Funestine and Other Adventures in Romancia

by Brian Stableford

  “I’m charmed,” I said, “that at least Romancia renders justice to women by admitting them to the public council, for it is shameful that they are excluded from it in all the other countries in the world. But explain to me, please, in what the judgments of this tribunal consist.”

  “They consist,” he replied, “in that all the captains are obliged on their return to present themselves of the President of the Council to render an account of what has happened to them. She listens to them, and after their report, she punishes them or rewards them in accordance with the good or bad conduct they have maintained in the course of their voyage. If they have conducted and governed their company with art and sagacity, they are given one of the leading ranks in Romancia. If, on the contrary, they have given their passengers a disagreeable, tedious or excessively dangerous voyage, if they have caused them to be shipwrecked, if they have treated them with too much rigor—in brief, if they have given them just cause for complaint—the judge punishes them and condemns some to prison and others to banishment, or to some more rigorous penalty.”

  That procedure seemed sufficiently curious to me to merit seeing it for myself, and I asked Prince Zazaraph to approach the tribunal with me in order to witness what was happening as the disembarkation of the newcomers.

  It might be difficult to believe, but it is true that among the large number of vessels that were arriving in the port, it was difficult to find a captain who merited some recompense. Some had only followed routes already traced by those who had preceded them without daring to attempt a new one. Others had caused a frightful confusion throughout the equipage by virtue of the large number of people they had taken on to their vessels. Others had only taken their passengers into uncultivated and arid lands, where they had suffered a great deal from famine and tedium.

  Some had exhausted the patience and courage of their people by virtue of too long a sequence of annoying adventures; others had only occupied them with puerile and extravagant things, with the consequence that having heard their narration, the council, far from giving them any recompense, deliberated as to whether they merited punishment more for having wasted so much time and having caused others to waste it. It was, however, concluded by a majority vote that the scant consideration and puerility in which they were condemned to send the rest of their days would take the place of punishment.

  A captain named L. D. F*** endured in that regard a long trial. His heroine, whose name escapes me, complained bitterly to the council that without any regard to the propriety of her sex, had made her run around for a infinite time, always dressed s a man, without ever wanting to permit her to don female attire until the moment when she was about to arrive in port.46 She added that her captain, without any necessity and out of pure malevolence, had abused that ridiculous disguise, sometimes to oblige her to fight cavaliers, sometimes to put her in utterly indecent situations and to take her into the most suspect places, where her honor had been in peril a thousand times over.

  The heroine’s complaint appeared so just to begin with and so well-founded, that she excited all minds against the captain, and he was about to be condemned unanimously when one of the oldest counselors came to his defense. He represented to the council that, considering things in themselves, it was true that L. D. F*** merited punishment for having made an honest heroine undergo such a dangerous and indecent voyage, but that her disguises, dangerous and indecent as they were, having always been tolerated in Romancia, as was easily proven by the most ancient annals, they ought not to be held against the captain so much as against those who had given such bad examples; that in consequence, his advice was that they ought to be content to admonish the captain seriously, not to follow again a practice so little in conformity with the laws of decency. However, in order to put the honor of Romancian princesses in security, it was necessary to make a new regulation, which abrogated the ancient tolerance, and forbade all captains from now on to give their heroines attire other than that of their own sex, unless they were forced to do so by some indispensable necessity.

  That opinion seemed so reasonable that everyone yielded to it, with the result that the captain got away with a fright.

  One of his colleagues was not so fortunate. Scarcely had he returned from his first voyage than he had undertaken a second, and then a third, with the result that, thus far, he had escaped the pursuits of his accusers and the sentence of the council. But he was finally held to account at the end of his third volume and was obliged to appear. First they wanted to enquire as to why he had meddled in the employment of captain, which was ill-suited to his profession, but he justified himself as best he could by citing he examples of a few celebrated captains who had previously exercised the same profession as him. It was not the same for the other major points of the accusation.

  A man of quality47 named the Marquis de **** spoke first, and among other grievances he accused the captain; firstly, of having deceived him, in that he had been obliged to embark in order to run the risks of a second navigation after he had promised to leave him in peace in solitude as soon as the first volume as finished; secondly, of having shamefully degraded him, by only giving him in his second voyage the employment of a tedious pedagogue after having made him play the role of a man of quality in the first; and thirdly, of having overloaded him in both voyages with the most calamitous misfortunes, the detail of which made him shiver. To these here principal accusations, the man of quality added a few other minor ones, to which no one paid much attention. The captain not having been able to respond to the former, however, he was judged guilty and convicted of breach of faith, but sentence was postponed until the other accusers had been heard.

  It was a woman who presented herself next, who gave her name as Manon Lescaut.48 What a woman! I have never seen anyone so wide awake, and I would not have believed that a man of the character of **** could take charge of the conduct of such a princess. I cannot remember the full detail of the complaints but the gist of them was to accuse her captain of having taken her out of the obscurity in which she was living, to which she had justly condemned herself in order to hide the aberration of her conduct, in order to set her on the stage in broad daylight and make her travel the world frantically, defying all the laws of modesty and decency.

