From this ordeal we arose in a condition which could be better described by the surgeon who was ten days laboring to efface the insignia left by this abominable scene; and he had a much easier time of it with me, upon whose behind, by good chance, only two or three drops of that boiling oil had fallen, than with the youngest of the quartet, whom our tormentors, for some probably evil motive, had singled out to be treated to a veritable bath.
Despite my hurts, and they were not inconsiderable, I kept my wits about me as we were leaving and, seizing a favorable moment, slipped over to the bush, plucked out my treasure, tucked it under my skirts, and thus recompensed for what I had suffered, was able to reckon the outing a success. Confronting Duvergier, I gave her a sharp scolding for having exposed me to such an insulting experience; what right had she to do so, I demanded, when knowing full well that I was no longer interested in being sacrificed to her greed. I went home, installed myself in my bedroom and had Noirceuil notified that I was unwell and would like to keep to my bed undisturbed for a few days. Not one whit in love with me—or with anyone else—still less given to wasting his time comforting the infirm or the languishing, giving evidence of a superb and doctrinal unconcern, Noirceuil never once presented himself at my bedside; his wife, milder of temper and more politic, visited me twice but abstained from shedding tears on my account; by the tenth day I was so well mended that I looked to be, if anything, in better condition than before. I then bent my gaze upon my catch: the purse contained three hundred louis, the diamond was worth fifty thousand francs, the watch a thousand crowns. As I had the other sum, I invested this one too; combined, they fetched nearly twelve thousand pounds a year; and it seemed to me that, thus endowed, it was high time I set to work for myself instead of continuing to be the toy of the avarice of others.
Thus did a year go by; during it I made my own arrangements and from what a number of adventures earned me pocketed the entirety. But, as chance so had it, none of these parties provided me an opportunity to exercise my thieving abilities; for the rest, I remained ever the pupil to Noirceuil, ever the butt of his lewd sports, ever the hated enemy of his wife.
Although our relationship was characterized by indifference, Noirceuil, who, without loving me, had a wonderful fondness for my mind and conversation, continued to pay me a very handsome allowance; all my needs were supplied, and in addition I had twenty-four thousand francs a year for my pleasures; join to that the twelve thousand livres annuity I had bought for myself, and you’ll agree I was not badly off. Caring rather little for men, it was with two charming women I satisfied my desires; they had two female friends who now and again were of the company, and we’d then execute every imaginable species of extravagance.
One day, a friend of the woman I was most attracted to solicited my sympathy in behalf of a kinsman who had run into some major difficulties; I was told that I had merely to say a word to my lover, whose influence with the Minister would be enough to save the situation at once; if I wished, the young man would be very willing to come and recite the whole story to me. Moved, despite myself, by the desire to make someone happy—a fatal desire wherefor the hand of Nature, who had not created me to be virtuous, was to see to my speedy chastening—I accept; the young man appears. My stars! what is my surprise to behold Lubin. I make an effort to conceal my emotion. Lubin assures me that he has left the Due’s employ, he spins out a wild and utterly confused yarn; I promise to do what I can for him; the traitor walks out, very satisfied, says he, to have found me again, for he’d been hunting a year after me. For several days I heard nothing; I fretted over the unpleasant consequences this encounter might well have, I even felt a growing resentment against the friend of my boudoir companion who had lured me into this trap, although I had no way of knowing whether or not she had done so intentionally. Such were my preoccupations when one evening, as I emerged from the Comédie Italienne, six men halted my carriage, leveled pistols at the servants accompanying me, instantly forced me to get out, then pushed me into a waiting fiacre, shouting to the driver, by way of instruction: “To the Hôpital!”
“My God!” I said to myself, “I am lost.”
Gathering courage at once, however, I turned to my captors:
“Sirs,” I demanded, “have you not made a mistake?”
“I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle, we may perhaps be making a mistake,” replied one of those knaves whom I soon recognized as Lubin himself, “yes; we are in all likelihood gravely mistaken, for ’tis to the scaffold we ought to conduct you; but if, until final inquiries have been made, in sending you no farther than the Hôpital, the police, out of consideration for Monsieur de Noirceuil, are reluctant to give you what you deserve immediately, we nonetheless trust the delay will be brief.”
