One night, among many, I dreamt of Senneval, that wretched lover I had never forgotten, since he alone was still enticing me back to Nancy. . . . In my dream, Senneval showed me two corpses at the same time, the body of Saint-Ange and that of a woman unknown to me.2 He shed bountiful tears upon both of them, and showed me nearby a coffin, bristling with thorns, which seemed to open for me. I awoke in a state of terrible agitation, my soul besieged by a thousand unclear and conflicting sentiments, and a secret voice seemed to say to me: “Yes, so long as thou shalt live, this wretched victim will wring tears of blood from thine eyes, tears more burning and bitter every day; and thy remorse, like the knife’s edge, shall not be dulled but grow increasingly sharper.”
Such, then, was my state upon arriving at Nancy, Monsieur, and there a thousand new sorrows awaited me: once the heavy hand of fate descends upon us, the blows rain down with renewed fury until they have crushed us.
I alighted at Madame de Verquin’s. In her last letter she had invited me to come and stay with her; it would be a great pleasure for her, so she wrote, to see me again. But, Merciful Heaven, under what conditions were we to share this joy! I arrived to find her on her deathbed. Were it possible, Good Lord! She had written me no more than a fortnight before . . . telling me of her present pleasures and her plans for those yet to come. Thus is’t, then, with mortal man’s plans: ’tis at the very moment they are being laid that pitiless death comes, in the midst of his amusements, and cuts the thread of all his days; whilst he, living without the least concern for that fatal moment, acting as though he would live forever, then vanishes into the dark cloud of immortality, uncertain of the fate which awaits him there.
Allow me, Monsieur, to interrupt my story for a moment to speak of her death and to picture the appalling stoicism that accompanied this woman to the grave.
Madame de Verquin, who was no longer young—she was then fifty-two—after some escapade quite mad for her age, jumped into a pond to cool off. She straightway felt indisposed, was borne home in a terrible state, and the following day pneumonia set in. On the sixth day she was informed she had no more than twenty-four hours left to live. This news did not daunt her; she knew I was en route to see her, and she instructed her servants to receive me. I arrived the same evening which, according to the doctor’s prognosis, was to be her last here on earth. She had had herself taken into a room furnished with all possible elegance and taste. She was lying there, casually attired, on a voluptuous bed whose heavy lilac-colored curtains contrasted pleasantly with garlands of freshly cut flowers: bunches of roses, carnations, jasmine, and tuberoses embellished every corner of her room. She was plucking the petals of the flowers and putting them into a basket, then covering her bed and the rest of the room with them. The moment she saw me, she extended her hand in greeting.
“Come over here, Florville,” she said to me, “embrace me on my bed of flowers. . . . How tall and lovely you have grown. . . . Ah, by my faith! virtue indeed agrees with you. . . . They’ve informed you of my condition, I’m sure they have, Florville. . . . I’m full aware of it myself. . . . In a few hours I’ll be gone. . . . I did not expect our reunion would be so brief. . . .” And as she saw my eyes filling with tears: “Come, now, my silly chit,” she went on, “don’t be a child. . . . Do you then think me so wretched? Have I not enjoyed myself as much as any woman on the face of this earth? I lose naught save those years when I would have had to give up all my pleasures, and how would I have managed without them? In truth, I in no wise regret not having lived any longer; in a short while, no man would have deigned to give me a second look, and I have never aspired to live to an age when I would inspire naught but feelings of repulsion and disgust. Death, my child, is an object of fear only to those who believe. Constantly torn between the images of heaven and hell, never certain which of the two will open to receive them, they are ravaged by anxiety, whilst I, who expect nothing, who am certain of being no more miserable after my death than I was before I was born, shall go peacefully to sleep, with no regrets and, likewise, with no sentiments of pain or sorrow, with no remorse and no misgivings. I have asked that I be laid to rest beneath my bower of jasmine, they have already prepared me a grave there, Florville, and there shall I lie. And the atoms emanating from this decaying body will help to nourish and sustain this flower which, of all flowers, I most loved. Think,” she went on, stroking my cheeks with a bouquet of jasmine, “next year when you smell these flowers, you will be breathing the soul of your former friend; and as the scent rises to the fibers of your brain, it will implant in your mind some pleasant thoughts and force you to think of me.”
