Poor Madame Guissac, beside herself with fear, seized the goblet, which she knew was laced with poison, and began to drink.
“Stop!” her husband said as soon as he saw that she had swallowed a portion of the lethal liquid. “You’re not going to die alone. Despised by you, betrayed by you, what do you think will become of me once you are gone?”
And with those words, he seized the chalice and downed the rest of its contents.
“Oh, Sir,” Madame de Guissac cried out, “in the frightful state to which you have reduced us both, grant me the right at least to see a confessor and at the same time to embrace my mother and father one last time.”
Servants were dispatched forthwith to summon those whom the poor woman had asked for, and when her parents arrived she threw herself into the arms of those who had brought her into this world and once again stoutly proclaimed her innocence. But what words of reproach could be heaped upon a husband who, believing he had been betrayed, had so cruelly punished his wife but also meted out the same punishment to himself? All they could do was to vent their despair, and tears flowed freely on all sides.
At which point the father confessor arrived.
“At this cruel moment of my life,” she said to him, “I wish to make a full and frank confession, both to bring comfort to my dear parents and for the honor of my own memory.” Saying which, she proceeded to unburden her conscience of all the sins, large and small, she had committed since the day she was born.
Her husband, hanging on her every word and certain that at such a crucial point in her life she would not conceal the slightest misdeed, heard not the least mention of the Baron d’Aumelas and was overcome with joy. He got to his feet and said, as he clasped first her mother then her father to his breast:
“Dear, dear parents, you have heard your daughter’s reassuring words. May she pardon me for giving her such a fright. But the fact is, she gave me so much cause for concern that I feel justified in giving her a bit in return. There was no poison in the cup we both drank from. Only lemonade. So, my love, put your mind at rest, let us put all our minds at rest. But let it be a lesson to us all: a woman should be truly honorable in all respects, not only in deeds but in words. She should, to quote the bard, always be above suspicion.”
The marquise, thoroughly convinced by the force of her imagination that she had really drunk poison from the goblet, had a great deal of difficulty recovering her wits, for she was actually suffering the physical and mental anguish of death by poisoning. She struggled to her feet, still shaking like a leaf, and embraced her husband. Pain gave way to joy and the young woman, unduly punished by the terrible experience, swore that in the future she would avoid even the vaguest semblance of wrongdoing.
And she was true to her word. For more than thirty years she lived in perfect harmony with her husband, and during all that time he never found anything in her conduct that was worthy of the slightest reproach.
THE PROPERLY PUNISHED PIMP
During the Regency,1 an adventure so extraordinary occurred that it still bears repeating, and may even prove enlightening in the context of today’s world. On the one hand it tells of a secret debauchery on which light deserves to be shed. On the other, it is a tale of three brutal murders, the author of which was never found. But before we relate the gory details of the catastrophe itself, let us offer some conjectures about what happened, and show how events leading up to it may well have justified the result. By so doing, the ending may be less frightening.
Rumor has it that Monsieur Savari, whom Nature had not treated kindly,* though a confirmed bachelor, was nonetheless a man of wit and considerable social grace. He regularly entertained, in his house on the rue des Déjeuners,2 people of the highest standing. For whatever reason, he had taken it into his head to turn his house into a setting for a most unusual kind of prostitution. He limited his invited guests to women of quality, both married and unmarried, who wished to enjoy with impunity the pleasures of the flesh in surroundings of the utmost discretion, knowing they could count on him to provide them with suitable partners ready and able to satisfy their desires. They knew, too, that there would be no untoward consequences of these fleeting intrigues, from which a woman can gather roses without fear of the thorns with which all too many of these arrangements are fraught, if ever they come to light and are viewed as lasting liaisons. A married woman, or a young lady, might at some social gathering the next day run into the man with whom she had had an affair the evening before without appearing to recognize him and without his taking any more notice of her than of any of the other women there. The result of all this: no scenes of jealousy among married couples, no fathers in a state of deep distress, no separation, no women hustled off to convents: in short, none of the unpleasantries to which this sort of affair can often lead. It is hard to imagine a more satisfactory arrangement, though I hasten to add that today it would in all likelihood be extremely dangerous. In a century where depravity not only rules the roost—and I include in that statement both sexes—but indeed knows virtually no bounds, it would doubtless be a matter of the gravest concern to think of reintroducing the practice unless at the same time we described in full detail the cruel fate that befell the gentleman who dreamed it up.
Although he was quite well off, Monsieur Savari, the originator and perpetrator of the project, limited himself to a single valet and a cook to keep the witnesses of the events taking place under his roof to a strict minimum. One morning a man Savari knew arrived to ask if he might be invited to lunch.
“With great pleasure,” Savari said, “and to show how pleased I am you’ve come I’m going to send my valet down to fetch a bottle of the finest wine in my cellar.”
After the valet, whose name was La Brie,3 had been given his instructions, the friend said: “You know what? I know your wine cellar like the back of my hand. I’m going to follow La Brie down there and make sure he’s really bringing up the very best.”
