game.’
I confess that if ever I was shaken it was by the seductions of this clever woman. But a voice louder than hers combated the sophisms she wished to plant in my heart. I listened to it, and asserted for the last time that I had decided never to allow myself to be corrupted.
‘Ah, well!’ exclaimed Dubois. ‘Do what you wish. I leave you to your evil fate – but if ever you happen to get yourself hanged, which you can hardly escape since the destiny which watches over crime inevitably sacrifices virtue, remember, at least, never to mention us.’
While we were reasoning in this fashion, the three companions of la Dubois were drinking with the poacher; and, as wine commonly has the effect of causing the malefactor to forget his past criminal offences, often inviting him to augment them at the very edge of the precipice from which he has just escaped, so did the miscreant wretches who surrounded me feel a desire to amuse themselves at my expense before I had time to run away from them. Their principles, their morals, combined with the sinister location in which we found ourselves, and the apparent security from the law which they felt they at present enjoyed, together with their drunkenness, my age, my innocence, and my figure, all encouraged them in their project. They rose from the table, held counsel amongst themselves and consulted la Dubois – proceedings the mystery of which made me shudder with horror, and which resulted in my having to decide whether, before leaving them, I would pass through the hands of all four willingly or by force. If I did it willingly they would each give me a crown to help me on my way, since I had refused to accompany them. If, on the other hand, they were obliged to use force to settle the matter, the thing would be done all the same, but the last of the four to enjoy me would plunge a knife into my breast and they would bury me immediately afterwards at the foot of a tree.
I leave you to imagine, Madame, the effect which this execrable proposition had on me. I threw myself at the feet of la Dubois, begging her to be my protectress yet a second time; but the villainous creature just laughed at my terrifying situation – which to her seemed a mere nothing.
‘Gracious heavens!’ she said, ‘– just look at you, so miserable and unhappy simply because you are obliged to serve successively four big boys built like these! In Paris, my girl, there must be ten thousand women who would hand over plenty of beautiful crowns if they could be in the position you are in at the moment…Listen,’ she added, after thinking things over for a few seconds, ‘I have enough control over these sly fellows to obtain mercy for you, if you wish to prove yourself worthy of it.’
‘What must I do, Madame,’ I cried in tears. ‘Instruct me! – I am quite ready to carry out your orders…’
‘Follow us, become one of our band, and do the same things as we do without the slightest repugnance. For this price I can guarantee you the rest…’
Consideration did not seem necessary to me. I agree that in accepting I ran the risk of new dangers; but these were less pressing than those immediately facing me. I would be able to avoid them; whilst nothing could help me escape those with which I was menaced.
‘I will go wherever you wish, Madame,’ I said; ‘I promise you I will go anywhere – only save me from the lusts of these men and I will never leave you!’
‘Boys,’ said la Dubois to the four bandits, ‘this girl is now a member of our gang. I accept her and I approve her. I forbid you, moreover, to do her any violence. And you mustn’t disgust her with our business on her first day. Just consider how useful her age and face can be to us, and let’s use them to our interest instead of sacrificing her to our pleasures…’
But once roused, the passions can reach such a pitch in a man that no voice is able to recall them into captivity; and those with whom I was dealing were in no state to hear anything at all. All four of them, in fact, immediately surrounded me, and in a condition least calculated to enable me to expect mercy, declaring unanimously to la Dubois that since I was in their hands there was no reason why I should not become their prey.
‘First me!’ said one of them, seizing me round the waist.
‘And by what right do you claim the first turn?’ exclaimed a second, pushing his comrade aside and tearing me brutally from his arms.
‘You shan’t have her until I’ve finished!’ shouted a third.
And the dispute becoming heated, our four champions tore each other’s hair, flung each other on the ground, sent each other flying head over heels and rained blows on one another. As for me I was only too happy to see them all involved in a situation which gave me the chance to escape. So while la Dubois was occupied in trying to separate them I quickly ran away, soon reaching the forest. In a moment the house had disappeared from view.
‘Oh, Being Most Supreme,’ I exclaimed, throwing myself to my knees as soon as I felt myself secure from pursuit, ‘– Being Supreme, my only true protector and my guide, deign to take pity on my misery. You know my weakness and my innocence. You know with what confidence I place in you my every hope. Deign to snatch me from the dangers which pursue me; or by a death less shameful than that which I have recently escaped, recall me promptly to your eternal peace.’
Prayer is the sweetest consolation of the unfortunate. One is stronger after prayer. And so I rose full of courage. But, as it was growing dark, I wound my way deep into a copse so as to pass the night with less risk. The safety in which I believed myself, my exhaustion, and the little joy I was tasting, all contributed to help me pass a good night. The sun was already high when I opened my eyes to its light. The moment of awakening is, however, calamitous for the unhappy; for, after the rest of the bodily senses, the cessation of thought, and the instantaneous forgetfulness of sleep, the memory of misfortune seems to leap into the mind with a newness of life which makes its weight all the more onerous to bear.
‘Ah, well,’ I said to myself, ‘it seems to be true that there are some human beings whom nature destines to live under the same conditions as wild beasts. Living hidden in their retreats, flying from men like the animals, what difference remains between man and beast? Is it worth while being born to endure so pitiful a fate?’
And my tears flowed abundantly as these sad reflections formed themselves in my mind. Barely had I ceased thinking after this manner when I heard a noise somewhere near me. For a moment I thought it was some creatures of the wood; then, little by little, I distinguished the voices of two men.
‘Come along, my friend, come along,’ said one of them, ‘We shall do wonderfully well here. And my mother’s cruel and deadly presence shall no longer prevent me from tasting with you, at least for a few moments, those pleasures which are so dear to me.’
They drew nearer, placing themselves so directly in front of me that not a word they spoke, not a movement they made, could escape me. And then I saw –
‘In heaven’s name, Madame,’ said Sophie, interrupting her narrative, ‘is it possible that fate has never placed me in any situations but those so critical that it becomes as difficult for modesty to hear them as to depict them?…That horrible crime which outrages both nature and law, that frightful offence upon which the hand of God has fallen heavily so many times, that infamy, in a word, so new to me that I only understood it with difficulty – this I saw, consummated before my very eyes, with all the impure excitations, all the frightful episodes which it is possible for premeditated depravity to conjure up.’
One of the men – he who assumed the dominating role – was about twenty-four years old. He was wearing a green coat, and well enough dressed to cause me to think that he came of good family. The other was probably a young domestic of his house, around seventeen or eighteen and with a very pretty face and figure. The
