“Ha!” said Rombeau, full of enthusiasm for these appalling maxims, “I applaud you, my dear fellow, your wisdom enchants me, but your indifference is astonishing; I thought you were amorous—”
“I? in love with a girl? . . . Ah, Rombeau! I supposed you knew me better; I employ those creatures when I have nothing better to hand: the extreme penchant I have for pleasures of the variety you have watched me taste makes very precious to me all the temples at which this sort of incense can be offered, and to multiply my devotions, I sometimes assimilate a little girl into a pretty little boy; but should one of these female personages unhappily nourish my illusion for too long, my disgust becomes energetically manifest, and I have never found but one means to satisfy it deliciously . . . you understand me, Rombeau; Chilperic, the most voluptuous of France’s kings, held the same views. His boisterous organ proclaimed aloud that in an emergency one could make use of a woman, but upon the express condition one exterminated her immediately one had done with her. (Of a work entitled The Jesuits in Fine Fettle) For five years this little wench has been serving my pleasures; the time has come for her to pay for my loss of interest by the loss of her existence.” The meal ended; from those two madmen’s behavior, from their words, their actions, their preparations, from their very state, which bordered upon delirium, I was very well able to see that there was not a moment to be lost, and that the hour of the unhappy Rosalie’s destruction had been fixed for that evening. I rushed to the cellar, resolved to deliver her or die.
“O dear friend,” I cried, “there is not an instant to waste . . . the monsters . . . it is to be tonight . . . they are going to come. . . .” And upon saying that, I make the most violent efforts to batter down the door. One of my blows dislodges something, I reach out my hand, it is the key, I seize it, I hasten to open the door . . . I embrace Rosalie, I urge her to fly, I promise to follow her, she springs forward . . . Just Heaven! It was again decreed that Virtue was to succumb, and that sentiments of the tenderest commiseration were going to be brutally punished; lit by the governess, Rodin and Rombeau appeared of a sudden, the former grasped his daughter the instant she crossed the threshold of the door beyond which, a few steps away, lay deliverance.
“Ah, wretch, where are you going?” Rodin shouts, bringing her to a halt while Rombeau lays hands upon me. . . .”Why,” he continues, glancing at me, “here’s the rascal who has encouraged your flight! Thérèse, now we behold the results of your great virtuous principles . . . the kidnapping of a daughter from her father!”
“Certainly,” was my steadfast reply, “and I must do so when that father is so barbarous as to plot against his daughter’s life.”
“Well, well! Espionage and seduction,” Rodin pursued; “all a servant’s most dangerous vices; upstairs, up with you, I say, the case requires to be judged.”
Dragged by the two villains, Rosalie and I are brought back to the apartments; the doors are bolted. The unlucky daughter of Rodin is tied to the posts of a bed, and those two demoniacs turn all their rage upon me, their language is of the most violent, the sentence pronounced upon me appalling: it is nothing less than a question of a vivisection in order to inspect the beating of my heart, and upon this organ to make observations which cannot practicably be made upon a cadaver. Meanwhile, I am undressed, and subjected to the most impudicious fondlings.
“Before all else,” says Rombeau, “my opinion is a stout attack ought to be delivered upon the fortress your lenient proceedings have respected. . . . Why, ’tis superb! do you mark that velvet texture, the whiteness of those two half-moons defending the portal! never was there a virgin of such freshness.”
“Virgin! but so she is, or nearly,” says Rodin, “once raped, and then it was despite her wishes; since then, untouched. Here, let me take the wheel a moment . . .” and the cruel one added to Rombeau’s his homage made up of those harsh and savage caresses which degrade rather than honor the idol. Had whips been available I should have been cruelly dealt with; whips were indeed mentioned, but none were found, they limited themselves to what the bare hand could achieve; they set me afire . . . the more I struggled, the more rigidly I was held; when however I saw them about to undertake more serious matters, I flung myself prostrate before my executioners and offered them my life.
“But when you are no longer a virgin,” said Rombeau, “what is the difference? What are these qualms? we are only going to violate you as you have been already and not the least peccadillo will sit on your conscience; you will have been vanquished by force . . .” and comforting me in this manner, the infamous one placed me on a couch.
“No,” spoke up Rodin, interrupting his colleague’s effervescence, of which I was on the brink of becoming the victim, “no, let’s not waste our powers with this creature; remember we cannot further postpone the operations scheduled for Rosalie, and our vigor is necessary to carry them out; let’s punish this wretch in some other manner.”
Upon saying which, Rodin put an iron in the fire. “Yes,” he went on, “let’s punish her a thousand times more than we would were we to take her life, let’s brand her; this disgrace, joined to all the sorry business about her body, will get her hanged if she does not first die of hunger; until then she will suffer, and our more prolonged vengeance will become the more delicious.”
Wherewith Rombeau seized me, and the abominable Rodin applied behind my shoulder the red-hot iron with which thieves are marked.
“Let her dare appear in public, the whore,” the monster continued, exhibiting the ignominious letter, “and I’ll sufficiently justify my reasons for sending her out of the door with such secrecy and promptitude.”
