means of vengeance the one that may please you—”
“In order to satisfy my hatred, I must remain a few days longer in the service of my master. My plan is made. Swear to me, in the name of our mutual affection, that you will take no step towards my liberation from my master before I shall have seen you again. I shall speedily find a way. Do you promise me that?”
“I swear!” answered Syomara beaming with joy.
Saying this the courtesan pressed her brother in a last and tender embrace, which he dared not to resist lest her suspicions be awakened. Syomara thereupon approached the door; touched, no doubt, a secret spring; the door flew instantly open; and before Sylvest had time to look around, Syomara had disappeared, either through some invisible issue, or by means of some new enchantment.
CHAPTER X.
THE DEMENTIA OF DESPAIR.
THE INSTANT THE door of the chamber in which Sylvest and Syomara had met for the first and last time since they were sold at Vannes had opened, the eunuch rushed in, followed by the magistrate and seeming to find an exquisite pleasure in forcibly ejecting the slave.
“There is the miserable slave!” he cried pointing at Sylvest. “The B
eautiful Gaul did not know that the vagabond had stolen a casket of gold; nobody in the house saw any such casket; but she was kindhearted enough to listen to the lamentations of the scamp, who claimed to be a countryman of hers so that he might wheedle some alms out of her. Get you gone, you gallows-bird! Fortunately seigneur Diavolus will soon settle accounts with you.”
Led away by the magistrate and his posse of soldiers, Sylvest left Syomara’s abode. Outside, his master stood waiting for him. Diavolus requested the magistrate to have the slave pinioned, and he was escorted by two soldiers to his master’s house lest he should attempt to flee.
The secret purpose that Sylvest pursued began to be realized. He was taken back to the house of seigneur Diavolus, who, without uttering a word, marched beside the soldiers. Diavolus’ silent anger was more dreaded by his slaves than his outbursts of rage. Arrived at his residence he ordered the two soldiers to wait in the vestibule, and had Sylvest himself follow him into a lower apartment where he remained alone with his slave.
Diavolus’ face was pale. From time to time his fists twitched convulsively while with knitted brows, eyes flashing fire and clenched teeth he looked upon his slave in savage silence. After having, no doubt, turned his scheme of vengeance like a sweet morsel in his mind, he said to Sylvest, whose arms were still pinioned:
“I waited for you all night at the door of the Beautiful Gaul — aye, at her door — I — I waited. What were you doing all that time while your master was dancing attendance in the chill air of the night on the street?”
“I was speaking of you, seigneur.”
“Indeed! Quite an honest servant! And what were you saying?”
“I told her, seigneur, that, loaded with debts, sticking at no act of baseness or of knavery, and insensible to shame, you sent to her as a present a casket of gold which you had virtually stolen from one of your friends, a young and imbecile but rich fellow. ‘Therefore,’ said I to the Beautiful Gaul, ‘I am of the opinion that you can make no more lucrative choice than to take in both the imbecile and his gold. As to my master, seigneur Diavolus, take my advice, and close your doors to him. That noble scamp will eat you out of house and home, as he did with the noble dame Fulvia, with Bassa the flute player, and so many other silly girls whom he squeezed like lemons and then cast off.’ The Beautiful Gaul listened to my brotherly advice. You may convince yourself by knocking at her door. Do not think I am joking, seigneur. No, this time, different from so many other occasions, I am not sporting with your stupid credulity. I said, and am now saying just what I think of you. Oh, my contemptible seigneur! Oh, master more infamous than the lowest scamp!—”
Accustomed to the impudent repartees of his slave, Diavolus did not at first wish to interrupt him. He confidently believed that after indulging in his insolent humor, by way of counter-irritants to the truth, Sylvest would speedily strike a different tack and make amends for his insolent sally. Thus Diavolus allowed his slave to proceed until the latter’s last words removed all doubt from his mind. Unable now any longer to restrain his fury, Diavolus seized a heavy chair studded with bronze ornaments, rushed with it at the slave, and raising it in both his hands, was on the point of crushing in Sylvest’s head who, impassible and full of hope, silently awaited death. But a second thought suddenly stayed Diavolus’ arms. With the chair still over Sylvest’s head, he cried:
“Oh! no — I shall not kill you now — no — you would suffer too little.”
Sylvest saw with deep grief that his last hope was frustrated. But he did not yet wholly give up his plan. His arms were pinioned, but his legs remained free. He took advantage of the partial liberty thus left to him and gave seigneur Diavolus so furious a kick in the stomach that the debauchee rolled on the floor screaming for help.
“Now,” thought Sylvest, “he is bound to kill me. I shall not owe my freedom to the infamy of Syomara and I shall, withal, be free from her sorceries. These would ever haunt me. I would finally succumb to them.”
At the screams uttered by seigneur Diavolus the two soldiers and several slaves, among the latter of whom was the cook Four-Spices, rushed into the chamber, while their master painfully raised himself from the floor with a face discolored by pain and rage. He dropped into a seat gasping for breath and said to the soldiers:
“Arrest that criminal — he tried to kill me!”
