It would be difficult to render the declarations of gratitude I had from Saint-Florent. He knew not in what terms to express his thanks; but we had no time to talk; it was a question of flight. With a dextrous movement, I retrieve the pocketbook, return it to him, and treading softly we walk through the copse, leaving the horse for fear the sound of his hoofs might rouse the men; with all possible dispatch we reach the path which is to lead us out of the forest. We had the good luck to be out of it by daybreak, without having been followed by anyone; before ten o’clock we were in Luzarches and there, free from all anxiety, we thought of nothing but resting ourselves.
There are moments in life when one finds that despite one’s riches, which may be great, one nevertheless lacks what is needed to live; such was Saint-Florent’s case: five hundred thousand francs might be awaiting him in Paris, but he now had not a coin on his person; mindful of this, he paused before entering the inn. . . .
“Be easy, Monsieur,” I said upon perceiving his embarrassment, “the thieves have not left me without money, here are twenty louis, take them, please, use them, give what remains to the poor; nothing in the world could make me want to keep gold acquired by murder.”
Saint-Florent, whose refinements of character I at the time did not exactly appreciate, was absolutely unwilling to accept what I tendered him; he asked me what my expectations were, said he would make himself bound to fulfill them, and that he desired nothing but the power to acquit himself of his indebtedness to me.
“It is to you I owe my life and fortune, Thérèse,” he added, kissing my hands, “I can do no better than to lay them both at your feet; receive them, I beseech you, and permit the God of marriage to tighten the knots of friendship.”
I know not whether it was from intuition or chilliness of temper, but I was so far from believing that what I had done for the young man could motivate such sentiments as these he expressed for me, that I allowed him to read in my countenance the refusal I dared not articulate; he understood, insisted no further, and limited himself to asking what he could do for me.
“Monsieur,” said I, “if my behavior is really not without merit in your view, for my entire recompense I ask nothing more than to proceed to Lyon with you and to have you find me a place in some correct household, where my modesty will have no more to suffer.”
“You could do nothing better,” said Saint-Florent, “and no one is in a better position than I to render this service; I have twenty relatives in the city,” and the young trader then besought me to divulge my reasons for having left Paris where I had mentioned to him I was born. I told my story with equal amounts of confidence and ingenuousness.
“Oh, if it is but that,” said the young man, “I will be of use to you before we reach Lyon; fear not, Thérèse, your troubles are over; the affair will be hushed; you will not be sought after and, certainly, less in the asylum where I wish to leave you than in any other. A member of my family dwells near Bondy, a charming region not far from here; I am sure it will be a pleasure for her to have you with her; I will introduce you tomorrow.”
In my turn filled with gratitude, I approve a project which seems so well suited to me; we repose at Luzarches for the rest of the day and on the morrow, it is our plan, we will gain Bondy, but six leagues distant.
“The weather is fine,” Saint-Florent says to me, “trust me, Thérèse; it will be most enjoyable to go afoot; we will reach my relative’s estate, will tell of our adventure, and this manner of arriving, I should think, will make you appear in a still more interesting light.”
Having not the faintest suspicion of this monster’s designs, and far from imagining that I was to be less safe with him than I had been when in the infamous company I had left, I agree to everything; we dine together; he not so much as murmurs when for the night I take a chamber separate from his, and after having waited until the warmest part of the day is past, certain of what he tells me, that four or five hours will suffice to bring us to his relative’s, we leave Luzarches and strike out on foot for Bondy.
It was toward four o’clock in the afternoon when we entered the forest. Until then Saint-Florent had not once contradicted himself: always the same propriety, always the same eagerness to prove his sentiments for me; I should not have thought myself more secure had I been with my father. The shades of night began to descend upon the forest and to inspire that kind of religious horror which at once causes the birth of fear in timorous spirits and criminal projects in ferocious hearts. We followed mere paths; I was walking ahead, I turned to ask Saint-Florent whether these obscure trails were really the ones we ought to be following, whether perchance he had not lost his bearings, whether he thought we were going to arrive soon.
