167 - Le Barge, Chapter 4
[Rather than deliver a statement on what has occurred in the last day, the Marquis has resolved, instead, to use the day he has had in the infirmary, to finish another chapter of his book and make it publicly available -- He found the next installment to be somewhat relevant.]
Chapter 4: The Breaking of a Libertine
The Emperor and all of the easily offended denizens of France were furious, burning copies of the book en masse, though it sold “like the devil”, Madeleine had said. Rumor tells me that initially, Napoleon had called for my death, but a more…diplomatic approach had been suggested. Soon came the Doctor Royer-Collard, renowned in his field, I am certain, but a man of the old schools, preferable to breaking the spirits of his patients as his means of treatment - preferring not treatment at all, rather forced complacency, obedience. The Abbe was of course furious when he learned that I was publishing. Pressured by the man of science come to usurp his place, he begged that I swear not to publish again or that he would be forced to revoke my privileges. The first book made more than enough money, and so I promised I would not do it again.
Rumor flew to me, through chambermaid gossip, of the Doctor’s newly taken bride - a child swept up from a convent, not even sixteen, and he, old enough to have fathered her three times over. The hypocrite! There were none that did not speak of it within Charenton, nor beyond it, I am certain, so it was not long before Madeleine whispered it to me as well. I found myself newly inspired, and penned a short play about the incident - names and locations changed to protect the wicked and the circumstantially innocent, of course. Soon my theatre troupe was rehearsed, and while a performance was scheduled, the public was surprised to find though advertised, “The Happy Shoemaker” would be replaced with something new and considerably more entertaining. “Crimes of Love” detailed the initially unhappy tale of a young girl from the convents, sold to a lecherous old man as his new wife - inspired by the rumors, naturally, but I certainly never invited audiences to make the comparison. The Doctor’s bride was in attendance, for a few minutes, before he sent her away, boiling in his own seat through to the conclusion of the play - or rather, when it was rather forcibly concluded. One of the more violent patients, Bouchon, saw his opportunity to attack Madeleine backstage, and she fought him off with a heated iron. The interruption as he staggered out onto the stage screeching in pain was potent enough a mood-killer. Madeleine was safe, and I tried not to concern myself beyond that.
That was my mistake. I knew that Bouchon was a lunatic leftover from the Terror just as I was, and that he had been an imbecile strong and wicked enough to wear the black cowl and drop the blade on many a victim’s head. On the rare occasions I had to leave my quarters I saw he was taken with young beauties, who always kept their distance. Madeleine never said to me that he had a particular fixation upon her, though I might have guessed. His advances during the play were only further proof of that, but I was in no position to address this had even thought to spare my attention.
It was more my way to celebrate my smaller victories and ignore my own apprehensions. The Abbe came to me that night, enraged, and announced that the Doctor had shut down the theatre and despite that I had kept my promise, after a rather heated discussion, he stole away my ink and quills. He saw wrong in what I had done, and even though I playfully suggested that I had not intended to fictionalize the Doctor’s scandalous liaisons, we both knew that was not the least bit true. I had relished dancing behind the shielding grace of parody and farce, but still I was offended that the Abbe betrayed my trust, all to protect the ego of that old fraud. In spite of my duplicity, there was still unfairness in his chosen punishment, one reserved, he had led me to believe, only for the instance that I should break my promise and publish again. It would not be seen in this way. Though I pleaded with him, perhaps even then sensing that this would only get worse, that I would begin to need to write if I had not begun already, but he took what he wished and left me, just the same.
I had no idea, reader, that being unable to write would affect me as much as it did. I attempted to busy myself the following day, but all distractions quickly became searches for an errant quill, some leftover ink - all that had perhaps slipped under and behind things, missed by the raid the night before. And when I had hoped I might calm myself, with a word with Madeleine, or perhaps to talk some sense into the Abbe, it was instead my wife that passed into my cell. It is this encounter that I will describe to you in detail because it need be known this is the last time I saw her:
(It is with regret that it is around now that I ran out of manuscript to transpose. The rest is new writing, and I apologize for its poor quality)
Renee’s entrance, the gentle introduction of gifts, was a rehearsed performance. I suspect now that perhaps the Abbe had spoken to her first, prompted her to bring what she could, to distract me, to appease me, but for that to be true, he must have anticipated my compulsion, and I think it is foolish to assume that he did. If my poor Renee had known, she would not have agreed to try - perhaps. Newly crafted apparati, chocolate pastilles, even her sweet odes - none would satisfy me and quickly I flew into a rage. At first predatory, seductive, and she played her part as she had learned to. Coquettish, but willing. And then my hand flew and she was on the floor.