Again tears welled up in my eyes. . . . I pressed this poor woman’s hands tightly in mine, and I searched for a way to persuade her to give up these dreadful, materialistic ideas for some less impious philosophy. But scarcely had I begun to give voice to this thought than she pushed me away in alarm. . . .
“Oh, Florville,” she cried, “I beg of you, do not poison my final moments with your false beliefs, and let me die in peace. I did not loathe them my whole life through only to embrace them on my deathbed. . . .”
I fell silent. What effect would my feeble eloquence have had, pitted as it was against such steadfastness of purpose? I would only have grieved Madame de Verquin without converting her; out of humanity, I desisted.
She rang; straightway I heard a sweet, melodious music which seemed to emanate from a neighboring room.
“This is how I intend to die, Florville,” said that Epicurean. “Is’t not preferable to being surrounded by a bevy of black-robed priests, who would only fill my last moments with confusion, threats, and despair? . . . No, I wish to teach your pious souls that one can, without emulating them, die in peace; I wish to persuade them that ’tis not religion that’s needed for one to die with an untroubled soul, but simply courage and reason.”
The hour was growing late. A notary, whom she had sent for, entered the room. The music ended, she dictated a few final wishes: childless, a widow for many years, and, consequently, mistress of many things, she made bequests to her friends and to her servants. Then she took a small coffer from a secretary near the bed.
“This is all I now have left,” she said. “A little cash and a few jewels. Let us enjoy ourselves the rest of the evening. There are six of you here in the room, I shall divide all this into six parts, and we shall hold a lottery. We’ll have a draw, and each of you shall keep whatever he wins.”
I marveled at the woman’s self-possession. It seemed to me incredible that one could have so many things wherewith to reproach oneself and yet arrive at one’s final moments in a state of utter calm—’twas the baleful result of her lack of belief. If the horrible deaths of some evil people cause us to shudder, how much more frightened ought we to be by such steadfast obduracy!
None the less, her desires were carried out. A magnificent meal was served, in conformance with her orders. She ate heartily several courses, drank a number of Spanish wines and quaffed several different liqueurs, the doctor having told her that, in her condition, it made no difference.
The lottery was held, each of us won about a hundred louis, either in gold or in jewels. No sooner was this little game over than she was seized with a violent attack.
“Well, Doctor, is this the end?” she said, maintaining her perfect calm.
“Madame, I fear it is.”
“Come hither then, Florville,” she said to me, stretching out her arms, “come receive my last farewell, I wish to expire on the bosom of virtue. . . .”
She clasped me in a tight embrace, and her lovely eyes closed forever.
A stranger in that house, no longer having any reason to remain there, I straightway departed. . . . I leave it to your imagination to fancy the state I was in . . . and how much this spectacle had darkened my thoughts even further.
Madame de Verquin’s manner of thinking and mine were too utterly opposed for me ever to love her sincerely. Had she not, in fact, been the prime cause o
f my disgrace, and all the misfortunes resulting therefrom? Yet this woman, the sister of the only man who had really ever cared for me, had always treated me with consideration and kindness, even unto her dying breath. My tears, therefore, were quite sincere, and became all the more bitter as I reflected that, with all her excellent qualities, that poor creature had been the unwilling cause of her own perdition and that, already cast forth from the bosom of the Almighty, she was doubtless even now suffering the punishments exacted for a life so depraved. God in His infinite wisdom and goodness vouchsafed to comfort me and help me banish these troubling thoughts from my heart. I fell to my knees and dared pray to Him that He might forgive that unfortunate soul. I, who so sorely needed Heaven’s grace, dared to implore it for others, and to move it as much as ’twere in my power I added ten louis of my own to what I had won at Madame de Verquin’s, and straightway had it distributed among the poor of her parish.