“We have arrived, whore,” the villain replied, toppling me with a blow of his cane brought down upon my head; I fell unconscious. . . .
Oh, Madame, I have no idea what that man afterward said or did; but the state I was in when I returned to my senses advised me only too well to what point I had been his victim. It was darkest night when I awoke; I was at the foot of a tree, away from any road, injured, bleeding . . . dishonored, Madame; such had been the reward of all I had just done for the unlucky man; and carrying infamy to its ultimate degree, the wretch, after having done to me all he had wished, after having abused me in every manner, even in that which most outrages Nature, had taken my purse . . . containing the same money I had so generously offered him. He had torn my clothing, most of it lay in shreds and ribbons about me, I was virtually naked, and several parts of my body were lacerated, clawed; you may appreciate my situation: there in the depths of the night, without resources, without honor, without hope, exposed to every peril: I wished to put an end to my days: had a weapon been presented to me, I would have laid hands on it and abridged this unhappy life full only of plagues for me . . . the monster! What did I do to him, I asked myself, to have deserved such cruel treatment at his hands? I save his life, restore his fortune to him, he snatches away what is most dear to me! A savage beast would have been less cruel! O man, thus are you when you heed nothing but your passions! Tigers that dwell in the wildest jungles would quail before such ignominies . . . these first pangs of suffering were succeeded by some few minutes of exhaustion; my eyes, brimming over with tears, turned mechanically toward the sky; my heart did spring to the feet of the Master who dwelleth there . . . that pure glittering vault . . . that imposing stillness of the night . . . that terror which numbed my senses . . . that image of Nature in peace, nigh unto my whelmed, distraught soul . . . all distilled a somber horror into me, whence there was soon born the need to pray. I cast myself down, kneeling before that potent God denied by the impious, hope of the poor and the downtrodden.
“Holy Majesty, Saintly One,” I cried out in tears, “Thou Who in this dreadful moment deign to flood my soul with a celestial joy, Who doubtless hath prevented me from attempting my life; O my Protector and my Guide, I aspire to Thy bounties, I implore Thy clemency, behold my miseries and my torments, my resignation, and hear Thou my entreaties: Powerful God! Thou knowst it, I am innocent and weak, I am betrayed and mistreated; I have wished to do well in imitation of Thee, and Thy will hath punished it in me: may Thy will be done, O my God! all its sacred effects are cherished by me, I respect them and cease to complain of them; but if however I am to find naught but stings and nettles terrestrially, is it to offend Thee, O my Sovereign Master, to supplicate Thy puissance to take me into Thy bosom, in order untroubled to adore Thee, to worship Thee far away from these perverse men who, alas! have made me meet with evils only, and whose bloodied and perfidious hands at their pleasure drown my sorrowful days in a torrent of tears and in an abyss of agonies.”
Prayer is the misfortunate’s sweetest comfort; strength reenters him once he has fulfilled this duty. My courage renewed, I raised myself up, I gathered together the rags the villain had left me, and I hid myself in a thicket so as to pass the night in less danger. The security I believed I enjoyed, the satisfaction I had
just tasted by communing with my God, all combined to help me rest a few hours, and the sun was already risen high when I opened my eyes. For the wretched, the instant of awakening is hideous: the imagination, refreshed by sleep’s sweet ministrations, very rapidly and lugubriously fills with the evils these moments of deceiving repose have smoothed into oblivion.
Very well, I said as I examined myself, it is then true that there are human creatures Nature reduces to the level of wild beasts! Lurking in this forest, like them flying the sight of man, what difference now exists between them and me? Is it worth being born for a fate so pitiable?. . . And my tears flowed abundantly as I meditated in sorrow; I had scarcely finished with my reflections when I heard sounds somewhere about; little by little, two men hove into view. I pricked up my ears:
“Come, dear friend,” said one of them, “this place will suit us admirably; the cruel and fatal presence of an aunt I abhor will not prevent me from tasting a moment with you the pleasures I cherish.”