“Fine with me,” said the master of the house, enjoying his friend’s little joke, “if it weren’t for my damn infirmity I’d go with you myself. But do go down and see to it the knave isn’t cheating me.”
The friend left the room and went down to the cellar, where he picked up a crowbar and dashed out the valet’s brains, following which he went back upstairs and into the kitchen, where he meted out the same punishment to the cook, even going so far as to kill both a dog and cat he chanced upon on his way back to Savari’s living quarters. His host, whose crippled state left him defenseless, suffered the same fate as had his servants. The pitiless murderer, who seemed completely unruffled and showed not the slightest twinge of remorse over the acts he had just committed, used the blank page of a book that happened to be on the table to calmly describe, in full detail, what he had just done. After which he did not touch another thing, removed nothing from the house, departed, locked the door behind him, and vanished.
Savari’s house was too well frequented for this cruel slaughter to go undiscovered for very long. Various people came knocking on his door, and when there was no response, knowing- the master of the house could not have gone out, they broke in and were greeted by the frightful carnage of the poor man’s entire household.
The cold-blooded murderer, not content with having left for all the world to read the full details of his act, had placed over the face of a clock—which was decorated with a death’s head and bore the maxim: Look upon this and regulate your life—a sheet of paper, on which he had written, then pasted just below the maxim, the following:
If you see how he lived you will not be surprised by his death.
Naturally, such a crime soon became known far and wide. A thorough investigation ensued, but the only apparent piece of evidence they came up with was an unsigned letter from a woman writing to Monsieur Savari, which went:
We are lost! My husband has just found out everything! The only person who can turn him around is Paparel. You must get Paparel to talk to him, otherwise there is no hope for
either of us.
There was indeed a man named Paparel who worked in the war office, a man highly ranked in the paymaster’s department, who was known to be a kind and gentle creature, and a man of excellent credentials. Nonetheless, he was summoned, and while he admitted to having a nodding acquaintance with Savari, he maintained that among the hundred or so personages of both the court and the city who were known to be friends of the deceased, foremost among them the Duke de Vendôme,4 he, Paparel, knew the man the least.
Several people were arrested but were released almost immediately. But the authorities did glean enough from their investigations to convince themselves that there were countless ramifications to this offense, which while implicating half the fathers and husbands in the capital, were also going to involve an infinite number of people in the highest echelons of society. And for the first time in their lives, prudence took precedence over severity in the minds of the magistrates. And so the matter remained. As a result, the death of this poor fellow was not only never solved but also never avenged. Doubtless he was guilty enough so that proper, upstanding people did not shed a tear over his passing. But if his death in no wise added to the world’s store of Virtue, it is to be believed that Vice mourned his loss for a very long time indeed, and that, independently of the merry band of rakes who had, within the welcoming walls of this disciple of Epicurus, gathered so many of love’s blossoms, the pretty priestesses of Venus who, on the altars, had daily come to burn the incense of love, must have mourned the demolition of their temple just as greatly.
Thus are all things measured one against the other.
Upon reading this account, a philosopher would doubtless say:
If out of a thousand people who may have been implicated in this affair, 500 were pleased by its outcome and 500 displeased, one would call it neutral, a draw. But if on the other hand 800 were greatly distressed by the fact that the catastrophe had deprived them of their former pleasures, against, say, 200 who were pleased by the man’s disappearance, then one would be obliged to conclude that Monsieur Savari did more good than evil, and the only guilty party was he who, doubtless to avenge himself, had committed the crime.
I leave it to you to decide and move quickly on to another subject.
*He was a cripple, having been born legless.
THE TEACHER PHILOSOPHER
Among all the learned matters one tries to cram into a child’s head when one is in charge of his education, the mysteries of Christianity, though doubtless one of the most sublime elements of that education, are nonetheless not among the easiest to explain clearly to a young mind. Try to convince a young man of fourteen or fifteen, for instance, that God the Father and God the Son are one and the same, that the Father is consubstantial to the Son and vice versa, etc., all that, however necessary it may be in ensuring a person’s happiness here below, is far more difficult to make a person understand than it is, say, to teach someone algebra. And when you really want to get your point across in a meaningful way, it is sometimes necessary to resort to physical examples, certain concrete methods that, however disproportionate they may seem, nonetheless make it easier for a young man of reasonable intelligence to grasp.
No one was more profoundly practiced in this method of instruction than Abbé Du Parquet, tutor to the young Count de Nerceuil, who was about fifteen years of age and possessed of one of the handsomest faces imaginable.
“Father,” the young count was wont to say virtually every day to his tutor, “the truth is, the whole notion of consubstantiality is completely beyond my powers. of comprehension. For the life of me, I just can’t figure out how two people can be one. Could you be kind enough to clarify this for me, or at least bring the mystery down to my level.”
