by Jan Potocki
I knew, or I thought I knew, that Señora Santarez had no financial means. So I decided to have recourse to Don Belial. All I said to my charming hostess was that Don Cristoforo didn’t come any more to her house because he had become suspect in his superior’s eyes, but I myself had sources of information in the ministry and I had every reason to expect complete success. Señora Santarez was overjoyed at the prospect of saving her father. She added gratitude to all the emotions which I had already inspired in her. The surrender of her person seemed to her less reprehensible. So great a service seemed necessarily to absolve her. New pleasures occupied all of our time. I tore myself away from them one night to go and see Don Belial.
‘I was expecting you,’ he said. ‘I knew full well that your scruples would not last long and your remorse would be even shorter lived. All the sons of Adam are made of the same clay. But I didn’t expect that you would be so quickly tired of pleasures the like of which the kings of this little globe, who have not had my sweet-box, have never tasted.’
‘Alas, Señor Belial,’ I replied, ‘part of what you say is all too true, but it isn’t that I am tired of my present state. On the contrary, I fear that if it were to come to an end, life would have no more charms for me.’
‘Yet you have come to ask me for the three thousand pistoles to save Señor Goranez, and as soon as he is declared innocent he will take his daughter and his granddaughters home with him. He has already promised his granddaughters’ hands to two clerks in his office. You will see in the arms of those fortunate husbands two charming persons who have sacrificed their innocence to you and who as a price for such an offering asked only for a share in the pleasures of which you were the focal point. Inspired more by rivalry than jealousy, each of them was happy in the happiness she had given you, and enjoyed without envy the happiness which you owed to the other. Their mother, more knowledgeable but no less passionate, could look on her daughters’ pleasures without resentment, thanks to my sweet-box. After such moments what will you do with the rest of your life? Will you seek the legitimate pleasures of matrimony? Or sigh away your love in the company of a coquette who will not be able to promise you even the shadow of the sensual pleasures that no mortal before you has known?’
Then Don Belial changed his tone and said, ‘No: I am wrong! The father of Señora Santarez is really innocent and it is in your power to save him. The pleasure of doing a good action should take priority over all the others.’
‘Señor, you speak very coldly about good works but with great warmth about pleasures, which after all are sinful ones. You seem to want my eternal damnation. I am tempted to think that you are…’
Don Belial did not let me finish but said, ‘I am one of the principal members of a powerful society whose aim is to make men happy by curing them of the vain prejudices which they suck in with the milk of their wet-nurse, and which afterwards get in the way of all their desires. We have published very good books in which we demonstrate admirably well that self-love is the mainspring of all human action, and that gentle compassion, filial piety, ardent, tender love, and clemency in kings are so many refinements of egoism. Now if self-love is the mainspring of all our actions, it follows that the satisfaction of our own desires must be its natural goal. Legislators have clearly felt this: they have written laws so that they can be evaded. And self-interested people rarely fail to do so.’
‘What, Señor Belial!’ I said. ‘Don’t you regard just and unjust to be real qualities?’
‘They are relative qualities. I will make you see this with the help of a moral fable:
‘Some tiny insects were crawling about on the tips of tall grasses. One said to the others, “Look at that tiger near us. It’s the gentlest of animals. It never does us any harm. The sheep, on the other hand, is a ferocious beast. If one came along it would eat us with the grass which is our refuge. But the tiger is just. He would avenge us.” You can deduce from this, Señor Hervas, that all ideas of the just and the unjust, or good and evil, are relative and in no way absolute or general. I agree with you that there is a sort of inane satisfaction to be had from what you call good works. You will certainly find it by saving good Señor Goranez, who is unjustly accused. You must not hesitate to do this if you are tired of living with his family. Think about it. You have the time. The money has to be handed over on Saturday, half an hour after sunset. Be here on Friday night. The three thousand pistoles will be ready at exactly midnight. Farewell. Please let me give you another sweet-box.’
I went back home and ate a few pastilles on the way. Señora Santarez and her daughters were waiting for me and had not gone to bed. I wanted to speak about the prisoner but I was not given time… But why should I reveal so many shameful crimes? You need only know that we gave full rein to our desires, and that it was not in our power to measure the passage of time or count the days. The prisoner was completely forgotten.
Saturday was on the point of ending; the sun, which had set behind clouds, seemed to me to cover the sky with blood-red hues. Sudden flashes of lightning made me tremble. I struggled to recall my last conversation with Don Belial. Suddenly I heard a hollow, sepulchral voice say three times, ‘Goranez, Goranez, Goranez.’
‘Merciful heavens,’ cried Señora Santarez. ‘Was that a spirit from heaven or hell? It was telling me that my father is no more.’
I fainted; when I came round I took the road to Manzanares to make one last appeal to Don Belial. I was arrested by alguaziles and taken to a part of the town which I did not know at all, and into a building which I knew no better but which I soon saw to be a prison. I was clapped in irons and pushed into a dark dungeon.
