Such were the judge’s ruminations when all of a sudden a terrible noise was heard simultaneously in all the rooms and corridors of the castle … The judge began to tremble in every fiber of his body; he clutched his chair; it was almost more than he could do to lift his eyes.
“I’ve completely lost my mind!” he shouted. “What business do I, what business does a judge of the High Court of Aix, have battling ghosts? Oh ye ghosts, I ask of you: what have you and the High Court of Aix ever had in common?”
And yet the intensity of the noise redoubled, the doors of the two towers burst open and terrifying figures entered the room … Fontanis dropped to his knees, begged that he be spared, that his life be spared.
“You scoundrel!” said one of these ghosts in a terrifying voice. “Was your own heart touched by pity when you wrongly condemned all those countless wretches? Did the frightful fate that was theirs have any effect on you? Were you any less vain or arrogant, less greedy or less dissolute the day your unjust decrees plunged the victims of your ridiculous inflexibility into misfortune, or into the grave? And where did you get the dangerous idea that your sudden power placed you above the law, or the illusive notion of your omnipotence that popular opinion lends for a moment or so and that philosophy just as quickly destroys?… Allow us to act in accordance with these same principles, and yield to our authority, since you are in no position to argue.”
With these words, four of these physical spirits laid harsh hands on Fontanis and, in no time at all, stripped him as bare as the day he was born, without eliciting any other reaction from him than a flood of tears, a few screams, and an offensive layer of sweat that drenched him from head to foot.
“Now what shall we do with him?” said one of them.
“Wait,” replied the ghost who appeared to be in charge. “I have here the list of the four principal murders that he has legally committed. Let us read them to him:
“In 1750 he sentenced to the wheel a poor wretch whose only crime had been to refuse him his daughter, whom the scoundrel wanted to seduce.
“In 1754, he offered to save a man’s life in return for a payment of two thousand ecus; since the man could not raise the sum, the judge had him hanged.
“In 1760, learning that a man in his town had made a few derogatory remarks about him, he sentenced him to be burned at the stake the following year as a sodomite, although this hapless creature had a wife and a whole host of children, all of whom gave the lie to his crime.
“In 1772, a young man of refinement who was a native of the region and who, as an act of good-natured revenge, wished to give a thorough drubbing to a courtesan who had given him a nasty present, had this practical joke turned into a serious crime by this unworthy churl, who treated the matter as a poisoning and attempted murder, talked all his colleagues into sharing his opinion, and thereby disgraced the young man, ruined him, and had him sentenced to death in absentia, since he had been unable to bring him bodily to trial.14
“These are his principal crimes. Make up your minds what to do with him, my friends.”
Without a moment’s delay a voice was raised: “The talion,15 gentlemen, the law of retaliation. He has unjustly sentenced people to the wheel; I vote that he be broken on the wheel.”
“I think he should be hanged,” said another, “for the same reasons just given by my colleague.”
“Let him be burned at the stake,” said a third, “both because he dared use this torture when it was undeserved and because he himself has deserved it many times over.”
“Let us show him an example of moderation and mercy, comrades,” said the chief, “and let us use as the basis for our text for today the fourth adventure just related: a whipped whore is a crime worthy of death in the eyes of this silly blockhead; therefore let him be whipped himself.”
Without further ado the poor judge was taken and placed facedown on a narrow bench, to which he was securely tied from head to foot. The four wanton spirits each took a leather thong five feet long and, striking up a cadence among them, proceeded to let the lashes fall with all the strength their arms could muster, on every square inch of poor Fontanis’s bare body. After three quarters of an hour of uninterrupted lashing by the four vigorous hands to which his education had been entrusted, Fontanis’s body began to look like one long welt from whose every nook and cranny blood was spurting.
“There, that’s enough,” said the chief. “As I said before, let’s give him an example of pity and charity. If the shoe were on the other foot, the rascal would have us drawn and quartered. We have him at our mercy; I suggest we let him off with this brotherly punishment. We can only hope that this lesson at our school will teach him that murdering men is not the only way to make them better. All he received were five hundred lashes, but I’m willing to wager against all takers that he has changed his mind completely about injustice and that in the future he can be counted on to be one of the fairest magistrates of his profession. Untie him, and let us be off on our rounds.”
“Great God!” the judge cried out, as soon as his torturers were gone. “I can see that if we hold up a torch to the actions of others, if we try to unfold them in order to have the pleasure of punishing them, yes, I can clearly see that in no time at all the chickens do come home to roost. And who in the world could have informed these people of everything I’ve done? How could they have been so well apprised of my conduct?”