Moreover, this unfortunate woman’s wishes were scrupulously carried out; the arrangements she had made were too meticulous for them not to be. She was buried in her bower of jasmine, and on her tombstone was engraved the one word: VIXIT.
Thuswise did the sister of my dearest friend meet her end: a fountain of intelligence and knowledge, possessed of great grace and talent, Madame de Verquin, had she chosen to live a different life, would have been deserving of the love and esteem of all who knew her; all she garnered was contempt. Her licentious habits increased with age—one is never more dangerous, when one has no principles, than at the age when one has ceased to blush. Depravity sits like gangrene upon the heart, one hones one’s initial misdeeds to a finer edge and, imperceptibly, one begins to commit the most heinous crimes, still fancying they are but harmless misdemeanors.
I was amazed by the incredible blindness of Madame de Verquin’s brother. ’Tis the distinctive characteristic of candor and goodness; decent people never suspect the evil whereof they themselves are incapable, and this explains why they are so easily duped by the first rogue who chances along to take advantage of them, and why ’tis so easy, and so inglorious, to deceive them. The insolent rogue who attempts it is working only to debase himself and, without even proving his talent for vice, merely manages to make virtue seem all the more brilliant.
In losing Madame de Verquin, I had lost all hope of ever learning any news of my son and my lover—you can imagine that, given the frightful condition in which I had found her, I had not dared to broach the subject.
Completely crushed by this catastrophe, utterly exhausted by a voyage made in a most painful state of mind, I resolved to rest for a while in Nancy—at an inn where I had previously put up—seeing absolutely no one, since Monsieur de Saint-Prât had seemingly wished that I conceal my real name. ’Twas from there I wrote my dear protector, determined not to leave until I had received his reply.
A miserable girl, who is nothing to you, Monsieur, I wrote to him, whose only claim upon you is for your pity, endlessly upsets your life; instead of writing to you of the grief you must be feeling over the loss you have just suffered, she dares speak to you of herself, ask you what you would have her do, and awaits your orders, etc.
But it was ordained that misfortune would stalk me wheresoever I went, and that I would be either the eternal victim of or witness to its sinister effects.
One evening I was returning to the inn rather late, having ventured out for a breath of fresh air, accompanied by my chambermaid and a footman I had hired upon my arrival in Nancy. Everyone else had already retired for the night.
As I was about to go up to my room, a tall and still very handsome woman about fifty years of age, whom I recognized from having seen her since I had moved into the inn—this woman, I say, suddenly emerged from her room, which was adjacent to mine, and, armed with a dagger, burst into a room across the corridor. My natural reaction was to see. . . . I hastened forward, with my maid and footman trailing close behind. In the twinkling of an eye, before we even had time to call to her or come to her aid, we saw the poor creature throw herself upon another woman and, twenty times over, drive the dagger into her heart, then cross back over to her own room, so completely distraught that she even failed to notice our presence. Our first thought was that the poor creature had gone stark raving mad. We could not understand a crime for which we could detect no motive. My maid and footman were on the verge of crying out. For reasons I was unable to fathom, some pressing urgency caused me to command them to remain silent. Taking them both by the arm, I herded them with me into my room and immediately closed the door behind us.
A frightful commotion was soon heard. The woman who had just been stabbed somehow managed to stagger out onto the stairs, screaming horribly, and, before she breathed her last, named her assailant. And as we were known to be the last to enter the inn before the murder was committed, we were arrested at the same time as the culprit.
None the less, the dying woman’s accusation freed us from any taint of suspicion, and the authorities merely ordered us not to leave the inn until after the trial.
Cast into prison, the murderess refused to admit her guilt, and steadfastly maintained that she was innocent. There were no other witnesses save me and my servants. We were summoned to testify; I had great difficulty concealing the uneasiness wherewith I was being devoured. . . I who deserved death fully as much as this woman whom my forced testimony would surely send to the gallows, for, although the circumstances were somewhat different, I was guilty of the same crime. I have no idea to what lengths I would have gone to avoid making this cruel deposition. It was as though each word I uttered in testimony were another drop of blood wrung from my heart. Still, there was no way around it, the testimony had to be given: we confessed to what we had seen.
