Justine

‘Looking after us is only a small matter. It is simply a case of cleaning and polishing this six-roomed flat three times each week. And, of course, you will make the beds, answer the door, powder my wig, dress the hair of my wife, look after the dog, the cat, and the parrot, attend to your kitchen duties, and wash the dishes regularly, whether they have been used or not; as well as helping my wife with the cooking and spending your spare time making caps, knitting stockings, and producing other little things for the household. So you see, Sophie, there isn’t much to do, and you will have quite enough leisure in which to attend to your own odd jobs and make whatever clothing you may need.’

You can easily imagine, Madame, that one would have to be in precisely that state of misery in which I happened to be before you would have accepted such a position. Not only were these creatures asking me to do far more work than my age and strength permitted, but was it possible to keep going on the food and the pittance they offered? Nevertheless I was careful not to be difficult, and installed myself in their home that same evening.

If, Madame, the cruel situation in which I found myself allowed me to think of amusing you for a moment – when I ought only to try and arouse sympathetic feeling for me in your heart – I honestly believe I could send you into paroxysms of laughter by relating in detail some of the manifestations of avarice which abounded so plentifully in that house. But such a terrible catastrophe befell me during my second year there that, when I think of it, I find it difficult to offer humorous details before acquainting you with the nature of this misfortune. Nevertheless, I can tell you, Madame, that lights were never used in that house. The bedroom of my master and mistress was situated directly opposite the street lamp, so they dispensed with any other means of illumination, not even using a light to see their way to bed. As for underwear and suchlike, they never wore it, but sewed into the sleeves of their coats and dresses old ruffles, which I washed each Saturday evening, so that they would be clean and fresh for Sunday. Neither were there any sheets or towels, so as to avoid the expense of laundering – for this, according to the respectable Monsieur Du Harpin, was an unusually expensive item. They never had wine in the house, for, according to Madame Du Harpin, clear water was the natural beverage of the first men, and the only one prescribed us by nature. Every time bread was cut a basket had to be placed underneath the loaf so as to catch the crumbs. To these were added the remnants of every meal, and on Sundays the mixture was fried in a little rancid butter and served up to form the special dish of the Sabbath day. Clothes and upholstery were never brushed in the usual manner, as that might have tended to produce wear in the material. Instead they were lightly swept with a feather duster. Their shoes were reinforced with metal caps, and each of them kept, as venerable relics, those which they had worn on their wedding day. But a much more bizarre duty was one which I had to undertake once a week. There was one large room in the flat with completely bare walls. Here I used to go regularly in order to scrape some of the plaster off the walls with a knife. This was then passed through a fine sieve, and I was instructed to use the resulting powder each morning to dress the gentleman’s wig and the chignon of the lady.

I would to God that these were the only depraved methods of economy indulged by this sorry couple. Nothing is more natural than the desire to conserve one’s means; but what is not equally so is the wish to increase them with the fortunes of others – and it did not take me long to realise that it was in this manner that Monsieur Du Harpin had become so rich.

Now at that time there was living above us an individual in very easy circumstances, owning some very pretty jewels; and these, perhaps because they belonged to our neighbour, or perhaps because they had actually passed through his hands, were well known to my master. Quite frequently I heard him lamenting to his wife about a certain gold box worth thirty or forty louis, which, he said, would certainly have belonged to him if he had been a little more adroit at an earlier time. In order to console himself for having returned the box which he had once borrowed, Monsieur Du Harpin planned to steal it, and it was me he commanded to effect this transference.

Having delivered a long speech on the unimportance of stealing, and on the possible utility to society of such an activity – since it served to re-establish an equilibrium totally upset by the unequal distribution of wealth, Monsieur Du Harpin presented me with a false key, assuring me that it would open the apartment of our neighbour, and that I would find the box in a desk which was never locked. He added that I would be able to remove it without any danger, and that for such a considerable service he would add an extra crown to my wages for the following two years.

‘Oh, Monsieur!’ I cried, ‘is it possible that a master dares attempt to corrupt his servant in such a manner? What is to prevent me from turning against you the very weapons which you have placed in my hands? And how could you reasonably object if I robbed you according to your own principles?’

