“That’s more like it,” said the judge. “When anyone speaks to me this way I am only too happy to listen, but to hear myself accused of being a heretic by this Hippo-cratic hack is, you must admit, more than I should be expected to bear.”
“My dear brother,” said the marquise graciously, “such was not his intent. He was referring to ‘erethism,’ which is a synonym for extreme irritation. At no time was he speaking of heresy.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon, my dear marquise. The problem is that I am sometimes a trifle hard of hearing. Come, let bygones be bygones, and have this worthy disciple of Averroës11 come over here and speak his piece, and I shall hear what he has to say. In fact, I shall do more: I shall follow whatever instructions he may give me.”
Delgatz, who had stepped back in the course of the judge’s boiling tirade for fear that he might receive the same medicine that the judge had meted out to his bed companion, returned once again to the edge of the bed.
“As I was saying, Monsieur,” said the latter-day Galen, again taking his patient’s pulse, “a serious erethi-cal condition in the organism …”
“A hereti…”
“Erethism, Monsieur,” the doctor said hastily, cringing for fear a punch was on the way, “which leads me to conclude that we should proceed with a quick phlebot-imization of the jugular vein, to be followed by a series of ice-cold baths.”
“I’m not sure that I agree with the bleeding,” said d’Olincourt. “His Honor the judge is no longer of an age to resist this kind of assault unless the need is really great. In fact, I am not a particular partisan, following the example of Themis and Asclepius, of the sanguinary mania: my theory is that there are as few illnesses that are worth the trouble of causing blood to flow as there are crimes over which blood ought to be spilled. My dear judge, I hope you will approve of what I say when it is a question of sparing your own blood; perhaps you would be less prone to agree if your interest in the problem were less immediate.”
“Monsieur,” the judge replied, “I approve of what you say in the first part of your statement, but I trust you will not take offense if I take exception to the second. ‘Tis by blood that crime is obliterated, with blood alone that it can be purged and prevented. I only ask you, Sir, to compare all the evil that crime can bring forth with the minor misfortune of a dozen or so poor wretches executed per year in order to prevent it.”
“Your paradox is lacking in common sense, my friend,” d’Olincourt said. “It is inspired by a complete lack of flexibility, and by stupidity. There is in you a vice imputable both to the state and soil whence you spring, and you should foreswear it forever. Irrespective of the fact that your ridiculous strictness has never stopped a crime from being committed, it is perfectly absurd to maintain that one crime can pay for another, and that the death of a second person can in any way atone for another. You and your colleagues ought to blush with shame at such methods, which are far less a proof of your integrity than they are evidence of your overwhelming predilection for despotism. Those who call you the torturers and tyrants of the human race are absolutely right: you destroy, by yourselves, more men than all of Nature’s plagues put together.”
“Gentlemen,” said the marquise, “it seems to be that this is neither the time nor place for such a discussion. Instead of calming my dear brother-in-law, Monsieur,” she went on, turning to her husband, “you are merely inflaming his blood all the more, and if you keep on you may even turn his illness into something incurable.”
“The marquise is right,” said the doctor. “May I beg your leave, Monsieur, to ask La Brie to have forty pounds of ice brought in and put into the bathtub, which we shall then fill with well water. And while all these preparations are taking place, I shall help my patient get up.”
With these words, everyone withdrew. The judge got up, haggled a trifle longer about the ice-bath which, he said, was going to make him good for nothing for at least six weeks. But all his arguments fell on deaf ears; they proceeded downstairs, and into the bath he went! They kept him there for ten or twelve minutes, in full view of the full company, who had gathered in every nook and cranny of the room to contemplate and savor the spectacle. After the patient had been thoroughly dried off, he dressed and rejoined the group as though nothing had happened.
As soon as dinner was over, the marquise suggested they go for a walk.
“The relaxation ought to be good for the judge, don’t you think so, Doctor?” she asked Delgatz.
“Most certainly,” he replied. “Madame doubtless remembers that no hospital worthy of the name fails to provide its inmates with a courtyard in which they can get a breath of fresh air.”
“But I flatter myself,” said the judge, “that you do not consider me completely dim-witted!”
“Very nearly, Monsieur,” Delgatz went on. “This is a slight aberration which, caught in time, ought not to have any consequences. But what Your Honor requires is calm, and time to recuperate.”
“What does that mean, Sir? Are you suggesting that I shall not be able to get my revenge tonight?”
“Tonight, Monsieur! The very thought makes me shudder. If I were to apply the same stern measures to you as you apply to others, I would forbid you from having anything to do with women for three or four months.”
“Three or four months! Good heavens …,” and, turning to his young bride: “Three or four months, my pretty one. Will you be able to hold out, my angel? Do you think you’ll be able to wait that long?”
“Oh, Monsieur Delgatz will relent, I trust,” the young Téroze replied with feigned naïveté. “He will at least take pity on me, if not on you …”
And with these words they went for their walk.
