When love is pure, when love is true if ever troubles do ensue
By others’ words or things they’ve seen that cast aspersions on your queen,
Then listen not to what is said, but start to listen to your heart.6
“Mademoiselle,” he went on, addressing himself to Emilie, “I am looking forward to your full and speedy recovery, for I want to return you to your family as my son’s betrothed, and I flatter myself that they will not raise any objection in joining me to make amends for all your misfortunes. If for any reason they refuse my offer, then you should know that my house is yours, Mademoiselle, and it is here that we shall celebrate your marriage. Know too that, whether your family agrees to this marriage or not, I shall always think of you, to my dying day, as my cherished daughter, one with whom I consider it a great honor to be allied.”
The young marquis embraced his father; Mademoiselle de Tourville burst into tears and clasped her benefactor’s hands in hers. Both men withdrew for a few hours to allow Emilie to recover from a scene that had been both long and emotional. They did not want to be the cause of a setback to her complete recovery, which they desired with all their heart.
Precisely two weeks after her return to Paris, Mademoiselle de Tourville was strong enough to get up and take a carriage. The count had her dressed in a white dress in keeping with the innocence of her heart, every care was taken to enhance her natural beauty, which her lingering pallor and a remnant of her illness made all the more attractive. The count, his son, and Emilie drove together to her father’s house. He, having not been forewarned of her visit, was completely taken aback when his daughter suddenly appeared. He was with his two sons, whose faces were immediately transformed into expressions of surprise and wrath. Both brothers were aware that she had escaped from the château, but they thought she had perished in some remote corner of the forest, and if they had the slightest remorse there was no visible evidence of it that one could detect.
“Monsieur,” the count said as he presented Emilie to her father, “here is the very essence of innocence, which I return to your loving care …,” at which point Emilie threw herself at her father’s feet. “I ask that she be forgiven,” the count went on, “and I would not ask you this favor if I were not certain that she richly deserves it. Moreover,” he continued, picking up the pace of his discourse, “the best proof I can give you of the profound esteem in which I hold your daughter is that I ask you for her hand in marriage to my son. We are of roughly equal stations in life,” he said, “but if it turns out that my fortune is less than yours, then you may rest assured that I shall sell whatever of my goods and possessions it requires to provide my son with a fortune worthy of your daughter. It is for you to decide, Monsieur, and grant me leave not to depart until I have your word.”
The elderly Judge de Tourville, who had always adored his darling Emilie, and who himself was goodness personified, so much so in fact that for the past twenty years he had retired from the bench precisely because of the excellence of his character,7 the elderly judge, I say, letting his tears course down onto the bosom of his dear darling Emilie child, replied to the count that he was only too happy at the thought of such a match but that what bothered him and upset him no end was the fear that his darling Emilie might be unworthy. At which point the marquis cast himself at the judge’s feet and asked the old man to forgive him for his own misdeeds and swore that he would atone for them.
Pledges were made on both sides, arrangements were discussed relative to the upcoming marriage, and emotions, which had been running high, abated. The only sour notes in the proceedings were Emilie’s brothers, who refused to partake of the pervasive joy and who, when Emilie had gone over to embrace them, had not only pushed her away but turned to leave the room. The count, furious at their behavior, tried to stop one of the brothers from leaving the premises, but Monsieur de Tourville called out to him:
“Never mind, let them go. They have deceived me horribly. If this dear child of mine had been as guilty as they have made out, why then would you be at such pains to want her for your son’s wife? By depriving me of my Emilie’s cherished presence, they have unsettled my days and turned my former happiness into sorrow. Let them go …” And filled with rage, the brothers stalked from the room.
Then the count went on to recite for the judge the full litany of despicable acts that his sons had visited upon his daughter. The judge, upset and dismayed by the total disproportion between the deed and the punishment, swore that he would never set eyes on his sons again. The count tried to smooth things over and made the judge promise to wipe all this unpleasantness from his memory.
A week later, the marriage took place without the presence of the two sons, who refused to honor their father’s invitation. But the ceremony unfolded very smoothly without them and they both were held in great contempt by all concerned. Monsieur de Tourville decided not to take legal action against them, warning them, however, to keep their mouths shut, adding that if they refused he would have them locked up. They did more or less as he had bidden, but they could not refrain from boasting about what they had done without being specific, then complaining to one and all that their father was far too lenient with their sister.
People who became privy to the frightful details of this unfortunate misadventure were appalled by it, shaking their heads and saying:
“Good God! This is one appalling example of what can happen when private individuals take it into their heads to punish crimes committed by others!8 How right people are when they maintain that such infamous conduct is the preserve of the crazed, incompetent devotees of blind justice, of Themis herself. Brought up in a climate of ridiculous inflexibility, their hearts hardened at the most tender age against the cries of the poor and downtrodden, their hands bloodied from the cradle, harsh in their judgments of others but lenient to a fault when it comes to their own behavior, firm in their conviction that the only way to keep their own vices secret and cover up their public prevarications is by flaunting their unbending nature, these future judges have the outward appearance of a lion and the inner character of a goose. Their only purpose, even as they steep themselves in crime, is to pull the wool over the eyes of the gullible and make wise men loathe not only their odious principles and their bloodthirsty laws, but their own detestable persons.”
