The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th Century (22 page)

But the dread which her crime inspired in him must have been tremendous, for she distinctly heard the sound that a man makes when he is about to faint and desperately tries to cling to a wooden partition.

After a long pause, he said stiffly:

‘You may go, madam.’

‘She retired, still sobbing.

***

But as she crossed the church, the swish of her dress seeming to deliberately offend the austerity of the flagstones, her eyes and her lips, hidden behind her veil, sparkled with a wicked gleam! Just before going out into the street, she turned round, her attention drawn by a painting over a side altar in which Satan, on the mount, was depicted whispering something into Jesus’ ear. A sudden ray of sunshine bursting through a stained-glass window brought the face of the devil to life; and it would have been easy to believe that Christ’s tempter paid the baroness the compliment of a smile. She went out quickly, urged on by a feeling of gaiety, her nose in her muff. As for her corset, she had forgotten it in the confessional box.

to M. Henri Mercier
¹

Whatever, depending on the individual, is responsible for the genuine marital bliss of some couples, whatever is the secret of their affection for each other, whatever is the explanation for the faithfulness of some unions, these things are mysteries whose comic nature would terrify us if our astonishment only allowed us to analyse them. Mankind’s sexual proclivities are like a peacock’s tail whose eyes only shine towards the inside of the soul and each one of us alone knows his own desires.

One brilliant morning in March 1793, the celebrated citizen Fouquier-Tinville
²
was seated at his desk in his office on the rue des Prouvaires absently scanning a heap of files after signing the list of the latest consignment of aristocrats to be dispatched that same day between eleven o’clock and noon.

Suddenly, the sound of raised voices – those of a visitor and an orderly on duty outside – reached him through the door.

He raised his head and began to listen. One of the two voices, which spoke of forcing his way in, made him shudder.

‘Tell him Thermidor Moutonnet from the
Dutiful Children
section wants to see him!’

At this name, Fouquier-Tinville shouted:

‘Let him in.’

‘There! I told you he would see me!’ the visitor blustered as he entered the room. He was a man in his early thirties with a face which, on first sight, seemed jovial but which left a lingering impression of cunning. ‘Good morning, my dear fellow. Have you got two minutes?’

‘Be quick. My time is not my own here.’

The unexpected visitor pulled up a chair close by his friend.

‘How many heads today?’ he asked, indicating the list which the prosecutor had just initialled.

‘Seventeen,’ replied Fouquier-Tinville.

‘Is there any room between the last name and your signature?’

‘Of course!’ said Fouquier-Tinville.

‘For another suspect?’

‘Tell me more.’

‘Never mind. I can arrange it.’

‘What name?’ asked Fouquier-Tinville.

‘That of a woman! A woman who … who is involved in some conspiracy or other. How long does the trial take?’

‘Five minutes. What name?’

‘And there would be no problem arranging a guillotining for tomorrow?’

‘What name?’

‘That of my wife!’

Fouquier-Tinville frowned and threw down his pen.

‘Get out! I’m busy!’ he said. ‘We can have a laugh about it later.’

‘This is not a laughing matter. I am making an accusation!’ said citizen Thermidor gravely.

‘What proof have you got?’

‘Everything points to it.’

‘Give me an example.’

‘I feel it in my bones.’

Fouquier-Tinville looked angrily at his friend Moutonnet.

‘Thermidor,’ he said, ‘your wife is a worthy sans-culotte. Her meat pie last Thursday, added to the three bottles of Vouvray we consumed (though I bet you keep your better vintages hidden behind the logs in your cellar), was quite excellent. Give my regards to your wife. We shall dine together at your house tomorrow evening. On that note, you had better leave before I lose my temper.’

At these almost harsh words, Thermidor Moutonnet suddenly fell to his knees, wringing his hands and with tears in his eyes.

‘Tinville,’ he whispered as if overwhelmed by bad news, ‘we have known each other since infancy. I thought I could count on you. We played together as boys. I have never asked anything of you before, but in the name of our friendship grant me this. You wouldn’t deny me the first favour I have ever asked of you, would you?’