In order to reach the house of a neighboring nobleman, who was privy to all that was going on and who was expecting the company for tea, they had to take a ferry. Once on the ferryboat, our young friends began to make merry, and Fontanis was quick to imitate them, in an effort to please his wife.
“Judge,” said the marquis, “I’m willing to wager that you can’t hang for several minutes from the ferryboat rope, the way I’m doing.”
“Nothing could be simpler,” said the judge, taking a pinch of snuff and standing up on his tiptoes in order to get a better grip on the rope.
“Excellent, excellent! Much better than you, my dear brother,” said Mademoiselle de Téroze as soon as she saw her husband take hold of the rope.
But while the judge, thus suspended, called their attention to how graceful and skillful he was, the ferryman, who had been cued in to the plan, began to double his strokes, and the ferryboat literally sped away, leaving the poor fellow suspended between the heaven above and the water below …
He cried out, he called for help; they were only about halfway across the river, with a good thirty yards more to go before they reached the bank.
“Do the best you can,” they shouted to him, “you can make it to the bank by moving hand over hand. But you can see the wind is carrying us away, there’s no way we can get back to you …”
Hearing which, the judge, slipping and sliding, flailing his legs, was struggling with all his might in an effort to catch up with the ferryboat, which the ferrymen by rowing deftly were careful to keep well ahead of him.
If ever there was an amusing sight, it surely must have been the sight of one of the most distinguished magistrates of the High Court of Aix thus suspended, in his long wig and black suit, over the flowing waters.
“Your Honor,” the marquis cried out to him, “the truth of the matter is, this is nothing but an act of Providence: ‘tis the lex talionis, my friend, which calls for an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; that favorite law of your tribunals. What are you complaining about? At being strung up in this manner? But haven’t you sentenced to the same torture others who did not deserve it any more than you?”
But by now the judge was beyond the reach of words. Terribly tired by the violent exertions he had been forced to make, the judge could ho
ld on no longer; his hands slipped, and he fell like a rock into the water. At the same moment, two divers, who had been held in readiness, quickly swam to help him; they soon had him back onboard, as soaked as a spaniel and swearing like an old trooper. He began by berating them for their practical joke which, he said, was quite out of place … They swore to him that it was not at all a joke, that a gust of wind had caught the boat and carried it away. They hustled him into the ferryman’s cabin, which was heated, and there his dear little wife coddled him and helped him change his clothes, doing everything she could to make him forget the little incident, until finally Fontanis, who was weak to begin with and in love to boot, began to laugh with all the others at the spectacle he had just made of himself.
At length they reached the neighboring nobleman’s and were received with open arms. A magnificent high tea was served: care was taken to serve the judge a pistachio cream-cake which had no sooner made the journey to his entrails than he found himself compelled to ask, virtually in the next breath, where the toilet was. He was directed to one that was cloaked in darkness. In a frightful hurry, he sat down and relieved himself without further ado; but when he had finished, the judge discovered he could not get up.
“Now what the devil’s this,” he cried out, shaking his bottom … But try as he might, there was no way of breaking loose, short of leaving a bit of his bottom behind.
Meanwhile, his absence was noticed, causing a certain amount of concern and consternation. Everyone there began to ask one another what in the world could have become of him until, drawn by his shouts, they finally were drawn to the door of the fatal toilet.
“What the devil’s keeping you in there so long, my friend?” d’Olincourt asked him. “Are you suffering from some kind of colic?”
“Colic, hell!” said the poor devil, redoubling his efforts to pry himself loose, “can’t you see I’m stuck! …”
But in order to add a bit of spice to the spectacle, and in order to make the judge squirm even more in an effort to pry himself loose from the damned seat, the group had someone stationed beneath the privy run a small flame from an alcohol burner over his buttocks, scorching the hair and upon occasion actually burning him, all of which made him jump and jerk and contort his face into horrible grimaces. The harder they laughed the more furious he became: he swore at the women and threatened the men, and the angrier he became the more comical his beet-red face was to behold. The various contortions he had made had managed to separate his wig from his head, and that bare skull made his facial contortions all the more comical.
At last their host arrived, embarrassed beyond words and begging the judge’s pardon a thousand times over for not warning him that this toilet was in no condition to receive him. He and some of his servants managed to pry loose the long-suffering soul as best they could, but not without his leaving behind, as it were, a circular layer of flesh that remained attached to the ring of the seat which the painters had sized with a special glue in preparation for the paint with which they planned to decorate it. It is all well and good to say that man is well fleshed in these regions, but when it comes to leaving even an ounce or two behind it is another matter altogether.
“The truth is,” said Fontanis, reappearing once again as bold as brass, “I’m a great asset to you all… but only as a butt for your jokes.”
“Fair-weather friend,” d’Olincourt rejoined, “why do you always have to blame us for misfortune which can only be rightly ascribed to the hand of fate? I always thought that the mere fact of donning Themis’s halter was sufficient to make equity a natural virtue, but I can see that I was mistaken.”
