Fear of De Sade

BARON: He used her. He always had a lot of influence over her. Even more after the Terror. She owed him her life. As I did. She said he’d saved her from the list of suspects when she came back from exile or wherever it was she’d been, to marry me. She couldn’t refuse him a favour. It might all have been a show. That’s why the pastilles knocked me out. He had to make me unconscious to kill the maid and put the blame on me. He asked for the baroness’s help. Can’t you see that’s the most plausible account of what happened?

VOICE: Then why didn’t they disappear, leaving you alone with the body?

BARON: Because, if they’d fled, they’d have aroused suspicion.

VOICE: But, since they stayed, why didn’t they serve as prosecution witnesses? All they needed to say was that they’d seen you killing the maid for your head to be marked for the chop.

BARON: They couldn’t, because they’d be accomplices. If they were there, why didn’t they stop me? It was two against one, they could have stopped me. They used the same pretext: they said they were unconscious because of the pastilles, and hadn’t seen anything.

VOICE: The same pretext? Is that the way you want to escape from the court’s examination? The same pretext as yours? You mean to say that the sleep brought on by the aniseed pastilles was a pretext?

BARON: It was a manner of speaking. I put it badly.

VOICE: Very badly. We’ll not get anywhere that way. When it comes down to it, do you want to know the truth or not? Sometimes, it seems to me that it would be better to leave things as they are, in ignorance.

BARON: I’m saying it wasn’t me!

VOICE: I think you must have understood by now that that phrase means absolutely nothing. You can’t speak for yourself. There’s nothing more fragile than words spoken in a waking state, all the more when people act when they’re asleep.

BARON: Fine. Then what’s to be done?

VOICE: You must doubt all certainties. Even the most basic ones. You have to hand yourself over to me, dear sir. Answer my questions, take me as a guide, and don’t resist. I’ll tell you all I heard in the refectory. Together we’ll try to reach a conclusion. But you’ll have to listen to me first. You’ll have to submit to me.

BARON: Sorry, but I think I’m seeing things again. It’s horrible! I’ve the impression I glimpsed you in the shadows. And again, in my vision you . . . are black as pitch, as well as . . .

VOICE: I’ve already said it’s impossible to see anything here! At the beginning, you seemed an intelligent man to me. This isn’t the moment to despair, but to focus your mind on what’s most important. You spoke to me of the revenge in the eyes of the maid when you met her, when you invited her to visit you in the château. Revenge for what?

BARON: For her status, of course. Probably on the count.

VOICE: Well, the count must have had some reason to kill her, according to your hypothesis, and jealousy, what you suggested, doesn’t seem enough. You said you need the opinion of someone who doesn’t believe in feelings. Everything is a convention. Only pleasure and the instincts are real. The count didn’t kill the maid out of jealousy. In the refectory, while the baroness was saying over and over: ‘What a nightmare! What a nightmare!’, if that woman with the fiery hair is really the baroness, he, the count, was trying to convince her that they had no choice. ‘She did it on purpose. You saw the countess’s clothes. She had one of the countess’s dresses on!’ And, at that moment, the baroness stopped repeating her mantra to ask him, in an irritated voice, to shut his mouth. She said, sharply: ‘You’d better think twice before you make your comments, if you still think you can escape the guillotine with your contacts.’ Probably you’re right when you say they must have used the pretext that they were unconscious, under the effect of the pastilles. Only you can’t repeat that to the court, because your own alibi would be useless. They know that the best thing for them is not to have seen anything. It wouldn’t shock me if they’d also said to the court, like you, that they didn’t know who the victim was, and that’s why they too were committed. We have to know what motive they had to kill her.

BARON: Martine! I can hear her voice telling me: ‘I want to be with you. I want to prove that God doesn’t exist’ in the carriage on the way to what was left of the château. The same thing as the baroness. The same thing all the men and all the women in the world say. Even if it’s only once in their lives. When they are more alive than ever. She couldn’t know that the count was expecting her. And I had no way of warning her. But I wasn’t to blame. I can hear her voice saying ‘I want to submit myself to your pleasures’, as she watched me leave the count’s lands. She was for me. The worst thing is her having died without experiencing pleasure.

VOICE: Who said that’s so?