Fear of De Sade

VOICE: Something might have gone wrong. The woman simply repeated: ‘What a nightmare! What a nightmare!’, with the same movement of her head and glazed eyes. She was very low, her face looked exhausted. And he said to her: ‘Now, she’s gone. She’s a long way off. There’s nothing more we can do. We have to accept facts and destiny.’

BARON: Murderers! That’s the confession the court needed to arrest them. The proof of my innocence!

VOICE: It’s a long way from there to make them confess anything to the representatives of justice. Though it’s not a bad idea. Forced confessions are often the most beautiful ones, the ones that expose the tragic, powerless destiny of man, all the falsity of justice and the illusion of liberty and free will.

BARON: Someone has to make them pay for the crime they committed.

VOICE: They don’t seem so worried about that. They think they’re going to get out soon. Now, thinking about you, I don’t know who’s more naïve, you or them. Pay! Nobody pays for anything and everyone pays for everything. Life is an incentive to crime. What kind of a libertine are you?

BARON: Not a proper one, I told you. A slave to my feelings.

VOICE: That’s why you’re blind. You can’t see a thing.

BARON: There’s not a chink of light anywhere.

VOICE: It’s one of the features of this wing. In the other wing, at least they can see one another. Or they think they do. Which doesn’t reduce the madness in the least. Maybe it just increases it. Sometimes, it’s worse to be able to see. There’s no use in seeing when everything around you is a hallucination. I’m not excluding the possibility that your companions at the orgy might be hallucinating too when they think they’re going to get out soon. They’re just as mad as the others. Maybe even more so. How come they think they’re going to be released?

BARON: If I was incriminated instead of them.

VOICE: No one escapes the latest medicine. They’re under observation. If I was a doctor, I’d never let them out again. Look at his tics while he was trying to comfort her and the way she shook her head, backwards and forwards, while she listened and repeated ‘What a nightmare! What a nightmare!’ Leave it to the doctors, they know what they’re doing. They’re the worst executioners. I doubt your friends will ever return to the world of reason. I say so myself, and I’ve been through a lot.

BARON: But someone has to pay for the crime.

VOICE: What teachings did you say you followed? Don’t you know what the most important lesson is? That pleasure ends in murder and death? There is nothing greater than killing for pleasure. When it comes down to it, do you want to reach a solution or don’t you?

BARON: I’ve already told you I’m not a proper libertine. I fall in love easily.

VOICE: The person who kills during an orgy, kills for pleasure. And of all the people there, you were the one who most desired the young creature. Weren’t you?

BARON: I’ve already told you I’m innocent! I don’t remember anything.

VOICE: You’re just made for the prosecutor. If they’d called me as a witness for the prosecution, they wouldn’t have needed to waste time. Your head would be marked for the chop.

BARON: I swear I’m innocent.

VOICE: That’s not much. At the start, you seemed more intelligent to me. Your word’s not enough. You spent the night in the arms of Morpheus and now you want everyone to believe in your reason? You want them to be convinced you didn’t kill anyone? You’d better change your argument, pal. You yourself told me at the beginning you needed to know who had died to discover the murderer.

BARON: And now I know. They killed Martine. She’s the victim.

VOICE: If she’s the victim, you’re the main suspect. In an orgy, anyone who kills kills for pleasure.

BARON: It wasn’t me!

VOICE: You don’t know. You can’t know. You were unconscious. As well as being a murderer, you’ve missed the opportunity of enjoying the crime while you were in control of your faculties.

BARON: I’m innocent!

VOICE: Let’s try another route. What motive could the count and the baroness have had to kill the maid?

BARON: And how should I know? You yourself say they’re mad. Jealousy, I don’t know. The count might have got jealous. He fancied the maid. Who can swear that he hadn’t already had her? She was the only maid he had in the house.

VOICE: Wasn’t it you yourself who asked to be judged without the truth of feelings being taken into account? And what could the baroness have to do with any possible jealousy of the count because of the maid?

BARON: She was used by the count. A plaything in his hands. He might have told her that I would be capable of killing her to get the maid, that Martine had that power over men. He didn’t want me to free Martine from his yoke and convinced the baroness to appear at the château that night.

VOICE: Wanting to take part in the orgy?