‘Have you been drinking this morning?’

‘Nothing has passed my lips,’ replied Moutonnet, obviously surprised by the question.

After a moment’s silence:

‘All I can do for you is not to say a word tomorrow evening over the table about your strange behaviour. I can hardly believe that you would come here to play a trick, nor that you have gone mad, though on the basis of what you have requested the last hypothesis is not altogether out the question.’

‘But I tell you I can’t go on living with Lucretia!’ exclaimed the visitor.

‘You are making a great mistake, citizen, I can see that.’

‘You refuse then!’

‘Refuse what? To cut off Lucretia’s head because you have had a row?’

‘Oh! The hussy! Come on, my dear fellow, after all we have been through together, add one more name to the list, I beg you! As a personal favour to me!’

‘If I add another name to the list, it will be yours!’ growled Fouquier-Tinville, grabbing for his pen.

‘What do you mean?’ exclaimed Moutonnet, turning pale and clambering to his feet. ‘Very well. I shall be on my way,’ he sighed. ‘But I must say I am absolutely astonished that you should decline the first little service I have ever had to request of you.’
This was said in a high-pitched hysterical tone which his friend had never heard him use before
. ‘You are welcome to come to dinner tomorrow night as usual,’ he continued as normal. ‘Not a word to my wife though; this is strictly between ourselves!’

Thermidor Moutonnet went out.

Alone again, citizen Fouquier-Tinville, after reflecting for a moment, pressed his finger against his forehead with a cold smile; then, shrugging his shoulders as if in conclusion, picked up the list, inserted it into a large envelope, wrote the address and sealed it.

A soldier came to the door.

‘Deliver this to citizen Sanson!’
³
he ordered.

Alone again, he drew from the pocket of his linen waistcoat decorated with tricoloured arabesques a gold half-hunter watch.

‘Eleven o’clock,’ Fouquier-Tinville murmured to himself. ‘Time for lunch.’

Thirty years later, in 1823, Lucretia Moutonnet, a forty-eight year old brunette, as plump, elegant and astute as ever, and her husband Thermidor, having emigrated to Belgium at the first rumble of canon-fire during the Empire, lived above a flourishing grocery business with a tiny garden in a suburb of Liège.

During the intervening decades, beginning the very day after Thermidor Moutonnet’s interview with Fouquier-Tinville, something mysterious had happened.

The Moutonnets had become the most perfect, the most loving, the most devoted couple of all those bound together by sexual attraction. They were like a pair of doves.

They were a model of conjugal existence. No cloud had ever cast a shadow over their happiness. Their ardour was quite exceptional; their fidelity to each other almost without parallel; they hid nothing from each other.

Any mortal granted the power to penetrate the very souls of these two beings would perhaps have been surprised to learned the real cause of their happiness however.

Every night, as he lay wrapped in a sexual embrace with the person who was dearest to him in the world, his luminous eyes blinking in the darkness, he repeated to himself:

‘You don’t know, you don’t know, do
you
, that I did my best to get your HEAD CHOPPED OFF! Ha! Ha! You wouldn’t wrap yourself around me in that manner if you knew that! Ha! Ha! But you don’t, do you? I
alone
know that! It’s enough to send me into ecstasies!’

And this thought made his heart beat faster as he smiled quietly to himself in the darkness, drove him almost mad with DESIRE.
Because he imagined how she would look without a head
: and this sensation, which accorded with his private sexual fantasy, plunged him into raptures.

Lucretia, for her part, infected by the same contagious influence, the same intensification of desire, whispered neurotically to herself:

‘Laugh as much as you like, you sanctimonious fool! How pleased you are with yourself! But you can’t control your desire for me.
Do you really think that I don’t know about your little trip to see Fouquier-Tinville!
And that you tried to get my HEAD CHOPPED OFF! But I know all about that, you bastard! Unbeknown to you, I
alone
know what you are thinking! What ferocious desires you have, only I am craftier than you! And I am very happy, thank you my friend, despite you!’

