After a moment’s reflection, the judge took the document and read these words:
I declare and affirm, to whomsoever it may concern, that I have never been Mademoiselle de Téroze’s husband. By the present document I render unto her all the rights which for a certain period of time were thought to have been given to me with respect to her, and I further swear that I shall never reclaim them so long as I shall live. Furthermore, I have only the highest praise for the many kindnesses and considerations bestowed upon me by her and her family during the summer I have spent in their house. It is by common consent and with mutual good will that we both renounce any plans for marriage that may have existed between us and render each unto the other the freedom to dispose of our persons as though there had never been any intention of joining us together.
I further declare that I sign the present document of my own volition, and in a state of reason and good health.
Done at the Château de Valnord, belonging to Madame la Marquise d’Olincourt.
“You have informed me, Monsieur,” said the judge after he had read the above, “what fate I might expect if I refused to sign, but you have failed to tell me what might happen to me if I were to consent to everything.”
“Your reward will be your immediate release, Monsieur,” the pseudo-commander resumed, “and this jewel, worth two hundred louts, which Madame la Marquise d’Olincourt most earnestly begs you to accept. Plus the assurance that you will find your valet awaiting you at the château gate, together with two stout horses ready to carry you back to Aix.”
“I shall sign and depart, Monsieur. I am too bent upon ridding myself of all these people for me to hesitate for even a moment.”
“I am most happy to hear it, Judge,” said the captain, taking the signed document from him and handing him the jewel in return, “but be careful how you act in the future. Once outside, if you should ever be tempted by an obsessive desire for revenge, bear in mind, before you try anything, that you would be dealing with a formidable adversary, that this powerful family to whom you would be giving offense in its entirety by your suit, would immediately have you taken for a madman, and you would spend the rest of your days in one of those wretched insane asylums.”
“Have no fear, Monsieur. No one is more interested than I in avoiding any further contact with such persons, and I can assure you I shall take every precaution to do so.”
“I strongly suggest you do, Judge,” said the captain, finally unlocking his prison door. “Go in peace, and may this region of France never set eyes on you again.”
“You have my solemn word,” said the lawyer, climbing onto his horse. “This little adventure has cured me of all my vices. If I were to live for another thousand years, I should never come to Paris looking for a wife. I have upon occasion had some inkling of how it felt to be cuckolded after one was married, but I had never suspected that it was possible to wear the horns before … I can further say that my judicial decisions will henceforth be governed by wisdom and discretion. No longer shall I set myself up as mediator between whores and men more worthy than I: the cost is too high to side with these ladies of easy virtue, and I want nothing more to do with people whose minds and hearts are intent upon revenge.”
With these words the judge departed and, having grown wise at his own expense, was never heard from again. The whores complained that they no longer received any judicial support in Provence, and as a result virtue flowered in that region because the young girls, seeing that they could no longer count on this prop, preferred the path of virtue to the dangers that might await them on the road of vice whenever the magistrates became wise enough to realize the terrible disadvantages of supporting them through their protection.
The reader may well imagine that during the time of the judge’s incarceration, the Marquis d’Olincourt, after having made the baron change his mind about his overly favorable impression of Fontanis, had bent his every effort to making sure that all the arrangements of which we have just read were faithfully carried out. Thanks to his skill and influence, he succeeded so well in this endeavor that three months later Mademoiselle de Téroze was married, in a public ceremony, to Count d’Elbène, with whom she lived in perfect bliss.
“There are times when I have some pangs of regret at having mistreated this scurvy fellow,” the marquis said one day to his dear sister-in-law. “But when I see on the one hand the happiness that has resulted from my efforts, and when on the other I realize more and more that the person I persecuted was nothing but a socially useless clown, essentially an enemy of the State, a person given to disturbing the public peace, one who set himself up as the tormentor of a decent and respectable family and slandered a distinguished nobleman whom I respect and to whose family I have the honor of belonging, I find consolation and echo the words of the well-known philosopher: ‘O sovereign Providence, why is it the ways of man are so restricted that they can never manage to do good save by a touch of evil.’”*
*The reader is reminded that he must try to supply Monsieur de Fontanis’s Provençal accent, to imagine him rolling his r’s, qualities the written word simply cannot convey.
*A Provençal swearword.
*Another common Provençal oath.
*This tale was finished on July 16, 1787, at ten o’clock in the evening.