They bandage me, dress me, and fortify me with a few drops of brandy, and under the cover of night the two scientists conduct me to the forest’s edge and abandon me cruelly there after once again having sketched what dangers a recrimination would expose me to were I to dare bring complaint in my present state of disgrace.
Anyone else might have been little impressed by the menace; what would I have to fear as soon as I found the means to prove that what I had just suffered had been the work not of a tribunal but of criminals? But my weakness, my natural timidity, the frightful memory of what I had undergone at Paris and recollections of the château de Bressac—it all stunned me, terrified me; I thought only of flight, and was far more stirred by anguish at having to abandon an innocent victim to those two villains, who were without doubt ready to immolate her, than I was touched by my own ills. More irritated, more afflicted morally than in physical pain, I set off at once; but, completely unoriented, never stopping to ask my way, I did but swing in a circle around Paris and on the fourth day of traveling I found I had got no further than Lieursaint. Knowing this road would lead me to the southern provinces, I resolved to follow it and try to reach those distant regions, fancying to myself that the peace and calm so cruelly denied me in those parts of France where I had grown up were, perhaps, awaiting me in others more remote; fatal error! how much there remained of grief and pain yet to experience.
Whatever had been my trials until that time, at least I was in possession of my innocence. Merely the victim of a few monsters’ attempts, I was still able to consider myself more or less in the category of an honest girl. The fact was I had never been truly soiled save by a rape operated five years earlier, and its traces had healed . . . a rape consummated at an instant when my numbed state had not even left me the faculty of sensation. Other than that, what was there with which I could reproach myself? Nothing, oh! nothing, doubtless; and my heart was chaste, I was overweeningly proud of it, my presumption was to be punished; the outrages awaiting me were to be such that in a short while it would no longer be possible, however slight had been my participation, for me to form the same comforting ideas in the depths of my heart.
This time I had my entire fortune about me; that is to say, about a hundred crowns, comprising the total of what I had saved fro
m Bressac’s clutches and earned from Rodin. In my extreme misery I was able to feel glad that this money, at least, had not been taken from me; I flattered myself with the notion that through the frugality, temperance, and economy to which I was accustomed, this sum would amply suffice until I was so situated as to be able to find a place of some sort. The execration they had just stamped upon my flesh did not show, I imagined I would always be able to disguise it and that this brand would be no bar to making my living. I was twenty-two years old, in good health, and had a face which, to my sorrow, was the object of eulogies all too frequent; I possessed some virtues which, although they had brought me unremitting injury, nevertheless, as I have just told you, were my whole consolation and caused me to hope that Heaven would finally grant me, if not rewards, at least some suspension of the evils they had drawn down upon me. Full of hope and courage, I kept my road until I gained Sens, where I rested several days. A week of this and I was entirely restored; I might perhaps have found work in that city but, penetrated by the necessity of getting further away, I resumed my journeying with the design of seeking my fortune in Dauphine; I had heard this province much spoken of, I fancied happiness attended me there, and we are going to see with what success I sought it out.
Never, not in a single one of my life’s circumstances, had the sentiments of Religion deserted me. Despising the vain casuistries of strong-headed thinkers, believing them all to emanate from libertinage rather than consequent upon firm persuasion, I had dressed my conscience and my heart against them and, by means of the one and the other, I had found what was needed in order to make them stout reply. By my misfortunes often forced to neglect my pious duties, I would make reparation for these faults whenever I could find the opportunity.
I had just, on the 7th of August, left Auxerre; I shall never forget that date. I had walked about two leagues: the noonday heat beginning to incommode me, I climbed a little eminence crowned by a grove of trees; the place was not far removed from the road, I went there with the purpose of refreshing myself and obtaining a few hours of sleep without having to pay the expense of an inn, and up there I was in greater safety than upon the highway. I established myself at the foot of an oak and, after a frugal lunch, I drifted off into sweet sleep. Well did I rest, for a considerable time, and in a state of complete tranquillity; and then, opening my eyes, it was with great pleasure I mused upon the landscape which was visible for a long distance. From out of the middle of a forest that extended upon the right, I thought I could detect, some three or four leagues from where I was, a little bell tower rising modestly into the air. . . .”Beloved solitude,” I murmured, “what a desire I have to dwell a time in thee; and thou afar,” said I, addressing the abbey, “thou must be the asylum of a few gentle, virtuous recluses who are occupied with none but God . . . with naught but their pious duties; or a retreat unto some holy hermits devoted to Religion alone . . . men who, far removed from that pernicious society where incessant crime, brooding heavily, threatfully over innocence, degrades it, annihilates it . . . ah! there must all virtues dwell, of that I am certain, and when mankind’s crimes exile them out of the world, ’tis thither they go in that isolated place to commune with the souls of those fortunate ones who cherish them and cultivate them every day.”
