He stood up, took his pistols from his saddle-holsters and discharged them at the men who were before him. Then, having thrown them away, he drew his sword and rushed forward uttering cries of death. He had lost all consciousness of himself. The sole thought that animated him was to destroy by violence the frightful image that he had before his eyes. He struck at random individuals whose surprise and intoxication rendered them defenseless. Blood flowed. He aimed a great blow in the direction of Bagawali, whose lotus-blue eyes he perceived for a second, exorbitant with terror. He had the sensation that with the cutting edge of his blade he severed an ear and gashed the cheek of the naked old man with the braided hair, who was probably the Brahmin Farhad.
A single furious man could destroy a thousand if they were animated by rut. In a few seconds, the worshipers of the goddess Shakti, with howls of terror, fled in all directions. Pierre de Landrecy, haggard and bloody, returned to reason. He had plunged his sword into the body of a young man agitated by somersaults, so profoundly that he was obliged to put his foot on his breast in order to pull it out. A woman, ridiculously fat, was walking on all fours, her breasts hanging down at a trickle of blood running down her face.
Bagawali had disappeared.
He was gripped by an immense lassitude. He had a desire to let himself fall into the blood he had spilled. He was not a man to have remorse. He often declared, subsequently, that he had done nothing but punish criminals. But it was disgust that was overwhelming him. At any rate, he decided to leave,
Having returned to Madras he fell into a profound prostration from which he did not emerge. His friends became anxious about him and, as much to remove him from a probable vengeance as to cure him, they obtained permission from La Bourdonnais for him to return to France on the Neptune.
No more mention was heard of Bagawali. Perhaps the Brahmins, attributing that violation of the mysteries of the goddess to her, imprisoned her in their temple. Perhaps they sent her to another city in India. Perhaps, in the confusion of the scene, she had been killed by the man she loved, under the asokas the color of coral that had been witness to their caresses.
The Siva Bakta, worshipers of Siva, contrary to the rites customary in India, do not burn their dead but bury them. One of the beggars who live on the threshold of pagodas, and are known as sanyassis, interrogated on the subject, reported that one night, approximately at that time, he had seen a cortege of Siva Bakta, recognizable by their red robes bordered in yellow, heading toward the forest, carrying a corpse. Was that Bagawali? As the Siva Bakta do not put any stele or exterior sign on the place where they bury one of their own, and even efface any visible trace of it, it has been impossible to determine.
Julia the Animal-Tamer
Julia the Animal-Tamer, who was celebrated throughout the south of France toward the end of the Second Empire, is known to us via the memoirs and correspondence of Madame de Lestang12 and also the memories of a few men still alive who were, in their early years, the gilded youth of Marseilles, Montpelier and Toulouse.
She sometimes told her lovers that her real name was Julie de Trécoeur and that she was from an old and noble family of Rouergue. No one believed her because of the common character of such fables, but it was true.
“The old dowager de Trécoeur,” reports Madame de Lestang, “often told me that her granddaughter incessantly formed the project of becoming a nun. I did not want her to do that. She was a very beautiful brunette child of fourteen, with gray-blue eyes, who did not seem to be made to consecrate herself to God. Fortunately, it is to donkeys that she devotes herself presently. The Trécoeurs have two charming ones in their stables. Little Julie adores them and occupies herself with them to the point that it is a true folly.”
It certainly seems that her love for those two charming donkeys left a vivid impression in the soul of the woman who was later to become the beautiful Julia. She never ceased, in the course of her life, to talk about them, to describe them and to regret them. We know nothing about their history and it is probable that they accomplished their donkey destiny obscurely. Julie de Trécoeur has not informed us, via those of her words that have reached us, of any particularity of their life except for the love she had for them.
We are better informed regarding Fauvette, the beloved bitch, because we know of one sublime feature of her. Fauvette was Julie’s inseparable companion. She slept in her bed and show a vivid jealousy if anyone came near her mistress. But when Julie was eighteen her taste for religion had developed singularly and her parents did not raise any objection to her entering a convent. It was the house of the Carmelites established in the Rue Saint-Michel in Toulouse. Julie wanted to take her dog with her, but the rules of the Order forbade it. She quit her tearfully when the carriage that was taking her away went down the slopes of the chalky plateau, heading for Najac on the way to Toulouse.
It is a long way from Najac in Rouergue to the Rue Saint-Michel, very far for a young woman quitting her family and the world, and even further for a little dog that does not know the way and has no map to guide her. In spite of that, a few hours after Julie de Trécoeur’s arrival among the Carmelites of Toulouse, the convent’s doorkeeper heard desperate appeals from the street and found Fauvette, covered in dust, searching the mossy stones of the old house for the lost scent of her mistress.
Julie de Trécoeur remained in the convent for a year, only knowing the sensualities of divine love. It was the roar of a lion that deflected her soul from its path.
In those days the great Autumn fair was installed in the Allées Saint-Michel, which opened at the corner of the old convent, and the last fairground booths were extended in front of the high wall on the Carmelites. The Castaniès menagerie was there, and Castaniès himself, with a square head, an athletic torso, clad in a red shirt, brandishing a snake in his hands, was delivering his patter in a resounding voice.
From the small window through which Julie de Trécoeur still had access to life, Castaniès’ face and form could be seen distinctly, but it was not those attractions, which had troubled more than one beautiful daughter of the Midi, and it was not the warmth of the voice and the picturesque setting that that changed the Carmelite’s destiny.
The lion roared, either because of anger, hunger or more likely dread—for it was the son and grandson of menagerie lions and it feared humans. It was when that roar resounded that Julie de Trécoeur’s heart caught fire. It was a heat that she had not known before, which she thought could never be extinguished.
Castaniès, his enormous neck and his gladiatorial build were only a pretext. The animal-tamer was to have a soul illuminated by the pride of having seduced a young woman of good society. He never knew that it was his lion that had made that conquest.
One night, at the hour when the crowd had ebbed away and the candles were about to be extinguished, Julie understood that the voice that had appealed to her could not remain without response; she let herself down from her window into the street and simply went to offer herself to Castaniès, who shoved her, even more simply, into his caravan.
For several years, Julia the Animal-Tamer astonished the towns of the Midi that the Castaniès menagerie toured. During the preliminary patter, she stood next to Castaniès, whip in hand, with a black mask over her eyes, clad in a pink leotard that allowed perfect forms to be seen, and the crowd pressed forward to look at her.
It was only given to the paying spectators to see her face when she went into the lion’s cage. That face then seemed transformed by the exaltation of passion. The lion, which knew its métier as a menagerie lion, roared with a simulated fury, agitated his mane, and did his best to disguise the placid mildness of his soul. He flew like a bird at a signal from Julia’s whip, and the latter came to lie down voluptuously between his claws, and put her little child-like head in its mouth.
Moreover, that king of beasts was a slave for her. If she left the menagerie it roared to lament the fact, and he had more powerful roars to express his joy when she appeared. Julia lo
ved him, and her life was completely happy divided between Castaniès and the lion.
But a great catastrophe overtook the menagerie. The exact cause of it was never known. It happened one summer morning in the outskirts of a small village, where they had camped, not far from the city of Foix, to which the menagerie was going for the festival of the fifteenth of August.
Had Castaniès, in accordance with a habit that had become increasingly frequent, drunk too much that evening? Was it necessary, rather, to blame the malevolence of a boy who had been dismissed they day before because of certain nasty remarks he had made about Julia? No one knows.
When dawn appeared in that corner of the Ariège valley, however, a milkman who arrived in his cart was witness to an extraordinary spectacle. There was a cockatoo with multicolored plumage singing on a branch; several young monkeys were playing with stones; a brown bear was climbing a slope with a satisfied sway; further way, a boa was dragging itself through the grass; and along the road, a huge lion was marching at a slow pace, gravely. Before the Ariégois mountains, having the revelation of what liberty could be, he was surprised and sad. He was, above all, frightened and inoffensive. The gendarmes of Foix killed him before Castaniès had time to arrive.
That was the sole loss that the menagerie had to deplore, for all the other animals returned to their cages, but it was the most serious. Julia was consoled with difficulty, and from that day on her métier as an animal-tamer had scarcely any attraction for her.
Castaniès had developed a pot belly and drank too much. Julia was in the full bloom of her beauty. She quit him on friendly terms. He had a large enough sum of money. She took away the skin of the lion and a large chimpanzee that was very intelligent.
Then the brilliant period of Julia’s life commences. A rich owner of vineyards gives her a carriage, horses, and a house in Montpelier. She is the cynosure, the splendid and lustful target of all the young men whose ideal is to be the lover of a woman maintained by another.
She realizes that ideal as often as possible and she reveals herself to be a woman of untiring temperament. By a singular particularity of her taste, however, she seeks out most of all men whose bestial physiognomy and certain mannerisms are reminiscent of animality. She ruins a young married deputy prosecutor whom she says resembles an eagle. She remains the mistress for several years of a sculptor with a floating beard and long blond hair, because he reminds her of the lion. She gives herself to her coachman for some time because of his resemblance to the chimpanzee.
Furthermore, that animal never quit her. He was taciturn and faithful. He slept in Julia’s bedroom when she slept alone there. On the nights when she had a lover with her it was necessary to appease him with caresses and tender words in order for him to be able to tolerate a night in the next room. He was poisoned by a lover who judged him importunate. He was mourned for a long time.
It would have been in inconformity with a habitual curve of her life, as well as literary tradition, if, when she grew old, Julia had returned to the convent of Carmelites in the Rue Saint-Michel. Nothing of the sort. She never gave it a thought. Rich, and weary of men, she retired with a linen maid named Floria, who was her friend, to a comfortable villa on the road between Béziers and Sérignan.
She had become with age one of those loquacious and eccentric southerners of which the Midi is full, who weep at the slightest excuse, laugh and sing without motive, and do extravagant things, either because the excessively hot summer sun affects their brains or because the quality of their race dictates that they become somewhat irrational at a certain age.