“Why, very well,” said I in a bold tone, “we’ll see. But take care, my young blade, take care above all lest they who, for the moment fancying themselves in the stronger position, dare attack me so imprudently now do not come soon to regret their insolence.”
I am cast into a foul little dungeon where for thirty-six hours I remain absolutely alone, hearing nothing but the coming and going of my jailers.
You might perhaps be amused, dear friends, to know what my frame of mind was during this incarceration. I shall be frank with you: the following description is, I believe, exact.
As in prosperity, calm in adversity; dismayed, no, coldly furious to discover myself a dupe for having given virtue’s case a single instant of heed; resolved—profoundly determined—never again to permit it the faintest entry into my heart; some amount of chagrin, perhaps, to see my fortunes temporarily ebb; but not a grain of regret, no remorse at all, not the shadow of a resolution to turn over a new leaf if I were ever to be restored to society; not the tiniest intention to compose my differences with religion if I were to have to die. Such was I inwardly-; what I say is true. Still in all, I was not absolutely free of anxiety—but in bygone days, when I was well-behaved, had I been any freer? Anxiety! ah, ’tis an old story. I prefer not to be pure and to put up with these familiar and tedious worries; I prefer having surrendered myself to vice than to discover myself blessed by a cowlike tranquillity, simple and stupid and full of an innocence I detest. O crime! yea, thy very stinging vipers are joys unto me: their penetrating fangs inject the venom that creates the divinest frenzy wherewith thou consumest thy faithful; all these quakings and fevers are pleasures; souls like ours have got to be subjected to shocks, affected; they cannot possibly be by virtue, whereof they have a loathing that surpasses what words can convey; and so we who wish to live, and who must be moved powerfully, we thirst after the maddening drink…. O divine excesses! lacking which, life there is none! Yes, yes, let me be evil; let new possibilities for wicked deeds be offered me, and they’ll see how avidly I fly to commit them!
Such were my thoughts; you were curious to know them. I sketch them for you; and who is fitter to hear these confessions than you, my dearest friends?
“Oh, Noirceuil!” I cried upon recognizing my lover, “what god led you here to find me? And, after all the grievous things I have done, how could I still be of interest to you?”
He gazed at me. “Juliette,” said he a little later when we had been left in privacy, “I have nothing to reproach you for: the manner in which we have been living together eliminates the disagreeable circumstances that make reproaches possible. You were free. Love had no share in our arrangements. The single question was of confidence. Whatsoever might have been the similarity between my attitudes and yours, you judged it expedient or necessary to refuse me that confidence. That’s all there was to it, nothing could be more natural, more acceptable. But what is neither natural nor acceptable is that you be punished for a bagatelle like this one they have arrested you for. My child, I admire your intellect, and you know it, you’ve known it a long time, and so long as the schemes it invents sort well with mine I shall always consent to them, better still, actively cooperate in their realization. Do not for one instant suppose t
hat it is either from sentiment or from pity I am having you released from behind bars; you know me well enough to be persuaded that I could not be moved by either the one or the other of these two weaknesses. In this I have acted solely through selfishness, and I swear to you that if my prick were to get one ace stiffer from seeing you hang than from delivering you, by bleeding Christ, I’d not hesitate a second. But your company pleases me, I’d be deprived of it if they hanged you; you’ve done enough to deserve the rope, by the way—they were ready to use it on you; and I respect you precisely for that reason, you are entitled to my respect, it would be all the greater had you merited the wheel…. Come along with me, you’re free. No demonstrations, please, above all no expression of gratitude, I abhor it.”
And remarking that, overcome, I was in spite of myself about to express thanks, Noirceuil backed off a pace and addressed these words to me:
“Since you will persist, Juliette,” said he, his eyes flashing, “you’ll not leave this place until I have proved to you the utter absurdity of the feelings to which, in defiance of your intelligence, your heart’s impoverishment seems to be causing you to succumb.”
Then, having me sit down, and seating himself in a chair facing me, he entered into the matter:
“My dear girl, you also know that I am loath to let pass an opportunity to shape your heart or to enlighten your mind; therefore allow me to teach you what gratitude is.
