we reached the cottage of a poacher, an intimate friend of our band who dwelt in the forest of Bondy.
“There you are, Therese,” Dubois says to me, “free. You may now choose the kind of life you wish, but were I to have any advice to give you, it would be to renounce the practice of virtue which, as you have noticed, is the courting of disaster; a misplaced delicacy led you to the foot of the scaffold, an appalling crime rescued you from it; have a look about and see how useful are good deeds in this world, and whether it is really worth the trouble immolating yourself for them. Therese, you are young and attractive, heed me, and in two years I’ll have led you to a fortune; but don’t suppose I am going to guide you there along the paths of virtue: when one wants to get on, my dear girl, one must stop at nothing; decide, then, we have no security in this cottage, we’ve got to leave in a few hours.”
“Oh Madame,” I said to my benefactress, “I am greatly indebted to you, and am far from wishing to disown my obligations; you saved my life; in my view, ‘tis frightful the thing was achieved through a crime and, believe me, had I been the one charged to commit it, I should have preferred a thousand deaths to the anguish of participating in it; I am aware of all the dangers I risk in trusting myself to the honest sentiments which will always remain in my heart; but whatever be the thorns of virtue, Madame, I prefer them unhesitatingly and always to the perilous favors which are crime’s accompaniment. There are religious principles within me which, may it please Heaven, will never desert me; if Providence renders difficult my career in life, ‘tis in order to compensate me in a better world. That hope is my consolation, it sweetens my griefs, it soothes me in my sufferings, it fortifies me in distress, and causes me confidently to face all the ills it pleases God to visit upon me. That joy should straightway be extinguished in my soul were I perchance to besmirch it with crime, and together with the fear of chastisements in this world I should have the painful anticipation of torments in the next, which would not for one instant procure me the tranquillity I thirst after.”
“Those are absurd doctrines which will have you on the dung heap in no time, my girl,” said Dubois with a frown; “believe me: forget God’s justice, His future punishments and rewards, the lot of those platitudes lead us nowhere but to death from starvation. O Therese, the callousness of the Rich legitimates the bad conduct of the Poor; let them open their purse to our needs, let humaneness reign in their hearts and virtues will take root in ours; but as long as our misfortune, our patient endurance of it, our good faith, our abjection only serves to double the weight of our chains, our crimes will be their doing, and we will be fools indeed to abstain from them when they can lessen the yoke wherewith their cruelty bears us down. Nature has caused us all to be equals born, Therese; if fate is pleased to upset the primary scheme of the general law, it is up to us to correct its caprices and through our skill to repair the usurpations of the strongest. I love to hear these rich ones, these titled ones, these magistrates and these priests, I love to see them preach virtue to us. It is not very difficult to forswear theft when one has three or four times what one needs to live; it is not very necessary to plot murder when one is surrounded by nothing but adulators and thralls unto whom one’s will is law; nor is it very hard to be temperate and sober when one has the most succulent dainties constantly within one’s reach; they can well contrive to be sincere when there is never any apparent advantage in falsehood... But we, Therese, we whom the barbaric Providence you are mad enough to idolize, has condemned to slink in the dust of humiliation as doth the serpent in grass, we who are beheld with disdain only because we are poor, who are tyrannized because we are weak; we, who must quench our thirst with gall and who, wherever we go, tread on the thistle always, you would have us shun crime when its hand alone opens up unto us the door to life, maintains us in it, and is our only protection when our life is threatened; you would have it that, degraded and in perpetual abjection, while this class dominating us has to itself all the blessings of fortune, we reserve for ourselves naught but pain, beatings, suffering, nothing but want and tears, brandings and the gibbet. No, no, Therese, no; either this Providence you reverence is made only for our scorn, or the world we see about us is not at all what Providence would have it. Become better acquainted with your Providence, my child, and be convinced that as soon as it places us in a situation where evil becomes necessary, and while at the same time it leaves us the possibility of doing it, this evil harmonizes quite as well with its decrees as does good, and Providence gains as much by the one as by the other; the state in which she has created us is equality: he who disturbs is no more guilty than he who seeks to re-establish the balance; both act in accordance with received impulses, both have to obey those impulses and enjoy them.”
7
I must confess that if ever I was shaken it was by this clever woman’s seductions; but a yet stronger voice, that of my heart to which I gave heed, combatted her sophistries; I declared to Dubois that I was determined never to allow myself to be corrupted. “Very well!” she replied, “become what you wish, I abandon you to your sorry fate; but if ever you get yourself hanged, which is an end you cannot avoid, thanks to the fatality which inevitably saves the criminal by sacrificing the virtuous, at least remember before dying never to mention us.”
While we were arguing thus, Dubois’ four companions were drinking with the poacher, and as wine disposes the malefactor’s heart to new crimes and causes him to forget his old, our bandits no sooner learned of my resolution than, unable to make me their accomplice, they decided to make me their victim; their principles, their manners, the dark retreat we were in, the security they thought they enjoyed, their drunkenness, my age, my innocence everything encouraged them. They get up from table, they confer in whispers, they consult Dubois, doings whose lugubrious mystery makes me shiver with horror, and at last there comes an order to me then and there to satisfy the desires of each of the four; if I go to it cheerfully, each will give me a crown to help me along my way; if they must employ violence, the thing will be done all the same; but the better to guard their secret, once finished with me they will stab me, and will bury me at the foot of yonder tree.
I need not paint the effect this cruel proposition had upon me, Madame, you will have no difficulty understanding that I sank to my knees before Dubois, I besought her a second time to be my protectress: the low creature did but laugh at my tears:
“Oh by God !” quoth she, “here’s an unhappy little one. What! you shudder before the obligation to serve four fine big boys one after another? Listen to me,” she added, after some reflection, “my sway over these dear lads is sufficiently great for me to obtain a reprieve for you upon condition you render yourself worthy of it.”
“Alas ! Madame, what must I do?” I cried through my tears; “command me; I am ready.”
“Join us, throw in your lot with us, and commit the same deeds, without show of the least repugnance; either that, or I cannot save you from the rest.” I did not think myself in a position to hesitate; by accepting this cruel condition I exposed myself to further dangers, to be sure, but they were the less immediate; perhaps I might be able to avoid them, whereas nothing could save me from those with which I was actually menaced.
“I will go everywhere with you, Madame,” was my prompt answer to Dubois, “everywhere, I promise you; shield me from the fury of these men and I shall never leave your side while I live.”
“Children,” Dubois said to the four bandits, “this girl is one of the company, I am taking her into it; I ask you to do her no ill, don’t put her stomach off the m‚tier during her first days in it; you see how useful her age and face can be to us; let’s employ them to our advantage rather than sacrifice them to our pleasures.”
But such is the degree of energy in man’s passions nothing can subdue them. The persons I was dealing with were in no state to heed reason: all four surrounded me, devoured me with their fiery glances, menaced me in a still more terrible manner; they were about to lay hands on me, I was about to become their victim.
“She has got to go through with it,” one of them declared, “it’s too late for discussion:
