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 scene which followed was as lengthy as it was scandalous; and the passage of time seemed even more cruel to me, for I dared not move for fear of being discovered.
At last the criminal actors who had played this scene before me, satiated, no doubt, arose to make their way to the road which must have led to their home. But the master, coming near the thicket where I was hiding so that he might relieve himself, my high bonnet betrayed me.
He saw it immediately: ‘Jasmin,’ he called to his young Adonis, ‘we have been discovered, my dear…A girl, a profane creature has seen our mysteries! Come, let’s get this hussy out of here and find out what she’s been doing.’
I did not give them the trouble of helping me out of my hiding place, but quickly jumped up and threw myself at their feet.
‘Good gentlemen,’ I cried, extending my arms towards them, ‘kindly take pity on an unfortunate creature whose fate is more to be commiserated than you might think. Few of the reverses which men meet in life can be equal to mine. Do not let the situation in which you have found me arouse your suspicions, for it is the result of my poverty rather than my errors. Instead of increasing the sum of evils which crush me, you can, on the contrary, diminish it by helping me find a means of escape from the misfortunes which continually pursue me.
Monsieur de Bressac, for that was the name of the young man into whose hands I had fallen, had an undue amount of the libertine in his character, but had not been provided with an equal abundance of compassion in his heart. It is, nevertheless, unfortunately only too common to see the debauchery of the senses completely extinguish pity in man. In fact the usual effect of such a life seems to be that of hardening the heart. Whether the greater number of such deviations arise on the basis of a kind of apathy in the soul, or whether they are the result of the violent shock which they imprint on the mass of nerves – thus diminishing the sensitive action of these – it can always be said that a professional debauchee is rarely a man of pity. But, to this natural cruelty in the kind of person whose character I have sketched, there was in Monsieur de Bressac such a marked and additional disgust for our sex, such an inveterate hatred for all that distinguishes it, that it was extremely difficult for me to encourage in his soul those sentiments by which I longed to see him moved.
‘Anyway, my little wood-pigeon, just what are you doing here?’
Such was the only response of this man whom I wished to soften, and it was spoken harshly enough.
‘Tell me the truth! – You saw everything that happened between this young man and myself, didn’t you?’
‘Me? – Oh no, Monsieur!’ I cried quickly, believing I did no wrong in disguising the truth. ‘You may rest assured that I saw only the most ordinary things. I saw you, your friend and yourself,