Monsieur Du Harpin, astonished at my reply, did not dare insist further. He reacted by nursing a secret grudge against me; but explained his behaviour by pretending he had been testing me, saying that it was fortunate I had not succumbed to his insidious suggestions as otherwise I should have been hanged. I accepted his explanation, but from that time onwards I felt both the misfortunes with which such a proposition menaced me, and how unwise I had been to answer so firmly. Nevertheless, there had been no middle way; for I had been faced with the choice of actually committing the crime, or of obstinately rejecting the proposal. Had I been a little more experienced I should have left the house at that instant; but it had already been written on the page of my destiny that every honest impulse in my character would have to be paid for by some misfortune. I was therefore obliged to submit to circumstances without any possibility of escape.

Monsieur Du Harpin allowed almost a month to pass – that is to say nearly the turn of my second year in his employ – and never said a word, or showed the least resentment at my refusal. Then one evening, my work being finished and having just retired to my room for a few hours of rest, I suddenly heard the door thrown open, and saw, not without fear, Monsieur Du Harpin accompanied by a police official and four soldiers of the watch who immediately surrounded my bed.

‘Perform your duties, officer,’ he said to the police official. ‘This miserable creature has stolen a diamond of mine worth a thousand crowns. You will almost certainly find it in her room, or on her person!’

‘But, sir! You cannot possibly think I have robbed you,’ I cried, throwing myself, in consternation, at the foot of my bed. ‘Ah! who knows better than you how repugnant such an action would be to me, and how impossible it is that I should commit it!’

But Monsieur Du Harpin made a great commotion so that nobody could hear what I was saying, and so contrived to order the search that the miserable ring was found in my mattress. In face of such proof there could be no reply. Therefore I was immediately seized, handcuffed, and ignominiously led to the Prison du Palais – without a word being heard of the many things I could have said in my defence.

The trial of those unfortunate wretches who lack both influence and protection is quickly over in France. For it is believed that virtue is incompatible with poverty; and misfortune, in our courts, is accepted as conclusive proof against the accused. An unjust bias causes a presumption that the person who might possibly have committed the crime actually did commit it. The feelings of one’s judges thus take their measure from the situation in which one is found – and if titles or wealth are not available to prove the honesty of the accused, the impossibility of his being so is immediately accepted as demonstrated.

Well might I defend myself, well might I furnish an exact description of the true state of affairs to the state lawyer who was sent to question me. My master accused me in court – the diamond had been found in my room; therefore, clearly, I must have stolen it. When I wished to describe Monsieur Du Harpin’s horrible deed, and to show how the misfortune which had befallen me was simply a consequence of his vengeance, of his obsessive desire to ruin a creature who knowing his secrets was in a position to wield considerable power over him, they interpreted my complaints as recriminations, and informed me that Monsieur Du Harpin had been known for forty years as a man of integrity and was quite incapable of such an outrage. Thus it was that I found myself about to pay with my life for my refusal to participate in a criminal conspiracy – when an unexpected happening set me free, once more to plunge me into the further miseries still awaiting me in the world outside.

A woman of forty named Dubois, celebrated for her indulgence in every species of horror, was likewise on the eve of her execution – which at least was more deserved than mine, since her crimes had been established while mine did not exist.

Somehow or other I had inspired a kind of sympathy in this woman and one evening, a few days before each of us was due to lose her life, she told me not to go to bed, but to remain as unobtrusively close to her as I could.

‘Between midnight and one o’clock in the morning,’ explained this prosperous villain, ‘the prison will be set on fire…thanks to my machinations. Someone may be burned, but what does that matter? The certain thing is that we shall make our escape. Three men, accomplices and friends of mine, will meet us, and I can answer to you for your liberty.’

The hand of heaven, which had just punished my innocence, became the servant of crime so far as my protectress was concerned. Once the fire had started the conflagration became terrible. Ten people were burned alive, but we made our escape in safety. The same day we managed to reach the cottage of a poacher who lived in the forest of Bondy. He was thus a different kind of rogue, yet nevertheless an intimate friend of our band.