They draw near, they station themselves squarely in front of me and so proximately that not one of their words, not one of their gestures is able to escape me, and I observe . . . Just Heaven, Madame, said Thérèse, interrupting herself, is it possible that destiny has placed me in none but situations so critical that it becomes quite as difficult for Virtue to hear them recited as for modesty to describe them? That horrible crime which equally outrages both Nature and social conventions, that heinous deed, in a word, which the hand of God has so often smitten, rationalized, legitimized by Coeur-de-fer, proposed by him to the unhappy Thérèse, despite her wishes consummated against her by the butcher who has just immolated her, in brief, I did see that revolting execration carried out before my own eyes, together with all the impure gropings and fumblings, all the frightful episodes the most meditated depravity can devise. One of the men, he who gave himself, was twenty-four years old, of such a bearing and presence one might suppose him of an elevated degree, the other, of about the same age, appeared to be one of his domestics. The act was scandalous and prolonged. Bending over, supported by his hands, leaning upon the crest of a little hillock facing the thicket where I lay, the young master exposed naked to his companion in debauch the impious sacrificial altar, and the latter, whom the spectacle filled with ardor, caressed the idol, ready to immolate it with a spear far more awful and far more colossal than the one wherewith the captain of the brigands of Bondy had menaced me; but, in no wise intimidated, the young master seemed prepared unhesitatingly to brave the shaft that was presented to him; he teased it, he excited it, covered it with kisses; seized it, plunged it into himself, was in an ecstasy as he swallowed it up; aroused by criminal caresses, the infamous creature writhed and struggled under the iron and seemed to regret it was not yet more terrible; he withstood its blows, he rose to anticipate them, he repelled them. . . . A tender couple lawfully connected would not have caressed one another so passionately . . . their mouths were pressed together, their sighs intermingled, their tongues entwined, and I witnessed each of them, drunk with lust, bring his perfidious horrors to completion in the very vortex of delight. The homage is renewed, and in order to fire the incense nothing is neglected by him who cries aloud his demand for it; kisses, fingerings, pollutions, debauchery’s most appalling refinements, everything is employed to revive sinking strength, and it all succeeds in reanimating them five times in swift succession; but that without either of them changing his role. The young lord was constantly the woman and although there was about him what suggested the possibility he could have acted the man in his turn, he had not for one instant even the appearance of wishing to. If he visited the altar corresponding to the one in him where sacrifices were performed, it was in the other idol’s behalf, and there was never any indication the latter was threatened by assault.
Ah, how slowly the time seemed to pass! I dared not budge for fear of detection; at last, the criminal actors in this indecent drama, no doubt surfeited, got up and were prepared to start along the road that was to take them home, when the master drew near the bush which hid me; my bonnet betrayed me . . . he caught sight of it. . . .
“Jasmin,” said he to his valet, “we are discovered . . . a girl has beheld our mysteries. . . . Come hither, flush the bitch into the open, let’s find out why she is here.”
I did not put them to the trouble of dragging me from my sanctuary; I stepped forward immediately and, falling at their feet,
“Oh, Messieurs!” I cried, stretching my arms toward them, “deign to have pity upon an unhappy creature whose fate more deserves your compassion than you may think; there are very few misfortunes which can equal mine; do not let the posture wherein you discover me cause any suspicion to be born in you; it is rather the consequence of my misery than of my faults; do not augment the ills which overwhelm me, be so kind as to diminish them by making available to me the means to escape the furies that hound me.”
