The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th Century Read online

  One must imagine that Muguetto and his reason had taken leave of one another.

  Blondina, standing, looked like a scrap of winding sheet, whence a soul had escaped, in other words still swaying about like something, and not someone.

  The man of Tortosa turned like a fish quickly flashing its tail in the water:

  ‘No more gentlemanly speech from my lips for you,’ he cried to Sangouligo ‘This moment gives me leave, even demands it; I could not do otherwise – and my sword unsheathed! Throw your Blondina, cast her upon it; if you will not, I shall throw myself on you and you will see! Waste no time, it must be done, it is resolved, I want it so, and take away this monk.’

  Although startled by this idea of vengeance, still intoxicated as if he had drunk, and demented like Muguetto, Sangouligo was pleased enough by it. It was as if two damned souls had to share out Heaven between them. Blondina, staggering was about to fall on Monako when, in this same instant, Sangouligo caught her and pushed her upon the weapon that Muguetto held straight with both hands.

  There came a faint and dreadful sound between the sword of the man of Tortosa and the body of the Spanish woman. The wretched lady died in seconds, without one drop of blood being visible. The scabbard wiped the sword clean.

  ‘It is left to us two,’ said Muguetto; ‘You are pale, and I too, I should be so. I am consumed by shivering; let us be quick in our match. Which of us two shall die first? The other will live if it should please him. And how are we to settle it? This sword exists no more for us. It must be chance …’

  The man of Tortosa did not finish, but cried out: ‘Turn away, Sangouligo, and when I tell you that it’s done you are to look.’

  The Spaniard obeyed.

  Then, moving behind Blondina who was on the armchair that Monako had filled, the man of Tortosa ran his fingers like lightning over the head that was slumped to one side, and then, placing the closed hands of the dead woman in his own, likewise closed, he called out to Sangouligo: ‘It is done! It is done! Is it in this one or in that one? Answer?’

  The Spaniard, understanding that death now was a matter of guessing something, pointed and said: ‘In that one!’

  ‘No,’ the man of Tortosa swiftly retorted, ‘in this one!’ And he revealed one of Blondina’s hands, then opened the fist, then added: ‘You are free, Sangouligo. Leave me, go and have yourself a dance if you will; but, see now, Sangouligo, it belongs to me. Do you see it? I am going to grind it down, and then … Depart! Depart! I will have none of you! I alone must follow her. Depart! You know where the key is.

  What Muguetto frenziedly displayed to Sangouligo was Blondina’s glass eye, which he had just removed from her head.

  When daylight came, Sangouligo was no longer in Tortosa, and people talked of the monk’s poor little one, then they said;

  You know well Muguetto of Tortosa, the man who always carried orange blossom in his hand? Well now! He poisoned himself with the eye of a corpse.

  Contes cruels

  Dorci, or The Vagaries of Chance

  The Marquis de Sade

  Of all the virtuous actions which nature has put at our disposition, the performance of a good service to a neighbour is incomparably the one from which we derive the greatest pleasure. Is there anything in the world that gives us more delight than lending succour to a fellow human being? At such moments do not our souls almost assume the qualities of the supreme Being who made us? Misfortunes, we are told, often follow such acts of charity: no matter, we have given pleasure to ourselves, we have given pleasure to others. What else do we require?

  For many a year there had been no greater friendship than that which existed between the Count and the Marquis de Dorci: they were brothers, both about the same age, that is to say between thirty and thirty-two, and the two of them were officers in the same regiment. Nothing had ever come between them; and in order to further strengthen the ties which were so precious to them both, especially since the death of their father, at which moment they had found themselves master of their own fortune, they shared the same house, were waited on by the same servants, and had resolved only to marry two women whose qualities were equal to their own and who would agree to the continuation of this charming communal existence for the rest of their days.

  The tastes of these two brothers were far from identical though. The Count de Dorci, the elder of the two, enjoyed tranquillity, solitude, walking in the countryside and reading. Although his temperament had a somewhat gloomy cast, he was kind, sensitive and honest. For him, helping others was a real joy. Little inclined to company, he was at his happiest only during the couple of months which his duties permitted him to spend every year at a charming property the brothers owned on the Aigle hillside in the Forêt du Perche.

  The Marquis de Dorci, infinitely more lively than his brother, infinitely more a man-of-the-world, did not share his brother’s love of the countryside. Graced with a charming figure and the kind of wit that women always find fascinating, he was rather too fashion conscious, and these defects, which he never learned to overcome, coupled with his ardent nature proved his undoing. A siren from the region we have just described took such a shine to him that he was no longer, so to speak, his own master. That year he failed to join his regiment and entirely neglected his brother in order to spend all his time in the small village where his idol lived; and it was there that, preoccupied by the object of his adoration, he completely lost touch with the very ground beneath his feet, which he hardly noticed any longer, and sacrificed his notion of duty and all the other sentiments which had formerly bound him to the amiable company of his brother.

