Justina (1)

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The masterpiece of Justina Sade’s notoriety

In the history of culture, Sade is the most morally condemned person, the only writer to have been imprisoned multiple times for living a life of debauchery.

It is a significant literary event to see Sade’s works translated and published in Chinese. We have specially selected three of Sade’s masterpieces: “Justina”, “The Lady’s Robbery”, and “Crimes of Love”.

, to satisfy the reader’s curiosity about this rebellious genius.

Sade is not only a literary scholar, two hundred years later, we have the ability to recognize Sade: he is a thinker, psychologist, psychoanalyst, his novels are simply a pathological report of human morbidity, Sade’s pen shows a variety of perverted sexual behavior, until today, we understand his authenticity and accuracy, with extraordinary scientific value.

However, it is precisely this value that has earned Sade the reputation of being a “moral degenerate,” turning his novels into exhibitions of deviant sexual behavior, from thorns, whips, rulers, and clubs to dog bites.

And what about Sade’s insights? It’s hidden in such “obscene” novels all over the place!

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The achievement of philosophy lies in the fact that it illuminates the dim path that God uses to guide mankind to its destination, and in the fact that it can thus mark out a code of behavior for mankind; God is arbitrary and always guides mankind according to his arbitrary will, and poor two-legged creatures such as mankind suffer from God’s capriciousness; with a code of behavior, mankind can discover a few rules that can be used to interpret God’s intentions for man, and yet to stick along one path to prevent the capriciousness of fate. The so-called destiny has been called by various names, and up to now there has been no name that corresponds to reality.

Though we have social conventions and have been taught to respect them, which has been repeatedly drilled into us since we were in school, unfortunately, due to the depravity of some people, we are always met with thorns while the bad guys reap roses, will those who are weak and do not have a considerable moral foundation sufficient to overcome such miserable circumstances think that it is better to go along with the trend than to resist it? Would they say that while it is great to be a virtuous person, unfortunately, virtuous people are too weak! Unable to fight the bad guys, and therefore, being virtuous is a bad idea, especially in a world that is downright rotten, and the safest thing to do is to go with the flow and do what everyone else is doing and I’ll do the same?

If they had a little more knowledge, would they not think that, as the angel Gesrard says in the Behandiad (fn. 1), where there is evil, there must be good in the world? Perhaps they would have to add a layer of meaning of their own: since in the imperfect structure of our bad world there is a whole lot of bad things, equal in number to the good things, it is therefore of the utmost importance to maintain the balance, and there must be equal numbers of good and bad people; it is irrelevant in the general scheme of things that someone is good and someone is evil; and if the bad people persecute the good people, the glory of riches and wealth that always accompany the bad people are also indifferent in the sight of nature. irrelevant, and therefore it is many times better to be on the side of the bad man who is rich and honorable than on the side of the good man who is dying.

It is of the utmost importance to guard against certain dangerous philosophical sophisms, which suppose that the mere example of a suffering virtuous man can convert a soul which has fallen but still retains a modicum of goodness to goodness as reliably as if it were presented with golden medals and the finest prizes on this moral path.

Surely the cruellest of all is the depiction of a series of calamities that fall upon a gentle and affectionate woman who is strictly moral, and, on the other hand, a woman who has a lifelong disdain for morality, and who possesses an immense wealth of splendor and fear. But if one derives benefit from the portrayal of these two pictures, why condemn the publicizing of them? Is there any regret in confirming a fact?

Wise men are benefited by reading very philosophical texts, which teach one to obey the Divine Providence, and from these wise men learn in part how the most mysterious will of the Divine Providence operates, and also receive the fatal warning that the Divine Providence, in order to lead us back to the right path, often strikes at those who seem beside us to be bent on the right path.

This was the motive which prompted us to write this book, and as we consider the reader’s conscience to be upright, we ask him to apply his attention, with a little interest, to the history of the calamities of the miserable Justina, which we shall hereafter describe.

Madame de Rosange is a high-class prostitute. Madame de Rosange was a high-class prostitute, whose whole fortune came from her charming face, her licentiousness, and her treachery; and all her titles, however grand, are to be found only in the archives of the Isle of Eros (fn. 2), which were taken for her by audacious men, and carried on by foolish gullible men.

She had brown hair, quick reflexes, a handsome figure, her black eyes were unusually expressive, very intelligent, and as unbelieving as is the fashion, she was well educated; she was the daughter of a very rich merchant in the Rue St. Aujourd’hui, in Paris, and had a sister, three years younger, and both sisters studied in the best convent in Paris until they were fifteen years of age, and their wants for an adviser, for a teacher, for a good book, for a man of talent, were all satisfied, and were never refused, in these decidedly unlucky times, when it takes but one day to make a moral girl lose everything.

The father of the sisters suddenly broke up his labor, and was placed in such a difficult position that the only way in which he could escape his miserable fate was to make a speedy escape to England. He left his two daughters in the care of their mother, who, eight days after her husband’s departure, also died of melancholy. One or two relatives were left together to discuss how to arrange for the two daughters.

The property due to both of them amounted to about one hundred ejus each, and the result of the discussion was to give them freedom of action, to give them the money due to them, and to do whatever they wanted to do in the future.

Mrs. de Lossange was then called Juliette. Mme. de Laussange, then called Juliette, had formed her character almost exactly as it had been at the age of thirty, and this book describes her as she was at the age of thirty. At that time, however, she felt only the joy of being free, and had no idea of the many misfortunes that awaited her. As for her younger sister, Justina, who was twelve years old at the time, she was melancholic and sentimental, very tender, amazingly sensitive, not elfin and cunning like her sister, but innocent, simple and honest, so that she constantly fell into the trap, and she found the present situation very terrible.

The sister’s looks were entirely different from Juliette’s; whereas the elder sister was always playing the sleight of hand and showing off, the younger showed innocence, delicacy, and shyness. She had a virginal grace, blue eyes, white skin, a slender waist, a melodious voice, a beautiful soul and the gentlest of dispositions, ivory-white teeth, and beautiful blonde hair; such were the outlines of this charming girl. No brush that depicts her can fail to capture her innocence and elegant demeanor.

The relatives limited the sisters to twenty-four hours to leave the convent, and left it to them to decide how they would use the hundred ejus, where they would go, and what they would buy.

Juliette, being overjoyed to be in charge, saw Justina weeping, and at first tried to stop her, but then, seeing that it had no effect, instead of comforting her, she scolded her. She called her a stupid ass, and said that a girl of her age and talent would not starve to death; and she cited the example of a neighbor’s daughter, who had escaped from her family, and was now very richly provided for by a tax-contractor, and rode in Paris in a four-wheeled splendid carriage. Justina was disgusted at hearing this bad example, and said she would rather die than follow the example of this girl, and refused to live with her sister, after seeing that she was determined to lead that degraded life.

Thus the two sisters parted; their purposes in life were so different, and they parted without saying when they would see each other again. Juliette wanted to be a noble lady, and if she ever saw her sister again, she feared that the moral proclivities of a little girl would defile her; and as for Justina, she was unwilling to risk putting her good habits of life to the test in the company of a wicked woman. The two therefore found their own way, and without making any appointment to meet again, left the convent the next day in compliance with their agreement.

Justina was raised by one of her mother’s seamstresses, a woman she thought would sympathize with her. She went to her, told her her situation and asked her to give her a job, but was coldly refused.

The poor little girl sighed and said, “Oh my God! Is my first step into society going to be a miserable one?… This woman used to love me, but why did she reject me today? Oh..! Just because I’ve become a poor orphan… just because I don’t have any money in the world anymore, and people only respect those who are able to help others or entertain them.”

When Justina found this out, she went to the priest of the church and asked him to give her advice. The merciful clergyman answered her vaguely, saying that the church was already overburdened, and that it was impossible for her to partake of the alms, but that he would be glad to keep her at home, if she would be willing to serve him.

As he said this, the priest reached out to touch her chin and kissed her, a kiss that was too vulgar to be the act of a member of the Church, and Justina knew it too well, so she hastily backed away and said to the priest, “Sir, I’m not asking for charity, nor am I looking for a position as a maid, I used to be in a higher position in society. All I ask is that you give me some advice, which I need because I am young and in a difficult situation, and you want me to buy that advice by committing a crime…”

The priest was so dissatisfied with her answer that he opened the gate and fiercely threw her out. Twice in the first day since she had been alone, Justina had run into difficulties. When she saw a sign on the door of a family’s house saying “Room for Rent,” she went in, rented a small furnished room, paid the rent, and spent the rest of the day in the room, giving vent to her grief, which stemmed both from her own situation and from the ferocity and cruelty of the few with whom she was destined to have to deal.

Readers, allow me to set aside this dimly lit shabby apartment for a moment and return to Juliette.

I am going to tell the reader, as briefly as possible, how Juliette, having begun with nothing, became in fifteen years a titled lady, with an annuity of twenty thousand francs, very fine treasures, two or three houses, both in Paris and in the country, and, at present, with the love, fortune, and confidence of M. de Colville. At present, she had the love, fortune, and confidence of M. de Colville, who was a man of great repute. Monsieur de Colville, a highly respected member of parliament, who was about to enter the Cabinet at a steady pace… The road she had traveled was a difficult one… No one can doubt that the first steps of these young girls in society were humiliating and difficult; that they were young and inexperienced, and that they invariably fell into the hands of immoral rogues when they first set out on the road, and that therefore even today, even in the Prince’s bed, the marks of their shame are probably still on their bodies.

After leaving the convent, Juliette remembered that one of her degenerate girlfriends had said the name of a woman whose address she remembered, and she went straight to her. She arrived at her house with a bag in her hand, a short, wrinkled, disheveled dress, and a world-class appearance, but with the demeanor of a schoolboy. She told the woman about her life, and at the same time begged her to take care of her, as she had taken care of her girlfriend years before.

“How old are you, kid?” Di. Mrs. Bisson asked her.

“Fifteen in a few days, ma’am.”

“Never touched a man before? …”

“No, ma’am, I can swear to you.”

“Because sometimes in these convents there is always a guiding priest… a nun, or a female companion… I have to have solid proof of this.”

“You can take as much evidence as you want, ma’am…”

Mrs. Bisson put on a pair of funny glasses and checked the truth herself. Mrs. Bisson put on a pair of comical spectacles, and after checking and verifying the truth herself, she said to Juliette: “Well, my child, you may stay here, and you shall follow my instructions, and be very happy to imitate me, and to keep clean, and to live frugally, and to be very faithful to me, and to be gentle with your companions, and to be treacherous to the men; and then, in a few years’ time you shall have a room of your own, and a chest of drawers, and paintings on your walls, and a maid of your own; and the skill you have learned from me will enable you to have all the rest. can have a room of your own, your own five-drawer chest, your own wall hangings, your own maid; and the skill you have learned from me will enable you to get all the rest.”

Mrs. Bisson asked Juliette if she had any money on her. Mrs. Bisson snatched the little bundle from Juliette’s hand, and asked her if she had any money with her. When Juliette replied frankly that she had a hundred ejus (note 3), the dear lady immediately took the money away and reassured her young disciple that she would invest this small asset for the benefit of her daughter, adding that a young woman should not have money… Money is an instrument of evil, and that in such a corrupt century as the present one, a wise woman of noble birth should be careful to avoid to fall into any kind of trap.

After this discourse, she introduced Juliette to her companion, and assigned her a bedroom. From the next day her virginity was sold; and in the course of four months the same goods were sold to eighty men in succession, each paying the price of fresh goods. It was only after this grueling period of training that Juliette obtained a certificate as a handywoman. From now on, she was truly recognized as a member of the house, sharing the fatigue of a lustful life… This was the beginning of another period of apprenticeship.

If, during the first period of apprenticeship, with a few exceptions, she had always served according to the laws of nature, in the second period Juliette completely put them out of her mind, pursuing sin, looking for shameful pleasures, leading a life of shadowy debauchery, with hideous and bizarre fetishes, and enjoying novelties that called for disgrace. All this is the result of two different ideas: on the one hand, the demand for enjoyment that is not harmful to health, and on the other hand, the satisfaction that is detrimental to health, which numbs the imagination and can only develop in unrestrained indulgence, or can only be satisfied in a life of debauchery.

Juliette corrupted her morals completely in her second novitiate, and the triumph of her immoral behavior rotted her whole soul. She felt that since she was born into a life of crime, she should commit even greater sins, and she was not willing to remain forever in a supporting role, committing the same sins, being equally corrupt and corrupted, and receiving benefits that were far from commensurate with what she had done.

She was taken in by an aged nobleman, who lived in debauchery, and at first called her in for a quarter of an hour’s pleasure, but afterwards she played her tricks so that he fed her like a queen, and at length went in and out of the theaters with her, and walked about the public places with the most dashing of couples; and every one stared at them, and every one talked of them, and every one envied them. This bad woman was so able that in four years she ruined three men, the poorest of whom had an annuity of one hundred thousand ejus.

She has become famous for it. The men of this century are blind, and the more notorious these bad women become, the more they want to be among their victims, as if the amount of love they dare to show them depends on the degree of her corruption.

When Juliette was twenty years old, a nobleman of Angers, the Comte de Lausange, was passionately in love with her, and as he was not rich enough to provide for her, he decided to marry her. When Juliette was twenty years old, a Count de Lausange, of Angers origin, about forty years old, fell passionately in love with her, and as he was not rich enough to provide for her in a golden house, he decided to marry her, gave her his title, and an annuity of twelve thousand francs, promising her the whole of the inheritance in case he should die before her. He gave her a house, a considerable number of servants, and uniformed attendants, which gave her a certain position in society, and in two or three years people would forget her origin.

It was at this point that poor Juliette, forgetting that she had been born into an upstanding family, that she had been well educated, that she had been thoroughly corrupted by physically and mentally destructive books and bad advice, and that she had only thought about enjoying her great wealth alone, enjoying her own title and name, and being free from her husband’s constraints, dared to formulate a sinful plan for the murder of her own husband… She envisioned the plan, and carried it out in considerable secrecy… and, because of the secrecy of her actions, she buried her obstructing husband along with all traces of her crime, without any legal recourse… Because of this secrecy, she buried her husband, who was in the way, along with the traces of her crime, and she was not prosecuted.

Madame de Rosange was free and retained her title of Countess. Madame de Rosange was free, and, retaining the title of countess, she resumed her old habits. But now that she thought she had some place in society, she took care to behave herself; she was no longer a mistress to be supported, but a rich widow, who often gave great banquets, and whose invitations were received with pride by all the notables of the city and the court. It cost two hundred louis (fn. 4) for a night’s sleep with her, and five hundred louis for a month’s subscription.