The Comte de Bressac (that was the name of the young man into whose hands I had fallen) possessed a mind containing a great fund of wickedness and libertinage; no very abundant amount of sympathy dwelled in his heart. Unfortunately, it is only too common to find men in whom pity has been obliterated by libertinage, whose ordinary effect is to harden: whether it be that the major part of his excesses necessitates apathy in the soul, or that the violent shock passion imparts to the nervous system decreases the vigor of its action, the fact always remains that a libertine is rarely a man of sensibility. But in addition to this harshness native to the species whose character I am sketching, there was also in Monsieur de Bressac a disgust for our sex so inveterate, a hatred so powerful for all that distinguishes it, that I encountered considerable difficulty introducing the affections into his soul wherewith I strove to move him.
“My little dove,” said the Count, severity in his tone, “if you are looking for dupes, improve your style; neither my friend nor I ever sacrifice at your sex’s impure temple; if it is money you are begging, look for people who are fond of good works, we never perform any of that description. . . . But, wretch, out with it: did you see what passed between Monsieur and me?”
“I saw you conversing together upon the sward,” I replied, “nothing more, Monsieur, I assure you.”
“I should like to believe it,” said the Count, “for your own good; were I to imagine you had seen anything else, never would you emerge alive from where we are. . . . Jasmin, it is early, we have time to hear the girl’s adventures, and afterward we will see what’s to be done with her.”
The young men sit down, they order me to sit near them, and thereupon very ingenuously I make them acquainted with all the woes that have afflicted me from the day of my birth.
“Well, Jasmin,” said Monsieur de Bressac as soon as I had finished, “for once let us be just: the equitable Thémis has doomed this creature, let us not suffer the Goddess’ designs to be thwarted so cruelly: let us expose the delinquent to the death penalty she has incurred: this little murder, far from being a crime, will merely take its place as a reparation in the moral scheme; since sometimes we have the misfortune to disturb that order, let us at least courageously make amends when the occasion arises. . . .”
And the cruel men, having laid hands upon me, dragged me toward the wood, laughing at my tears and screams.
“We’ll tie each of her members to a tree—we need four trees placed in a rectangle,” said Bressac, tearing off my clothes.
Then by means of their cravats, their handkerchiefs, their braces, they make cords wherewith I am tied instantly, in keeping with their plan, that is to say in the cruelest and most painful position imaginable. I cannot express to you what I suffered; it seemed they were rending me limb from limb and that my belly, facing downward and strained to the utmost, was about to split at any moment; sweat drenched my forehead, I no longer existed save through the violence of pain; had it ceased to compress my nerves, a mortal anguish would surely have seized me: the villains were amused by my posture, they considered me and applauded
.
“Well, that’s enough,” Bressac said at last, “for the time being she may get off with a fright.
“Thérèse,” he continued as he untied my hands and commanded me to dress myself, “show a little judgment and come along with us; if you attach yourself to me you shall never have reason to regret it. My aunt requires a second maid; I am going to present you to her and, upon the basis of your story, undertake to interest her in you; I shall make myself answerable for your conduct; but should you abuse my kindness, were you to betray my confidence, or were you not to submit yourself to my intentions, behold these four trees, Thérèse, behold the plot of earth they encompass: it might serve you for a sepulcher: bear it in mind that this dreadful place is no more than a league’s distance from the château to which I am going to lead you and that, upon the least provocation, I will bring you back here at once.”
I forgot my sufferings instantly, I embraced the Count’s knees, tears streaming down my cheeks, I swore to behave myself well; but quite as insensible to my joy as to my pain,
“Let us be off,” said Bressac, “your actions will speak for you, they alone will govern your fate.”
We advance; Jasmin and his master exchange whispered remarks; I follow them humbly, without saying a word. In less than an hour we arrive at Madame la Marquise de Bressac’s château, whose magnificence and the multitude of servants it contains make me see that whatever the post I must hold in the house, it will surely be more advantageous to me than that of drudge to Monsieur du Harpin. I am made to wait in an office where Jasmin most obligingly offers me everything conducive to my comfort. The young Count seeks out his aunt, acquaints her with what he has done, and a half-hour later himself comes to introduce me to the Marquise.