‘Madame, have pity on me…’
‘People starve through indulging in pity.’
‘But what would you have me do?’
‘You must return to Monsieur Dubourg – you must satisfy him, and bring me back some cash. I shall go and see him and make up, if I can, for your silly behaviour. I shall offer him your apologies. But mind you behave better next time!’
Ashamed and in despair at not knowing which path to take, seeing myself harshly repulsed by everyone, and without any other resource, I told Madame Desroches (that was my landlady’s name) that I was ready for everything in order to placate her. She went off to see the financier, and on her return informed me that she had experienced considerable difficulty in prevailing on him to grant me another chance – that only by dint of repeated entreaties had she persuaded him to see me again the following morning. She ended by warning me that I had better keep an eye on my conduct, for if I disappointed him again, or disobeyed him in the least, he would himself undertake the business of having me locked up for life.
Next day I arrived at the mansion quite excited. Dubourg was alone, and in a more indecent state than on the previous evening. Brutality, libertinism, all the marks of debauchery shone forth from his sullen features.
‘You have la Desroches to thank for my welcome,’ he grumbled in a harsh tone; ‘for it is only on her account that I condescend to grant you my kindness for a space. You should certainly feel undeserving of it after your conduct yesterday! Undress immediately! And if you offer anything like the slightest resistance to my desires, two men who are waiting in my ante-room will take you to a place which you will never leave again while there is life in your body…’
‘Oh, sir!’ I wept, throwing myself at the knees of this despicable man, ‘relent, allow yourself some mercy, I beseech you! I would rather die a thousand deaths than betray the principles I received during my childhood. Do you not realise that you will no sooner have accomplished your crime than the spectacle of my despair will overwhelm you with remorse…’
But the infamies to which Dubourg had abandoned himself whilst I spoke hindered me from proceeding further. I realised the folly of pretending to myself that I could affect a man who found my grief merely a vehicle for the increase of his horrible passions. He became more and more inflamed at my bitter accents, at my weeping and shuddering, relishing them with an inhumanity which frightened me, and further preparing himself for his criminal attempts. He rose to his feet, revealing himself to me in a state in which reason rarely triumphs, and during which the resistance of the object which causes such loss of reason is but an added stimulus to the delirium of the senses. He grasped me brutally; impetuously he tore away those veils which still concealed what he was burning to enjoy; then, in turn, he abused me, flattered me, caressed me, and treated me with contempt…Oh! what a picture! Almighty God, what a strange medley of hardness and mad unbridled lust! It seemed as if the Supreme Being, during the first of such circumstances in my life, wished to imprint eternally on my soul an image of all the horror I ought to feel for the kind of crime, or sin, which so often has its genesis in an abundance of evils similar to those with which I was threatened…But was there necessity for complaint at this hour? Certainly not – for I owed my very safety to his excesses…A little less debauchery and he would have had his will of me; but the fires of Dubourg’s ardour were extinguished by the effervescence of his attempts. Heaven avenged, on my behalf, all the assaults to which the monster tried to abandon himself – for the loss of his force before the sacrifice preserved me from becoming his victim.
Nevertheless, Dubourg only became the more insulting. He accused me of being the cause of his weakness, and wished to recompense himself by fresh outrages and abuses of an even more terrifying nature. There was nothing disgusting he did not say to me, nothing he did not attempt, nothing his vile imagination, the hardness of his nature, and his depraved morals did not cause him to undertake. But my awkwardness tired his patience, especially as I made not the slightest attempt to play up to him. You may well imagine that it required considerable fortitude on my part to lend myself in such a manner; nor has the passage of time been able to obliterate my remorse…Nothing, however, succeeded; his final attempts failed miserably; and my submission lost its power to inflame him. In vain he successively passed from tenderness to severity, from severity to tyranny, from glances of loving sympathy to the excesses of filth and lust. At length we were equally tired – a condition which fortunately persisted and prevented his being able to recover the ability necessary for truly dangerous attacks. He gave over, but made me promise to return the following day; and in order to be absolutely sure of this he paid me only the sum I owed la Desroches. And so I returned to the woman’s house exceedingly humbled by my adventure, and firmly decided, whatever might happen to me in the future, never to expose myself to this man a third time. I expressed these ideas to my landlady when paying her, and decried with maledictions the old rogue who had been capable of so cruelly taking advantage of my misery. Nevertheless, my curses, far from bringing on him the wrath of God, seemed only to bring him good fortune. Eight days later I learned that this notorious libertine had just received from the government a grant which increased his annual revenue to more than 400,000 livres. I was lost in reflections on this and similar inconsistencies of destiny, when a ray of hope seemed suddenly to lighten my heart.
La Desroches came to tell me that at last she had discovered a house where I would gladly be received, providing I conducted myself well therein.
‘Oh! Merciful heaven,’ I cried delightedly, flinging myself into her arms, ‘– that is the very condition I should myself lay down; do not doubt my decision for an instant – I accept the offer with pleasure…’
And so I left the home of Desroches for what I hoped would be a changed and better period of life.
My new master was an old usurer who had become rich not only by way of lending money, but also by robbing everyone with whom he came into contact – whenever he found it possible to do so safely and with impunity. He lived on the rue Quincampoix, in an apartment on the first floor, accompanied by an old mistress whom he called his wife and who was at least as wicked as he himself.
‘Sophie,’ said this miser to me (for that was the name I had assumed in order to conceal my own), ‘my dear Sophie, the first of the virtues necessary to anyone who lives in my house is that of honesty…And if ever I should find you appropriating to yourself the tenth part of one of my pennies, I shall have you hanged – hanged, do you understand, until it would be impossible to revive you! For if my wife and I are able to enjoy a few small pleasures in our old age, it is only because it is the fruit of our excessive labours and profound sobriety. By the way, my child, do you eat a lot?’
‘Only a few ounces of bread a day, sir,’ I replied; ‘together with a little water and some soup when I am lucky enough to be able to have it.’
‘Soup! Soup! – good heavens!’ exclaimed the old miser to his wife – ‘Let us bewail the extravagance of luxury and its progress in our times!’ Then he continued: ‘For a year this child has been looking for a job; for a year she has been dying of starvation; and at the same time she wants to eat soup! We ourselves have it only rarely – once every Sunday, to be precise – we who have worked ourselves like galley-slaves for forty years. You will receive three ounces of bread a day, my girl, half a bottle of river water, and every eighteen months one of my wife’s old dresses from which you can make your petticoats. At the end of a year, if we are satisfied with your services, and if your approach to economy corresponds with our own; if, in short, you order arrangements so that our domestic matters prosper, then we will pay you three crowns.
‘Looking after us is only a small matter. It is simply a case of cleaning and polishing this six-roomed flat three times each week. And, of course, you will make the beds, answer the door, powder my wig, dress the