Until she was twenty-six years old, she was able to conquer many men brilliantly, and she ruined three ambassadors, four great landowners, two bishops, and three knights of the royal seal in quick succession.

It is not often that a murder is committed and then the hands are washed, especially when the first crime was very successful, so that poor Juliette, who was so guilty, had her hands defiled by two new murders. These two murders were the same as the first; one was the murder of one of her lovers, who had given her a large sum of money for safekeeping, without the knowledge of his family, and Madame de Lossange had viciously murdered him. Madame de Lausange, after having viciously murdered her lover, took the sum for herself; and in the other case, in order to obtain an early bequest of 100,000 francs, which one of her admirers had created in his will in the name of a third person, and which could have been obtained by paying the third person a small sum of money, she was anxious to kill the legatee in order to obtain the bequest in an early  manner.

In addition to these scandalous crimes, Madame de, Losange was guilty of two or three infanticides. Fearing that it would affect her slender waist, and wishing to conceal her fornication with two men at the same time, she made up her mind to have several abortions.

These unknown crimes, as well as others, did not prevent the cunning and ambitious woman from finding new men to be deceived every day, thus increasing her wealth and her crimes. Unfortunately, it is a fact of life that prosperity is always accompanied by sin, and that the more corrupt one is, the more one can live what the world calls a happy life.

It is a cruel and unalterable truth, and we shall shortly give examples of how good men are always miserable all their lives; but the honest man of the world need not fear this truth, nor need he suffer for it, for the prosperity which accompanies sin is only superficial, and has nothing to do with God; God is bound to punish this prosperity, and the man who sins has conceived within him a worm which continually bites him, and which prevents him from He is prevented from enjoying the happiness that has fallen upon him, so that he can feel no happiness, but only a heart-rending remorse for his sin. As for the good man who is tormented by his fate and suffers own conscience as a consolation, he can enjoy the joys of innocence in private, and it will not take long to atone for him for the injustice of the world.

The above is the situation of Mrs. de Lossange at that time. The situation of Mrs. de Lausange at that time. A Mr. de Colville, fifty years old and very rich, was determined to sacrifice everything for this woman to make her his forever. Monsieur de Colville, fifty years old and very rich, was determined to sacrifice everything for this woman, and to make her his for ever. Perhaps it was due to the attentions of Mme. attention, attitude, and sagacity of Madame de Lausange, he accomplished his purpose. She lived with him for four years as his full and lawful wife.

That year he happened to buy a fine piece of land near Montargis, and they both decided to go there for a few months in the summer. One evening in June the weather was so fine that they walked all the way to the town, and as it was too tiring to walk back the same way, they went into an inn, and thought of sending a man from there to ride back to the castle to get a car to meet them.

The large traveling carriage from Lyons stopped at this hotel. They happened to be lounging in a low, cool hall, which led into the courtyard, where the traveling coach was parked. Watching travelers is a natural amusement, and every one who has a moment’s leisure will not miss the opportunity. Madame de Lossange Madame de Lausange stood up, followed by her mistress, and they watched the whole company of travelers enter the hotel. The carriage seemed to be empty, when a sergeant of the mounted police, stepping down from it, took from one of his companions, who was also huddled in the same corner, a woman of about twenty-six or twenty-seven years of age, clad in a short topcoat of bad cotton, and tied up as if she had been a criminal.

Madame de Coeur d’Alene. Mme. de Lausange, at this sight, could not but cry out with horror and astonishment, and the maiden, turning back, revealed a gentle and noble countenance, and a slender and dexterous figure, so that M. de Colville and his mistress could not help sympathizing with the poor maiden.

Mr. Colville went over to one of the troopers and asked what the unfortunate girl had done. Mr. Colville went over to one of the mounted police and asked one of them what the unfortunate young girl had done.

“Truly, sir.” The officer replied, “People say she has committed three or four major crimes, allegedly theft, murder and arson, but I must admit to you that my companion and I, we have never escorted a prisoner with so much revulsion as we did on this occasion, and she is so docile, so completely like an honest person…”

“Yeah?” Mr. De. Mr. Colville said, “will it be another of the common wrong cases in the lower courts? Where did she commit the offense?”

“At an inn about twelve kilometers from Lyons, the poor maiden was trying to work there; the Lyons court had convicted her, and she had gone to Paris to have the sentence ratified, and then returned to Lyons to have it executed.”

Mrs. de Lossange, who was close by, heard the officer. Mme. de Lausange, who was close enough to hear the officer, whispered to M. de Colville that she would like to hear from the young girl herself what had happened to her. She whispered to Mr. de Colville that she would like to hear the young girl tell her story; Mr. de Colville had the same idea. Mr. de Colville had the same idea. Mr. de Colville, who had the same idea, went over to the officers and told them who they were and what they intended to do. The officers had no objection, and decided to spend the night at Montargis, where they rented a comfortable room for the female prisoner, with the officers in the next one.

Mr. de Colville assured her that she would not escape. Mr. Colville assured the prisoner that she would not escape, and when she was untied, she went into the room of Madame de Lossange and Mme de Lossange. She went into the room of Madame de Lausange and M. de Colville, where she ate a little. She went into the room of Madame de Lausange and Monsieur de Colville, where she ate a little.

Mrs. Lotharge must have thought to herself, “This poor little thing may be innocent, but people think she is a criminal, and I am probably more guilty than she is, and yet I am enjoying all the riches. Mme. de Rosange must have thought to herself: “This poor little thing may be innocent, but people think she is a criminal, while I, who am probably more guilty than she is, am enjoying the glory and the riches.” Therefore, Mrs. de Lossange was deeply concerned about the young girl. Therefore, Madame de Lausange was deeply interested in this young girl, and as soon as she saw that she had recovered a little from the many consolations and deep concerns she had received, she invited her to tell her what had brought her to such a miserable state, as she was so regular and honest in appearance.

The pretty, unlucky girl said to the Countess, “To tell you my life story is to provide you with a striking example of how innocent and good people always suffer forever. It is an indictment of God, a complaint against God, which is also a sin… I dare not…”

The poor girl shed many tears, and only after weeping bitterly for a few moments did she relate, in the following words, her experiences.

Madam, I beg your permission to withhold my real name and family origin; my family, though not an illustrious one, was a decent one, and had it not been for the calamities of my destiny, I should not have been reduced to the humiliation and neglect from which most of my misfortunes have come. My parents died at a young age, and I thought that with the little money they bequeathed me I could find a proper occupation, so I often refused jobs that were not decent enough, and I unknowingly ate up the portion of the inheritance that was left to me, and the poorer I became the more I was looked down upon by the people, and the more needy I became, the less help I had, or the more I was offered nothing but shameful and humiliating offers of help (Note 5 ).

I will give but one instance of the harsh treatment I have received, and the hard and horrible words I have heard, in such a miserable state of things. It happened at the house of Mr. Dibble, a rich tax-contractor in the capital, to whom I was told to go, because it was thought that a man of his reputation and fortune would be able to change my bad luck. But those who urged me to meet him were either mistaken, or did not know how hard-hearted and morally corrupt the man was. I waited two hours in the waiting-room of his house, and at last he received me. Mr. Dibble was about forty-five years of age, and had just risen from his bed, wrapped in a wide robe that did not conceal the disarray of his dress, and people were just about to put a wig on his head, when he saw me he called his valet out of the room, and asked me what I wanted.

I said to him, “Alas, sir, I am a fatherless and motherless orphan, and have tasted all the sufferings of the world before I was fourteen years old.”

I then described my misfortunes in detail, and told him how difficult it was for me to find work, that I had to live on the little money I had, and that I was obliged to look for it by all means, and that I could not even find work in a store or at home, on which I hoped to make my life a little easier. Mr. Dibble listened to me very carefully, and when he had finished he asked me if I had always been very regular.

I said to him, “If I hadn’t always been a rule, I wouldn’t be so poor and embarrassed.

”

He said to me, “Son, who are you to ask for money to relieve you of your pain, when you have not served it once?”

“Service, sir, that’s all I want.”

“The services of a child such as yourself would be useful in a family, but unfortunately not of the kind I am going to speak of; you are not yet up to the standard, either in age or stature, to place you as you require. But so long as your style is not excessively ludicrous in its strictness, you will be satisfactory with all the prodigal gentry. This is what you should aim at, and as for your reckless selling of the so-called virtues, it is of no use in the world, and as much as you flaunt your virtues, in the end you won’t even get a glass of fresh water. People like mine, who do everything but good, are most reluctant to do good, and hate charity; and when we have taken money out of our pockets, we ask to be compensated for it, but what can a little girl like you produce to pay your debts? I’m afraid the only way to do that is to contribute all that people ask of you?”

“Ah! My lord, is there nothing left at all in the hearts of men of the feelings of charity and goodness and uprightness?”

“There is but little, my child, if any; and to be thanked for it is already considered an unworthy thought, for it gives one a little pride for a time, but it is not real, it is a vague and fleeting thing, especially for a little girl like you, and instead of taking pride in your charity, it would be more real to take pleasure in you. It is better to get pleasure from you.

In my opinion, a reputation for generosity and charity is far less valuable than the small joys you have given me to enjoy. People of my age and inclination agree with this. My child Yu, the only condition on which I am willing to help you is that you obey me absolutely, and do whatever I tell you to do, which you will consider quite moral.”

“How cruel, my lord, how cruel you are! Do you think God will not punish you?”

“O little debutante, realize that the last thing we care for in this world is God; whether he likes what I do on earth or not, we don’t give a damn; we know too well that his power over mankind is very limited, and therefore every day we offend him without fear. And our pleasures are only the more charming when they are in direct opposition to the will of Heaven.”

“O my lord, according to these truths, the unfortunate are only dead.”

“What does that matter? In France, the population is too large. The government always looks at the big picture and rarely worries about individual people, and doesn’t care about anything else as long as the big picture is maintained.”

“But do you think abused children can honor their fathers?”

“What can a father do with a father who has too many children, even though some of them love him dearly, but are of no use to him?”

“Then it’s better to strangle us to death as soon as we’re born.”

“That’s pretty much how it should be. But you don’t know anything about this policy stuff, so let’s not talk about it; fate is in your own hands, so why are you complaining about fate?”

“My God! What a price to pay to take control of my destiny!”

“It’s a small price to pay, something is only as valuable as your pride deems it to be, so what’s the price for that? … let’s not talk about that, let’s just talk about what’s going on here concerning the two of us.

Do you think this price is important, to you? I do not think it important at all, but I do not ask you to make sacrifices for it; what I ask of you is another kind of service, for which you may be properly, but not excessively, remunerated. I’ll give you to my housekeeper, and you’ll serve her, and every morning, in front of me, either the housekeeper or my valet, you’ll…”

“Ah, ma’am! How can I tell you about his shameful proposal? I am so ashamed of what he wants me to do that I was stunned at his words… It is difficult for me to repeat them… I can only rely on your goodness to forgive me… That cruel man has appointed me high priest and wants to make me an altar sacrifice.”

At that time that despicable fellow stood up shamelessly and continued to say to me, “That’s all I can do for you, my child. This is a long and tricky ceremony, and I can only promise you that it will last for two years. You are fourteen this year, and at sixteen you will be free to take your chances elsewhere. Until then, I’ll pay for your clothes, food, and lodging, and you’ll have a Louis’ salary every month. That’s more than enough. It’s more than your predecessor had. It is a fact that your predecessor did not have the same chastity that you have kept intact; and as you take it very seriously, which I also appreciate, I am willing to give you about fifty ejus a year, which, you see, is a much larger sum than your predecessor got. Consider it well, and especially think how miserable you were when I took you in, and contemplate what a poor country you are in, and how those who have nothing to live on must suffer in order to earn money, and how you, like them, have to suffer a little, which I don’t deny, but you are much better off than most of them.”

Talking and talking, these shameless talks ignited this demon’s lust, and he roughly grabbed me by the collar, saying that this was the first time and that he wanted to show me for himself what was going on… But my misfortune gave me courage and strength, and I finally broke free from his clutches and rushed towards the door.

As I fled, I said to him, “Vile fellow, you have violently offended the Lord of heaven, and the Lord of heaven will one day punish you according to your crime; you have used your property for such an ugly purpose, and you are unworthy of it; you have defiled the world with your cruelty, and you are unworthy to breathe the air of this world.

”

I returned home sadly, with my bowels still full of the melancholy and gloomy thoughts, which inevitably arise whenever a man is violent and depraved. I was in the midst of mourning, but unexpectedly a ray of light seemed to shine before my eyes in a flash. It turned out that the landlady of the house where I lived was a woman, and she knew of all my misfortunes. She came up to me and told me that she had finally found someone who would be happy to take me in if I behaved well.

I went up to her in excitement and embraced her, saying to her, “My God, ma’am, this condition that you are talking about is the very condition that I am using to bind myself to, and how can I not accept it with a high degree of joy!”

The man I am to serve is an old usurer, who, it is said, has not only made his fortune by pawning and lending, but he finds an opportunity of swindling everyone, if he thinks it is safe to do so. He lived on the second floor of a house in the Rue Cancampois, and shared his room with an old mistress whom he called his wife, a woman at least as bad as he was.

The miser said to me: “Sophie, Sophie (Sophie is my pseudonym), the most important virtue in my family is honesty… If one day you embezzle one-tenth of my pennies, I’ll have you hanged, do you hear me, Sophie, until you return to your souls in hell. My wife and I are enjoying our old age today because of our hard work and frugality… My son, do you eat a lot?”

I answered him, “Sir, I eat only a few taels of bread a day, drink some water, and have some soup when I am lucky.”

“Soup, damn it! Soup…” the miser turned to his mistress, “My old lady, the winds of luxury are blowing so hard. A whole year of working for me, a whole year of starvation, and now you want soup! We can hardly get soup once a week, and we have worked hard as hard laborers for forty years! My boy, you will eat three taels of bread and drink half a bottle of river water every day, and every eighteen months you may take one of your wife’s old dresses and change it into a petticoat; and at the end of the year I will give you three écuats’ wages, if your services satisfy us, if you are as frugal as we are, and if you are so good at arranging and arranging as to give a little flourish to the house.”

“Our housework is of no great importance, and you can do it alone; you can clean and wipe the ten-room apartment three times a week, make the beds for Mrs. and me every day, answer the door-bell for visitors, powder my wig, comb Mrs.’s hair and put on her hats, take care of the dogs, cats, and parrots, and manage the kitchen, and wash the dishes whether they are used or not, and you can help Mrs. when she wants to make something for us to eat, and the rest of the time you can spend in sewing and mending stockings, and making caps and other small household utensils. You’ll help her when she wants to make something for us to eat, and the rest of the time you’ll spend in sewing and mending stockings, and making caps and other small household utensils. You see, Sophie, it’s as good as nothing, isn’t it? You have plenty of free time left, and we grant you permission to use it, and you may also use it for sewing the clothes you need inside and out.”