  The second complaint was followed by a third at least as heated, but much more interesting because of the touching scene to which it gave rise.

  The two companions were the famous Cleveland and the sad Fanny.49 They made the most melancholy couple that has perhaps ever been seen. Sadness was panted n their faces; they could scarcely raise their eyes. Profound sighs preceded, accompanied and followed all their words, and to tell the truth, it was difficult to understand the story of all the misfortunes that their captain had made hem endure in the course of their voyage, without taking part in the just resentment that they caused to erupt against him.

  “Barbarian!” cried Cleveland. “What have I done to you to overwhelm me thus with the cruelest misfortunes without having given me a moment’s relaxation in the entire curse of my life? Was the sad situation to which an unfortunate birth had reduced me not enough? Were you not satisfied by having given me such a savage education in a frightful cavern? Did you have to take me out of it in order to render me a victim of fortune and assemble over my head all the disasters, all the contradictions and all the frustrations of human life?

  “Yes, Mesdames et Messieurs,” he added, addressing his judges, “count all the murders, all the baleful deaths, the black deeds, the treasons, the frightful dangers and all the tragic events with which he blackened the course of my adventures, and you will have difficulty comprehending how I was able to survive so many misfortunes and how the story could even have been sustained.

  “If, in the catastrophes into which he plunged me he had at least followed the ordinary rules! But has anyone ever heard mention of a tempest like the one he made us endure in passing from England to France? Who has ever seen a lover like Madame Lallin combine so many c
ontrary qualities, malice with goodness of heart, extravagance with reason, the most violent passion with the moderation of simple amity? What is the sense of that ridiculous passion, which he made me conceive at an age already mature, at a time when my heart was devoured by a thousand chagrins? By what right did he make me speak like a man who only has vague religious principles without any determined worship? Oh, how many other objects of complaint I could add here! But no, I want to forgive him; I even consent to forget the cruel proof to which he put my constancy in having my dear daughter and the unfortunate Madame Roding burned before my eyes and devoured by savages. I only watch myself to one last outrage, which brought a culmination of all his maltreatments. He rendered my wife, my dear Fanny…Gods, can one believe it? Can I say it? Yes, he rendered her infidel.”

  As he finished speaking, the unfortunate Cleveland, overcome by grief, no longer able to sustain himself, was obliged to sit down. The entire assembly, deeply moved by his just complaints, gazed at him compassionately, while Fanny rose to her feet excitedly, and attracted the attention of the judges and the spectators. The crime of infidelity for which her husband had just reproached her had cut her to the quick. “Ingrate!” she said to him, with an expression of anger and pride, sustained by the modest assurance that innocence inspires. “Direct your complaints against our captain; I will share the accusation with you, since I have shared your misfortunes; but do not dare to accuse him at the expense of my virtue. He was able to render Fanny unfortunate, but he has never rendered me infidel. It is you, ingrate, who has not blushed to prefer an odious rival to me, and Heaven doubtless permitted that to punish me for having loved you too much.”

  “What, Madame!” cried Cleveland, with a great deal of emotion. “Dare you deny that you abandoned me to follow the perfidious Gélin?”

  “It’s true,” she replied. “I wanted to allow you to renew in liberty your former amours with Madame Lallin; but know that, although Gélin aided me in my flight, his passion for me never had reason to applaud itself for the service he rendered me.”

  “Me, Madame Lallin!” cried Cleveland, with astonishment.

  “Me. Gélin!” retorted Fanny, indignantly.

  “What a fable!” said one,

  “What imagination!” said the other.

  “You’re mistaken, Madame!”

  “You’re in error, Monsieur!”

  “God is my witness!”

  “I swear by the Gods!”

  “Oh, I only loved you too much!”

  “Alas, I sense only too well that I love you still.”

  “What! Can that be possible?”

  “Nothing is more true.”

  “You’ve always loved me, then?”

  “You’ve always been faithful to me, then?”

  “Let’s make peace.”

  “Let’s embrace.”

  “Oh, my dear Fanny!”

  “Oh, my dear Cleveland!”

  They did, in fact, set one another ablaze with a thousand transports of tenderness

  The little children in the party looked at one another, which was a spectacle at least as touching as the coronation of Inès de Castro.50 Thus, after a momentary explanation, the long quarrel of the two tender spouses ended. But the captain appeared no less culpable for that. No one understood how he had been harsh enough to deliver to despair for entire years, by the cruel persuasion into which he had put them both that they had each been betrayed, without wanting to afford them a momentary clarification.

  He alleged for his defense that he had needed that expedient to prolong his voyage, to which views of profit engaged him to give greater extent. No one listened to him, and the council, on the basis of the report and all the defenses on both sides, condemned the aforesaid D. P*** to perpetual banishment from all the lands of Romancia, with a prohibition ever to return.51 The sentence was carried out immediately, and it is said that the poor exile wanted to take refuge in the land of History, where he had a few acquaintances, and where he hoped to have better luck.