The soldiers seized Sylvest, while his companions in bondage stood around silent and dumbfounded. They all loved him. They exchanged sad glances among themselves.
His pain having somewhat subsided, Diavolus rose from his seat, and leaning with both hands upon a table said to the soldiers in a calm and collected voice, after a moment’s reflection:
“Take that murderer to the underground pens of the circus. In three days there will be a performance. Let him be then delivered to the wild beasts in the arena.”
“At last,” thought Sylvest to himself, “my hour will soon sound.”
A shudder of horror ran through his companions while the two soldiers led Sylvest away. Four-Spices, however, covertly made to Sylvest a mysterious sign that consisted in joining two of his fingers, as if taking a pinch of some powder. Sylvest understood that Four-Spices had returned to his poisoning scheme.
Before proceeding with this painful narrative, my son, I wish to tell you why the noble Faustina should inspire you with no pity whatever, while Syomara, however criminal, however monstrous she may seem to you, deserves, perhaps, some compassion.
Faustina is the personification of the savage contempt for the life of others which is born of the unlimited power that the master arrogates to himself over his slave, the conqueror over the conquered, the oppressor over the oppressed. Faustina is the most shocking instance of the excesses that a total absence of religious sentiment, unbridled will, unbounded desires speedily followed by satiety, lead to. They engender the refinements of barbarism and the debaucheries that cause nature to shudder.
Syomara, on the other hand, is the personification of the shocking depravity that slavery almost inevitably plunges one into when taken young, above all, when, instead of presenting itself in the garb of roughness and cruelty, it caresses the body with all the enjoyments of luxury, and for all time poisons the soul with precocious corruption. The slave who is condemned to the most arduous labors, who is beaten and tortured has his energy ever revived by pain: the sense of his own dignity never is wholly extinguished in his breast; his mind will ever turn to revolt. The horror for oppression, sole virtue left to slavery, the slave who is rendered effeminate and is unnerved by infamous delights wholly loses. Often he eclipses his own master by his crimes.
Bought when still a little child, and brought up by an infamous old man, the monstrosity of whose performances seemed to cross the bounds of possibility, Syomara could not choose but emulate Trymalcion; and she surpassed him.
Shame to our race! But the slave Syomara never had the choice between good and evil; the noble Faustina on the contrary, being free and rich, could choose.
The one became a monster through circumstances, the other developed into one by nature.
Have pity for the unfortunate Syomara.
CHAPTER XI.
THE CIRCUS JAILOR.
SYLVEST WAS TAKEN by the soldiers to the circus, where he was put in irons and locked up in a solitary cell. All slaves intended for the wild beasts were locked up separately, out of fear lest they mutually put an end to their lives in order to escape a death whose long agony rendered it dreadful in advance.
From his cell Sylvest could hear the roarings of the animals that he was to be a prey to on the evening of the third day of his imprisonment. The gladiatorial combats and the exhibitions of wild beasts were always given by torch light.
So shaken was Sylvest’s mind at the close of the night that he spent in Syomara’s house, especially when she offered him to associate himself with her sorceries, that, forgetting Loyse, he sought, by insulting and striking his master, to meet a speedy death which his hands, bound since he
left the courtesan’s house, prevented him from giving to himself. In the seclusion of his cell, the slave had leisure to collect his thoughts. He remembered his wife, and mentally addressed her his adieus, sorrowfully reflecting that on the very evening when he would be delivered to the wild beasts, Loyse was to wait for him at all hazards in Faustina’s park, as was agreed between them at their last interview. It also shot with grief through his mind that he had not accepted Loyse’s offer, made to him a month previous, to try to flee.
To certain domestic slaves and to those who were employed in factories and in field labor the opportunity for escape was not infrequent. But they had to take refuge in the wilderness, far from any inhabited spot. Hunger often killed those who ventured on the expedient. He did not wish to expose his wife to such a death, all the less knowing that she was with child. But finding himself at the pass when his only prospect was to be slain by the teeth of a savage lion or tiger in the amphitheater, now when a painful agony loomed before him, he regretted not having mustered up the requisite fortitude to brave the dangers of flight with Loyse. But for the recollection of his wife, the slave would have awaited the hour of his death with indifference. Enslaved Gaul might not so soon be able to break her chains by the revolt of the Sons of the Mistletoe. He would, at any rate, be about to join his ancestors in the new and unknown worlds.
In the midst of his perplexities there was a fear that ever and anon recurred to Sylvest. At such times he would scan the thick vault overhead and the heavy slabs of his cell with anxiety. Syomara was a magician; he feared to see her appear any moment and to find himself carried away by her, thanks to her magical powers. There was still another cause of pain that assailed his heart. As was his custom, he had stowed away in the thick and strong belt of his trousers the little gold sickle and brass bell of Hena and his father Guilhem, together with the thin rolls of tanned skin that contained the annals of his family. Seeing himself now inevitably doomed to death, he sorrowfully saw in advance the pious relics scattered over the blood-stained sand of the arena, instead of being handed down to his descendants, according to the wishes of his grandfather Joel, the brenn of the tribe of Karnak.