You can easily guess, madam, that I accepted such a profession on account of the wretchedness of my situation; not only was the work I had to do beyond the reach of my age and strength, which increased without limit, but how could I live on such a small amount of food every day? However, in order to prevent people from saying that I was picky, I accepted and stayed in the house that night.

Madam, I witnessed in that family many of their comical and ridiculous miserly acts, and would have told you all about them to make you laugh, but the next year a dreadful misfortune befell me, and I was obliged to tell you about it first.

You know, madam, that this family never used any light; the master’s and mistress’s rooms faced the street-light, so that they could go to bed without any other light. They never use odds and ends of clothing, and on the two cuffs of the master’s blouse and the two cuffs of the mistress’s gown, there are two tubes of old cuffs sewn on, which I have to wash every Saturday evening, so that I can use them on Sundays.

There were no sheets in the house, no towels, in order to dispense with the washing, which, according to my esteemed host, Mr. D.C., was the most expensive thing in a house. According to my esteemed host, Mr. D. Arpin, washing is the most expensive thing in a family. They never drank, Mr. D. Apan said. Mr. D. Apan says that water was drunk by the fathers of mankind, and that it is the only drink that nature has provided for us. Whenever bread was cut with a knife, a basket was always placed underneath to hold the crumbs that fell, and these, together with the crumbs that fell at meals, were fried on Sundays in a little bit of harry-smelling butter, and constituted the delicacy of the vacation day.

It was never allowed to pat the clothes or furniture for fear of spoiling them, but only to sweep them gently with a feather duster; the master’s and mistress’s shoes were lined with iron, and the couple made a respectful offering of the shoes they had worn on the day they began to share their bed. There was another very odd practice which they made me do once a week; there was a rather large little room in the original bedroom, and the walls were not hung with tapestry, so that I had to take a knife and scrape the lime from the walls, and after scraping a certain amount put it into a fine-holed sieve, and the powder that came out became a masquerade powder, which I sprinkled every morning into my master’s wig and over my mistress’s chignon. Every morning I sprinkle this white powder into my master’s false hair and on my mistress’ bun.

If these villains would only do these despicable and shameful deeds, thank God for them, for it is human nature to preserve one’s own property, but it is a different thing to try to increase one’s own property by robbing someone else’s.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that Mr. D.D. had become rich in the latter way. Mr. Apain had become rich in the latter way. There was a rather rich man living above us, who possessed valuable jewels, which, perhaps because they were neighbors, or perhaps because they had passed through my master’s hands, the old miser was very familiar with them. I have often heard him sigh with his wife that a gold box worth from thirty to forty louis had not fallen into his hands, which, according to him, must have remained in his possession at that time, had his litigant been a little wiser. In order to alleviate the pain of returning the gold box, the self-appointed and honest Mr. D. Apan planned the return of the gold box to him. Mr. Appan planned to get the gold box back, and they sent me to make the deal.

Mr. D. Apan. After a lengthy sermon on how theft was an insignificant thing, and even socially beneficial, because it restored the imbalance caused by the inequitable distribution of wealth, Mr. Diapan gave me a stolen key, assuring me that it would unlock the door of my neighbor’s house. Mr. Apan handed me a stolen key, assuring me that it would unlock the door of my neighbor’s room, and that when I entered the room I would find an unlocked writing-table, in which lay the box, which I could remove without danger. For such a simple piece of labor, they promised to pay me an extra ejus a year for two consecutive years.

When I heard this I could not help crying out, “Ah, sir, is there any master in the world who dares to corrupt his servant in this way? Who shall prevent me from returning against you with the weapons which you have given me? If I were to steal from you, as you have taught me, would you have any just cause against me?”

Di. Mr. Apan was so astonished at my answer that he dared not persist in it, but bore me a secret grudge, saying that what he had just said was but a test, and that it was fortunate that I had resisted the insidious temptation, or I should certainly have been hanged.

I paid for that answer, and have felt ever since that such a suggestion would bring me bad luck.

My firm refusal would have damaged me, but there was no middle way: either I accepted the advice to commit a crime, or I firmly rejected it. At that time, if I had only had a little more experience in life, I would have left the family immediately. But it was written in my book of destiny that whenever my personality asked me to do a righteous act, there was bound to be a catastrophe as the price, so I had to live with my destiny and there was no way to escape it.

For a month Mr. D. Arpin remained unmoved, in other words, until near the end of my second year in his house, without a word of reproach, and without the slightest hint of displeasure at my refusal. One evening, when I had finished my work, and had returned to my room to take a rest, there was a sudden banging at the door, and I was surprised and terrified to see Mr. Dee Dee Apen with a constable and an officer of the law. Mr. Apan, with a constable and four patrolmen, came all the way to my bed (fn. 6).

Mr. D. Apan said to the officer, “Sir, do what you have to do. Mr. Apan said to the officer, “Sir, do what you have to do; this vile woman has stolen a diamond ring of mine worth a thousand ejus, and it is a certainty that you will find it in her room or on her person.”

“Me? ve stolen something from you! Sir,” I rolled out of bed in a panic, “I? Sir, who knows better than you that I have always abhorred stealing, and that I could not possibly be guilty of such a crime.”

But Mr. D. Apan was so loud and shouting that it was impossible to hear what I was saying. But Mr. D. Apan, who was so loud and shouting that it was impossible to hear what I was saying, simply continued to order a search, and the ring that was to kill me was found in one of my mattresses. The evidence was overwhelming, and I was immediately arrested, bound, and shamefully committed to the prison of the court, without being allowed to say a word in my own defense.

In France, the trial of an unfortunate man, who has neither position nor power, will soon be over.

The courts believe that morality and poverty cannot coexist, and as long as you are poor, the courts consider that sufficient proof of guilt; there is also the unjust stereotype that a person who may have committed a crime must have done so; everything is judged according to your situation, and as long as your status and property do not prove that you are a decent person, you are immediately guilty.

After I had gone to great lengths to defend myself, and after I had offered many methods in vain to the attorney who had been temporarily appointed to defend me, my master accused me of the ring, which was found in my bedroom, and which I had evidently stolen. By the time I had made the point that Mr. Dee B. Mr. D. Arpin had abetted me in my crime, and that the disaster which had now fallen upon me was but one of a series of vengeful acts on his part to get rid of me. He wanted to get rid of me because I had his secrets, could influence his reputation, and so on. They dismissed my complaint as mere sophistry, saying that for forty years everyone had considered Mr. Di-Apan to be an honest man. They said that for forty years everyone had thought that Mr. D. Apan was an honest man, and that he could not have done such an appalling thing. Just when I was about to pay with my life for refusing to take part in a crime, an unexpected event restored me to liberty, and at the same time threw me into other adversities that awaited me.

A woman of forty years of age, known as La Dobois, was on the eve of her execution. La Dubois, who had a reputation for having committed all sorts of great crimes, and was on the eve of the execution of her death sentence; she deserved it, for all her crimes had been proved, whereas I had been unjustly victimized for no reason at all. I had somehow attracted the attention of this woman, and one night, just a few days before we were both about to lose our lives, she asked me not to go to bed, and, acting naturally, to remain with her near the prison gate.

“Between midnight and one o’clock,” the bad woman who had gotten lucky said to me, “there will be a fire in the prison… it’s my work… maybe someone will burn to death… it doesn’t matter… all that matters is that we’ll be able to break out of the prison… and there will be three men, all of them my co-conspirators and my friends, who will join us… and I’ll make sure that you’ll be free. guarantee that you will be free.”

The hand of God had just punished me for my innocence, and now it protected me in my crime… The fire burned, and it was so alarming that ten people were burned to death, and we escaped. That same day we reached the hut of a poacher in the Bundi forest, a baddie in a different category from us, but a close friend of our group.

Lara Dubois said to me. At this point, Dubois said to me: “My dear Sophie, you are free, now you can choose to live as you like. But I would like to give you a piece of advice, and that is to give up morality as a code of conduct, because such a code has never brought you any good, my friend, improper cleanliness has brought you to the guillotine, while an appalling crime has saved me. I beg you to open your eyes and see what goodness is good for in the world, and whether it is worth sacrificing yourself for it. You are young and beautiful, and I am willing to take charge of everything in Brussels for your care, if you wish it; I am going to Brussels, for that is my native place. Within two years, I can make you a big star, but I warn you: I’m not calling you to the path of riches along the narrow path of morality; at your age, you should be in more than one profession, and if you want to be successful quickly, you should be involved in more than one kind of intrigue… Do you hear me? Sophie… Do you hear me? SOFI… You make a decision quickly, because we have to escape quickly, we’re only safe here for a short period of time.”

I said to my benefactress: “Ah, madam, I am indebted to you for the great favor you have done me in saving my life, which I regret most of all: it was gained by the commission of a crime, in which, you may be sure, I would rather have died than to have been a partaker. I know very well that my heart is always nourished by feelings of integrity and honesty, and how great would be the danger I would run if I followed them; but though the path of morality is thorny, I would rather follow it than accept the false prosperity and happiness which sin for the time being brings. Thank Heaven that the religious mind in me has never left me. If God has made my life very rough, it is because it wants to fully compensate me in the good afterlife: this hope comforts me, relieves my pain, calms my resentment, and makes me stronger in adversity, daring me to face all the bad luck God is willing to give me. This happy state of mind immediately vanishes without a trace, if I defile it with sin, when I shall not only fear a worse evil than that which now befalls me, but also be constantly mindful of the punishment which in the other world Heaven is ready to inflict on those who have offended it.”

“This big ridiculous theory of yours is going to put you in the hospital soon, my good girl,” said La Dubois to me with a frown; “believe me, put aside your theory of Divine Punishment or your theory of Retribution in the afterlife, and all that you have said ought to be forgotten after you have left school, or that once you have gone into society you are still foolish enough to take these words at face value, and then you will only starve to death. My child, the ruthlessness of the rich makes the vile behavior of the poor both reasonable and legal. So long as their purses are open for our needs, so long as the word ‘humanity’ is in their hearts, morality may be rooted in ours; but if our misfortunes, our patience in enduring them, our goodwill, and our adversity, can only add to our shackles, our crimes become their product, and we are greatly deceived if we refuse to lighten the yoke which they have put upon our heads by our crimes.”

“Nature has made all men equal, Sophie; and if fate has arbitrarily disturbed this universal law, we should correct it, we should use our wit to get back what the strong have taken by force… I hate to listen to these rich men, these judges, these officials, and I love to see them preach to us about morality. A man who has three times as much wealth as he needs to live is hardly likely to stop stealing; a man who is surrounded by ass-kissers or obedient slaves is hardly likely to refrain from murder; a man who is intoxicated by pleasure and surrounded by wine and food is hardly likely to abstain from lust or eating; and it’s hard to be truthful when there’s never a need to lie.

”

“But we, Sophie, the unreasoning gods of heaven, whom you foolishly consecrate as idols, compel us to crawl on the earth as the serpent crawls in the grass; we are scorned because we are poor; we are insulted because we are weak; we find in the whole earth nothing but bitter bile and thorns, and crime alone opens the door of life to us, and you forbid us to sin. You wish us to be ever obedient and groveling, while those who rule over us have all happiness and good fortune, and we have nothing but misery, nothing but dismay and sorrow, nothing but poverty and tears, nothing but abuse and the guillotine!”

“No, no, Sophie, no, your god is either only worthy of our contempt or our intentions are not clear enough… Please, Sophie, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please. Both are useful. What has been created for us is an identity of equality, and he who destroys equality is no more guilty than he who restores it; both are impelled to do so by an impulse, and both should obey that impulse, and both should enjoy themselves blindfolded with a strip of cloth.”

I confess that if I faltered for a moment, it was as a result of the charming words of this clever woman, but a stronger voice from within me defeated these sophisms. I listened to my inner voice and declared for the last time that I was determined never to be corrupted.

L. L. Du Bois said to me, “Do what thou wilt, I care not. Then said he to me, “Do what thou wilt, I care not for thee, but let evil fortune rule thee; but if thou art caught again, thou shalt not give us up. Fate is always such a trickster: the criminal will always get away with it, and the good man will inevitably fall victim to it.”

While we were arguing on this side, on the other side La. Three of Dubois’s friends were drinking with the poachers. Often wine has the power to make a bad man forget his sins, and at the same time to make him reoffend before he is out of harm’s way. These four villains would not leave me alone and wanted to make fun of me. The principles they professed, their habits, the darkness of our hiding-place, the safety they thought they had gained for the time being, their state of drunkenness, my age, my stature, and my naivety, all encouraged them to do so.

They left the table, and all consulted, and consulted La, Dubois, and the whole process seemed mysterious, and made me tremble with fear.

The result was: I had to serve all four of them in turn before I left, whether voluntarily or by violence. If I did so of my own free will, they each gave me an ejus, and sent me where I was going, for I was not willing to go with them; but if they were forced to compel me to obedience by violence, I was to be insulted in the same way, but in order to keep it a secret, he who enjoyed me the last of the four had to thrust a knife into my breast, and then to bury me under a tree.

Think, madam, what effect this scandalous suggestion had upon me; I flung myself at the feet of La Dubois, and implored her to be my protector once more, but the bastard woman only hemmed and hawed at my perilous situation, which, in her mind, was a mere trifle.

She said, “Of course, it’s sad that you have to serve four big, tall, well-built men! But in Paris today, there are 10,000 women who would pay a fortune to be in your place…” After a long moment’s consideration, she added, “Listen to me, I have a lot of authority over these guys. If you listen to me, I can tell them to spare you.”

I cried out with tears streaming down my face, “Ah, ma’am, what do you want me to do? At your command, I will do it at once.”

“All I want is for you to follow us, do whatever we do, and not show the slightest bit of distaste, and if you’ll agree to that, your safety will be on my shoulders.”

I do not believe I can weigh the pros and cons, and if I accept the offer, I admit that I will encounter new dangers, but they are less imminent, and I may manage to avoid them, whereas the dangers that threaten me in front of me are imminent and there is no place to hide from them.

“I will go wherever I can, ma’am,” I said to La. I promise you that I will go wherever I can, and that I will never leave you if you will save me from the clutches of these people.”