‘Now you are free, my dear Sophie,’ la Dubois said to me, ‘and you can choose whatever kind of life seems to suit you best; but if you listen to me you will renounce your virtuous ways, which, as you see, have never succeeded in helping you. Your misplaced delicacy conducted you right to the foot of the gallows, yet a frightful crime has saved me from a similar fate. Just look at the value which goodness has in the world, and then consider whether it is worth dying for. You are young and pretty; and, if you like, I will take care of your future in Brussels. I am going there, because that is where I was born, and within two years I can place you at the very peak of fortune. But I warn you that it will certainly not be by the narrow paths of virtue that I will promote your success. At your age it is necessary to engage in more than one profession, as well as to serve in more than one intrigue, if you wish to make your way to the top with any promptitude. Do you understand me, Sophie? – Do you understand me? Decide quickly because we must be on the move. We are safe here only for a few hours.’

‘Oh, Madame,’ I replied to my benefactress, ‘I am obliged to you for so much, since you have saved my life; yet it fills me with despair when I consider that this was possible only by way of the commission of a crime. And you may be very sure that had it been necessary for me to participate in it I would rather have died than done so. I know but too well the dangers I have courted in abandoning myself to those sentiments of honesty which for ever spring up in my heart, but whatever the thorns of virtue may be I shall always prefer them to the false glow of prosperity and those unreliable advantages which momentarily accompany crime. Thanks be to heaven, my religious convictions will never desert me, and if providence renders my way of life difficult it is only in order the more abundantly to recompense me in a better world. It is this hope which consoles me, this hope which softens all my griefs, calms my complaints, fortifies me in adversity and enables me fearlessly to encounter any evils with which I may be faced. This joy would immediately be extinguished in my heart were I to stain myself with crime – and, to the fear of even more terrible reverses in this world, I should add the frightening expectation of those punishments which celestial justice reserves in the beyond for those who outrage it.’

‘I’m afraid you have some absurd ideas which will quickly take you to the workhouse, my girl,’ exclaimed la Dubois, frowning. ‘Believe me, you will be well advised to give up your ideas of celestial justice, of punishment, or rewards to come. Those things are all best forgotten as soon as you leave school, for their only result is to help cause you to starve to death – if you are stupid enough to believe them once you have launched out on a life of your own. The hardness of the rich justifies the rascality of the poor, my child; if humanity reigned in their hearts, then virtue would become established in ours; but so long as our misfortunes, and our patience in enduring them, so long as our good faith and our submission serve only to multiply our chains, then we can lay our crimes at their door, and we would be fools indeed were we to refuse to profit by them when they can to some extent ameliorate the yoke with which we are burdened.

‘Nature caused us all to be born equal, Sophie; and if chance has been pleased to disorganise the original plan of her general laws, it is for us to correct such caprices, and to recover, by our adroitness, the usurpations of those who are stronger than us. I love to hear them – those rich gentlemen, those judges and magistrates – I love to hear them preach of virtue to us. It must be very difficult to avoid theft when one has three times more than is necessary for living in comfort; it must be equally difficult never to think of murder when one is surrounded only by the adulations of sycophants, or the submission of absolute slaves; likewise it must be enormously distressing to be temperate and sober when one is perpetually surrounded by the most succulent delicacies; and people must experience a great deal of trouble in being honest when they have no reason to lie.

‘But we, Sophie, we whom this barbarous providence which you are foolish enough to idolise has condemned to crawl on the earth as a serpent crawls in the grass – we who are disdained because we are poor, humiliated because we are weak, and who at length find nothing but bitterness and care over the whole surface of the globe – could you wish us to forbear from crime when it is her hand alone which opens for us the door of life, sustains and maintains life in us, and saves us from losing it? You would, it seems, prefer us to be perpetually submissive and humble whilst those who control us retain for themselves every favour which fortune can grant, we having only the experience of pain, hardship, and sorrow, with the addition of tears, the iron-mark of infamy, and, finally, the scaffold!

‘No, Sophie, no – either this providence which you so revere has been created solely for our scorn – or that is not the intention…Get to know it better, get to know it better and you will soon be convinced that whenever it places us in a position where evil becomes necessary for us, granting us at the same time the possibility of exercising this evil, it is because evil, just as much as good, serves its laws; and it gains equally as much from the one as from the other. We were created in a state of equality, and the man who disturbs this state is not more culpable than he who seeks to re-establish it. Both men are activated by given motives, and each must follow his impulse, tying a bandage round his eyes and enjoying the 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 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.