I heard the sound of chains rattling near me. ‘Are you young Hervas?’ my companion in misfortune asked me.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am Hervas. And I can tell from the sound of your voice that you are Cristoforo Sparadoz. Do you have any news of Goranez? Was he innocent?’
‘He was innocent,’ said Don Cristoforo. ‘But his accuser had hatched his plot with a skill which placed Goranez’s condemnation or his salvation in his control. He demanded three thousand pistoles from him. Goranez was not able to procure them and has just hanged himself in prison. I was also given the choice of either hanging myself or spending the rest of my days in the castle of Larache on the African coast. I have chosen the latter course, and have decided to escape as soon as I am able and turn Muslim. As for you, my friend, you will be cruelly tortured to make you confess to things you know nothing about; but your affair with Señora Santarez gives rise to the presumption that you know all about them and are an accomplice of her father.’
Imagine a man whose soul as well as his body had been softened by pleasure; a man threatened with the horrors of protracted and cruel torture. I thought I could already feel its pains; my hair stood up on my head. A shudder of terror ran through my limbs, which no longer obeyed my will but were jerked by sudden convulsions.
A gaoler came into our prison to fetch Sparadoz. As he went away, Don Cristoforo threw me a dagger. I did not have the strength to grasp it and would have been even less able to stab myself with it. My despair was such that death itself could not bring me comfort.
‘Oh Belial,’ I cried. ‘Belial, I know who you are and yet I invoke you.’
‘Here I am,’ the vile spirit cried. ‘Take this dagger. Draw blood and sign the paper I am giving to you.’
‘Oh my guardian angel,’ I then cried. ‘Have you altogether forsaken me?’
‘It is too late to invoke your angel,’ cried Satan, grinding his teeth and vomiting out flames.
At the same time he scored my forehead with his claw. I felt a burning pain and fainted, or rather fell into a trance.
A sudden light illuminated the prison. A cherubim with shining wings held up a mirror to me and said, ‘Behold on your forehead the inverted Thau. It is the sign of reprobation. You will see it on other sinners. If you bring twelve back to the path of salvation you will return there yourself. Take up this pilgrim�
��s habit and follow me.’
I woke up, or I thought I did, and in truth I was no longer in prison but on the high road to Galicia. I was dressed as a pilgrim.
Soon after, a company of pilgrims came by. They were going to Santiago de Compostela. I joined them and went with them to all the holy places in Spain. I wanted to go into Italy and visit Loreta. I was in Asturias and took the road to Madrid. Once I reached this city I went to the Prado and looked for Señora Santarez’s house. I could not find it even though I recognized all those in the neighbourhood. These hallucinations proved to me that I was still in Satan’s power. I did not dare pursue my researches further.
I visited several churches and then went to the Buen Retiro. The garden was completely deserted. I saw only one man sitting on a seat. The great Maltese cross embroidered on his cloak told me that he was one of the principal members of that order. He seemed lost in thought and plunged in so deep a reverie that he seemed to have lost all power of movement. As I came closer I thought I saw under his feet an abyss in which his face was depicted upside-down as if in a pool of water, but in this case the abyss looked as though it was filled with fire.
As I came still closer, the vision disappeared, but in looking at the man I saw that he bore on his forehead the inverted Thau, the sign of reprobation which the cherubim had made me see on my own forehead in the mirror.
When the gypsy reached this point in his story a man came to discuss the day’s business with him. So he had to leave us.
The Fifty-third Day
The next day the old chief, taking up Busqueros’s story, continued to tell it as follows:
THE REPROBATE PILGRIM’S STORY
CONTINUED
It was easy for me to realize that before my eyes was one of the twelve sinners who had to be led back by me to the path of salvation. I tried to gain his confidence; I did not succeed until I convinced him that my motive was not idle curiosity. It was necessary for him to tell me his story. I asked him for it, and he began as follows:
THE COMMANDER OF TORALVA’S STORY
I entered the order of the Knights of Malta before the end of my childhood, having been received into it, as they say, as a page. The protection I enjoyed at court obtained for me the favour of a galley command at the age of twenty-five and in the following year the grand master, having offices to distribute, conferred on me the best commandery in the ‘langue’1 of Aragon. So I could, and still can, aspire to the highest positions in the order. But as these are not reached until one is of an advanced age, and as I had nothing to do in the meanwhile, I followed the example of our first bailli, who perhaps should have set me a better one. In a word, I spent my time in love affairs, which I thought then to be the most venial of sins. Would that I had not committed any more serious ones! The sin for which I reproach myself was a guilty excess which made me defy what our religion holds most sacred. I can only think about it with terror. But I must not get ahead of myself.
You will know that on Malta we have noble families of the island who do not enter the order or have any contact with the knights of whatever rank, recognizing only the grand master, who is their sovereign, and the chapter, which is their council.