In other words, the sexual insanity of one of them had won over the other. Thus did they live, each wary of the other, each finding in this monstrous deception a terrible yet continual source of stimulation for their macabre pleasures. Thus did they die (her first) without ever betraying the mutual secret of their strange, unspoken desires.

And the childless widower, Thermidor Moutonnet, remained faithful to the memory of his wife whom he only survived by a few years.

In any case, what woman could ever have replaced
for him
his dear Lucretia.

  
1
   
Henri Mercier
was founder and editor of the short-lived
Revue du monde nouveau
. On friendly terms with Cros, Rimbaud and Debussy, he translated Keats and Shelley into French and was involved with the stage.

  
2
   Antoine Quentin
Fouquier-Tinville
(1746–1795). The indefatigable public prosecutor, especially during the Terror, who was himself eventually decapitated.

  
3
   Charles-Henri
Sanson
(1740–1793), public executioner who beheaded Louis XVI.

To Maurice Bouchor
¹

To action! To evil! Good deeds always pass unnoticed!

Alfred de Musset

The Guignards had married for love and longed for a son. As if this passionately desired little being wished to hasten the accomplishment of their dream, he came into the world prematurely. His mother died during childbirth, and his father, unable to bear the loss, hanged himself in despair.

***

Constant Guignard had an exemplary but sad childhood. He spent his schooldays doing impositions he had ill-merited, fending off blows intended for others, and falling sick on examination days. By the end of his studies he enjoyed the reputation of a sanctimonious duffer. During the baccalaureate, he did his neighbour’s Latin unseen, which was awarded a pass, while he himself was ejected from the examination hall for cheating.

***

Such an unfortunate series of events early in life would have soured the temperament of most men. But Constant Guignard was made of sterner steel and, convinced that happiness is the reward for virtue, he resolved to overcome his bad luck by dint of heroism.

He accepted a job in a trading house which burned down the next day. At the height of the fire, noticing his employer’s dejection, he rushed through the flames to save the firm’s most valuable assets. With smouldering hair and blistering skin, he managed at the risk of his life to force open the safe and remove all the cash, shares and securities.

But the fire consumed them in his hands. As he staggered from the inferno, two policemen grabbed him by the neck; a month later he was sentenced to five years imprisonment for having attempted to steal, under the cover of the conflagration, a fortune which was secure from danger in a fire-proof safe.

***

A riot broke out in the prison where he was sent. Attempting to assist a warder who had been attacked, he only managed to trip him up. The warder was massacred on the spot. Constant Guignard was immediately set to Cayenne for twenty years.

Gaining courage from his innocence, he escaped, made his way back to France under an assumed name, convinced himself he had evaded his fate, and recommenced his good deeds.

***

One day, during a bank-holiday, he spotted a runaway horse and carriage making straight for the moat by the ramparts. He threw himself at the head of the horse and, at the cost of a sprained wrist and a broken leg, succeeded in preventing the inevitable catastrophe. Only the animal careered off in a different direction and went crashing into the crowd, knocking over an old man, two women and three children. The carriage was unoccupied.

***

Sick at last of such heroic gestures, Constant Guignard decided to go about his task of doing good in a more humble manner and devoted himself to the alleviation of private hardships. But the money he distributed among the wives of poor households was squandered by their husbands in the grog-shops; the woollen clothes he handed out to workmen used to the cold resulted in them catching pneumonia; a dog he rescued from the street gave rabies to six local people; and the substitute he purchased for a young soldier for whom he felt sorry sold the keys of a stronghold to the enemy.

***

Constant Guignard came to the conclusion that money does more harm than good, and that rather than scattering his philanthropy too thinly on the ground he should concentrate on a single individual. He adopted a young orphan who though far from beautiful possessed the rarest qualities and whom he raised with paternal fondness. Alas, he was so caring and devoted that one day she threw herself at his feet and admitted that she loved him. He tried to make her understand that he had always considered her as his daughter and that it would be a crime for him to cede to the temptation she put in his way. He calmly explained to her that she had mistaken the awakening of her senses for love and that he would take immediate heed of such a sign to find for her a husband worthy of her. The next day he found her slumped across the threshold of his room with a knife in her heart.