AUGUSTINE DE
VILLEBLANCHE or
LOVE’S STRATEGY
Of all Nature’s aberrations, the one that has caused the most controversy and seemed the strangest to those semi-philosophers who spend their lives analyzing everything without ever understanding anything,” said Mademoiselle de Villeblanche (with whom we shall later have an opportunity to converse) to one of her closest female friends, “is this strange penchant that women of a certain disposition and temperament have for persons of their own sex. Although long before and since the time of the immortal Sappho1 every country in the world, and indeed every city, has produced women of this bent, and although in the face of this overwhelming evidence it would seem reasonable to accuse Nature of eccentricity rather than accuse these women of unnatural crimes, the fact remains that we have never ceased to blame and censure them. And if it were not for the haughty superiority that our sex has always enjoyed, who knows whether some Cujas, some Bartolo, or some Louis IX2 might not have conceived the idea of punishing these sensitive and unhappy creatures by burning them at the stake, as they have felt obliged to do with men who, possessed of this same penchant and doubtless for as compelling reasons, have thought it possible to find satisfaction among members of their own sex and held the opinion that congress between the two sexes, while essential for the propagation of the race, might well not be of such overriding importance when it comes to the pursuit of pleasure. God forbid that we should take sides in this dispute, don’t you agree, my dear?” the beautiful Augustine de Villeblanche continued, as she blew kisses, which nonetheless seemed slightly suspicious, in the direction of her charming friend. “But instead of resorting to th
e use of sarcasm or scorn, or the threat of the stake— weapons which hardly seem meaningful today—would it not be infinitely simpler, in a matter so completely indifferent to society, of absolutely no consequence to God, and perhaps even more useful to Nature than we tend to realize, to let everyone do as he or she pleases?… What is there to fear from this depravity?… In the eyes of any truly wise person, it will seem that it may well prevent more serious ones, but no one will ever make me believe that it can lead to more dangerous deviant behavior… Ah, good heaven, are they afraid that the whims of these individuals of one or the other sex will bring about the end of the world, that they are playing games with the ever-so-precious human race, and that their so-called crime will wipe it out, since they are failing to assure it grows and multiplies? If you think about it carefully, you will see that all these imaginary losses are completely indifferent to Nature, that not only does she not condemn them but, on the contrary, she demonstrates by a thousand examples that she wishes and desires them. Why, if these losses irritate her so, would she tolerate them in thousands of cases? Why, if the problem of progeny is so essential to her, would she have limited the length of time a woman can bear children to only a third of her life? And why would Nature dictate that half of those creatures to whom she gives birth leave their mothers’ hands with a clear distaste for producing offspring, contrary to what we have been taught are Nature’s demands. I shall go even further: Nature allows the race to multiply, but she does not demand it and, thoroughly convinced that there will always be more people than her needs require, she has no desire whatsoever to oppose the penchants of those who refuse to conform to society’s demands to procreate and will have no part of it. Ah, let Mother Nature work her ways, let us be quite convinced that her resources are immense, that nothing we do will outrage her, and that we humans are not equipped to commit any crime that will affect or endanger her laws.”
Mademoiselle de Villeblanche, a sample of whose logic we have just seen, was at the age of twenty in full control of her own life. Blessed with an income of thirty thousand francs, she had decided that she was not made for marriage. She came from a good, though not illustrious, family. She was the only child of a man who had made his fortune in India and died without ever having been able to persuade her to marry. We would be less than candid if we did not reveal that the kind of penchant for which Augustine had just offered such a vigorous defense played a major role in her aversion to marriage. Whatever the reason—whether it was advice received, education, predisposition, her own hot blood (she was born in Madras), Nature’s inspiration, or any other reason you can think of—Mademoiselle de Ville-blanche detested men and, totally dedicated to what chaste ears will understand by the term “sapphism,” found pleasure only with members of her own sex and compensated for her contempt of Love only with the Graces.3
Augustine was a real loss to men: tall, statuesque, she had beautiful dark hair, a slightly aquiline nose, superb teeth, eyes that sparkled with intelligence and wit; and her skin was exquisitely smooth and white; in a word, she emanated an aura of such piquant voluptuousness that it came as no surprise that a number of men, seeing her so perfectly made to give love and so determined not to receive it, quite naturally let slip an infinite number of sarcastic remarks about a taste which, however simple it may have been, nonetheless deprived the altars of Paphos4 of one of the creatures best endowed to serve them and thus caused a certain degree of ill humor among the adepts of the temples of Venus. Mademoiselle de Villeblanche shrugged off these reproaches and all the malicious gossip about her with a good-natured laugh, and went right on indulging in her own caprices.