L. L. Dubois said to the four robbers, “Boys, this girl has joined us. La Dubois then said to the four robbers: “Boys, this girl has joined us, and I have accepted her and placed her among you. I forbid you to do violence to her, so that she does not lose her appetite on her first day in the gang; you see, her age and appearance may be useful to us, and we may use her for our benefit, but do not sacrifice her for the sake of a moment’s pleasure…” (fn. 7) But there is nothing that can be said to stop a man’s lust from expanding to a certain point, and the four thugs could not listen to a word. The four thugs couldn’t listen to anything, and all four of them came up to me together and said in one voice to R. H. Dubois. All four of them came together in front of me, and in one voice they told La Du Bois that even if they had to face the guillotine, they would get me first.

One of them put a arm around me and said, “I’ll go first.”

“What right do you have to be the first at the beginning?” The second man pushed his companion aside and snatched it roughly.

“Of course you’re all going to be behind me.” The third man said.

The argument grew heated, and the four thugs pulled each other’s hair, punched and kicked, twisted and tripped, which gave me a good chance to escape with time to spare. Taking advantage of the fact that La. Dubois came up to dissuade them and pull them apart, I darted away and ran as far as the woods, and in the twinkling of an eye I could no longer see the house.

When I thought I had reached a place of safety, I immediately fell down on my knees and prayed, saying: “Most High God, You are my true protector and guide; have mercy on me. You see well that I am weak and naive, and You see well that I confidently place all my hopes in You; please save me from the immediate danger, and let me die a more honorable death, and call me back to You quickly.”

Prayer is the sweetest consolation for the afflicted person, and once he has prayed he becomes stronger.

I stood up, with courage in my heart. It was then late in the day, and I burrowed into a short wood for the night to minimize the danger, and the security I then possessed, the fatigue I felt after running, the little pleasure I enjoyed in being out of danger, all helped me to pass a restful night’s sleep, which lasted until the sun opened my eyes the next day when the sun was high in the sky. To the unfortunate, the first moment of awakening is the most fatal, when the stillness of the senses, the subdued tide of thought, and the temporary oblivion of suffering, all redouble their violence in reviving the remembrance of it, and make the heavy burden that weighs upon the body, all the more intolerable.

“Well!” I thought to myself, “What difference is there between me and the beasts, since it is in fact nature that wants to make some people like the beasts, and they have to stay away from people and hide in their hideouts, like the beasts? Is such a miserable life worth living?”

As I thought thus sadly, tears could not help pouring down my face. I had not cried enough when I heard a loud noise around me; at first I thought it was a wild animal, but slowly I heard it was the sound of two men talking.

“Come, my friend, come,” said one of the men, “we’re wonderful here, where my mother can’t get in the way of me enjoying with you what is so precious to me…”

They came close, so close that they were right in front of me, so that every word they said and every movement they made could not escape my ears and eyes, and so I saw it with my own eyes…

My God, ma’am, Sophie paused for a moment before pressing on, why was fate so cruel as to place me in a situation so embarrassing that I’m too ashamed to speak of it or hear it described? …

This abominable crime, which offends both nature and the law, has been punished many times by the hand of heaven, and, in short, is so unheard of by me, that I could not conceive of it, and now that I have witnessed it with my own eyes, this abominable crime has unfolded itself in all its details before my very eyes.

One of the men, the active one, was about twenty-four years of age, and wore a green cloak, and was rather nicely dressed, which proved that he was of some rank; the other was evidently a young manservant of his house, between seventeen and eighteen years of age, and of very good appearance. The scene they performed, which was both scandalous and rather long, made me wait with great anxiety, especially as I was in constant fear of being discovered by them.

The last two villains who had put on this scandalous show must have had their lust fulfilled, and they both stood up, ready to go on their way home. At that moment the young master, who had come to urinate in the bush where I was hiding, saw my high hat and immediately said to his gay man, “Jasmine, our secret has been exposed… A girl has profaned the sacred and spied on our secret… Come over here, pull this stinking bitch out and interrogate her about what she was doing in there.”

I didn’t wait for them to pull me, I struggled out on my own and immediately knelt at their feet.

“My lords,” I cried to them, stretching out my arms to them, “have pity on this unfortunate man; my fate is much more miserable than you can imagine, and there is no other situation worse than mine; and I beg of you not to see my present condition and think that it is my fault, that it is the result of my I ask you not to see my present condition and think that it is my fault, that it is the result of my miserable fate. My present sufferings are enough; I hope that you will not add to them, or add fuel to the fire; please, on the contrary, make it easy for me, and help me to escape from my harsh fate.”

The young man I fell into his hands was named De Brusac. He had a head full of impudent thoughts, but no goodness in his heart. Unfortunately, it is often the case that moral corruption of the flesh inevitably extinguishes the goodness of the heart. Moral turpitude usually makes a man hard-hearted, for the vast majority of debauchery requires a numbing of the soul, or a senselessness of one’s own actions due to the intense stimulation of the nerves; in short, it is a sadly common phenomenon that a professional swinger is seldom at the same time a compassionate man.

Mr. de Brusac. Mr. Broussac, in addition to the natural brutality of the character I have described above, had a pronounced hatred of women, which was so deep-rooted and comprehensive, that it was difficult for me to transpose into his mind the sentiments with which I wished to move him.

“What the hell are you doing here, Ms. Rinaka?” The man I was trying to soften up answered me rather gruffly with those words. “To be honest, you just saw what happened between me and him? Is that right?

”

“Me? No, sir.” I exclaimed at once, thinking it right to tell a lie in the matter, “I only saw very ordinary things: I saw you, this gentleman and you, sitting on the grass, and I think you talked there for a little while, and that is the whole truth of what I saw; believe me, please.”

Mr. de Brusac replied, “I would like to believe what you say, for your own good. Mr. de Brusac answered, “I am tempted to believe what you say, and it is for your own good, for if I thought you had seen anything else, you would never get out of this wood. Come, Jasmine, it is early in the day, and we have time to hear this bitch tell her story; tell her to tell it at once, and when she has done so, let us tie her to this oak tree, and try our knives on her frame.”

The two young men sat down, and when they ordered me to sit beside them, I innocently told them everything I had experienced since my birth.

When I had finished, Mr. de Brusac stood up. Mr. de Brusac stood up: “I say, Jasmine, let us do justice in our lifetime; the goddess of justice and law has condemned this whore, and we must not disappoint the goddess, but we must make sure that this sinner receives the punishment he deserves. We are not committing a crime in doing this, but, on the contrary, doing good, my friend; we are restoring things to the order in which they were meant to be, for we have sometimes had the misfortune to destroy the order of things, and now that the opportunity has come to do so, we ought to be brave enough to restore it.”

After saying that the two murderous guys dragged me up from the ground and kept dragging me towards the oak tree, my moans and tears could not move them.

“Tie her in this direction,” said De. Broussac said to his servant, while pushing me to press my stomach against the trunk of the tree.

All of a sudden their garters, their handkerchiefs were used, and I was cruelly bound so tightly that I couldn’t move a limb. When they were done, the two assholes unzipped my skirt, lifted my shirt up to my shoulders, and grabbed their hunting knives, which I thought would surely decapitate my backside.

Before I could take a slice, I heard Brusak say, “That’s enough, that’s enough to make her realize that we’re awesome, to make her see what we can do to her, to make her listen to us forever.”

Then he untied the bonds on me and said to me, “Sophie, put on your clothes, take care to keep your secret, and follow us. If you will follow me, you will not regret it, my child. My mother is in need of an additional maid, and I can introduce you to her… I believe in what you say about your past history, and I can give her my word for you, but if you take advantage of my goodness to deceive me, then look at this tree, it’s where you’ll be buried, and remember that the castle we’re taking you to is only four kilometers away, and if you make the slightest mistake, we’ll bring you back in no time at all. “

I got dressed and simply didn’t know what kind of words to use to thank my benefactor… I knelt at his feet… I kissed his knees, I swore to him that I would be of good character, and I had no feeling for my own pleasure or sorrow at that moment.

“Go,” said De. M. de Broussac said, “in future your actions speak for you, and the only thing that will determine your fate is your actions.”

We walked. Jasmine and his master were talking together; I said not a word, but followed them humbly, and in less than an hour we reached the chateau of the Comtesse de Broussac. In less than an hour we arrived at the chateau of the Countess de Brusac, and the magnificence and luxury of all that surrounded it made me see that, whatever work I might do in this mansion, I was sure to earn better than in the house of Mr. and Mrs. de Arpin as a housekeeper. Mr. and Mrs. Appan’s house as a housekeeper. They asked me to wait in the kitchen, and Jasmine gave me a good lunch. At this time Mr. de Brusac went upstairs to see Mr. and Mrs. D’Appan. Mr. Broussac went upstairs to see his mother (fn. 8), and after half an hour he came to me in person, and took me to see his mother.

Mrs. de Broussac was a woman of forty-five years of age. Mme. de Broussac was a woman of forty-five years of age, still in her prime, and I found her to be a very honest and humane woman, though she was a little too severe in her moral code and in her conversation. She had been a widow for two years, and her late husband, who owned a magnificent mansion and had no other property, had married and brought his wife only the title, so that the young Count de Brusac had hopes of obtaining the title. All the property which the young Count de Broussac had any hope of acquiring came from his mother, and the inheritance which he had received from his father was not sufficient to support his expenses.

Mrs. de Brusac gave him a large annuity. Mme. de Broussac added a large annuity, but it was still far from enough to satisfy her son’s enormous expenses; the house had an income of at least 60,000 francs, and Mme. de Broussac had neither brother nor sister. Mrs. de Brusac had neither brother nor sister. There had never been any means of persuading him to go into military service; everything that took him away from his beloved amusements was too much for him to endure, so that no one could ask him to accept any bondage.

The Countess and her son spent three months of the year here, and the rest in Paris. The three months which she compels her son to spend with her here is quite enough torture for a man who never refuses to leave his amusement.

Mr. de Brusac ordered me to repeat the experience I had told him to his mother. The Marquis de Brusac ordered me to repeat to his mother what I had told him. When I had finished, Mr. de Brusac ordered me to repeat what I had told him to his mother.

Mrs. Brusack said to me: “Your innocence and honesty make it impossible for me to doubt your innocence. I am not going to make any other inquiries about you, but only to know whether you are really the daughter of the man you say you are. If that is the case, I am an old friend of your father’s, and I have all the more reason to take an interest in you. As for your dispute with Dee, I am responsible for handling it, and all I have to do is to visit the Chancellor twice. The Chancellor has been an old friend of mine for many years, and he is the most honest man in all of France, so if you prove your innocence to him, all previous attacks on you will be null and void, and you’ll be able to appear in Paris without fear… But think about it very carefully, Sofie, everything I’m promising you comes with a condition that you be of good character, and so, you see, the conditions on which I’m asking you to repay me are always in your favor. “

I knelt at the feet of Mrs. de Brusac. I knelt at the feet of Madame de Brusac, and I assured her that she would always be pleased with me only; and from that moment I became her second maid. Madame de Broussac sent to Paris. Madame de Broussac sent to Paris for news, and three days later brought, as I had hoped, an answer, and all thoughts of misfortune disappeared from my heart, and were replaced by the sweet consolation which I had long expected. But it is not written in heaven that poor Sophie could enjoy happiness; and if she could unexpectedly have a short period of peace to live in, it was for the sake of the more dreadful moments that were to ensue to make her fate more miserable.

As soon as we arrived in Paris, Mrs. de Brusac rushed to my aid. Madame de Broussac rushed to my aid. The Chief Justice, who wished to see me, listened with deep interest to my misfortunes, and the fraud of D. Arpin was confirmed on deeper inquiry. The fraud of D. Arpin was confirmed upon deeper inquiry, and it was considered that, although I had taken advantage of the fire in the prison, at least I had not taken part in setting it, and that my case was therefore cleared up (so they said to me), and that no further formalities would be required from the other judges who had been involved in the case.

It is not difficult to imagine that such a move brought me closer and closer to Mrs. de Brusac. Even if Madame de Broussac did not give me all the advantages, would not these activities alone make me follow this invaluable protector forever? Even if Mrs. de Brusac had not given me all the advantages, could not these movements alone have made me follow this invaluable protector for ever?

The young Baron de Brusac did not really want me to be so close to his mother. Baron de Brusac did not really want me to be so close to his mother, and apart from the vices which I have described to you (and in which the young man was as blindly absorbed in Paris as he was in the country), I did not take long to discover that he hated the Countess very much.

The truth was that the Countess had used every means to thwart him from leading a life of desultory debauchery, and perhaps the methods used were so excessively severe that the enraged Marquis rebelled, and went doubly mad to do evil, and the poor Countess only got a redoubled hatred from its severity.

The Marquis used to say to me: “Don’t think that everything my mother does for you is of her own free will, Sophie, but if I hadn’t pestered her so much, she wouldn’t have remembered a thing about all the care she’s promised to give you, and she boasts to you about all the running around she’s doing, but it’s all thanks to me. I dare say that it is I who should be the one for whom you are grateful, and the gratitude I ask of you should be disinterested in your regard, no matter how beautiful you may look; it is not your good opinion that I ask for… No, Sophie, no, the reward I await from you is of a different kind; wait until you are fully convinced that I have done everything for you, and then I hope to find in your heart what I have a right to enjoy.”

The vagueness of his remark left me at a loss for a reply; I took my chances and answered, perhaps too rashly.

Now I should tell you, madam, that the only real and reprehensible mistake I have ever made in my life… I say mistake, but in fact it was a unique and absurd act… But at least it was not a crime, but an ordinary mistake, and I was the only one who was punished for it, and I don’t think the fair hand of the Divine would have taken advantage of the mistake and dragged me down into the abyss that had unknowingly opened up a big mouth underneath my feet.

The truth is that whenever I saw the Marquis de Brusac, I could not help feeling a tenderness that drew me to him. It was impossible for me to meet the Marquis de Brusac without feeling a tenderness that drew me to him, a tenderness that I could not repress. In spite of his dislike of women, his indecent tastes, and the great distance between his moral code and mine, nothing in the world could extinguish my incipient love, and if the Marquis had asked me to sacrifice my life, I would have sacrificed it a thousand times for him and still have thought that I had done nothing for him.

He didn’t doubt the love that I held so carefully inside me… This heartless man, he couldn’t tell that poor Sophie’s daily tears were all about his shameful life of debauchery, a life that could destroy him; and yet he couldn’t fail to sense that I flew off to meet his favorites, and he couldn’t fail to be aware of my solicitude… my solicitude could be so blind… I even helped him make mistakes, as far as reason allowed. I even helped him make mistakes as far as reason allowed, and often covered for him in front of his mother.