The good abbé, anxious to leave no stone unturned in making sure his student’s education was complete, and pleased by the thought that he might make it easier for his student to comprehend anything that might someday be an important factor in his life, seized upon a rather pleasurable means of overcoming the difficulties the young count was having in understanding the concept, figuring that an example taken from real life might just do the trick. Accordingly, he had a young nubile girl brought forth and after having instructed her as to what was expected of her, conjoined, as it were, the girl and his young student.
“Now,” said the abbé to his student, “do you understand more clearly the mystery of consubstantiality? Do you see how it is quite possible for two people to be but one?”
“Oh, good heavens, yes, my dear Abbé,” the randy young count responded, “I now understand everything with amazing clarity. Nor am I any longer surprised if this mystery, so people maintain, provides as much pleasure as that reserved for those in heaven above, for when two people become one ‘tis pure pleasure, I find.”
A few days later the young count asked his tutor if he wouldn’t mind giving him another lesson, for the more he thought about it the more he realized, he said, that he had not fully plumbed the depths of the mystery but that he was sure that if he tried it one more time everything would become crystal clear. The obliging abbé, who had in all likelihood been just as amused by the scene he had concocted as his student had been, called the same girl back and the second lesson got under way. But this time the abbé, especially moved by the vision offered to him by the sight of young de Nerceuil as he was consubstantiating with his companion, could not refrain from involving himself as a third party interested in the further clarification of the evangelical parable, and the beauteous backside upon which his hands were compelled to roam in the process of his explanation ended up exciting him uncontrollably.
“It is my studied opinion,” said Du Parquet, “that things are progressing at far too fast a pace. Much too much buoyancy in all the movements, as a result of which the conjunction, not being as intimate as it ought to be, does not conjure up a proper image of the mystery. Let me demonstrate … If we set about it just so, this way…” whereupon the scoundrel did unto his student precisely what the student was doing unto the young lady.
“Oh! Good God above! you’re hurting me, Abbé,” the lad exclaimed. “Nor can I see that this whole ceremony is serving any useful purpose. In what way, may I ask, does this further clarify the mystery?”
“Oh, ventrebleu!”1 the abbé mumbled, overcome as he was by the pleasurable lesson, “don’t you see, my dear boy, that I’m teaching the whole thing in one fell swoop. That’s the trinity I’m demonstrating in today’s lesson. Another six or seven lessons and you’ll be as learned as any doctor at the Sorbonne!”
YOUR WISH IS MY
COMMAND or
AS YOU LIKE IT
My dear daughter,” said the Baroness de Fréval to her eldest daughter, who was due to be married the following day, “you’re as pretty as a picture, but the fact is you’ve barely turned thirteen. Still, no one is brighter or more attractive than you. Actually, I sometimes have the impression that your features were drawn by love itself, and yet here you are obliged to marry an elderly gentleman of the robe, whose idiosyncratic tastes are more than suspect… I’m most displeased by this mismatch, but your father insists on it. I wanted you to marry a man of rank, but such is not to be. I fear you are destined to spend your life bearing the burdensome title of ‘présidente’—a judge’s wife.
“What upsets me even more is the notion that you may never be more than half a wife … modesty prevents me from explaining what I mean in graphic detail, my girl, but what I’m trying to say is that these foolish old rogues, who spend their lives passing judgment on others while carefully refraining from judging themselves, all have bizarre fantasies, used as they are to living a life of indolence. These dirty old men are born corrupt, they revel in dissolution, wallow in the slough of vice, and, crawling along in the muck both of the Justinian laws and the obscenities of the capital, remind one of the common garter snake that lifts its head from time to time to snag an insect. Like those indolent snakes, these foul creatures only emerge now and again to lo
dge some complaint or make an arrest…
“So listen to me carefully, young lady, and stand up straight… for if you tilt your head in that coquettish way, I’m sure the judge will find it totally seductive and, I have no doubt, try to back you into a corner then and there. In short, my child, here is what I am trying to say: whatever your husband first asks you to do, turn him down cold. We’re as sure as we can be that the first thing he will ask of you will be as indecent as it is bizarre … We know his tastes like the back of our hand, for forty-five years now it’s been common knowledge that, in keeping with principles that are completely ridiculous, this wicked old double-dealing knave has a decided preference for the rear door. Therefore, my child, you are to say ‘no’ to his first request, and I want to make it very clear that when he asks you should respond to him in the following way:
“‘No, Monsieur, anywhere else you like, but most assuredly not there!’”
Having spoken her piece, the baroness had her daughter bathed, perfumed, and dressed in her finest robe. The judge arrived, his hair all in curls like those of the latest doll, powdered from head to shoulders, talking for all he was worth in a voice as shrill as it was nasal, citing this law and that and spouting statutory rules and regulations galore. From the cut of his tight-fitting clothes, his fashionable wig, and his fat pudgy fingers, he could have passed for a man of forty, though in fact he was nearing sixty. The bride-to-be appeared, he paraded around like the cock of the walk, and it was clear from the glint in his eyes the depths of depravity that lay in his heart.
The Mystified Magistrate Page 15