Whatever the answer to that question, Fontanis tidied himself up as best he could; but no sooner had he slipped back into his clothes than he heard, emanating from the area toward which the ghosts had departed when they left his room, a series of blood-curdling screams. He strained his ear, and made out the voice of the marquis calling to him for help at the top of his lungs.
“I’ll be damned if I respond,” said the judge, who was completely exhausted. “Even if those rogues were to thrash him within an inch of his life, the way they did to me, I’d refuse to get involved. We all have our problems, and charity begins at home, I always say.”
And yet the noise grew louder and louder, until finally d’Olincourt burst into Fontanis’s room, with both his valets hard at his heels, all three of them screaming and yelping as though someone had just slit their throats. They were all covered with blood; one had his arm in a sling, the other’s forehead was swathed in bandages, and anyone who might have seen them thus—pale, disheveled, and bloodied—would have sworn that they had just done battle with a whole legion of devils, freshly escaped from hell, in a knock-down-drag-out battle.
“Oh, my friend,” said d’Olincourt, “what an assault! I thought they were going to throttle all three of us right here on the spot.”
“I can assure you, you could not have been manhandled more than I,” said the judge, showing his battered and bloodied backside. “Look what they did to me.”
“Good Lord!” said the colonel of dragoons, “this time the tables are turned, my friend, and you have every reason to lodge a complaint. You are, I am sure, well aware of the deep interest your colleagues have had throughout the ages in whipped asses. Call a meeting of the entire judiciary, my friend; find yourself some famous lawyer who would be willing to lend his eloquence to the defense of your molested buttocks. Utilizing the ingenious expedient whereby an orator in ancient times used to move the Areopagus by uncovering, in the presence of the court, the marvelous bosom of the beauty whose cause he was pleading, let your Demosthenes choose the most pathetic moment of his address to the court to lay bare your much maligned buttocks, and thereby move the tribunal to pity. Above all, remind the Paris judges before whom you will be obliged to appear of that notorious incident in 176915 when, their hearts much more moved to pity for the beaten backside of an ordinary streetwalker than for the worthy people for whom they feign the role of father and whom, nonetheless, they allow to die of hunger, they decided to institute proceedings against a young officer who had just given the best years of his youth to his sovereign and who, upon his return, found instead of lau
rels awaiting him naught but the humiliation prepared by the hands of the greatest enemies of that selfsame State which he had just defended …
“Come, my dear fellow-sufferer, let us not waste another moment, let us leave this accursed castle, for here there is not the slightest place where we can feel safe. Let us hurry and seek revenge, let us fly forthwith to the protectors of public order, the defenders of the oppressed, to the pillars of society, and ask for their help.”
“I can’t stand on my own two feet,” said the judge, “and even if those damned scoundrels were to peel me again like an apple, I must beg of you to find me a bed and allow me to take to it for at least twenty-four hours.”
“You can’t be serious, my friend. You’ll be strangled to death.”
“Then so be it. It will be only one sin atoned for, and I must say that at present my heart is so filled with remorse that I would look upon any misfortune that might befall me as no more than an order from Heaven.”
Since the commotion had completely subsided, and as d’Olincourt saw that the poor native of Provence was really in need of a little rest, he summoned good Master Pierre and asked him whether there was any danger of these scoundrels returning the following night.
“No, Monsieur,” the farmer replied. “Tonight’s activities will keep them quiet for the next eight to ten days, and you can go to bed without any concern on that score.”
The badly crippled judge was taken to a room where he took to bed and rested as best he could for a good twelve hours. He was still fast asleep when suddenly he felt himself being inundated in his bed. He raised his eyes and saw the ceiling perforated with a thousand holes, from each of which there flowed a fountain with which he was threatened to be soaked unless he decamped as fast as his legs could carry him. He quickly dashed downstairs, completely naked, as best his backside permitted, where he found the colonel and Master Pierre seated around a dish of pâté and a battlement of Burgundy wine, wherewith they were drowning their sorrows. Their initial reaction, upon seeing Fontanis rush in clothed in such indecent dress, was to burst out laughing. The judge began to relate to them his latest woes; they made him sit down at the table, without giving him time to slip into his breeches—which he was still clutching under his arm much in the manner of the inhabitants of some primitive island. The judge began to drink, and by the time they had polished off the third bottle he found consolation for all his woes. Since by then only two hours remained before their scheduled departure for the Château d’Olincourt, they decided to have the horses saddled and to set off.
“That’s some lesson you had me learn there, Marquis,” said the judge as soon as they were in the saddle.