EMILIE DE TOURVILLE
or
FRATERNAL CRUELTY
Nothing is more sacred than a family’s honor, but if this treasure, no matter how precious, in any way becomes tarnished, should those in whose interest it is to defend it go so far as to assume the humiliating mantle of persecuting those poor creatures who, it has been assumed, have sullied them? Would it not be reasonable to assume that the unspeakable acts with which they have tormented their victim more than compensate for the wrong—often imagined—they feel has been done them? Who ultimately is the more guilty in the eyes of reason, a weak young lady who has been betrayed or a family relative who, claiming to take revenge in order to cleanse the blot on one’s escutcheon, becomes the torturer of that poor creature? The story we are about to relate may perhaps shed some light on that question.
The Count de Luxeuil, who bore the title of lieutenant-general in His Majesty’s service,1 a man of fifty-six or fifty-seven, on his way home by post chaise from one of his properties in Picardy, was passing through the Compiègne Forest about six o’clock one November evening when he heard a woman’s cry, seemingly emanating from one of the roads parallel to the main thoroughfare along which he was traveling. He stopped and ordered his valet, who was trotting along beside the post chaise, to go and see what it was. The valet returned shortly to report that the source of the cries was a young woman of about sixteen or seventeen, so covered in her own blood that it was impossible to tell where the bleeding was coming from, who was calling for help. The count immediately descended from his carriage and flew in the direction of the poor creature; he too, partly because of the increasing darkness, had trouble telling where the blood she was losing was coming from, though it looked as if it was from the veins in her arms, where normally doctors were wont to bleed a patient.
“Mademoiselle,” said the count, after trying to administer whatever help he could on the spot, “this is neither the time nor place to ask you what has brought you to this pass, nor clearly are you in any state to tell me. Please, come with me to my carriage and be assured that my sole concern now is to calm you down and to render you whatever help I can.”
Saying which, the count and his valet carried the poor girl to the carriage, and off they went.
Scarcely had this intriguing young lady realized that she was no longer in danger than she tried to stammer some words of gratitude, but the count begged her not even to try.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “tomorrow you can tell me, I hope, just what has befallen you, but today, by the authority vested in me by age and by my good fortune of being in a position to help you, I most urgently ask that you simply try to regain your composure.”
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br /> They arrived; in order to avoid attracting any undue attention, the count wrapped his charge in a man’s cloak and had his valet escort the young lady to a convenient apartment at the far end of the house. As soon as he had exchanged embraces with his wife and son, who were awaiting him for dinner, he made his excuses and hurried off to see her. He took the local surgeon with him, who examined the young woman: she was in an indescribable state of physical prostration and seeming depression, and of a pallor that made one think that she had but a few moments left to live, and yet there was no visible wound the doctor could detect. Her weakness, she told them, stemmed from the enormous amount of blood she had lost for the past three months, and as she was on the point of telling the count the unnatural reason for that prodigious loss, she fainted, and the surgeon urged she be allowed to rest and that, for the moment, he recommended giving her only some calmatives and cordials.
Our poor young woman spent a relatively peaceful night, but for the next six days was still in no condition to tell her benefactor the events leading up to his discovering her in the forest that night. Finally, on the evening of the seventh day—no one in the count’s house still had any inkling the young lady was there, and she, because of the precautions taken to keep her presence a secret, had no idea under whose roof she was lodged—she begged the count to hear her out, and above all to show her forbearance, no matter how grievous the faults to which she might confess.
The count pulled up a chair, assuring his protégée that she had already piqued his interest beyond compare, and that she need not fear, he was all ears. So it was our beautiful adventuress began the story of her misfortunes.
MADEMOISELLE DE TOURVILLE’S STORY
I, Sir, am the daughter of the Presiding Judge de Tour-ville, who is too well known and too distinguished in his profession for me tell you further about him. It has been two years since I left the convent, and during my first few months home I did not set foot from my father’s house. Having lost my mother when I was still very young, he alone assumed the task of taking care of my education, and I can say that he went to great lengths to give me all the graces and amenities of my sex. This attentiveness on his part, plus his stated intention to see that I was as well married as it was in his power to arrange, and, I must say, a touch of favoritism toward me, all this, I say, soon awakened in both my brothers a certain degree of jealousy. My oldest brother, who had just turned twenty-six, had already been named a judge of the provincial court three years before, and my other brother, who would soon be twenty-four, has recently been named a legal counselor.