However convinced were the authorities, moreover, that ’twas this woman who had committed the crime—her motive, apparently, was to rid herself of a rival—however convinced they were, I say, that she was the guilty party, we later learned beyond any shadow of a doubt that without our testimony it would have been impossible to convict her. There was, it seems, a man somehow implicated in the affair, who had fled following the murder and who might otherwise have been a likely suspect. But our testimony, and especially that of my footman—who was attached to the inn where the crime had taken place—these cruel depositions which we had no choice but to make or run the risk of implicating ourselves, sealed the poor woman’s doom.
The last time I confronted her, this woman examined me in considerable amazement and asked how old I was.
“Thirty-four,” I told her.
“Thirty-four? . . . And you’re a native of this region? . . .”
“No, Madame.”
“Your name is Florville?”
“Yes, ’tis thus I am called.”
“I do not know you,” she went on, “but you are highly esteemed in this town and considered a most respectable young lady. That, unfortunately for me, is quite enough.”
Then, in a state of considerable agitation, she continued:
“Mademoiselle, in the depths of this frightful situation wherein I find myself, you appeared to me in a dream. You were there with my son . . . for I am a mother and, as you see, a most unhappy one . . . your face was the same . . . you were wearing the same dress . . . and the scaffold loomed before my eyes. . . .”
“A dream,” I cried, “a dream, Madame!” immediately recalling my own dream; I was struck by this woman’s features, I recognized her as the woman who had appeared with Senneval in my own dream, near the coffin bristling with thorns. . . . Tears flowed from my eyes. . . the more I examined this woman, the more I was tempted to retract my testimony. . . . I wanted to request that I be put to death in her place. . . . I wanted to flee, but could not tear myself away. . . .
When the authorities saw the terrible state this confrontation had put me in, they confined themselves—since they were persuaded of my innocence—to separating us. I returned home in a state of complete despair, prey to a whole host of confused s
entiments the cause of which I was unable to discover. The following day, that poor woman was put to death.
That same day, I received the reply from Monsieur de Saint-Prât. He urged me to return to Paris. As Nancy was anything but a pleasant place for me after the baleful scenes I had witnessed there, I left it without a moment’s delay and headed for the capital, pursued by the fresh ghost of that woman, who seemed with every passing moment to be crying out to me:
’Tis thou, wretched girl, ’tis thou who hast sent me to my death, and thou knowest not whom thy hand has brought low, even unto the grave.
Overwhelmed by such an accumulation of calamities, persecuted by as many sorrows, I besought Monsieur de Saint-Prât to find me some retreat where I might finish out my days in the most complete solitude, and in the strictest observance of my religious duties. He suggested the one wherein you discovered me, Monsieur; I entered it that same week and did not leave it save twice a month to visit my dear protector, and to spend a few moments with Madame de Lérince. But Heaven, which seemed intent upon raining down ever new afflictions upon me, denied me the pleasure of long enjoying my friend’s company: I had the misfortune to lose her last year. Because of her tender feelings for me, she claimed my presence during those cruel moments, and ’twas also in my arms that she breathed her last.
But—and who would have believed it, Monsieur?—her death was not as peaceful as that of Madame de Verquin. The latter, expecting nothing, had no fear of losing everything; the former seemed to tremble at the thought of seeing the certain object of her hope disappear. In the woman who should have been beset by remorse from all quarters, there was none, so far as I could see; Madame de Lérince, who had never had any cause for remorse, was filled with it. In dying, Madame de Verquin had but one regret, and that was that she had been unable to do enough evil. Madame de Lérince died lamenting the good she had left undone. The former, deploring naught save the loss of her pleasure, covered herself with flowers; the latter wished to die upon a cross of ashes, full of regret at the memory of those many hours she had not devoted to virtue.
The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings Page 19