I had gained his confidence to a certain extent by what I did, and I babied whatever he gave me, and I was blind to such an extent that he gave me just a little of his heart, and sometimes I was proud to believe that I was not indifferent in his mind; but soon the excesses of debauchery woke me up!

He debauched himself to such an extent that his mansion was filled with servants of this kind, and he kept a large number of villains outside, sometimes he came to their houses, sometimes they came to his, and this male lust, though it was a vice, was not cheap, and therefore the marquis wasted a great deal of money.

Sometimes I ventured to advise him of the many disadvantages of such behavior, and he listened to me without resentment, and finally he told me, “You can’t correct a habit you’ve taken on, and it comes in all forms, and multiplies into branches adapted to all ages, and every ten years it gives you a new sensation, and it will keep the unfortunate and obsessed in the habit until they go to their graves…” And if I talked about his mother and the sorrows he caused her, all I could see was resentment, anger, and anxiety. If I talk about his mother and the sorrow he caused her, all I see is resentment, tantrums, irritation and anxiety.

He was intolerant of seeing property that should have been his long ago continue to remain for a long time in the hands of others, and he harbored a deep hatred for the venerable mother, and he had a rebellious spirit against the love of parentage. Is it really true that the inevitable consequence of this first step in sinning will be the very easy commission of other sins by a man who in his proclivities is able to do so in flagrant violation of the laws of this sacred organ?

Sometimes I have used religion as a weapon, and as I am often comforted by it, I have tried to move the field of its benefits into the soul of this bad man, and if I could have done so by sharing with him the charms of religion, then probably I could have bound him with that tie, but the Marquis did not allow me to use it against him in the long run. He was an avowed enemy of our mystical sacraments, a staunch opponent of our doctrines, and a vehement denier of the existence of a God, and M. de. M. de Brusac, instead of allowing me to convert him, sought to corrupt me.

He said to me, “All religions proceed from a false principle, and assume the necessity of worshipping a Creator, not realizing that this immortal world of ours, like other planets floating in infinite space, has neither end nor end, and that if the reproduction of nature is the inevitable result of its own laws, and if its ceaseless action and reaction are the essential movements of its nature, then what is the need for you to give it a prime mover without any foundation? are the indispensable movements of its nature, what need is there for you to give it a prime mover without any foundation?”

“Believe, Sophie, that the Creator you affirm is nothing but the product of ignorance and despotism; that the strong, when they wish to enslave the weak, always persuade the weak to believe that the fetters that weigh him down have been consecrated by God, and that the weak, when they are stupefied by poverty, believe everything that the strong say. All religions, which are the corollary of this primitive lie, ought to be held in the same contempt as this lie, and there is not a single one of these religions that does not bear the marks of deception and ignorance. I see very clearly that in all these religious myths which shock reason, there are only dogmas which corrupt human nature. And the quaint religious ceremonies are only capable of making people laugh.

Sophie, I was born and just opened my eyes and I hated it all, I made a code to trample these things under my feet, I made a vow to never compromise with these things in my lifetime. If you are reasonable, you will follow my example.”

I answered the Marquis: “Sir, if you outlaw the religion which comforts me, you will be breaking the sweetest hopes of a poor woman. I am firmly attached to the doctrines of religion, and I am absolutely convinced that all attacks upon it are the result of licentiousness, and am I to sacrifice the sweetest convictions of my life to these sophisms which make me tremble?”

I also added, according to my reason, the countless other reasons which lay in my mind; but the Marquis only laughed, and his sophisms, coupled with his eloquence, and supported by quotations from the Scriptures (which, fortunately for me, I had not read), always refuted all my theories. Mrs. Broussac, who was full of virtue and compassion, was not unaware that her son defended his misguidance by the whims of unbelief, and she often joined me in my long lamentations; and as she found me more reasonable than the other maids, she was fond of pouring out her sorrows to me.

But her son’s attitude towards her was getting worse and worse, and he had reached the point where he no longer hid himself even from her, and his dangerous gang of bad guys who vented their sexual desires for him were all over his mother, and he was so bold as to declare in my face that if she ever tried to object to his proclivities again, he would perform them in front of her and convince her of the beauty of the proclivities. This conversation and this behavior made me so furious that I tried to find some reason from the depths of my heart to extinguish the unfortunate fire of love that was burning inside me… But is love a disease that can be cured? My search for reasons to extinguish it only made it burn even brighter, and the sinister Brusak only became more lovable in front of all the reasons I had concentrated on to help me hate him.

I had been four years in this house, always troubled by the same sorrows and comforted by the same tenderness. At this time the Marquis made me a terrible proposal: we were living in the country, the Countess had me alone with her, and her first personal maid was allowed to remain in Paris for her husband’s affairs.

One evening, shortly after I had returned from my hostess’s house, I was standing on the balcony in the cool of the heat, which made it impossible for me to sleep, when all of a sudden the Marquis knocked at my door and asked me to talk to him for a while… Alas, although this cruel man was the cause of all my suffering, every minute of his presence was precious to me, and I was not willing to refuse him.

He went into my bedroom, closed the door carefully, sat down on a couch beside me and said to me, “Sophie, listen to me,” he looked a little embarrassed, “I have something very important to tell you, and you have to swear first that you’ll never divulge anything I tell you. “

“Ah, sir, do you believe I would fail you?”

“Your life is in danger if your actions prove that I should not trust you.”

“My biggest worry is that I don’t have your trust, and I don’t need you to terrorize me anymore.”

“Well, Sophie… I tried to get my mother killed, and I’m going to borrow your hand to do the job.

”

“Lend me your hand? Sir,” I cried, as I fell back a few steps in terror, “how can you think of this thing, my God! Sir, have me killed; my life is yours to dispose of as you please; though you have saved my life, yet do not think that I would help you to commit a crime; the mere thought of such a crime is too much for my heart to bear.”

“Listen to me, Sophie,” said Mr. de Brusac. Mr. de Brusac, who had restored me to my senses, said to me: “I have long known that you detested this sort of thing, but you are an intelligent man, and I flatter myself that I am able to help you to overcome your aversion, by proving to you that what you consider to be a great crime is in fact only a commonplace thing. In your lack of philosophical eyes, two great sins appear, which are aggravated by the fact that the person killed was my mother. The so-called killing of our kind, Sophie, please note, is nothing but pure fantasy; nature has not endowed mankind with the power to extinguish a thing; mankind has, at best, the power to change the form of a thing, not the power to extinguish it. And from the point of view of Nature, all forms are equal, and in the immense furnace of the universe nothing disappears but changes, and every part of the matter thrown into the furnace keeps on appearing in a new guise, and no matter what we do, no action of ours can directly injure it, no action of ours can defile it. Our destruction can only revitalize it, keep up its energy, and not at all diminish it.”

“What, then, does a heap of flesh, which to-day appears in the shape of a woman, and to-morrow is transformed into a hundred thousand different kinds of insects, matter to nature, which is constantly creating? Dare you say that the destruction of a man like us is a greater loss to Nature than the destruction of an insect, and therefore deserves greater attention? What does it matter if one man’s supposedly sinful action causes another to become a fly or a lettuce, if their relation to nature, close or not, is the same?

I will believe that the destruction of man is a crime only if it can be proved to me that he is of a higher order than the other species, and that he is of such importance to nature as to make his destruction a necessary offense against the laws of nature. But the most careful study of nature can only prove to me that everything that grows on earth, even the most imperfect creation, has the same value in nature, and that I do not believe that the evolution of one creature into a thousand others violates the laws of nature, and I say to myself: all men, all creatures, all animals, grow, multiply, and perish in the same way, but never really die; they only change their shape, and never die. They only change their form; they are born, destroyed, and reproduced without a care, sometimes in one form, and a few moments later in another, and, by the will of nature, can change a thousand times in a day, without for a single moment violating any of the laws of nature.”

“Now I’m going to attack my mother, the one who carried me to term in October. What, on the basis of this illusory reason to stop me from doing it, on what basis can it succeed? This mother, did she ever think of giving birth to me, the fetus, while she was lusting? Can I thank her for thinking only of her own pleasure? Besides, it is not the blood of the mother that causes the fetus, but only the blood of the father. The function of the mother’s womb is to result, to preserve and process, but it can’t provide anything, and this consideration is the reason why I never wanted to murder my father, whereas I thought it was an extremely common thing to cut the mother’s lifeline. Perhaps the key to a child’s heart, if it can reasonably well up with a surge of gratitude to his mother, is the way she treats us when we know better. If her attitude is good, we can love her, and perhaps we ought to; if her attitude is bad, we, who are not bound by any law of nature, not only owe her nothing, but everything is destined for us to get rid of her, for there is a strong force of selfishness and self-interest in us, and quite naturally and irresistibly and just as surely, we will get rid of everything that stands in our way.”

I was so horrified at this that I said to the Marquis: “Ah, sir, you say that nature does not care about such things, but that is still a thought that comes from your illicit passions. I beg you to pause for a minute, not to listen to your illicit passions, but to listen to your conscience, which you will soon find condemns you for this brutal reasoning from a life of debauchery. I put you before the tribunal of conscience, and is not this tribunal a holy place, where nature, which you have insulted, requires you to listen to and venerate it? If nature has put a very shameful stamp on the sin you have planned, will you not agree with me in condemning it? Will you say to me that the flames of lust will in a moment consume this sense of shame? I am afraid that you will not have time to be satisfied, but this sense of shame will be new-born again, and it will make itself heard again through the senses of regret, which you will not be able to suppress.”

“The more sensitive your senses become, the more pain you feel… Every day, every minute, this gentle mother, whom your savage claws have sent to the grave, is always in front of your eyes… You hear her mournful voice calling out your sweet little name… She appears in front of your eyes during your waking hours… She agonizes you in your dreams… She opens up her bloody, scarred hands to you… You have no momentary happiness on earth from now on… All your pleasures have been destroyed, and your thoughts are confused. She will open her bloody, scarred hands to you; from now on you will not have a moment’s happiness on earth; all your pleasures will be destroyed; your thoughts will be confused; did you not deny the power of the heavens? The hand of Heaven will take vengeance on you for poisoning all your loved ones, and you cannot wait to rejoice in your crimes, but will regret to death for having dared to accomplish them.”

I was sobbing uncontrollably when I said the last words, and I threw myself at the feet of the Marquis, and I asked him to swear by the most precious of all things to forget the shameful thing he had tried to do in a moment of loss of nature, and I promised to keep his secret for all eternity. But I had misjudged the man, and though the Marquis was still over-energetic, his whole nerves were numbed, his lust was at the boiling-point, and his whole being was under the control of crime alone. The Marquis rose, and said to me coldly: “I see that I am mistaken, Sophie, and perhaps I ought to be annoyed for you as well as for myself; but never mind, I will find another way. You have lost much weight in my mind, while your mistress has added little.”

This intimidation changed all my thoughts: I refused to accept the crime, which was very dangerous for me, while my mistress was sure to die; if I agreed to be an accomplice, I could avoid the Marquis’ wrath, while I was sure to save his mother’s life.

The idea took shape in my mind in a few moments, and it caused me to change my role at once. However, such a rapid change would have aroused suspicion, so I tried to delay my defeat as long as possible, I made the Marquis repeat his sophistry again and again, and I pretended to be progressively speechless, so that the Marquis would believe that I was truly persuaded. I defended my weakness by saying that his eloquence was too strong, and finally, as I pretended to be completely receptive, the Marquis jumped up and embraced me… an act which could have filled me with joy, but unfortunately his barbaric plan had extinguished all the love that my fragile heart had dared to feel for him… It was impossible for me to love him any more… The Marquis said to me, “You’re the first woman I’ve ever kissed! “You’re the first woman I’ve ever kissed, and I mean it with all my heart… You’re wonderful, my child; the rays of philosophy have penetrated your heart, and will your lovely mind never be enlightened?”

We at the same time agreed upon our plan of action; and in order to deceive the Marquis, I always assumed an air of reluctance, and whenever he spoke in depth of his plans, or introduced me to the methods employed, I was in such a pitiable position, that I was only able to deceive him by disguise. We agreed that in two or three days, the length of which I would determine according to the smoothness of the situation, I should skillfully put a small packet of the poison which the Marquis had given me into a glass of chocolate, which the Countess drank every morning; and that afterwards the Marquis would be in charge of it, and that he would promise to give me an annuity of two thousand écuments, either to enjoy it at his side, or in a place where I might choose to live out my years in peace and quiet. He would sign this promise to me, but would not state on it the reason for giving me this favor. Having negotiated this we parted.

In the meantime a strange thing had happened, which proves to you the brutal character of the man with whom I had dealt, and as you must be curious to know the end of the affair in which I had taken part, I shall go on without interrupting my narrative. The day after our meeting, the Marquis received news that an uncle of his had died, and that he had not expected to receive his inheritance, but had left him an annuity of 80,000 francs at the time of his death.

“My God!” I said to myself when I learned of this, “This is how Heaven has punished the wicked! I refused to accept a much smaller amount of money for fear of losing my life, while this rich and powerful man was given a large fortune for planning to commit a terrible and great sin.”

But I immediately regretted my blasphemous words, and I fell to my knees, asking God to forgive me, while rejoicing in this unexpected inheritance, which I thought would at least enable the Marquis to change his plans… Great God, how wrong I was!

That night Mr. de Brusac came to my bedroom and said. Mr. de Brusac came into my bedroom and said to me: “My dear Sophie, what a blessing I have! I have told you many times that happiness can only come to you if you think of committing a crime, and that the way to happiness seems to be open only to the wicked. Eighty thousand plus sixty thousand, my child, I have fourteen hundred thousand francs in all for my amusement.”

“How is it, sir,” I pretended to be less surprised on account of the circumstances, “that this unexpected property does not enable you to wait patiently for Madame to die a natural death, and that you still wish to put an end to her life quickly?”

“I won’t wait a minute if you ask me to. Sophie, please consider that I’m eighteen years old, and it’s difficult to wait at that age. I don’t want to change our plans, I beg you, let’s make sure we end this before we go back to Paris… Let’s do it tomorrow, the day after tomorrow at the latest, I’m already in a hurry to pay you a quarter of my annuity, and I still want to give it all to you.”

I hid my horror as well as I could; his passion for crime was horrible. I played the part of yesterday once more, but all my love was extinguished, and I felt nothing but disgust for this one resolute villain.