I had no idea that they hated me as strongly as I now know they did. Having done nothing to deserve those feelings on their part, I lived under the illusion that they were as fond of me as I was, in my sweet innocence, of them. O just heaven! How wrong I was. Except for the time taken up by my studies, I enjoyed the greatest freedom in my father’s house; he imposed no restrictions upon me, and for the last eighteen months I had his permission to go out for daily walks in the company of my maid. We either walked along the terrace of the Tuileries gardens or along the ramparts not far from where we lived. Or, upon occasion, always with my maid, we would either walk—or sometimes take my father’s carriage— and pay a visit to relatives or friends, though we would never make these visits at times when it would be improper for a young lady to be alone at such gatherings. All my misfortunes emanate from this accursed freedom, which is why I mention it to you, Sir. Would to God that I had never been granted that freedom!
About a year ago, I was out walking, as I have mentioned to you, with my maid, whose name is Julie, along a rather dimly lit path in the Tuileries, where I thought it would be less crowded than on the terrace and where I felt the air would be more bracing. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, six rowdy young men accosted us and made it clear from the foul language they used that they took us both to be women of little virtue, if that is the term. Horribly embarrassed by such a scene, and not knowing how to extricate myself from it, I was about to seek safety in flight when a young man whom I had frequently seen out alone taking walks more or less at the same time as ours, and who looked like a proper gentleman, happened by in the thick of this frightful scene.
“Monsieur!” I cried out to him. “You don’t have the honor of knowing me, but we have crossed paths almost every day in the course of our walks. What you have seen of me, I trust, must have convinced you that I am not an adventuress. I beg you most urgently to give me your hand and escort me home, away from the clutches of these ruffians.”
Monsieur de *** (I shall if you please not divulge his name, for all sorts of good and valid reasons) hurried over, scattered the young rapscallions to the four winds, convincing them by the polite and respectful manner in which he greeted me that they had made an egregious error. Upon which he took my arm and led me from the garden.
“Mademoiselle,” he said as we approached the door to my house, “I think it would be wise if I took my leave here. If I escort you to your door, you might be obliged to explain my presence, as a result of which you might be forbidden to take any further walks unescorted. So don’t tell a soul what just happened and do keep coming, as you have in the past, to that same path, since you seem to enjoy it and your parents allow it. As for me, I shall be there every day without fail, and you should know that if anyone ever tries to accost or in any way disturb you, I stand ready to lay down my life in your defense.”
Such a declaration and tempting offer made me look at this young man with somewhat different eyes than I had till then. He was quite handsome, and I judged him to be roughly two or three years older than I. As I thanked him, I found myself blushing, and before I had time to ward them off, the ardent features of this seductive god, who today is the source of all my afflictions, had already pierced my heart. We separated, but I had the clear impression by the way he took his leave that I had made the same impression on him as he had made on me.
I went back to my father’s house and carefully refrained from mentioning anything that had happened. The next day I returned to that same pathway spurred on by some uncontrollable feeling, one that would have made me brave any danger I might have encountered there … What am I saying, I would rather have willed them to happen so that this same gallant person might perhaps once again come to my rescue. I am doubtless portraying my feelings too naively to you, Sir, but you have promised to bear with me and hear me out, and each new facet of my story will show you that I am right to ask for your forbearance: that is not the only imprudent act I committed, nor will it be the only time I shall stand in need of your compassion.
Monsieur de *** appeared on the pathway six minutes after I arrived, and as soon as he saw me he came up to me and said:
“Dare I ask, Mademoiselle, whether there have been any negative repercussions from yesterday’s incident and whether you have suffered any ill effects as a result of it?”
I assured him everything was fine on both counts, saying that I had indeed followed his advice, and thanked him once again for his help. Nothing, I now felt certain, would stand in the way of my pleasure at taking these bracing morning walks.
“If you derive a certain pleasure from coming here, Mademoiselle,” Monsieur de *** went on in the most civil of tones, “those who have the pleasure of meeting you in this place doubtless derive even more, and if I was so bold as to offer you that advice yesterday to say nothing that might interfere with your daily walks, the truth is you have no reason to be grateful to me, for I was working more for myself than for you.” And as he spoke those words, the expression in his eyes as he gazed into mine … Oh, Monsieur, is it possible that such a decent, gentle man could one day be the source of all my misfortunes?
The Mystified Magistrate Page 10