“And I can assure you it will not be the last, my friend,” d’Olincourt replied. “Man is made to learn lessons, and especially men of law. ‘Tis beneath the ermine-collared robe of jurisprudence that stupidity has erected its temple, and only in your tribunals can it breathe in total peace. But in any case, no matter what you might say, was it possible to leave this château before finding out what was going on there?”
“What good does it do us, now that we know?”
“For one thing it allows us to lodge our complaints now with a great deal more authority.”
“Complaints! I’11 be damned if I lodge any, thank you! I’ll keep those I have to myself, and I’ll be much obliged if you do the same.”
“My dear friend, you are simply not consistent: if you find it ludicrous to lodge a complaint when one has been mistreated, why then do you go out of your way to look for them, why do you never stop provoking them? It makes no sense: you, who are one of crime’s most ardent enemies, intend to let it go unpunished when it has been so clearly established? It is one of the most sublime axioms of jurisprudence, is it not, that, even assuming that the injured party waives his claim, justice still must demand its due? And are you not flying in the face of justice when you refuse to press your claims relative to what has just happened to you? Dare you refuse justice the rightful homage it demands?”
“You may be right on all scores, but I shall still not say a word.”
“And what about your wife’s dowry?”
“I shall count upon the baron’s sense of fair play, and I shall ask him to take full responsibility for clearing up this matter.”
“He will refuse to get involved.”
“Then we shall live in poverty.”
“What a gallant fellow! You’ll be the cause of your wife’s ruing the day she ever met you, of her bitterly regretting for the rest of her life that she ever cast her lot with a coward like you.”
“Oh, as far as regrets are concerned, I suspect that we shall each have our fair share. But pray tell me, why do you now want me to lodge a complaint, whereas nothing was further from your mind only minutes ago?”
“I didn’t realize what was involved. As long as I thought we would be able to win without any outside help, I chose this method as the most honest. And now that I find it necessary to seek the assistance of the law I suggest it to you. What, may I ask, is inconsistent about that?”
“Marvelous, marvelous!” said Fontanis, climbing down off his horse as they were arriving at the Château d’Olincourt. “But still, I beg of you not to breathe a word of all this. That is the only favor I ask of you.”
Although they had been gone for no more than two days, a great deal had transpired at the marquise’s. Mademoiselle de Téroze was abed; a feigned indisposition, brought on by worry, by the sorrow of knowing that her husband was exposed to danger, had kept her in bed for the past twenty-four hours. A pretty bathing attendant was by her bed; her head and neck were swathed in twenty yards of gauze … a totally touching pallor, which made her a hundred times more beautiful than ever, rekindled all the fires of passion in the judge whose body was already further inflamed by the impassioned flogging he had just received.
Delgatz was at the patient’s bedside, and in a low voice warned Fontanis not to manifest the slightest desire, given the unhappy situation in which his dear wife found herself. The critical moment had taken place during her periods; there was, he must be frank, a danger of losing her.
“Damnation!” said the judge. “I must have been born under the most unlucky of stars. I have just been thrashed for this woman, and I mean thrashed within an inch of my life, and once again I am kept from claiming my rightful due from her!”
Moreover, the number of guests at the château had increased by three, and it is essential at this point to introduce the newcomers. Monsieur and Madame de Totteville, wealthy neighbors of the d’Olincourts, had just arrived with their daughter Lucille, a sprightly little brunette of about eighteen whose tender features were not one whit less lovely than those of Mademoiselle de Téroze. In order not to leave our readers in suspense any longer, we shall, without further ado, inform them who these three characters are whom we have deemed it appropriate to introduce at this juncture, either for the purpose of postponing the denouement or of leading the story more firmly to its desired conclusion.
Totteville was one of those impoverished knights of the order of Saint-Louis who, not above dragging their knighthood in the mire in exchange for a few free dinners or a handful of ecus, accept indiscriminately whatever roles they are asked to play. His presumed wife was an old adventuress of another sort who, finding herself now at an age where she could no longer trade on her physical attractions, made up for it by dealing in the attractions of others. As for the lovely princess who was passed off as being their own flesh and blood, one can easily imagine, merely from her alliance with such a family, from what class she had come. A pupil of Paphos16 from her most tender youth, she had already been the ruination of three or four farmer-generals, and it was because of her artfulness and beauty that they had adopted her. And yet all these characters, chosen from among the best their class had to offer, were well-schooled, perfectly instructed and, possessing the façade of good manners, performed to perfection what was expected of them, so much so that it was diff
icult, seeing them mingle with men and women of high society, not to believe that they too were members of it.
The Mystified Magistrate Page 7