I was in a very awkward position: if I did not do it, the Marquis would soon realize that I was playing a trick on him; if I told Madame de Brusac, he would soon see that he had been taken in. If I told Mme. de Brusac, the Marquis would soon see that he had been deceived, and perhaps he would decide to take a more vicious course, and at the same time bring about the death of my mother, and take his revenge on me as well. There was only one course left to me, that of informing the judicial authorities; but I was unwilling to take this course in any case, and at last I decided that, whatever happened, I would inform the Countess. Of all the courses open to me, I thought it the best, and I did so.

The day after my last interview with the Marquis, I said to the Countess: “Madame, I have something of great importance to tell you, but whatever it may concern you, I will not speak of it if you do not pledge your honor that you will not show your displeasure at what your young master has so boldly planned. You may act, madam, as you think best, but you must not speak of it, and you must promise me that you will, or I will not speak of it.”

Mrs. de Brusac thought I was going to tell her about some outrageous act of her son’s. Mrs. Broussac, thinking that I was going to speak of some outrageous act on the part of her son, swore at my request, and I told her the whole story. The poor mother wept like a tear when she learned of this shameful crime.

“The villain!” She cried out, “what thing have I done that was not for his good? If I wanted to prevent him from making a mistake, or to correct him, what other motive could have led me to do so than his happiness and peace? Who was it that caused him to receive his uncle’s inheritance? Who else but me? It was considerate of him that I did not let him know it sooner. Ah, the devil! Sophie, please prove the wickedness of his plan, please present evidence so that I will never again doubt the truth of this matter, and not doing so cannot extinguish the natural mother-son feeling in my heart…”

So I took the box of poison that had been handed to me and showed it to the Countess, and we gave a small dab of it to the dog, which we carefully confined. In less than two hours the dog was convulsed in all its limbs and died a horrible death. The Countess, no longer suspicious, decided at once to take steps, and she ordered me to give her the remainder of the poison, and then wrote and sent a letter to her kinsman, Matsuzawa. In the letter, he asked Sunzawa to visit the Minister of State in secret, to tell him in detail about her impending murder, to obtain an order for the arrest of her son, and to go to the countryside as quickly as possible with the order and a police officer to arrest as many of her murderers as possible… It was a pity that God had decreed that this hideous crime should be accomplished, and morality is no match for vile behavior.

The dog that we used for the test exposed everything to the Marquis, who heard the dog wailing, and knowing that her mother loved the dog, he immediately inquired where the dog was and what had happened to it. Those he inquired of did not know everything and did not answer him. From this time he became suspicious. He did not say a word, but I saw that he was restless and looked about all day. I told the Countess what had happened, but there was no hesitation; all we could do was to urge the messenger to move quickly and to hide the letter.

The Countess said to her son that she was in a hurry to send a letter to Paris, requesting the Duc d’Auzeval. The Duc d’Auzeval was to act as executor of her uncle’s estate, as it was to be feared that there would be a lawsuit if no one appeared in the will; and she added, that she would ask the Duc to come here and tell her all about the inheritance, in order that she might, if necessary, take her son. The Duc d’Auzeval was to act as executor of her uncle’s estate as it was to be feared that there would be a lawsuit if no one appeared in the will; and she added, that she would ask the Duc to come here and tell her all about the inheritance, in order that she might, if necessary, take her son to Paris.

The Marquis, who was a good judge of character, and who had seen the impatience in his mother’s face, as well as the embarrassment in mine, pretended to be satisfied with everything, but in reality took every precaution. On the pretext of going out for a walk with his boys, far from the castle, he waited at the place where the courier was bound to pass, who was loyal to him as well as to his mother, and when the marquis intercepted him he handed over the letter he was carrying without any difficulty. Convinced that I had betrayed him, the marquis gave a hundred louis to the messenger, ordering him never to return to his house, and then the marquis went home full of anger, but restrained himself as much as he could; he met me, caressed me as usual, asked me if I would do it to-morrow, and, telling me that I must finish the work before the duke’s arrival, returned to his room and went to bed quietly and without showing any sign of his presence.

Soon after the Marquis told me that this shameful crime had been accomplished. Probably as I will describe below… The next day Madame drank her chocolate drink as was her custom, and since it passed through my hands only, I can be sure that there was nothing in it.

But about ten o’clock the Marquis entered the kitchen, and finding the cook alone there, he ordered him to go at once into the garden and pick him some peaches. The cook retorted that it was impossible for him to leave his dishes, and the Marquis insisted that the cook should satisfy his whims for peaches, and that he could look after the stove in his stead.

The cook went out, and the Marquis carefully examined all the dishes at dinner, and thinking that her ladyship’s favorite was the veins of a prickly artichoke, he poured in the fatal poison. At dinner the Countess probably ate the ill-fated dish, and the crime was realized.

What I have said here is my guess, Mr. de Brusac only told me after this tragic event that he had succeeded. Mr. de Brusac only told me after this tragic event that he had succeeded. Let’s not talk about these terrible speculations, but about the cruel punishment I received for not wanting to take part in this crime and for having told Madame about the plot… As soon as we had finished eating, the Marquis came up to me and, with a very calm face, he said, “Sophie, listen to me, I have found a more reliable way of accomplishing my plan than the one I told you about… But this is not something that can be explained in one or two words. And I don’t dare come into your bedroom so often, I’m afraid it’s bad to be seen. Will you wait for me in the corner of the garden at five o’clock precisely? I will meet you there, and we will go for a long walk together, in which I will tell you everything.”

I confess that, either by the will of Heaven, or through my excessive naivety, or my blindness, there was not the slightest sign to me that a dreadful catastrophe awaited me; and I believe that the Countess’s arrangements were so secret and so reliable that I could never have expected the Count to discover them. But there was a little uneasiness in my heart.

One of our tragic poets once said, “It is a virtue for one who has promised to sin to break his word.” But the breaking of a promise is always ugly to a noble and sensitive mind, and I felt a little uneasy, but not too long, and the Count’s vicious action gave me new pains, and at the same time calmed my uneasiness in this respect.

He came up to me with the most pleasant and frank manner in the world, and we went into the woods together, where he talked and laughed with me as usual, and did nothing else. Whenever I tried to move the conversation to the purpose for which we had come here, he always said that we had to wait, and that he was afraid of being seen, as our situation was not yet safe.

Before I knew it we were near the great oak tree, where he had first met me. I could not help shuddering at the sight of these places; the consequences of my carelessness and my perilous fate seemed to be all before my eyes at this time, and what was more dreadful was that I saw two of the marquis’s favorite boy-girls seated under the oak tree, under which I had been in such mortal danger. When they saw us approaching, they rose, and threw on the grass ropes, bullocks, and other implements which made me tremble at the sight of them.

At this time the Marquis used the rudest and most horrible words to me: “Bitch,” he said to me, before the young men could hear him, “do you know this bush? I have saved you like a beast from this bush, and you should have died, but I saved your life; do you know this tree?”

“I once threatened you under this tree that the day you did something that made me regret having done this good deed, I was going to bring you here. Why is it that you promised to do me a favor by plotting against my mother, when in fact you intended to betray me? You wanted to practice virtue, but you gambled with the freedom of your savior. You had to choose one of two evils, why did you choose the worst one?

You should have refused my request, not accepted it first and then betrayed me later.”

Then the Marquis told me how he had become suspicious, how he had intercepted the messenger, and how he had obtained the letter.

He added, “What have you gotten for your lies, bitch? You risked your life but you couldn’t save my mother’s. My act has begun, and I hope I return with great success.

But I must punish you, I must teach you to know that the path of morality is not a well-trodden one, and that there are many times in the world when it is much better to be an accomplice to a crime than an informer. You are not ignorant of me. How dare you play tricks on me? Do you think that compassion and a few puritanical rules of religion can tie my hands? I don’t realize that my compassion can only serve my pleasure, and the clean rules of religion are something that I often trample underfoot… Perhaps you want to rely on your charms?”

He added with the cruelest mockery, “Well, I’ll prove to you that your charms, no matter how naked you are, can only ignite the fire of my vengeance…”

Without waiting for an answer, and without showing the slightest sympathy for my tearful face, he seized me by the arm, drew me towards his two favorites, and said to them: “This woman has tried to poison my mother, and perhaps she has committed this abominable crime, whatever precautions I may have taken. I think the best thing to do is to hand her over to the judicial authorities, but she may not be able to save her life there, and I would like to leave her alive and let her suffer for a long time. You will quickly strip her naked, and bind her to a tree, with her belly to it, and I will punish her according to the punishment she deserves.”

His orders were at once carried out; they gagged me with a handkerchief, told me to cling to the trunk of the tree, and bound my shoulders and thighs, leaving the rest of my body exposed, so as to make it susceptible to the lash. The Margrave, in an extraordinary state of excitement, seized a bullwhip (Note 9), and before the flogging, this cruel man wanted to observe my appearance; one might say that his eyes were greatly satisfied by the tears in my eyes and the expression of pain and horror on my face…

Then he came about three paces behind me, and I could immediately feel him whipping me with all his might, from the middle of my back to the fleshiest part of my thighs. The executioner paused for a moment, and he brutally ran his hands over all the parts of my body that he had just wounded… He whispered something to one of his slaves, and when I did not know what he was saying, someone immediately put a handkerchief over my head so that I could not see any of their movements.

After making some movements behind my back, they once again whipped me until I was drenched in blood… Before the whipping, the Marquis said, “Yes, that’s it.” As soon as he said that, the whip came down on my body twice as hard, and I didn’t understand what the Marquis meant by that; then they stopped for a moment, and then they touched the skinned areas with their hands, and they spoke in low voices… One of the young men said in a loud voice, “Isn’t it better for me the way I am?” I couldn’t understand what he meant, but I heard the Marquis say, “Closer, closer,”

Then came a third, more violent whipping, in the midst of which Brusak uttered the following words two or three times in a row, accompanied by very unpleasant curses: “Hit! Fight! Both of you, don’t you know that I want her to die here, by my hand?” (fn. 10) These words grew louder and louder, and at last ended this excellent massacre. They whispered a little longer, when I heard a new sound of movement, and I found that my ropes were untied. When I opened my eyes and saw the grass leaking with my blood, I knew what state I was in: the Marquis was alone, and his two accomplices had disappeared. And…

“Bitch,” said the Marquis to me, while observing me with the look of disgust which is inevitable after a wild passion, “don’t you think it costs too much to be good? Two thousand ejus are worth less than a hundred lashes of the bullwhip? ….”

I fell at the foot of a big tree, ready to lose consciousness at any moment… That bastard, whose atrocities just now did not satisfy him, was cruelly agitated by the sight of my wounds, and he trampled on me, who was sprawled on the ground, with his feet and made me gasp for breath.

“I was too nice to spare your life,” he repeated two or three times in a row, “You should at least be careful not to let me down…”

He then ordered me to stand up and get dressed. As I was bleeding all over, it was all I had left, and to avoid letting my clothes leak blood, I unconsciously picked up grass from the ground to wipe my body. He was walking around, ignoring me, just brooding, my muscles were swollen, the blood was still flowing, the pain in my wounds was intolerable, all this made it impossible for me to get dressed, and this vicious man in front of me, this demon who had brought me to this state, the one for whom a few days ago I would have sacrificed my life, didn’t show the slightest mercy, didn’t lift a finger to help me.

When I had dressed, he came up to me and said, “Go away, go where you please; you have some money left in your pocket; I will not take it from you; but you must take care that you do not appear before my eyes again, not in Paris, not in the country. You are in the public eye, I warn you, to confess that you are the person who poisoned my mother; and if she has any breath left, I will let her take the idea to her grave; all the people in the house know it; and I will denounce you to the justice.”

“Your first lawsuit, which you thought was closed, was in reality only suspended, and I warn you that people are lying to you when they tell you that the lawsuit is closed; the purpose of placing you in such circumstances is to observe your behavior, and the original decision has not been revoked, and consequently Paris is not a fit place for you to reside. Now you are carrying not one lawsuit, but two, and your adversary is not a mean usurer, but a rich and powerful man, who is determined to pursue you all the way to hell, and who, if I spare your life, will use it to cry out in vain for wrongs and malign the words of others.”

I answered him, saying, “O sir, however severe you may be to me, you need not fear my actions; when your mother’s life is at stake, I think it right to oppose you; when poor Sophie’s is at stake, I shall never act. Farewell, sir, and may your sins bring you as much happiness as your cruelty has brought me pain; and however heaven may arrange your fate, if it will preserve my cheap life, I shall certainly use it in praying for you.”

The Marquis lifted his head, and at these words of mine he could not help looking towards me, and seeing me so full of tears that I could not stand, he was afraid that he would be softened for a moment, and ruthlessly he went away without a glance towards me, and when he had gone out of sight, I fell limply to the ground, and was so completely sunk in agony, that I made my moans resound through all the fields, and sprinkled my teardrops all over the meadows.

“O my God,” I cried, “it is Thy will, it is written in Thy immortal will: once again the innocent have fallen victim to sin and injustice; punish me! God, I have suffered far less than You have suffered for us; let the pain I have endured to venerate You enable me one day to obtain the reward which You have promised to the weak, who, in their sufferings, always have their eyes turned toward You, and sing without pause of Your glory!”

It was all dark already, and I could not stand, much less go far. I remembered the underbrush where I had slept for a night four years before, under circumstances a little better and more miserable than now, and I crawled over it as best I could, and finding the place where I had been I lay down. The wound, which was still bleeding, agonized me, my spirit was oppressed, and my heart hid sorrow, and there I spent a night of misery beyond imagination.

At daybreak my youthful vigor and strong character gave me a little strength, and being too near the château alarmed me, I hastened away, and, stepping out of the woods, I determined to take my chances in the first dwelling I saw. I went into the little town of Clay, about twenty-four kilometers from Paris. I looked for a doctor, and was told the doctor’s house. I asked the doctor to dress my wounds, and I told him that I had left my mother’s house in Paris for a love dispute, and had had the misfortune to go into the forest of Bounty, and had fallen into the hands of some ruffians, who had beaten me as he had seen me, and that the doctor had given me a medical treatment for my wounds, on condition that I would go to the village clerk and dictate a minute of my statement, which I promised to do.

It seems likely that the doctor did some research, but I have never heard anyone talk about it. The doctor was willing to take me into his home until my wounds were healed. Because of his dedication to healing me, I was completely healed in less than a month.

As soon as I had recovered enough to get out of the house, the first thing I did was to find a girl in the village who was quite resourceful and quite clever, and to go to the Chateau de Broussac to find out what had happened since I had been away. Broussac’s castle to find out what had happened since I left.