I felt betrayed, that she would pander to these people, trying to buy me off with her little sweetmeats when she knew - she must have known - the level of which I had been violated. How could she come to me and not bring parchment? A quill? A pot of ink!
“How could I know, my darling?” she tried to reason. And how was I to tell her? Write a letter? What, my asinine bride! She did not understand; she understood nothing, and how could she? She was free. Thirty years, more than that. Always I in the cage and she in the sun. “I’ve been raped, far more egregiously than my wretched characters,” I had sobbed to her.
“Donatien, you must not make such a monstrous spectacle of yourself,” pleaded she. “You should court the doctor’s favor, not his contempt.”
I remarked with venom that I ought to carve my name into that old bastard’s backside and rub the wounds with salt!
Renee attempted to justify my imprisonment. That I was safe behind stone and mortar. “My prison has no walls,” she blathered on. Talking of how people hissed at her when she took her box, how the Holy Father would not hear her confession, for she was already damned. “Why must I suffer for your sins?”
“Tis the way of all martyrs, is it not?”
“Give me back my anonymity; that is all I ask of you.” It struck me like iron. When she first knew of my crimes, of the things the courts accused me, she had been my champion, my dearest friend, the one who would never leave me in the dark. Now, when the mistreatment had begun anew - possessions stolen, punishments unfit for the crimes, and she would not defend me. The accusations flung; I felt so righteous. She had never petitioned the courts for my release, not once. She never sought an audience with the Emperor. It was so much easier for her to have me here, caged. She would not have to see me at my best or even my worst. I demeaned her, claimed I used her only for gratification and would have none of her any longer, for she was one of my many jailers.
The guards entered then, and I remember demanding they remove her from my cell, for I could no longer stand the sight of her, that perhaps they might find her lodging among the hysterics. Even though I had flung her at them quite roughly, even though I might have harmed her further still, the guards carried her away, and I can remember her, reaching for me in vain.
Lock her up so that she knows how it feels, I had said, in frantic tears myself.
The gorgon. The sow.
I was left to my lamentations until well after dark, when Madeleine brought my supper. My addled and agitated mind could not fixate upon the roasted hen before me, but a spilled droplet of red wine on my napkin struck me with inspiration. It stained rather dark. I pried the wishbone from my dinner, and set upon my bedsheets, finally able to relax as I wrote all of my vexations away on the linens. In thought, it was that I had already been punished for publishing, though I had not, which inspired me. If I was to be punished, I might as well commit the crime.
And so I did. When Madeleine came to my cell to collect my linens in the morning, she received a complete manuscript, with time enough to transcribe the words written, clever girl.
It would perhaps have been wise to consider what all that wine would do to the laundry as a whole, however. Though the pages were written and smuggled out, she later claimed, I had been found out. The Abbe decreed that all my dinners were to be deboned, and that I would have only water to drink. My bed, alas - completely confiscated. I had been condemned to temperamental circulation and to freeze, apparently. All items that could be fashioned into a quill, taken.
The Abbe tried once, flippantly, to give me a Bible, suggesting that I read more. “A writer that never reads is the mark of an amateur,” he chided.
I spat upon the tome and threw it at his feet. “Your God had his own son strung up like a side of veal. I shudder to think what he should do to me.”
My room stripped of its finer things and now a proper cell, I was still stubborn, compelled to show my defiance, by whatever means I could find. In settings of adversity, the artist flourishes, after all.
My mind still unresting, but lacking the same tools I had the night before, I broke instead a mirror. True, I lacked wine, but there was still something red upon my person that the Abbe had not yet attempted to excise from my person. I pricked the tip of one of my fingers and squeezed a few drops of blood. Yes, much thicker than wine. The pain died down to a dull, exquisite ache. I found my canvas and began to write in earnest.