  It is said that love is spurred on by jealousy, and that was certainly the case with the Marquis. But chance had thrown a rival in his way who was, or so it was rumoured, a man as dangerous as he was lacking in courage. Such were the reasons – the desire to please his mistress, the need to forestall the plots hatched by his perfidious rival, and the urge to abandon himself blindly to his passion – that detained this young man far from the arms of the brother who idolised him and who wept bitter tears over his absence and apparent indifference. The Count hardly received as much as a word from the Marquis. When he wrote, there was either no reply or one so hasty that it only served all the more to convince him that his brother was distracted and that they were gradually drifting apart. Meanwhile, he himself followed his customary life in the country: books, long walks, innumerable acts of charity. Such were his unique occupations, and in this he was happier than his brother, since he was at least master of himself while his brother, who lived in a state of constant agitation, hardly had time for a moment’s reflection.

  This is where matters stood when one fine day the Count, preoccupied by what he was reading and seduced by the warm weather, found himself, just at the time he needed to be thinking of turning back, more than two leagues from the edge of his own estate and no less than six from his château, in the corner of a distant wood, completely incapable of making up his mind which path he should take. Looking all around him in confusion, he spotted a tiny peasant’s cottage about a hundred yards away and he decided to ask the way there and rest for a moment.

  He reaches the house … He opens the door … He steps into a dingy kitchen, the largest room in the cottage, and there his sensitive soul is exposed to a most irresistible tableau. What does he see but a young girl of sixteen who is cradling in her arm the head of a forty-year-old woman, presumably her mother, who has fainted. The young girl is weeping.

  ‘Whoever you are,’ says she, ‘I hope you have not come to tear my mother away from me. I would rather you kill me than disturb this unfortunate woman any more.’

  As she said this, Annette threw herself at the feet of the Count and, still imploring him, she made a rampart between him and her mother by raising her arms towards heaven.

  ‘In truth, my child,’ said the Count, as touched as he was surprised, ‘these signs of fear are not necessary. I have no idea what has alarmed you, my friends, but
I do know that, whatever your misfortunes, heaven has sent me to you not as an enemy but as your protector.’

  ‘Our protector!’ exclaimed Annette as she climbed to her feet and hurried to the side of her mother who, recovering consciousness, had taken refuge in the corner, terrified out of her wits. ‘Mother! Do you hear? A protector! This gentleman says he will protect us, that he has been sent by heaven in answer to our prayers!’

  Turning to the Count, she said:

  ‘It would, indeed, be a noble action to come to our aid, sir. There cannot be two creatures on the face of the earth more to be pitied than we are. Help us, help us! This worthy woman has not eaten for three days! And what will I find to feed her with when she is in a condition to eat? There is not a crust of bread to be found in the whole house. Everyone has abandoned us … We have been left to die by inches, yet as God is my witness we have done no harm. Alas, my poor father! The most honest and the most unfortunate of men! He was no more guilty than you are … And yet it is perhaps tomorrow that … Kind sir, never have you set foot in a more wretched house than this one. God is said never to abandon those in distress, yet there can be none more needy than us …’

  The Count, who realised from the girl’s behaviour, her wild words and the harrowing state of the mother that some terrible catastrophe had befallen the household, immediately wondered whether his charitable nature had not found the perfect opportunity to exercise its customary virtue. He began by begging the two women to calm themselves, repeated his assurances of his protection in order to give them confidence, and insisted that they recount the story of their troubles. After another torrent of tears, this time caused by their unexpected good fortune, and Annette having invited the Count to be seated, she told him the tragic tale of the atrocious misfortunes which had overtaken them.

  ‘My father, sir, is one of the poorest and most honest men of the region. His name is Christophe Alain and he is a woodcutter by trade. His poor wife, whom you see before you, had but two children: a son, who is now nineteen, and myself, just turned sixteen. My brother and I were boarders at a school in Aigle for more than three years, and we can both read and write; but our father took us away after we had celebrated our first communion; the cost was too much for him, and my poor parents had to subsist on bread in order to give us the rudiments of an education. When we returned home, my brother was strong enough to go out to work with my father, and things were looking up for us. In fact, fortune seemed to shine on us; it was as if the exactitude with which we fulfilled our duties had earned the blessing of heaven; then, a week ago today, the most terrible catastrophe which can befall people like us – without either money, credit or protection – occurred.

  ‘My brother was not with him that day and my father was working alone, some three leagues away, in the forest on the Alençon side, when he noticed a dead man lying at the foot of a tree … He approached the corpse with the intention of doing, if it was not already too late, whatever he could to help. He turned the man over and was rubbing a little wine which he carried in his gourd into his temples when four mounted officers suddenly rode up to him at a gallop, arrested him and carried him off to the prison at Rouen where he was charged with murdering the man he was trying to revive. You can easily understand our anxiety, sir, when our father failed to return home. My brother, who had just come in, immediately went out to look for him and told us the bad news the next day. We gave him the little money there was in the house, and he set off for Rouen to do what he could. He wrote to us three days later, we received the letter yesterday.