I did not do it out of pure curiosity, and perhaps curiosity is dangerous and out of place here; but what little wages I had earned at the Countess’s house were left in my room, and I had less than six louis with me, whereas at the château I had near thirty. I did not think that the Marquis would be so cruel as to refuse to give me back the money which I had legally earned, and I was sure that after his first anger had passed, he would not treat me unfairly a second time. So I wrote him a letter that was as touching as possible… Alas! The letter was so moving that my sad heart may have inadvertently spoken for the devil.

I carefully concealed the place where I was staying, and only begged him to return to me my baggage and the little money I had hidden in my room. A country girl between twenty and twenty-five years of age, who was witty and intelligent, promised to deliver my letters, and also promised to gather information for me in secret, in order to satisfy me that I would ask her all sorts of questions when she returned.

I expressly cautioned her not to say where she had come from, not to mention me, not to mention me at any time, but only to say that she had received the letter from a man who had come from several dozen kilometers away. The country girl, whose name was Jeanette, set out, and twenty-four hours later she brought an answer, Madame, telling you above all what had happened at the house of the Marquis de Broussac, and what had happened at the house of the Marquis de Broussac, and what had happened to him. The most important thing is to tell you what happened at the house of the Marquis de Brusac, and then I will let you know what I received in reply.

His mother, the Countess, fell heavily ill on the day I left the castle, and died twenty-four hours later in agonizing and horrible convulsions; the relatives came, and the Count, pretending to be overwhelmed with grief, declared that his mother had been poisoned by a personal maid, named Sophie, who had fled the same day. Everyone searched for the maid, and when she was found, she was sent to the guillotine.

The Marquis, who had become even richer after receiving his mother’s legacy, could not have imagined that the safes, the jewels, the wealth of Madame de Broussac, unknown to all, had left her son with more than six hundred thousand francs in notes or cash, besides his income. The wealth of Madame de Broussac, unknown to all, had left her son with more than six hundred thousand francs in notes or cash, besides his income. People said that through his feigned misery he could not conceal his full happiness.

His relatives came at his request to observe the dissection of his mother’s body, and the kinsmen, mourning for the poor countess, vowed to avenge her by catching the murderer, and then departed, leaving the marquis to enjoy in silence the full rewards of his dastardly deed. Mr. de Broussac personally met with Jeanne d’Arc. M. Broussac had himself spoken with Jeanette, and had asked her many questions, of all kinds, to which the country girl had replied with so much firmness and frankness, that he was unable to do anything, but, without any further compulsion, decided to give her a letter of reply.

“Here is the letter, this accursed letter,” said Sophie, as she took it out of her coat pocket; “this is it, madam, and sometimes I feel that my heart needs it so much that I shall keep it till my last breath. You will read it if you are not afraid to sweat.”

“A shameless woman who was able to poison my mother had the audacity to write to me after committing this heinous crime. It was better for her to conceal her hiding place; she was certain that if people found out about her, she would have no good life. She also had the nerve to demand… What did she say about money and clothes? Did what she left behind outweigh what she stole? She stole when she lived in this house, and she stole when she finally finished her sins, did she steal any less? Do not allow her to send a second time, as she did this time, or the man who ran the errand for her will be arrested until justice discovers the place where this guilty woman is hiding.

”

Mrs. Loksangye returned the letter to Sophie and said, “Go on, my dear child. Mrs. Losange handed the letter back to Sophie and said, “Go on, my dear child, what a shameful attitude… To be rich and refuse to give back to a poor, poor girl the money she had earned legally, just because she did not want to be an accomplice, that is the most despicable and shameless act of all time.”

Sophie went on to relate her experience. Alas, ma’am, I wept for two days with this accursed letter, and I wept more for its vile and impudent attitude than for its refusal of my request.

I am a criminal again, I said to myself with a sigh, I have fallen into the cage of justice for the second time, only for having obeyed the law too much… It doesn’t matter, I don’t regret it; no matter what has happened to me, I have no pain in my conscience nor remorse, my soul is clean, I have not done anything else wrong, if anything, I have only trusted too much in the concepts of fairness and morality but I am sure that they will never forsake me.

I did not believe at all what the Marquis said that they were searching everywhere for me, which was not as true as it would have been dangerous for him if I had appeared in court, and I thought that deep down he was more afraid of seeing me, and that I had little reason to be afraid in the presence of his intimidations. These thoughts made me decide to remain in the place, and, if possible, to find a bit of work, and wait until my purse had risen a little before I left.

The doctor who healed me was named Rodin, and he suggested that I work for him. He was a man of thirty-five with a stern, rough and brutal character, but he had a good reputation in the region and was praised for his skill as a healer. There was no woman in his house, so he was happy to have a maid to run the household and look after him when he came home from work. He offered to pay me 200 francs a year and dividends, which I agreed to… but I didn’t trust my new master, who never knew who I was.

I worked in his house for two years, and my master never asked anything of me except what I had to do, which is a fair thing I should say for him. Though I have many painful memories of my time there, yet my mental stability has made me almost forget those sorrows. Whenever I did a good and moral thing, God must immediately bring misfortune upon me, and on this occasion God also took me away from a short period of happiness and threw me into a new catastrophe.

One day I was alone in the house, and as I was doing my duty, I heard moans coming from down in the cellar… I went down there… I got a better look… I heard a girl crying, but I couldn’t get into the place where she was hiding because of the closed door that separated her from me. All sorts of thoughts ran through my head… What could that little thing be doing in there? Mr. Rodin had no children, and I didn’t see any sisters or nieces etc. that he cared about and was punished by being locked up in the cellar; he lived a very disciplined life, and I didn’t believe that he would have locked up this young girl to satisfy his animalistic desires (note 11), so why would he have locked her up? I was so curious to answer this question that I boldly went to the girl and asked her what she was doing in there. Who was she?

The unfortunate girl answered me: “Alas, my lady, I am the daughter of a coal-vendor in the forest, and I am only twelve years old. The gentleman who lives here, while my father was away, with a friend of his, kidnapped me here yesterday. They both tied me up and threw me into a pocket full of bran, in which I could not cry out at all; they put me on horseback, and last night got me into this house, where they immediately put me into the cellar. I did not know what they were going to do with me, but as soon as I arrived here they immediately stripped me of my clothes, and subjected me to their examination naked, and they asked me how old I was, and at last the gentleman who looked like the master of the house, said to the other gentleman that it was necessary to reschedule the operation for the night after to-morrow, because I was too much frightened, and that the experiment would be better if I was a little quieter, and said that I fulfilled all the conditions of being a subject. all the conditions of being a subject.”

After these words the little girl fell silent and began to cry bitterly again. I asked her to be quiet, and I promised to look after her. I felt that I should find out what M. Rodin and his friend, who was also a surgeon, were doing with this unfortunate girl. But I had often heard them say the word ‘experimental subject,’ and on this occasion, on hearing the little girl say it, I at once suspected that it was probable that they had a dreadful plan to make a vivisection on the poor little girl.

I had some inquiries to make before I could ascertain whether this was the cruel plan or not. Monsieur Rodin had returned with his friend, and, as they dined together and prevailed upon me to leave them, I pretended to obey, but hid myself and listened to their conversation. Their conversation was only a further confirmation of the dreadful plan they were conceiving.

Mr. Rodin says: “Anatomy would not be complete without being able to examine the blood vessels in a violently dead child. For it is only from such contractions that we can obtain a complete analysis of this noteworthy organ.”

His friend said: “The same applies to the hymen, which protects virginity, and must be operated on with a child. What can we observe in an adolescent girl? Nothing; menstruation tears the hymen and makes all the findings incorrect.”

Rodin said, “What is most annoying is that all sorts of meaningless objections prevent the progress of technology… Can we be swayed by the cost of sacrificing just one subject to save millions of people? What’s the difference between killing by law and killing by us? The law is so wise. Is not its purpose to sacrifice one man to save thousands? I wish nothing could stop us.”

“Ah, for me, I’ve made up my mind.” The other said, “If I had dared to do it alone, I would have done it long ago. Doesn’t this poor girl, who was born into misfortune, love life very much? She’s doing herself and her family a favor.”

“If we buy her, her family will sell her for money. But my principle is that all lowly people are good test material, my friend; it is by testing them that we get a steady stream of valuable business, business that makes us rich…”

I need not tell you the rest of the conversation between the two of them; it was only about the art of healing, and I took no notice of it. But from this time onwards my mind was fixed on saving the poor victim at any cost; the progress of medical science was certainly valuable in every way, but it was too great a price to pay for an innocent life. After the two friends had parted, Rodin went to bed without saying a word to me.

The next day, the day of this cruel operation, he left the house as usual, only to tell me that he was coming back for dinner with his friends as he had done yesterday. As soon as he walked out the door, all I could think about was my plan… God help me, but what kind of retribution I was getting!

I went down to the cellar and questioned the little girl again… She answered me with the same words, the same fear; I asked her if she knew where they had left the key when they came out of the cellar… “I don’t know,” she replied, “but I think they took it with them… “

Anyway, as I continued to look around, my foot hit something in the mud, I bent down… and there was the key I was looking for… I opened the door… and the poor little girl threw herself on my knees, wetting my hands with her tears of gratitude… I didn’t even think about what I was risking, or the fate that was waiting for me. I was only focused on helping this child escape.

Fortunately I met no one when I took her out of the village, and I took her to the road that led to the forest and kissed her, rejoicing in her salvation and in the joy and comfort she would bring to her father when she reappeared before him.

The two doctors returned home at the appointed hour, their hearts filled with the hope of carrying out their ugly plan, and they happily and quickly finished their dinner and immediately went down to the cellar. In order to cover up what I’d done, I took the precaution of breaking the lock and returning the key to its place, creating the illusion that the little girl had escaped on her own… but the two men I was trying to deceive weren’t so easy to dupe… Rodin came back to the ground in a great rage, and he grabbed me and immediately punched and kicked me, asking me where I had gotten the little girl that he had locked in; I denied it at first… and soon my unfortunate frankness led me to admit everything.

By this time the look of ferocity and rage on the faces of the two villains had reached a point of no return; one suggested that the girl should be replaced by me, the other that I should be given a more terrible punishment, and as they talked they struck me, this one after the other, and at last knocked me unconscious, and I fell to the ground unconscious. Their fury was only a little calmed when Rodan revived me, and as soon as I regained consciousness they ordered me to strip naked. I obeyed with trembling. When I was as naked as they wished, one of them held me down while the other opened the knife; they cut off a toe from each of my feet, and then told me to sit down, and each of them pulled a tooth from my mouth.

“This is not the end of it,” said the brutish doctor, putting the iron in the fire as he spoke; “she was whipped when I took her in, and I shall brand her when I release her.”

This impudent man branded a red-hot iron on the back of my shoulder as he spoke, as one usually does only on thieves, and the doctor’s friend held me down so that I could not move but went along with him.

“The bitch, let’s see her come back, if she dares!” Rodan said in exasperation, pointing again to the humiliating brand on my shoulder, “With that brand, I have enough just cause to dismiss her secretly and quickly.

”

When they had finished speaking, the two doctors seized me and carried me all the way to the edge of the forest, where, it being night, they left me in cruel abandonment, warning me beforehand that I was not to say a word against them, or else it would be dangerous for me to do so, in view of the lowly position I was in.

Any other man would not have taken this intimidation to heart, for why should I be afraid, as long as it was proved that my brand had not been put on me by a court of law? But my weakness, my habitual honesty, the fear produced by my misfortunes in Paris and at the Château de Brussac. But my weakness, my habitual honesty, the fear of my misfortunes in Paris and at the Château de Broussac, had made me so disoriented and frightened, that I only wished to get out of this hellish place as soon as my wounds were a little better. The pain of my wounds was much relieved the next morning by the care with which they had dressed them.

I spent the most terrible night of my life under a tree, and at first light I moved off. The wounds on my feet prevented me from moving quickly, but I was so eager to get out of this ominous forest that I walked sixteen kilometers on the first day, and the same on the second and third. Unfortunately, I didn’t know my way around, and I didn’t ask anyone; I just circled around Paris, and it was only in the evening of the fourth day that I reached the Holy Land.

I knew that this road led to the southern provinces of France, and I decided to follow it as far as I could into these distant regions, where peace and rest, which I thought I could not find in my native land, might be waiting for me at the ends of the earth.

Wrong, terribly wrong! I do not know how many more dismal situations await me! All my possessions are a little less in the house of Rodin than in that of the Marquis de Brusac, so that I do not have to keep them separately. All my possessions are a little less in Rodin’s house than in that of the Marquis de Broussac, so that I do not have to keep them separately, but fortunately I have them all with me, in other words, about ten louis, which I had saved at de Broussac’s house, and which I had saved at the doctor’s house. In other words, about ten louis, which is the sum of what I had saved at the house of de Broussac, and what I had gotten from my work at the doctor’s.

I was too unfortunate to find that I was glad that they did not take this life-saving money of mine, which I thought would at least help me until I could find work. The marks of shame, such as the brand, were concealed in my clothes, and I thought I could keep them out of sight for ever, and that these would not prevent me from earning a living; I was only twenty-two years old, and though I was weak and slender, I was in good health, and my likeness had unfortunately been praised by too many, and I possessed a number of virtues that, though they often gave me trouble, comforted me, and I hoped that one day Providence would give them some recompense, or at least put the the calamities to which they attract a pause.

So I was filled with hope and courage, and walked as far as Sans, where my unhealed feet caused me pain that pierced my heart, and I decided to rest for a few days. But I dared not tell anyone the cause of my pain, and remembering that Rodin had used certain medicines to heal similar wounds, I went and bought some to heal myself.

A week’s rest had restored me to full health; perhaps I would have found a job at Sans, but I was so mindful of going as far away as possible, that I would not even look for a job, and went on my way, my object being to take my chances in the province of Dauphine. As a child I had heard people talk of this place, and I thought there was happiness here; we shall see how it turns out.

Throughout my life, whatever the circumstances, religious ideas have never left me. I scorned the empty sophisms of the unbelievers, which I considered as arising from their debauched lives, and not from a firm faith, and I confronted them with my conscience and courage, from both of which I always found a way of refuting them. Owing to my misfortunes, I was sometimes compelled to neglect going to worship, which I made up as soon as I could.

I started from Auxerre on June 7, a period I shall never forget. I had driven about eight kilometers that day, and was beginning to feel the heat; I climbed a small hill with a grove of trees a little way off the main road, to the left of the main road, and thought I would cool off on the top, and sleep there for a couple of hours, so as to avoid having to pay for an inn, and to be safer than if I had rested on the main road.

I went up the hill, sat down at the foot of an oak tree, ate some bread and water, which was considered my frugal lunch, and then I fell beautifully asleep. I enjoyed the quiet for two hours. As soon as I opened my eyes I thought that there was a pleasant view to the left of the main road, an endless forest, the middle of which was about twelve kilometers or so away from me, and I saw vaguely a bell tower, timidly appearing in the air.

