the price of a mere chimera, a thing which has no value at all, other than the one which your pride places on it. Briefly,’ continued this barbarian, whilst rising and opening the door, ‘that is all I can do for you – If you can’t agree to my proposition, get out of my sight! I do not like beggars…’
My tears flowed; I could not hold them back any longer. Would you believe it, Madame? – they served only to increase the irritable temper of this man, instead of softening him. He slammed the door, and seizing me by the collar of my dress brutally told me that he was going to force me into doing that which I would not willingly grant him. At this cruel moment my misfortune lent me courage; I extricated myself from his arms and threw myself towards the door.
‘Loathsome man,’ I shouted as I ran; ‘may heaven, so grievously insulted by you, punish you as you deserve for your execrable cruelty and hardness of heart! You are worthy neither of those riches which you put to so vile a use, nor of the air which you breathe in a world stained by your barbarities.’
Reaching my lodgings I hastened to inform my landlady as to the kind of reception given me by the man to whose house she had sent me. But my surprise passed all bounds when I heard this female wretch load me with reproaches instead of sympathetically sharing my grief!
‘You mean little creature,’ she exclaimed in her rage; ‘do you imagine that men are foolish enough to bestow charity on little girls such as yourself without exacting the interest on their money? Monsieur Dubourg is too kind to have acted as he has done. Had I been in his position you would not have escaped from my room before I had satisfied my desires. However, since you do not wish to profit by the help I have offered, I can only let you dispose of yourself as you wish. You owe me rent – by tomorrow you must either pay me my money or go to prison!’
‘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