Julia had around her a well-stocked poultry-yard and many domestic animals. She collected stray dogs and always had several around her. For hours on end she went to play with a young calf in a meadow. It was her, personally, who gave hay to her horses in the stables. She was sometimes passionate about some of them, sometimes others. Sometimes she did not quit the pig-sty and at other times she went to sit in the bulldog’s kennel, which was large enough for her to lie down full length there.
She had birds of every sort in cages, bees in hives, and even domesticated fleas. She was fond of the fauna of hot countries, bought books on natural history, and marveled at the number and variety of species. She brought a llama from the Andes at great expense, which died of cold the in first winter, and an ant-eater, which deteriorated rapidly and also died, because the fields of the Béziers region did not contain enough ants, its only possible nourishment.
She grew old with the constant thought and love of animals. She said incessantly that they were far superior to humans, less by virtue of their fidelity than because they placed amour above everything else and thought of nothing but that. Perhaps she was right.
Madame Floria, the linen maid, who witnessed Julia’s last moments, reported them in these terms:
“She had stopped talking and no longer responded to the questions I asked her except by grunts that imitated those of a pig or a strident cry like the crow of a cock. After two days in that condition, however, she became agitated and started running around the house imitating the braying of a donkey, the roaring of a lion and the barking of a dog. She even walked on all fours, trying to bite. In the end, though, she calmed down and she died smiling, caressing a little gilded cage in which there was a tame lizard.”
Appendix
Hiao the Korean13
I knew for the first time how unjust the fear of death renders one when the tempest commenced to rage in all its fury and I started to curse my father with a violence almost equal to that of the wind, for the reason that he had allowed me to undertake that voyage. It was me who had wanted to depart, in spite of his pleas and even his orders. He had urged me to marry beforehand the daughter of one of our rich neighbors, who pleased me very much, hoping that that would retain me. Nothing had been able to stop me. I nevertheless rendered him responsible for the danger that I was running, telling myself that he ought to have obliged me to remain with him by violence.
A barrel that had been detached from who knows where rolled over the deck and collided violently with my knee. The sails had been carried away, and the vessel was creaking and trembling as if it were a living being shaken by fever. I went back down precipitately to the passenger cabin. But there, the screams, the invocations of God and the spectacle of human cowardice rendered me a little courage, and I ceased to curse my father.
Only the old gray-haired Arab was calm. He called me “Giaour!” by way of a joke, as he had had the custom of doing since the beginning of our voyage, and then he leaned over to say to me: “Allah is great!” He claimed to have grown rich in the slave trade in the Red Sea and he gave himself, proudly, the singular title of the former chief of the fleet of the Imam of Muscat.
We had left Batavia on the first of June 1721, we had dropped anchor at Tay Ouen in the island of Formosa and we were headed for Japan. According to my calculations, we must have been carried by the tempest not far from the coasts of China.
All night and all the following day we were tossed by the waves at hazard. Several Chinamen went to find the captain in order to ask him for permission to throw one of their comrades overboard. They accused him of carrying with him something that they designated by a Chinese term that I did not understand, but which was equivalent to what we call “bad luck” in Europe. It would also be necessary for the ship to draw away rapidly from the place where the man had been thrown, because Chinese bad luck has the ability to swim and sometimes escorts ships.
The Portuguese of noble birth who affected not to address a word to anyone had become extraordinarily familiar and was asking everyone the probable duration of death by asphyxia under water. That problem, which was secretly tormenting everyone, is scarcely pleasant to discuss at such moments.
The Portuguese had a wife of great beauty who seemed scarcely older than eighteen. She had large languorous eyes and it had seemed to me that, during the crossing, she had directed them at me quite frequently. I had been vividly impressed by t
hat. As her husband was running in all directions to interrogate everyone, and seemed to have lost his head, she leaned against me several times in a troubling fashion, mingling her gaze with mine—but I scarcely paid any attention to what would have filed me with joy in other circumstances.
Daylight was about to appear when we heard a cry of “Land!” That provoked a delirious joy from some, who believed that we would soon be saved, and brought to others, better informed, the certainty of their imminent end. The passenger cabin into which we were crowded, and from which hardly anyone had emerged for days, exhaled a nauseating odor. A box belonging to a Chinaman, containing a kind of bird-lime, had broken and the glue had spread. Everyone had some on their garments, with the consequence that we stuck to one another.
I went out and went up on deck. As well as the sails, the launches had been carried away by the waves. The rails had been crushed, and the hatches torn away. Enormous gushes of sea-water were sweeping the deck incessantly.
I asked the first mate, who was passing by, crawling, what he thought would become of us, and whether we could reach port.
He only replied to me with a single excessively vulgar word, by which I felt wounded. I wondered at first whether I ought not to crawl after him in order to strike him, but, as if the insult had had a magic power, I was penetrated thereafter by a extraordinary sentiment of calm. A vague, frightful, indefinable yellow light began to cover the sea and render it similar to a purulent wound that was in motion. Very close to us there was a somber mass, which was the shore.
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