Through the night I had pricked and slashed every finger. The fine clothes that I wore, my favorite suit, was soon scrawled with the makings of a book, every layer containing text. The climax started at my life cufflink, climbed the full length of my inseam, resolving itself at the base of my shoe. It was a creation of dark, sensual beauty. Though weak, I was invigorated and could not wait to show Madeleine, coaxing her to unlock my door and look.
The sight of it made her so happy that she kissed me. It surprised me, and I think I remembered something just then, or someone. Enough to make me realize what a danger she posed to herself in listening to me and entering my cell. Not for what I would do, but what would happen if she was caught associating with me. I bade her leave before she could be blamed for my behavior, but too late. Another of the laundry girls caught her, and to distract, I saw opportunity in the door ajar, and danced merrily out of my cell. I made it as far as the dining area before I was caught. Oh, certainly, I would be punished again. Once more I felt it right to earn it. I showed the Inmates my beautiful new masterpiece, danced upon their table and worked them into a delirious excitement - before finally, my strength gave out, and I fainted dead away.
I woke to Doctor Royer-Collard, pronouncing me a dog and demanding I be returned to my cage. It surprised me not. The man who pronounces the executions never drops the blade.
The Abbe was angered to tears - showing not his insanity as it did for me, but rather his youth. He cried at the unfairness, at frustration. It was beautiful. He was beautiful. He could see now that I had lost all interest in favoring any of my keepers, even him. The more he forbade me, the more I would be provoked. I am not certain what would have calmed me then, what would have stilled my disobedience. He did not think long on this, either, and he removed the rest of my belongings, including the very clothes that I wore.
I stripped before him, intent upon showing to him that I no longer saw him as a friend. Every movement was deliberate and more brazen than I had ever been in his presence. I accused him of taking pleasure in it. It is a potent aphrodisiac, having power over another man. It mattered not that this was far from the truth, that it pained him to do these things at the demand of the Doctor, but I would not see that then. I would not submit, nor would I allow him to see the things that he was doing, without regard for right or wrong - just that he had been commanded, would be tolerated.
“Are your God’s morals so flimsy that they cannot stand in opposition to mine? For shame.”
He left me naked in an empty cell, weeping still.
The following evening, before dusk, Doctor Royer-Collard removed me, bringing me - perhaps to punish me for my escape? - to a device he introduced as his “calming chair”. A chair, with straps for the ankles, wrists, and neck to prevent its occupant from moving, that stood suspended on a rail above a great vat of cold water. When a lever was turned, the chair would roll backward, tipping the occupant upside-down into the water, where they would be suspended, unable to expel the liquid dropping into their nostrils, to cough out what they had in a gasp taken into their lungs. Into this contraption I was placed. Sometimes I would be dropped for a few seconds - a minute? Often it was hard to tell.
I will not lie. It was agony. To convince one’s body that it shall not drown because one’s keepers shall not allow it is an impossible task. It is like death here - no matter how often it happens you will never fully convince your mind or body that it is temporary.
Once, I begged them to stop - the Doctor, his hooligan guards who would never have so harmed a patient in the presence of the Abbe, once. I swore I would never write such filth again. I would write happy stories, dainty stories. Odes to the church. Still they persisted, and rather than break my spirit this hardened my resolve. “You are enjoying this too much, Doctor,” I had chided, breathless. “I can see you straining in your trousers.”
They continued their game. Ignoring my insults, my curses. The self-righteous fucks could not understand, I declared, that the greater their vexations the deeper they instilled my principles within my heart.
They dumped my body back in my cell after dark.
I found a corner of the room that seemed touched less with the draft, and I contemplated my place, which had indeed become worse than any I had known in a lifetime of prisons. Briefly I considered capitulating. I would find something, anything to write a story, perhaps. A comedy. Something with a happy ending. Something wholesome. But then I imagined Royer-Collard reading what I had written - with what, I wondered? My leavings on the wall? Something other than my escape had occupied his mind when he tortured me that night. I saw in his eyes a malice that had not been there when I was removed from the dining hall. That same malice, in my mind’s eye, would inform his reading of my peace offering. He would write lascivious things into the margins, between the lines, until even the sweetest of stories would have become one of my darkest, most lurid of horrors.