  Scarcely had that affair concluded than the arrival of the Malabar princesses was announced to the assembly. That name excited curiosity. People hastened to make way for them, but as soon as they had begun to explain themselves everyone looked at one another in astonishment, wondering what they were trying to say. It was an allegorical, metaphorical, enigmatic language of which no one understood a word. They even disguised their names under puerile anagrams. They spoke one after another without order and without method, affecting a philosophical tone and an enthusiastic emphasis in order to say extravagant things. It was nevertheless possible to perceive through the insensate obscurities several scandalous impieties and maxims of irreligion that revolted the entire assembly against the ridiculous princesses. A general cry went up to have them expelled. They were banished in perpetuity, and the vessel that had bought them was burned publicly. Fortunately for the captain, he had been in hiding since his arrival, for he would doubtless have been condemned to an exemplary punishment; but he found a means of avoiding all research and thus escaped the punishment he merited.52

  XIV. The arrival of Princess Anemone.

  Prince Fan-Férédin falls in love

  with Princess Rosebelle.

  While everyone was occupied with the spectacle of these various scenes, the great paladin Zazaraph, who was distracted by his amour and his impatience, darted glances continually toward the entrance to the port. He was sure that Princess Anemone could not fail to arrive imminently; and, in fact, he finally discovered the ship that was bringing her.

  “There she is!” he cried, transported by joy. “It’s Princess Anemone herself. I recognize the ship that is carrying her, and the sweet stirring that I sense in my soul leaves me in no doubt of it.”

  Prince Zazaraph immediately ran to welcome the princess when she descended from the vessel, and I accompanied him.

  But how can I recount everything that happened in that meeting? It would be the subject of an entire volume, and anyone who has read a few romances will understand that better than I could represent it. Transports, sharp impatience, tender gazes, inexpressible joys, inconceivable satisfaction, reciprocal testimonies of affection, even tears—al that was put to work and placed appropriately. Then it was necessary to recount everything that had happened during a long absence. The great paladin did not take long to tell his story, having nothing to say except that he had slept for an entire year by virtue of an enchantment, but Princess Anemone’s story was much longer.

  Prince Gulifax had entered her home one evening, weapon in hand, and had abducted her while she was beginning to undress in order to go to bed, without even given her the leisure to put on her nightcap. She wept, cried and charged her abductor with insults in vain; it was necessary to depart and embark. She was no sooner in the ship than she found herself distanced from her dear Dondindandian prince and in the power of the perfidious Gulifax, who had the insolence to talk to her about amour. She fainted more than twenty times, twenty times she would have thrown herself into the sea had she not been prevented from doing so.

  In sum, no other resource remained to her but tears and sobs, a feeble defense against a brutal corsair, so Princess Anemone passed lightly over that chapter in order to continue the remainder of her story, and she did it so well that I remarked Prince Zazaraph, at certain points in the story, testifying some anxiety.

  She reported, therefore, that the gods, protectors of oppressed innocence, had delivered her miraculously from the tyranny of her cruel kidnapper. A prince full of valor and generosity had attacked and captured Gulifax’s ship; the latter had perished in the combat. As her liberator was bringing her back, however, a frightful tempest had engulfed the vessel in the waves. She had saved herself on a plank and had been cast up on the shore more than half-dead After having brought her round, fishermen had introduced her to their prince, who had fallen in love with her, but, always intractable on that chapter, although the prince was handsome and well-built, she had not wanted
to listen to him.

  Here, however, I noticed that Prince Zazaraph made another grimace, and it was even worse when she added that she had subsequently passed successively into the power of three or four other princes. The paladin Zazaraph could not stand it any longer. It was written in the order of his adventures that after the return of the beautiful Anemone he had to quarrel with her, and that did not fail to happen. His anxiety regarding the perilous proofs to which the virtue of his princess had been put caused him to ask, stupidly, a few imprudent questions.

  The princess blushed, went pale, shed tears and appeared offended to a point where one might have thought that she would never pardon him, but as it was also written that the reconciliation would follow soon after, a few equivocal oaths on the one side and the thousand pardons demanded on the other, with tears, settled the matter, and the virtue of the princess was recognized as having been proof against all adventures and above all suspicion.

  It only remained to finish the romance by means of a solemn marriage, but it was necessary for that to leave Romancia, where it is not permitted to marry, and Prince Zazaraph made arrangements to do that.

  I confess, moreover, that I did not pay much attention to the detail of Princess Anemone’s adventures. While she was telling her story, my mind and heart were occupied with a more interesting object. At the rumor of his arrival, Princess Rosebelle, the sister of the great paladin, who had been linked in narrow amity with Anemone, ran to see her and embrace her. That was the fatal moment that Amour had destined to bring me under his law.

  To see Princess Rosebelle, to admire her, to love her and to adore her were, for me, the same thing, and all that only took a moment; so I convinced myself that nothing as lovable had ever appeared on the earth. She was a small composite of perfections, the most complete imaginable, in which one saw youth, beauty, graces, intelligence, joviality and vivacity disputing the advantage.