  ‘Here it is, sir,’ said Annette bursting into tears again, ‘that fatal letter. My brother urges us to be on our guard, that we may be herded off to Rouen at any moment to be confronted with our father who, although innocent, is beyond all help. The identity of the dead man is still not known, a house-to-house search is underway, but everyone is quite sure that he must be some local gentleman whom my father robbed and murdered, and that he threw the money into the woods when he realised he was about to be arrested. The evidence for this is that they did not find so much as a sou in the dead man’s pockets … I ask you though, sir, does it not seem more likely that this man, who might have been dead for as long as a day before my father found him, was robbed by whoever killed him or by somebody who stumbled across him in the forest? You must believe me, sir! My poor father could never have done such a thing! He would rather die himself than kill another man … Now you know everything that ails us, sir. Forgive my tears and help us as best you are able. We shall spend the rest of our lives praying for the safe return of our loved ones! God is sometimes moved by the tears of the poor and, if he listens to our prayers, we shall beg him to watch over you too and never let you want for anything.’

  The Count was not unmoved by this tale of woes. Wanting to do his best for them, he began by asking them under the jurisdiction of which lord they lived and persuading them that it was necessary to seek his protection.

  ‘Alas, sir!’ Annette replied, ‘we are under the jurisdiction of the monks, and we have already asked their help. They told us that they could not assist in any way. If we lived only two leagues away on the other side of the hill, we would be on the lands of the Count de Dorci and he would surely assist us. There is not a more charitable lord for miles around …’

  ‘And you can think of no-one to turn to except him?’

  ‘No, sir. No-one at all.’

  ‘Well, I shall intercede with him on your behalf. I can go further, and promise you his protection. I give you my word that he will do everything in his power to help you.’

  ‘Sir, you are kindness itself. How can we possibly repay you,’ cried the two women.

  ‘By forgetting all about it as soon as I have been successful.’

  ‘Forget all about it, sir? Never! Only death will extinguish the memory of your charity!’

  ‘Very well, my children,’ said the Count, ‘I see that I must reveal who I am. You see before you the Count de Dorci himself.’

  ‘You, sir? The Count de Dorci?’

  ‘In person, my friend, your staff and your protector.’

  ‘Mother, mother! We are saved!’ exclaimed young Annette.

  ‘My children,’ said the Count, ‘it is getting late and I have a long journey home ahead of me. Although I must leave you now, I promise to be in Rouen tomorrow evening and from there I shall send word within a couple of days of the steps I have taken. I shall say no more for the moment, but rest assured of my undivided attention. In the meanwhile, Annette, you must be in need of some financial assistance; here is fifteen louis. Make use of them for your domestic wants; I will take care of your father and brother.’

  ‘My lord, your generosity knows no bounds! This is more than unexpected. God Almighty! Has ever such charity shone forth from a mortal soul! But my lord,’ continued Annette, throwing herself at the feet of the Count, ‘you cannot be made of human clay, you must be the very godhead come down from on high to bring succour to the needy. How can we possibly repay you? Tell us how we may be of service to you. You have only to say the word.’

  ‘There is one little service you could render me straight away, my dear Annette,’ said the Count. ‘I am utterly lost and have no idea of my way home. If you would be so good as to accompany me a couple of miles, you shall entirely acquit yourself of any debt you may have towards me – a debt, moreover, on which your sweet and sensitive soul places a higher value than its true worth.’

  The haste with which Annette fell in with the Count’s wishes may easily be imagined: she hurried before him, pointing out the way and singing his praises. If she paused for a moment, it was to bathe her benefactor’s hand in tears, and the Count, suffused with the pleasant sensation of being loved, enjoyed a brief foretaste of celestial happiness and felt like a god on earth.

  Humanity in all your glory! If you are truly the daughter of the sky and the queen of men, how can you allow a source of pain and remorse to be the recompense of your worshippers while
those who continually offend you triumph as they insult you on the debris of your altars?

  Some two leagues or so from Christophe’s house, the Count regained his bearings.

  ‘It is late, my child,’ he said to Annette. ‘I know where I am now; you should go home, your mother will be worried about you. Assure her of my support and tell her that I shall not come back from Rouen without her husband.’

  Annette burst into tears now she had to leave the Count; she would have followed him to the end of the earth … She asked his permission to embrace his knees.

  ‘No, Annette, it is I who shall embrace you,’ he replied, as he held her chastely in his arms. ‘Now, return home and continue to serve God, your parents, and your neighbours. If you remain honest, the benediction of heaven shall never forsake you.’

  Annette clutched the Count’s hands, her tears and sobs preventing her from saying what her sensitive soul would have wished. Dorci, likewise overwhelmed with emotion, embraced her a second time before gently pushing her away and making off.

  Citizens of this century! Whoever reads this, take good note of the empire virtue has over an uncorrupted soul and, if you are incapable of imitating such a model, then at least allow yourself to be touched by it. The Count was hardly more than thirty-two-years-old, master of all around him, in the middle of a forest, he had a beautiful girl in his arms who was totally beholden to him … He wept over the misfortunes which had befallen her and his only thought was how best to help her.