“The most foolish thing of all,” she used to say, “is to blush about the penchants that Nature has given us. And to make fun of anyone, simply because his or her tastes are unusual, is just as barbaric as railing against someone who was born lame, or blind in one eye. But trying to convince fools of these reasonable concepts is like trying to halt the stars in their courses. People seem to take a kind of prideful pleasure in mocking defects that they themselves do not possess, and they apparently derive such enjoyment—especially the halfwits—from this sport, that it is very rare to see them give it up … It serves as a pretext for maliciousness, witticisms, and poor puns; and society, that is, a collection of people whom boredom has brought together and stupidity has molded, enjoys nothing better than spending two or three hours talking without saying anything, it delights in appearing brilliant at the expense of others, in making a point of censuring a vice from which it thinks itself free … This is a slightly roundabout way of patting yourself on the back. By the same token, people even agree to join forces with others to form a clique and crush the individual whose major sin is not to conform like everyone else, and they go home feeling proud as peacocks for the wit they have shown, whereas all they have basically proved by their conduct, when you come right down to it, is their own pedantry and stupidity.”
Such were Mademoiselle de Villeblanche’s thoughts. Having firmly decided never to hold her feelings in check, caring not a whit for what people said about her, wealthy enough to provide for her own requirements, unconcerned about her reputation, desiring a sybaritic life, one of luxury and pleasure rather than one filled with heavenly beatitudes in which she scarcely believed, believing even less in any kind of immortality which, to her mind, sounded all too chimerical, surrounded by a small circle of kindred souls, Augustine gave herself over in all innocence to every pleasure that touched her fancy.
She had had more than her share of suitors, but she had treated them all so shabbily that any hope of ever winning her heart had virtually been abandoned when there appeared on the scene a young man named Franville, whose background was more or less equal to hers and who was at least as rich as she. He fell madly in love with her, and not only was he not put off by the tales of her inflexibility but made up his mind then and there that he would not give up until the conquest was his. He confided his plan to his friends, they told him he was mad, he maintained that he would succeed, they challenged him to prove it, and he accepted the bet. Franville was two years younger than Mademoiselle de Villeblanche, had as yet scarcely any show of beard, was possessed of a fine figure, the most delicate features, and the most beautiful head of hair in the world. In fact, when he dressed as a girl he looked so well in feminine attire that he was forever fooling both sexes, with the result that he had often received both from those who were taken in as well as those who knew his true identity, propositions so clearly framed that he could easily have become, in the course of the same day, some Hadrian’s Antinous or some Psyche’s Adonis.5 It was with this costume that Franville fancied he would be able to seduce Mademoiselle de Villeblanche. We shall shortly see how he went about it.
One of Augustine’s greatest pleasures was to dress up as a man during carnival and, in this disguise so inconsistent with her tastes, flit from one party to the next. Franville, who had had her watched and followed and who, up to this time, had made a point of keeping out of her sight as much as possible, learned one day that she would be attending a masked ball that same evening given by the patrons of the Opera, and that she would, as usual, be dressed up as a man, that evening as a captain of dragoons. He disguised himself as a woman, taking great pains with his makeup and dress to appear as elegant as possible, with liberal applications of rouge and no mask. Then, taking in tow one of his sisters who was far less attractive than he, he hied himself to the gathering, to which Augustine was going only to see who she could pick up.
Before Franville had finished circling the room three times, Augustine’s knowing eyes had singled him out.
“Who is that beautiful young lady?” she said to the girl she was with. “I don’t remember ever seeing her before. How could we have missed such a gorgeous creature?”
And no sooner had she uttered these words than Augustine made every effort to strike up a conversation with the false Mademoiselle de Franville, who at first fled from her advances, turned his b
ack, snubbed her, avoided her, all of which merely to make himself more ardently desired. Finally Augustine cornered him, they exchanged a few banalities, but little by little the conversation became more interesting.
“It’s frightfully warm in here,” said Mademoiselle de Villeblanche. “Our friends can stay here, but why don’t we go over to the game rooms, where they serve refreshments, and get a breath of fresh air.”
“Ah, Monsieur,” said Franville to Mademoiselle de Villeblanche, still pretending to take her for a man, “I’m only here with my sister, but my mother will be along shortly with the man I’m meant to marry, and if either one of them were to see us together there’s no telling what kind of trouble …”
“Come, come, you must learn to overcome these childish fears. How old are you, my angel?”
“Eighteen, Monsieur.”
“Ah! And I say by the time one has reached the age of eighteen one should have the right to do whatever one chooses … Come, now, I won’t take no for an answer. Follow me, and have no fear …” And Franville followed meekly in her footsteps.
“Do you really mean to tell me, you charming creature,” Augustine went on, as she led the person she still mistook for a young woman toward the gambling rooms adjacent to the main ballroom, “do you mean to tell me that you really are going to get married? … I must say I pity you … And who is this person they’ve chosen for you? A real bore, I’d be willing to wager… Ah, what a lucky man he is, and what I wouldn’t give to be in his place! Tell me, you heavenly child, would you consent to marry me if you had the chance? I want an honest answer!”
The Mystified Magistrate Page 13