I was absorbed in these thoughts when a girl of my age, keeper of a flock of sheep grazing upon the plateau, suddenly appeared before my eyes; I question her about that habitation, she tells me what I see is a Benedictine monastery occupied by four solitary monks of peerless devotion, whose continence and sobriety are without example. Once a year, says the girl, a pilgrimage is made to a miraculous Virgin who is there, and from Her pious folk obtain all their hearts’ desire. Singularly eager immediately to go and implore aid at the feet of this holy Mother of God, I ask the girl whether she would like to come and pray with me; ’tis impossible, she replies, for her mother awaits her; but the road there is easy. She indicates it to me, she assures me the superior of the house, the most respectable, the most saintly of men, will receive me with perfect good grace and will offer me all the aid whereof I can possibly stand in need. “Dom Sévérino, so he is called,” continues the girl, “is an Italian closely related to the Pope, who overwhelms him with kindnesses; he is gentle, honest, correct, obliging, fifty-five years old, and has spent above two-thirds of his life in France . . . you will be satisfied with him, Mademoiselle,” the shepherdess concluded, “go and edify yourself in that sacred quiet, and you will only return from it improved.”
This recital only inflamed my zeal the more, I became unable to resist the violent desire I felt to pay a visit to this hallowed church and there, by a few acts of piety, to make restitution for the neglect whereof I was guilty. However great was my own need of charities, I gave the girl a crown, and set off down the road leading to Saint Mary-in-the-Wood, as was called the monastery toward which I directed my steps.
When I had descended upon the plain I could see the spire no more; for guide I had nothing but the forest ahead of me, and before long I began to fear that the distance, of which I had forgotten to inform myself, was far greater than I had estimated at first; but was in nowise discouraged. I arrived at the edge of the forest and, some amount of daylight still remaining, I decided to forge on, considering I should be able to reach the monastery before nightfall. However, not a hint of human life presented itself to my gaze, not a house, and all I had for road was a beaten path I followed virtually at random; I had already walked at least five leagues without seeing a thing when, the Star having completely ceased to light the universe, it seemed I heard the tolling of a bell . . . I harken, I move toward the sound, I hasten, the path widens ever so little, at last I perceive several hedges and soon afterward the monastery; than this isolation nothing could be wilder, more rustic, there is no neighboring habitation, the nearest is six leagues removed, and dense tracts of forest surround the house on all sides; it was situated in a depression, I had a goodly distance to descend in order to get to it, and this was the reason I had lost sight of the tower; a gardener’s cabin nestled against the monastery’s walls; it was there one applied before entering. I demanded of this gate-keeper whether it were permitted to speak to the superior; he asked to be informed of my errand; I advised him that a religious duty had drawn me to this holy refuge and that I would be well repaid for all the trouble I had experienced to get to it were I able to kneel an instant before the feet of the miraculous Virgin and the saintly ecclesiastics in whose house the divine image was preserved. The gardener rings and I penetrate into the monastery; but as the hour is advanced and the fathers are at supper, he is some time in returning. At last he reappears with one of the monks:
“Mademoiselle,” says he, “here is Dom Clément, steward to the house; he has come to see whether what you desire merits interrupting the superior.”
Clément, whose name could not conceivably have been less descriptive of his physiognomy, was a man of forty-eight years, of an enormous bulk, of a giant’s stature; somber was his expression, fierce his eye; the only words he spoke were harsh, and they were expelled by a raucous voice: here was a satyric personage indeed, a tyrant’s exterior; he made me tremble. . . . And then despite all I could do to suppress it, the remembrance of my old miseries rose to smite my troubled memory in traits of blood. . . .
“What do you want?” the monk asked me; his air was surly, his mien grim; “is this the hour to come to a church? . . . Indeed, you have the air of an adventuress.”
“Saintly man,” said I, prostrating myself, “I believed it was always the hour to present oneself at God’s door; I have hastened from far off to arrive here; full of fervor and devotion, I ask to confess, if it is possible, and when what my conscience contains is known to you, you will see whether or not I am worthy to humble myself at the feet of the holy image.”
“But this is not the time for confession,” said the monk, his manner softening; “where are you going to spend the night? We hav
e no hospice . . . it would have been better to have come in the morning.” I gave him the reasons which had prevented me from doing so and, without replying, Clément went to report to the superior. Several minutes later the church was opened, Don Sévérino himself approached me, and invited me to enter the temple with him.
Dom Sévérino, of whom it would be best to give you an idea at once, was, as I had been told, a man of fifty-five, but endowed with handsome features, a still youthful quality, a vigorous physique, herculean limbs, and all that without harshness; a certain elegance and pliancy reigned over the whole and suggested that in his young years he must have possessed all the traits which constitute a splendid man. There were in all the world no finer eyes than his; nobility shone in his features, and the most genteel, the most courteous tone was there throughout. An agreeable accent which colored every one of his words enabled one to identify his Italian origin and, I admit it, this monk’s outward graces did much to dispel the alarm the other had caused me.
“My dear girl,” said he very graciously, “although the hour is unseasonable and though it is not our usage to receive so late, I will however hear your confession, and afterward we will confer upon the means whereby you may pass the night in decency; tomorrow you will be able to bow down before the sacred image which brings you here.”
Erotic Classics I Page 55