“That is because your ideas concerning what is called equity are unclear,” said the judge. “In law we acknowledge several kinds of equity. There is what is called relative equity and personal equity …”
“Not so fast there,” said the marquis. “I have never noticed that this virtue which is the object of so much analysis is very often practiced. What I call equity, my friend, is very simply the law of Nature. One is always just and upright when one follows it; one only becomes unjust when one deviates from it. Tell me, Judge, if you were to indulge in some whim of your imagination, within the safe confines of your own home, would you find it very equitable if a gang of roughnecks burst into your family hearth carrying torches and there, resorting to all kinds of mischievous and inquisitorial ruses, using bought information in an effort to ferret out some failings of which you may have been guilty when you were twenty or thirty, would try to take advantage of these atrocious methods to ruin you, to expel you from home and country, put an indelible blot on your escutcheon, dishonor your children and plunder your possessions: tell me, my friend, tell me honestly: would you find these scoundrels equitable?”12
“And judge it, may I ask? Do you mean to tell me you are blaming us for ferreting out crime! … It’s our duty!”
“That is false, Sir: your duty consists only in punishing crime whenever it has been uncovered. Leave to the stupid and unrelenting maxims of the Inquisition the barbarous and tasteless task of ferreting out crime like vile spies and foul informers. What citizen can feel himself safe when, surrounded by servants you have been careful to bribe, his honor or his life will at any moment be in the hands of persons who, embittered by the chains they wear, think they can free themselves from them, or at least lighten their burden, by selling to you the man who imposes these chains upon them? What will you have accomplished? You will have increased manyfold the number of rogues and rascals in the State, you will have made God knows how many perfidious women, slandering servants, and ungrateful children: you will have doubled the sum of vices without having given birth to a single virtue.”
“It is not a matter of giving birth to virtues; all we’re concerned with is stamping out crime.”
“But the means you use only multiplies it.”
“Right you are! But that is the law, and we must follow it. We are not legislators, my dear marquis. My colleagues and I are simply implementers.”
“I have a better term for it, Judge, a much better term,” d’Olincourt retorted, warming up to his topic. “I say that you are rather the executioners, the unworthy torturers, who, naturally enemies of the State, derive your only pleasure from subverting its prosperity, from placing obstacles in the path of its happiness, sullying its glory, and causing the precious blood of its subjects to flow without rhyme or reason.”
In spite of the two cold baths that Fontanis had taken that day, bile is something so difficult to destroy in a man of the long robe that the judge literally shook with rage to hear such aspersions being cast at a profession which he deemed so respectable. It had never crossed his mind that what is called the judiciary could be taxed with such charges, and he was perhaps on the verge of responding to the attack in the language of a sailor from Marseilles when the ladies came over and suggested that they start for home. The marquise asked the judge whether he needed to pay another visit to the water closet before they left.
“No, no, Madame,” said the marquis. “This worthy magistrate does not always suffer from attacks of colic. You’ll have to excuse him if he took this attack a trifle seriously. It is an illness of some consequence in Marseilles or Aix, this minor movement of the bowels. Ever since we have seen a troop of rogues—colleagues of our friend here present—judge that a few whores who were suffering from colic were poisoned, it should come as no surprise to us that colic is a serious matter indeed as far as a judge from Provence is concerned.”
Fontanis, who in fact had been one of the most rabid judges in the case to which the marquis was referring, a case that had heaped shame upon the whole judicial body of Provence forever, was in a state difficult to portray: he stammered, he fussed and fidgeted, he frothed at the mouth, and in general resembled those mastiffs in a bullfight when they are unable to sink their teeth into their opponent. Whereupon d’Olincourt, taking advantage of the opportunity, said:
“Look at him, ladies, just look at him
and tell me, I beg of you, whether you would look benevolently upon the fate of an unfortunate gentleman who, trusting in his innocence and good faith, should see fifteen mastiffs such as this one yapping at the seat of his trousers.”
The judge was about to take serious umbrage at this remark, but the marquis, who did not want to create a scandal, at least not yet, having wisely repaired to his carriage, left to Mademoiselle de Téroze the task of smoothing over the wounds he had just inflicted. She was hard put to do so, but she finally succeeded in placating the judge.
The return trip on the ferry was without incident, the judge indicated no desire to dance beneath the rope, and the company reached the château without any further problem.
They had dinner, during which the doctor was careful to remind Fontanis of the necessity for him to eschew all contact with the fair sex.
“Upon my word,” said the judge, “there is no need to warn me on that score. How do you expect a man who has spent the night with a dark-skinned lady he has never set eyes on before, who has been accused of being a heretic in the morning, has been made to take an ice bath for lunch, who shortly thereafter has fallen into the river, who, finding himself caught on the toilet, like a rat in a trap, has had his behind burnt to a crisp while he was peacefully moving his bowels, and who has been told to his face that judges who make an effort to ferret out crime are but sorry rogues and knaves, and that whores who have the colic are not whores who have been poisoned: how, I ask you, do you expect such a man to even entertain the idea of deflowering a virgin?”
The Mystified Magistrate Page 5