Below this class, there is an intermediate one whose members take offices and seek the protection of the knights. The ladies of this class are independent and are designated by the title of onorate, which means ‘honoured’ in Italian. And they certainly deserve this title through the propriety of their behaviour and, to be perfectly frank with you, through the secretiveness in which they shroud their love affairs.
Long experience has taught the lady onorata that discretion is incompatible with the character of French knights, or at least that it is extremely rare to find discretion combined with all the other fine qualities which distinguish them. The result of this is that young gentlemen of that nation who are used to enjoying brilliant success with the fair sex, have to make do with prostitutes in Malta.
The not very numerous German knights are those who please the onorate most. I believe this to be because of their pink and white complexions. After them come the Spanish knights, and I believe we owe this to our character, which is justly reputed to be honest and dependable.
The French knights, and especially the caravanists,2 take revenge on the onorate by making fun of them in all sorts of ways, most especially by revealing their secret liaisons. But as they stick together and do not bother to learn Italian, which is the language of the country, whatever they say makes little impression.
So it was that we were living together peacefully, as were our onorate, when a French vessel brought us the Commander de Foule-quère, of die ancient house of the Seneschals of Poitou, themselves descended from the Counts of Angoulême. He had previously spent time in Malta and had often been involved in affairs of honour. He had now come to solicit the post of grand admiral. He was over thirty-five years old. He was therefore expected to be of steadier character, and indeed the commander did not seek quarrels and make trouble as he had done before, but he was haughty, imperious, even factious, aspiring to more consideration than the grand master himself.
The commander kept open house. The French knights flocked there. We seldom would go there, and ended up by not going at all because we found the conversation would turn on subjects which we found distasteful, including the subject of the onorate whom we loved and respected.
When the commander appeared in public he was accompanied by a crowd of young caravanists. He would often lead them to the via stretta,3 show them the places where he had fought and retail to them all the details of his duels.
I must tell you that according to our customs duelling is forbidden in Malta except in the via stretta, which is an alley not overlooked by any windows. It is only wide enough to allow two men to take guard and cross swords. They cannot step back. The adversaries face each other across the street. Their friends stop passers-by and prevent the duellists from being disturbed. This custom was introduced in former times to prevent murders, for a man who believes himself to have an enemy does not go down the via stretta, and if a murder was committed elsewhere it couldn’t be passed off as a duel. Besides, the death penalty is passed on anyone who comes to the via stretta with a dagger. So duelling is not only tolerated in Malta but even permitted. However, this permission is, so to speak, a tacit one. And far from being abused, it is spoken of with a sort of shame, as though it were offensive to Christian charity and improper in the headquarters of a monastic order.
The commander’s strolls down the via stretta were altogether out of place. They had the bad effect of making the French caravanists very quarrelsome, which they were anyway very inclined to be.
The bad atmosphere grew worse. The Spanish knights became more reserved than before. In the end, they came together to my house and asked me what was to be done to put a stop to this wild behaviour, which was becoming altogether intolerable. I thanked my compatriots for the honour they had done me by placing their trust in me, and I promised to speak to the commander about it and point out to him that the behaviour of the young Frenchmen was a sort of abuse to which he alone could put a stop because of the great consideration and respect in which he was held in the three ‘langues’ of his nation. I promised myself to be as circumspect as was possible in the way I expressed this, but I had no hope of ending the affair without a duel. However, as the issue of this single combat did me honour I was not too upset about it.
In a word, I believe that I was motivated by an antipathy which I felt for the commander.
We were then in Holy Week, and it was agreed that my conversation with the commander would not take place for a fortnight. I think that he knew what had taken place in my house, and he wanted to forestall me by picking a quarrel with me.
We reached Good Friday. According to Spanish custom, as you know, if one has an attachment to a lady, one follows her on that day from church to church to offer her holy water. This is partly done out of jealousy in case someone else might offer i
t to her and take the opportunity to make her acquaintance. This Spanish custom had been introduced into Malta. So it was that I was following a young onorata to whom I had been attached for some years. But at the very first church which she entered the commander accosted her before me, placing himself between us, turning his back on me and stepping backwards from time to time, treading on my toes, all of which was noticed.
On the way out of church I accosted my man in a casual way as if to exchange views with him. I then asked him which church he intended to go to. He named it. I offered to show him the shortest way and I led him without his noticing into the via stretta. Once there I drew my sword, quite certain, as it happened, that no one would disturb us on such a day when everyone is in church.
The commander also drew his sword but he lowered his guard. ‘What?’ he said. ‘On Good Friday?’
I resolutely paid no attention.
‘Look here,’ he said, ‘it is more than six years since I fulfilled my religious duties. I am horrified by the state of my conscience. In three days…’
I am of a pacific temperament and, as you know, once people of such a nature lose their temper they will not hear reason. I forced the commander to take guard, but terror was written on his features. He retreated to the wall as if foreseeing that he would be struck down. He was already looking for support; and indeed with my first pass I ran him through with my sword.