“What a wonderful quiet,” I thought to myself, “I envy the bell-tower a long stay in this place! This bell-tower must be the secluded retreat of a few nuns, or a few holy hermits, who are bent on religion, and on doing their duty, away from this sinister society, in which sin has often struggled with innocence, and has constantly triumphed. I believe that all the good people live in this belfry.”

As I was thinking about this, a girl of my age suddenly appeared in front of me, herding a flock of sheep. I asked her what kind of people lived in that bell tower. She answered me that what I saw was a convent, inhabited by four Ostinian Reformed hermits, whose piety, abstinence, and abstinence from food and drink are without equal.

The girl also said to me: “Once a year, people make a pilgrimage to the convent to worship the Mother of God, who is able to show miracles, and whoever is pious and asks for anything from the Mother of God will receive it.”

I was so excited that I wanted to immediately kneel at Our Lady’s feet and beg her to help me. I asked the girl if she would accompany me. She answered me that it was impossible, because her mother was always waiting for her at home, but that the way to the bell tower was easy to follow, and she pointed it out to me, adding that the presiding priest was a most honorable and holy man, and that he would be sure to receive you well, and perhaps help you if you needed help.

“They call it the Honorable Father Raphael.” The girl went on, “He is an Italian, but he has spent his whole life in France; he likes the quietness of this place, and the Pope, who is a relative of his, has several times suggested that he should be offered a high salary and a good fortune, which he has refused. He was of a well-known family, of a gentle and helpful disposition, about fifty years of age, and very pious. The people of this region regard him as a saint.”

The words of the shepherdess inflamed my zeal, and I could not wait to make a pilgrimage to this convent, and to make up for my past neglect of my duty by worship. Though I myself was in great need of alms, I still gave the girl a few dollars.

I set out for the monastery, which was called “St. Mary of the Woods”. When I came back up to the plain, I could not see the bell tower, and only the forest was my guide. I did not ask the shepherdess how many miles it was from my place to the convent, but I soon realized that the distance between the two places was much greater than I had estimated. But I wasn’t discouraged. When I reached the edge of the forest and saw that it was still light, I decided to go deeper into the forest, thinking that I would reach the monastery before nightfall… and then I realized that there was no sign of anyone on all sides, not a single house. There was only one trail with very few footsteps on it, and I had to follow it regardless.

I had walked at least twenty kilometers from the hill to here, and I thought I would reach my destination in twelve kilometers at the most. I saw nothing in front of me, and the sun was about to leave me; finally I heard the sound of a bell less than four kilometers away. I followed the sound of the bells, walking faster and faster, and the path became wider and wider… From the time I heard the bells, after an hour’s walk, I saw the fence, and then the abbey.

The location of the abbey is really secluded, there is not a single house around, the nearest one is twenty-four kilometers away, and the abbey is surrounded by a twelve-kilometer layer of forest. The abbey is situated in a depression, and it took me half a day of downhill walking to get there, which is why I couldn’t see the bell tower when I got back to the plains.

In the gardener’s hut of the monastery lived a monk who was in charge of the gardens, and in order to enter the monastery you had to ask the gardener first. I asked this saintly hermit if he could send me to the presiding priest… He asked me what my business was… I told him it was a religious duty… A wish attracted me to this pious hermitage… I had suffered a thousand hardships… and if I could kneel for one minute at the feet of the Virgin Mary or at the feet of the presiding priest of the house for one minute, I would be compensated for the hardships I had suffered, for the house housed the icon of the Miracle Manifestation ( Note 12).

When the friar heard this he told me to rest, and he immediately went into the convent. It was already dark, and he said that the priests were at dinner, and that he would not return until later. At last he came back with the priest, who said to me, “This is Father Clément, Mademoiselle, he is the steward of the convent, and he has come to see if your business is important, in order to decide whether or not to disturb the presiding priest.”

Father Clément, a forty-five year old man, unusually fat and tall, with a fierce, dark gaze and a cold, raspy voice, did not comfort me at first, but rather startled me… I shuddered, and, strangely enough, all the disasters of the past appeared as if they could not be suppressed in my confused memory.

“What do you want?” The priest asked me rather gruffly. “Is it time to come to church?

You look like a dilettante.”

I hastened to fall at his feet and said, “Father, I think it is permissible to enter the church day and night; I have come from a far country, and my heart is full of piety and love, and I ask the priest to hear my confession if possible, and when you have fully recognized my conscience, you will know whether I am worthy to kneel before the statue of the Virgin which you have consecrated.”

“But this is not the time for confession,” said the priest, softening his tone a little; “where will you spend the night? We have no room here for your lodging; you had better come back in the morning.”

I replied to him that there were so many reasons why I could not come in the morning, and instead of answering me, he went and informed the presiding priest. In a few minutes I heard the door of the church open, and the presiding priest came into the gardener’s cottage to me, and asked me to enter the church with him. I thought I should describe to you at once what kind of a man Father Raphael was: his age was the same as I had been told, but he was young, and looked as if he were only forty years old; he was thin, rather tall, with a wise and gentle look, spoke French well, though with a slight Italian accent, and was outwardly ostentatious, but inwardly insidious and malicious, as I shall have plenty of opportunity of proving to you hereafter.

“My son,” said the priest to me, with a beaming face, “although it is very late, and we are not in the habit of receiving the faithful at night, yet I am still willing to hear your confession, and after hearing it we will find a way to give you a good night’s rest, so that on the morrow you may be able to make your offerings to our consecrated icons in time to homage.”

When he had finished speaking, the priest lit several lamps around the iconostasis, told me to kneel down, ordered the gardener friar to go away and close all the doors, and asked me to feel free to tell him everything. The shock that Clément had caused me by meeting someone so apparently gentle vanished completely, and I bowed my head at the priest’s feet and confessed my sins, and then I told him everything I had experienced. I was always naïve and trusting again, and I did not hide anything about me from him at all. I told him all my faults, I told him all my misfortunes, I didn’t hide them at all, I even let him know the brand of shame that the abominable Rodin had put on me.

Fr. Raphael listened to me very attentively, and he even asked me to repeat certain details a few times with kindness and compassion… The questions he asked me several times in a row were about the following: 1. Whether or not I was really a Parisian and a fatherless orphan. 2;

2. Is it true that I have no parents, no friends, no relatives to turn to, no one to whom I can correspond.

3. Did I tell the shepherdess that I wanted to come to the convent, and did I make an appointment to meet her on my return?

4. Whether I am indeed a virgin and only 22 years old.

5. Can I be sure that I was not followed and that I was not seen coming into the convent?

I answered his questions with a face full of innocence and fully satisfied him, whereupon the priest stood up and shook my hand and said to me, “Come, my child, it is too late this evening to take you to worship the Blessed Virgin, tomorrow I will fulfill your request to receive the Eucharist at the feet of the icon, for now think of yourself first and go to supper and to bed. “

He said as he led me towards the sacristy.

“What?” I could not help but feel a little uneasiness, and I asked him, “Father, do I eat and sleep in your chambers?”

“Where else, fair pilgrimess?” The priest replied, opening the door to the cloister and leading me into the house… “Why, are you afraid to spend the night with four monks? Ah, my angel, you’ll soon learn that we’re not as religious as we seem, and that we know how to have fun with a beautiful novice…”

As the priest spoke these words, he nastily clasped a part of my body with his hand; shame prevented me from saying it, but I trembled all over my body, down to the depths of my heart: “O fair God,” I said to myself, “am I once more the victim of my good thoughts? Does my desire to approach the most honored things of the Church constitute a sin to be punished?”

At this point we continued to travel in the darkness, the priest breathing more and more rapidly, and from time to time he stopped to change his nasty gestures. Encouraged by his gradual success, he reached under my skirt with one hand and grabbed me with the other, making it impossible for me to escape, as he groped me wantonly in several places and forced me to submit to nasty kisses that made me feel very much at home.

“Ah, God, I’m screwed!” I said to him.

“I suppose so,” the bad man answered me, “but this is no longer the time to think about it.”

We went on, he growing bolder and bolder, and I nearly fainted; and when we reached the end of the cloister, we met with a staircase, and Raphael called me to step in front of him, and, perceiving the slightest sign of resistance on my part, he pushed me roughly, scolded me severely, and told me again and again that there was no longer any way of retiring from it now.

“Beast! You’ll soon find that even if you fall into a den of robbers, it’s no worse than if you fall into the hands of four lecherous wolves who are about to make fun of you.”

The things that made me tremble cascaded before my eyes, and I had no more time to be disturbed by these few words; they had just penetrated my ears, and the other things that frightened me had already assailed my five senses. As soon as the door opened, I saw three priests and three young girls seated around a table, all six of them in very nasty garments; two of the girls were completely naked and were undressing the third, and the three priests were in a similar state.

“My friends,” Raphael said as he walked in, “we lacked a girl, and now we have one; allow me to introduce you to a true natural beauty; she is Lucrece (Note 13) reincarnated, with the brand of a slut on her shoulder, and here,” he said while making a gesture that was both nasty and explicit, “here is the proven proof of virginity. said while making a gesture that was both nasty and explicit… “Here, my friends, is the definitive proof of recognized virginity.”

The sound of laughter filled every corner of the room, the laughter of a newcomer; and Father Clément, whom I saw at the beginning, half drunk, immediately cried out, saying that he would verify the truth of it. As I must give you a picture of what I was with, I must interrupt my narrative, and as far as possible I will not leave you in suspense as to my situation. I think that my situation has become rather critical, and that you may not be interested in it.

You are already fairly well acquainted with Raphael and Clément, I can talk about the other two.

Father Jérôme, the oldest in the convent, a lecherous old man of sixty, as severe and brutal as Clément, and more of a drinker than Clément, was tired of natural pleasures, and was obliged to seek some perverse excitement in order to revitalize himself.

Father Antonin was a short man of forty, dry and thin, with a temper like fire, a lecherous appearance, hairy as a bear, and a debauched and uncontrolled life, and the world could not have found a man so fond of amusing beauties and so vicious as he.

Little Flower was the youngest of the women, a native of Dijon, about fourteen years of age, and the daughter of a rich merchant in the city of Dijon, who had been kidnapped by Raphael’s men; Raphael was rich and powerful, and most influential in the order of the friars to which he belonged, and would not spare any one or any thing that would gratify his bestial desires. She had brown hair, a pair of extremely beautiful eyes, and very endearing features.

The next was Cornelli, who was about sixteen years of age, with beautiful blonde hair, a striking look, a crystal white skin, and a waist too beautiful for her own good, a native of Auxerre, and a father who was a wine merchant, and who had been seduced by Raphael himself, and had secretly fallen into his trap.

The third was Onfale, a very tall woman of thirty, of a gentle, gentle appearance, well defined in every part of her body, with a head of gorgeous hair, breasts of incomparable beauty, and eyes full of tenderness; she was the daughter of a rich vineyard owner in Jouvannes, and was about to be married, at the age of sixteen, to a man who would make her rich, when she was seduced by Jérôme, in a very singular manner, to separate her from her own family.

This is the class of people with whom I am to live, and this is the place that hides the dirt, which I at first thought was a convent, and must be inhabited by many virtuous people, but which I never imagined to be a dumpster.

They immediately made me realize that living in this horrible circle, I would be better off just emulating their submissiveness.

Raphael said to me: “You can easily guess that your calamity has led you to this isolated abode, and that all resistance is useless. According to you, you have suffered many hardships, and this is true according to your account of your past experiences, but you have not yet suffered the greatest hardships for a virtuous woman. Is it normal to be a virgin at your age? Is it a miracle that shouldn’t be prolonged any further? …Your female companions here were polite when they were forced to serve us, and then they obeyed when they realized that it only caused them to be abused, and you’ll be good enough to do what they did.”

“Sophie, in a situation like yours, do you still want to defend yourself? Open your eyes and see how you have been abandoned to the world! By your own admission, you have no parents or friends; look, you’re in the desert, no one is coming to rescue you, no one knows you exist, you’re in the hands of four lecherous men, and of course they won’t let you go… To whom do you turn? Turn to the Lord of Heaven, to whom you were praying with great devotion just now, and who took advantage of your devotion to cast you into a trap with even greater certainty…”

“You see clearly that there is no human or divine power in the world that can take you out of our hands, nor is it possible to find a way, among the things that man can do, or among the miracles that can help you, so that your virginity, of which you are so proud, can continue to be preserved; or that can prevent you from becoming a prey in the mouths of the four of us. Strip naked, Sophie, and hope that your unconditional obedience will procure our goodwill, or else our goodwill can at once be transformed into the most cruel and humiliating penalties, which will only redouble our wrath, and will not in the least enable you to escape our pleasure-seeking and tyrannical wantonness.”

I knew, of course, that this dreadful speech meant that I had no chance of survival, but would I not be guilty if I did not follow the guidance of my nature and conscience and take the last course? I threw myself at Raphael’s feet and begged him with all my strength not to take advantage of my current situation to humiliate me, wetting his knees with my bitter tears I had the audacity to cry my way through everything that my heart desired but I didn’t know that tears had a different charm for criminals and perverts I didn’t know that all my attempts at touching the king of these devils would only have the effect of Raphael stood up angrily, frowning, and said, “Seize this whore, Antoine, strip her naked in front of us at once, and teach her that pity and sympathy have no place in the eyes of men like us.”

Antoine grabbed me with a dried and sinewy arm, cursing fiercely as he moved, and in the blink of an eye he made to rip off my entire body, so that I too was to be naked and exposed to the group.

“What a beautiful pussy,” said Hot Rom, “I’ve never seen such a good looking chick in thirty years.”

“Wait a moment,” said the presiding priest, “there must be some regulation of our actions; familiarize yourselves, my friends, with the methods by which we receive the newcomer, and let her try each of them without exception, and in the meantime the other three females must remain with us as a reserve or to stimulate us.”

Those present immediately formed a circle around me, and over the course of more than two hours, the four perverts scrutinized me, watched me, touched me, each of them appreciating and criticizing me at times.

Here our fair prisoner, her face reddening, continued: Madame, I beg your permission to pass over some of the obscene details of this first encounter, but imagine, Madame, what the shameless wolves must have done in such a situation, and you will probably have some idea of their first orgies, if you imagine them comparing, contrasting, and contrasting me with my companions one by one; but this is too trivial an act in comparison with the atrocities I was soon to suffer. you will probably have some idea of what their first orgies were like; but they were so insignificant in comparison with the atrocities I was soon to suffer.