“Gratitude, Juliette, is the word by which they denominate the sentiment felt and expressed in return for a boon whereof one has been the beneficiary; now, I must inquire into the motives of him who bestows a boon. Is he acting in his own behalf, or in ours? If in his, then you’ll concede that we owe him nothing; if in ours, the ascendancy he thereby obtains over us, far from exciting gratitude, will certainly only arouse our jealousy, our rage: for this purportedly good deed has in actuality simply wounded our pride. But what is his ulterior design in putting us in his debt? Why, the dog’s behavior is transparent. He who obligates others, he who draws a hundred loins from his pocket to hand them to a man in distress, has, appearances aside, in no wise acted in the name of the needy wretch’s welfare; let him peer into the depths of his heart, he’ll discover he has done nothing but flatter his vanity, he has labored for no one’s benefit but his own, whether it be that from giving the money to the beggar, he derives a mental pleasure which outstrips the pleasure he’d receive from keeping it for himself, whether he imagines that this act, become notorious, will win him a reputation; but no matter what the case, I see nothing but sheer grubby self-seeking and egoism here. Tell me, if you will, what I owe a person who does nothing save in his own interest? Well, rack your brains, finally endeavor to succeed in proving to me that he was thinking exclusively of the man he obligates by acting in the manner he has, that no one else knows anything of his deed, that report of it will never leak out, that he cannot have derived any pleasure from parting with that hundred louis since, to the contrary, the gift inconvenienced him, yes, acutely discomforted him, that, in a word, his deed is so damnably disinterested that not a grain of selfishness can be located anywhere in it or behind it; tell me all that and in reply I’ll tell you, firstly, that it’s impossible and that, closely analyzing this benefactor’s gesture, we’ll inevitably and invariably strike upon some fugitive, some hidden delight somewhere which will diminish the value of the deed and qualify its purity; but, even supposing this disinterestedness impeccable, you never need lie under the curse of gratitude, for by this deed, or trick, maneuvering himself into a position of superiority and you into one of inferiority, this man, in the best of cases, inflicts hurt upon your pride and his act mortifies something in you which, when offended, obliges you not to be thankful, but never to forget or forgive this that is unpardonable injury. From now on, this man, regardless of what he has done for you, acquires no right save, if you be just, to your undying enmity; you will profit from his service—by all means—but you will detest him who renders it; his existence will weigh burdensomely upon you, you will ever flush at the sight of him. If you learn news of his death, you’ll inwardly mark the date as a jubilee, you’ll feel as though delivered from a curse, from a bondage, and the assurance of being rid of a person before whose eyes you cannot appear without sensing a kind of shame will necessarily become like a promise of joy—indeed, if your soul is truly independent and proud, you’ll perhaps go farther, perhaps you’ll take certain measures … perhaps you’ll feel obliged out of duty to yourself…. Why yes, you may well, you certainly shall, go to the point of destroying the being whose existence plagues you; what other alternative have you? by all means yes, you’ll extinguish the life of this man as you would liquidate an eternally fatiguing burden; the service rendered you, instead of having provoked friendly sentiments for this benefactor, will, don’t you see, have produced the most implacable hatred. Consider well what I say, Juliette, and judge for yourself how incredibly ridiculous, and dangerous, it must always be to do good unto your fellow men. In the light of my analysis of gratitude, observe, my dear, how precious little I want yours, and think how eager I must be not to find myself in the grave position of having rendered you any service at all. I repeat it once again: in liberating you from this prison I do nothing for your sake, it is in nobody’s interest but mine own that I act; believe that, absolutely; now let’s be off.”
We betook ourselves to the office of the clerk; Noirceuil spoke:
“Your Honor,” said he, addressing one of the magistrates there, “this young lady, recovering her freedom, does not intend to conceal the name of the culprit who committed the theft of which she has been erroneously accused; my friend has just assured me that the individual you seek is one of the three girls who were there with her at the residence in Saint-Maur of Due Dennemar. Speak, Juliette, do you recollect the girl’s name?”
“I do indeed, Monsieur,” I answered, instantly perceiving what the perfidious Noirceuil was about. “She was the prettiest of the three, her age must be eighteen or nineteen, and she is called Minette.”
“That is all we want to know, Mademoiselle,” said the man of the law; “will you seal your deposition under oath?”
“I shall, your Honor, of course,” I replied, raising my right hand toward the crucifix: “I do solemnly swear,” I intoned in a loud and clear voice, “and before God do hereby take sacred oath, that she who goes by the name of Minette is guilty and alone responsible for the theft committed in the house of Monsieur le Due de Dennemar.”