No. I knew then that I would likely die in Charenton, and I meant to do so on my own terms.
Chapter 4: The Breaking of a Libertine
The Emperor and all of the easily offended denizens of France were furious, burning copies of the book en masse, though it sold “like the devil”, Madeleine had said. Rumor tells me that initially, Napoleon had called for my death, but a more…diplomatic approach had been suggested. Soon came the Doctor Royer-Collard, renowned in his field, I am certain, but a man of the old schools, preferable to breaking the spirits of his patients as his means of treatment - preferring not treatment at all, rather forced complacency, obedience. The Abbe was of course furious when he learned that I was publishing. Pressured by the man of science come to usurp his place, he begged that I swear not to publish again or that he would be forced to revoke my privileges. The first book made more than enough money, and so I promised I would not do it again.
Rumor flew to me, through chambermaid gossip, of the Doctor’s newly taken bride - a child swept up from a convent, not even sixteen, and he, old enough to have fathered her three times over. The hypocrite! There were none that did not speak of it within Charenton, nor beyond it, I am certain, so it was not long before Madeleine whispered it to me as well. I found myself newly inspired, and penned a short play about the incident - names and locations changed to protect the wicked and the circumstantially innocent, of course. Soon my theatre troupe was rehearsed, and while a performance was scheduled, the public was surprised to find though advertised, “The Happy Shoemaker” would be replaced with something new and considerably more entertaining. “Crimes of Love” detailed the initially unhappy tale of a young girl from the convents, sold to a lecherous old man as his new wife - inspired by the rumors, naturally, but I certainly never invited audiences to make the comparison. The Doctor’s bride was in attendance, for a few minutes, before he sent her away, boiling in his own seat through to the conclusion of the play - or rather, when it was rather forcibly concluded. One of the more violent patients, Bouchon, saw his opportunity to attack Madeleine backstage, and she fought him off with a heated iron. The interruption as he staggered out onto the stage screeching in pain was potent enough a mood-killer. Madeleine was safe, and I tried not to concern myself beyond that.
That was my mistake. I knew that Bouchon was a lunatic leftover from the Terror just as I was, and that he had been an imbecile strong and wicked enough to wear the black cowl and drop the blade on many a victim’s head. On the rare occasions I had to leave my quarters I saw he was taken with young beauties, who always kept their distance. Madeleine never said to me that he had a particular fixation upon her, though I might have guessed. His advances during the play were only further proof of that, but I was in no position to address this had even thought to spare my attention.
It was more my way to celebrate my smaller victories and ignore my own apprehensions. The Abbe came to me that night, enraged, and announced that the Doctor had shut down the theatre and despite that I had kept my promise, after a rather heated discussion, he stole away my ink and quills. He saw wrong in what I had done, and even though I playfully suggested that I had not intended to fictionalize the Doctor’s scandalous liaisons, we both knew that was not the least bit true. I had relished dancing behind the shielding grace of parody and farce, but still I was offended that the Abbe betrayed my trust, all to protect the ego of that old fraud. In spite of my duplicity, there was still unfairness in his chosen punishment, one reserved, he had led me to believe, only for the instance that I should break my promise and publish again. It would not be seen in this way. Though I pleaded with him, perhaps even then sensing that this would only get worse, that I would begin to need to write if I had not begun already, but he took what he wished and left me, just the same.
I had no idea, reader, that being unable to write would affect me as much as it did. I attempted to busy myself the following day, but all distractions quickly became searches for an errant quill, some leftover ink - all that had perhaps slipped under and behind things, missed by the raid the night before. And when I had hoped I might calm myself, with a word with Madeleine, or perhaps to talk some sense into the Abbe, it was instead my wife that passed into my cell. It is this encounter that I will describe to you in detail because it need be known this is the last time I saw her:
(It is with regret that it is around now that I ran out of manuscript to transpose. The rest is new writing, and I apologize for its poor quality)
Renee’s entrance, the gentle introduction of gifts, was a rehearsed performance. I suspect now that perhaps the Abbe had spoken to her first, prompted her to bring what she could, to distract me, to appease me, but for that to be true, he must have anticipated my compulsion, and I think it is foolish to assume that he did. If my poor Renee had known, she would not have agreed to try - perhaps. Newly crafted apparati, chocolate pastilles, even her sweet odes - none would satisfy me and quickly I flew into a rage. At first predatory, seductive, and she played her part as she had learned to. Coquettish, but willing. And then my hand flew and she was on the floor.
I felt betrayed, that she would pander to these people, trying to buy me off with her little sweetmeats when she knew - she must have known - the level of which I had been violated. How could she come to me and not bring parchment? A quill? A pot of ink!
“How could I know, my darling?” she tried to reason. And how was I to tell her? Write a letter? What, my asinine bride! She did not understand; she understood nothing, and how could she? She was free. Thirty years, more than that. Always I in the cage and she in the sun. “I’ve been raped, far more egregiously than my wretched characters,” I had sobbed to her.
“Donatien, you must not make such a monstrous spectacle of yourself,” pleaded she. “You should court the doctor’s favor, not his contempt.”
I remarked with venom that I ought to carve my name into that old bastard’s backside and rub the wounds with salt!
Renee attempted to justify my imprisonment. That I was safe behind stone and mortar. “My prison has no walls,” she blathered on. Talking of how people hissed at her when she took her box, how the Holy Father would not hear her confession, for she was already damned. “Why must I suffer for your sins?”
“Tis the way of all martyrs, is it not?”
“Give me back my anonymity; that is all I ask of you.” It struck me like iron. When she first knew of my crimes, of the things the courts accused me, she had been my champion, my dearest friend, the one who would never leave me in the dark. Now, when the mistreatment had begun anew - possessions stolen, punishments unfit for the crimes, and she would not defend me. The accusations flung; I felt so righteous. She had never petitioned the courts for my release, not once. She never sought an audience with the Emperor. It was so much easier for her to have me here, caged. She would not have to see me at my best or even my worst. I demeaned her, claimed I used her only for gratification and would have none of her any longer, for she was one of my many jailers.
The guards entered then, and I remember demanding they remove her from my cell, for I could no longer stand the sight of her, that perhaps they might find her lodging among the hysterics. Even though I had flung her at them quite roughly, even though I might have harmed her further still, the guards carried her away, and I can remember her, reaching for me in vain.
Lock her up so that she knows how it feels, I had said, in frantic tears myself.
The gorgon. The sow.
I was left to my lamentations until well after dark, when Madeleine brought my supper. My addled and agitated mind could not fixate upon the roasted hen before me, but a spilled droplet of red wine on my napkin struck me with inspiration. It stained rather dark. I pried the wishbone from my dinner, and set upon my bedsheets, finally able to relax as I wrote all of my vexations away on the linens. In thought, it was that I had already been punished for publishing, though I had not, which inspired me. If I was to be punished, I might as well commit the crime.
And so I did. When Madeleine came to my cell to collect my linens in the morning, she received a complete manuscript, with time enough to transcribe the words written, clever girl.
It would perhaps have been wise to consider what all that wine would do to the laundry as a whole, however. Though the pages were written and smuggled out, she later claimed, I had been found out. The Abbe decreed that all my dinners were to be deboned, and that I would have only water to drink. My bed, alas - completely confiscated. I had been condemned to temperamental circulation and to freeze, apparently. All items that could be fashioned into a quill, taken.
The Abbe tried once, flippantly, to give me a Bible, suggesting that I read more. “A writer that never reads is the mark of an amateur,” he chided.
I spat upon the tome and threw it at his feet. “Your God had his own son strung up like a side of veal. I shudder to think what he should do to me.”
My room stripped of its finer things and now a proper cell, I was still stubborn, compelled to show my defiance, by whatever means I could find. In settings of adversity, the artist flourishes, after all.
My mind still unresting, but lacking the same tools I had the night before, I broke instead a mirror. True, I lacked wine, but there was still something red upon my person that the Abbe had not yet attempted to excise from my person. I pricked the tip of one of my fingers and squeezed a few drops of blood. Yes, much thicker than wine. The pain died down to a dull, exquisite ache. I found my canvas and began to write in earnest.