We left and promptly settled ourselves in Noirceuil’s coach.
“Well, my dove, without me you’d never have been able to play that nasty little trick. And yet, my role in the thing was modest: indeed, I merely set the stage; I felt certain, and I was right, that there was no need to prepare you for what was to come. You carried it off faultlessly. Kiss me, my angel. … I love to suck this lying tongue. Ah, you behaved like a goddess. Minette will be hanged; and, when one is guilty, ’tis delicious not only to wriggle out of a scrape but to have an innocent person put to death in one’s stead.”
“Oh, Noirceuil,” I cried, “I do love you so! verily, of all the men in this world, only you were a fit companion for me; I failed you, and you shall make me regret it.”
“Come, Juliette, have no fear,” Noirceuil replied; “you have committed a crime, do me the favor of feeling no guilt therefor; it is a virtuous act I expect you to repent. You had no cause to do this thing behind my back,” continued my lover as we drove toward his mansion. “I have no objection if you wish to do a little whoring, provided you are motivated by greed or lust; whatsoever has its origin in such vices is totally respectable, according to my view. But you ought to be cautious in your dealings with Duvergier’s clientele: she traffics with and procures for none but libertines whose cruel passions could easily bring you to your downfall: Had you specified your tastes to me, I myself could have arranged exceedingly profitable encounters wherein the dangers would have been relatively slender and you would h
ave been able to steal your fingers to the bone. For theft is an everyday affair, of all the whims to be found in man not one is more natural; I myself long had the habit; and I only rid myself of it by adopting others which are far worse. For petty vices there is no better cure than major crimes; the more one diddles virtue, the more one becomes accustomed to outraging it; and in the end, nothing short of enormity can wake the slightest sensation in us. Really, Juliette, you’ve missed acquiring whole fortunes at a stroke; unaware of your caprices, in the past year I’ve refused you to at least five or six friends who were burning to have a fair shot at you and with whom you’d have been quits after having simply bared your ass. Anyhow,” Noirceuil went on, “the source of all this trouble is that deplorable Lubin who, suspected by his employer, swore to make the most thorough investigation. But, don’t fret, my beloved, you’re avenged: Lubin entered Bicêtre yesterday, he’ll stay there the rest of his life. You must know that it is to the excellent Saint-Fond, Minister and my great friend, you owe your deliverance and the suitable conclusion of the affair. The case against you was made up, watertight; they were going to have you in the dock tomorrow; twenty-two witnesses had been assembled to testify. Well, had there been five hundred, our influence would still have drowned them out; this influence is immense, Juliette, and between the two of us, Saint-Fond and I, we can regularly expect, by means of a word, a gesture, and whenever we like, to untie the rope knotted around the neck of the worst criminal on earth, and to have a saint mount the scaffold and die in his place. That’s how things are when idiot princes are on the throne. Everyone in their vicinity leads them around by the nose, mulcts them, and those drab robots, while fancying they do their own governing, actually reign through us, as our instruments; or, if you prefer, our passions are the sole sovereign in this kingdom. We could take our revenge upon Dennemar too, I’m equipped with all that’s needed for that; but he’s as libertine as we, his eccentricities prove it. Never attack those who resemble us, that’s my creed, you might subscribe to it too. The Due knows he was wrong in behaving as he did; he’s ashamed of himself today, he relinquishes title to the stolen goods and would even be very happy to see you again; I conferred with him, all he asked was that someone hang, and, you see, someone shall: he’s satisfied, so are we. My advice is, however, that you not visit the old miser; we know perfectly well that if he desires to see you it is only to persuade you to take pity on Lubin: well, don’t. I too once had that Lubin in my service, he fucked me very badly, cost me a great deal of money, and so disgusted me that I have, more than once, thought of having him packed off to some jail; he’s in jail now, it seems to me right that he stay there. As for the Minister, he’d like to meet you; it will be this evening, you’re to sup with him. He’s an excessively libertine individual…. Tastes, proclivities, fantasies … passions, vices ad infinitum; I hardly need recommend the extremest submissiveness—it is the one way in which you can demonstrate the gratitude whose effects you very mistakenly wished to shower upon me.”
Juliette Page 25