Through the night I had pricked and slashed every finger. The fine clothes that I wore, my favorite suit, was soon scrawled with the makings of a book, every layer containing text. The climax started at my life cufflink, climbed the full length of my inseam, resolving itself at the base of my shoe. It was a creation of dark, sensual beauty. Though weak, I was invigorated and could not wait to show Madeleine, coaxing her to unlock my door and look.
The sight of it made her so happy that she kissed me. It surprised me, and I think I remembered something just then, or someone. Enough to make me realize what a danger she posed to herself in listening to me and entering my cell. Not for what I would do, but what would happen if she was caught associating with me. I bade her leave before she could be blamed for my behavior, but too late. Another of the laundry girls caught her, and to distract, I saw opportunity in the door ajar, and danced merrily out of my cell. I made it as far as the dining area before I was caught. Oh, certainly, I would be punished again. Once more I felt it right to earn it. I showed the Inmates my beautiful new masterpiece, danced upon their table and worked them into a delirious excitement - before finally, my strength gave out, and I fainted dead away.
I woke to Doctor Royer-Collard, pronouncing me a dog and demanding I be returned to my cage. It surprised me not. The man who pronounces the executions never drops the blade.
The Abbe was angered to tears - showing not his insanity as it did for me, but rather his youth. He cried at the unfairness, at frustration. It was beautiful. He was beautiful. He could see now that I had lost all interest in favoring any of my keepers, even him. The more he forbade me, the more I would be provoked. I am not certain what would have calmed me then, what would have stilled my disobedience. He did not think long on this, either, and he removed the rest of my belongings, including the very clothes that I wore.
I stripped before him, intent upon showing to him that I no longer saw him as a friend. Every movement was deliberate and more brazen than I had ever been in his presence. I accused him of taking pleasure in it. It is a potent aphrodisiac, having power over another man. It mattered not that this was far from the truth, that it pained him to do these things at the demand of the Doctor, but I would not see that then. I would not submit, nor would I allow him to see the things that he was doing, without regard for right or wrong - just that he had been commanded, would be tolerated.
“Are your God’s morals so flimsy that they cannot stand in opposition to mine? For shame.”
He left me naked in an empty cell, weeping still.
The following evening, before dusk, Doctor Royer-Collard removed me, bringing me - perhaps to punish me for my escape? - to a device he introduced as his “calming chair”. A chair, with straps for the ankles, wrists, and neck to prevent its occupant from moving, that stood suspended on a rail above a great vat of cold water. When a lever was turned, the chair would roll backward, tipping the occupant upside-down into the water, where they would be suspended, unable to expel the liquid dropping into their nostrils, to cough out what they had in a gasp taken into their lungs. Into this contraption I was placed. Sometimes I would be dropped for a few seconds - a minute? Often it was hard to tell.
I will not lie. It was agony. To convince one’s body that it shall not drown because one’s keepers shall not allow it is an impossible task. It is like death here - no matter how often it happens you will never fully convince your mind or body that it is temporary.
Once, I begged them to stop - the Doctor, his hooligan guards who would never have so harmed a patient in the presence of the Abbe, once. I swore I would never write such filth again. I would write happy stories, dainty stories. Odes to the church. Still they persisted, and rather than break my spirit this hardened my resolve. “You are enjoying this too much, Doctor,” I had chided, breathless. “I can see you straining in your trousers.”
They continued their game. Ignoring my insults, my curses. The self-righteous fucks could not understand, I declared, that the greater their vexations the deeper they instilled my principles within my heart.
They dumped my body back in my cell after dark.
I found a corner of the room that seemed touched less with the draft, and I contemplated my place, which had indeed become worse than any I had known in a lifetime of prisons. Briefly I considered capitulating. I would find something, anything to write a story, perhaps. A comedy. Something with a happy ending. Something wholesome. But then I imagined Royer-Collard reading what I had written - with what, I wondered? My leavings on the wall? Something other than my escape had occupied his mind when he tortured me that night. I saw in his eyes a malice that had not been there when I was removed from the dining hall. That same malice, in my mind’s eye, would inform his reading of my peace offering. He would write lascivious things into the margins, between the lines, until even the sweetest of stories would have become one of my darkest, most lurid of horrors.
No. I knew then that I would likely die in Charenton, and I meant to do so on my own terms.