Justine (Chapter 7)

The poor, bedraggled Justine made her way to Marcel, a town situated just outside of Paris, a suburb for the affluent. It was here that, broken, bent and bleeding, she made her inquiries as to where, "In the name of sweetest mercy, kindness and charity, I might find a doctor!" She was directed by the servants at an inn to the home of one Rodin, a neighborhood surgeon known for the astonshig efficacy of his ministrations.

Forthwith, the old physician examined the poor child, and tsk-tsking under his great, bulbous nose and curious little spectacles, which he wore perched at the end of his nose, stated, "You will live my dear, although you have been ill-used, I take it. Whatever could have brought you to this unhappy state? Ah, you are unwilling to say? Very well. You may dress."

And Justine pulled up her skirts, still aching and bruised and hurting. But, she said, "Dear doctor, is there any chance that you might know of a house in this happy neighborhood, wherein a poor, unfortunate young girl, such as myself, might seek a position as a domestic? Why, I'd work my fingers to the bone for just a few scraps of bread and a warm, comfortable bed upon which to recline."

At hearing this, the doctor (whose name was Rodin) brightened, and his face took on a pitying aspect, a smooth, oily look of understanding.

'Nonsense!" he exclaimed. "Nonsense my child! Why you will stay here, and I and my lovely daughter Rosalie, and our two maids shall look after you. Why, I wouldn't dream of turning so poor and unfortunate a child such as yourself out of doors! It would," he then finished, his voice growing low and strange, "it would be the work of a MONSTER."

And so Justine was thus ensconced in the home of the physician.

Now, Rodin was known, far and wide, for his genius, his investigative brilliance as regarding medical reseaerch, and his charitable work involving the poor and misfortunate. To this latter end, he was the director, inside his home, of a school for wayward young people. Justine wondered at this, for a time, but Rosalie, Rodin's daughter, divested her of any sentimentality or admiration she might have conceived for Rodin (whom, hitherto, she had no reason but to admire).

"Why, your father seems to work so hard on the behalf of the poor and unfortunate! You are so very lucky, Rosalie, to have been born the daughter of such a noble, self-sacrificing, and altogether vituously righteous man!"

At hearing this, Rosalie threw back her had in torrent of laughter.

She said:

"I can see you're quite an innocent, my dear. Oh, poor, naive child! It is true that my father works very hard at what he does, but, it is only because to do so arouses in him the moct vile and sordid passions and pleasures. He works at surgery, chiefly, as a hobby; his motivation is the fame and power he gets from making new discoveries. As to the charity work and his 'school,' well..."

And Rosalie here trailed off, as if she was somewhat reluctant to even broach the subject. Then, as if finally coming to the realization that it was indeed pointless to hold anything back, she thrust forward:

"He does this teaching bit to increase his sordid pleasures, to give free reign to his monstrous appetites. Shocked? Oh my yes, it is shocking stuff. Today is Friday; it's one of three days of the week he, ah, 'corrects' his pupils. Come. Follow me. You'll see."

And with that, Rosalie lead Justine to her closet, and instructed her to get down and peep through a hole in the wall. The hole looked in on Messeur Rodin's study.

"See, he brings them here for a...well, you'll see."

And Justine screwed up the side of her face, put her eye to the hole and watched.

There was a sort-of post with an iron ring screwed into it in the center of the room. Soon, Rodin came in, dragging some tear-streaked maiden by the arm, telling her viciously, "So. You think you can pass notes to boys in class and get away with it, eh? Why, I'll teach you to disobey me, you little piggy-wiggy!"

And with that, Rodin lead the terrified girl to the post, tying her trembling wrists to it, while she implored him, "Oh sir! I beg of thee! spare me the indignity of these ministrations! It was not I that passed the notes to Jean-Luc, but Rosamund, that strumpet! That harlot! That, that!..."

"Whore," spat Rodin. "Whore is the word you're looking for!" And then he spat angrily, Fie!"

And, producing a leather strap, he began to angrily abuse the exposed rear of the poor, trembling wench, whose cries for mercy rang shrilly, and with increasing volume, throughout the room. Alas, these exhortations to mercy fell upon deaf ears!

Soon, short of breath from his exertion (for he was an old man), he stated, "Fine. You've had enough I see. Now, go, and sin no more. And remember: next time, I'll not be so lenient with you!"

The girl, her tear-streaked face covered in blood and dripping snot, got up, rearranged her blouse to cover her bleeding back, rose quickly, and was lead out, as she had come in, by the wrist. Next, Roding brought in a lad; presumably the unfortunate Jean-Luc. The whole scene repeated itself, only this time, with a male instead of a crying girl.

Rosalie said: "He devises these punishments to inflict on them after he has framed them for some imaginary misdeed. Don't you believe it for a moment! That girl you just saw flogged? She was an angel."

In all, Justine saw the entire scene repeated, again and again, with NINE of Rodin's students.

"Oh heavens," she finally cried, when they had retreated from the spy hole in the closet. "How can any one man be so impossibly perverted and cruel! To think that, behind the facade of goodness, mercy and righteousness he affects, lurks the hideous soul of a debauched, perverted MONSTER, driven to extremes of wanton cruelty due to his sick lust!"

And Rosalie said, "That is not the end of it, I'm afraid! You see, my father runs this school to do as you have just witnessed. But, his cruelty does not end there."

And with that, Rosalie unbuttened her blouse, and, turning her back to Justine, she showed her the hideous marks and scars, the bruises of abuse that her father had laid upon her with his leather whip.

Justine's horrified hand flew to her mouth.

"And," Rosalie continued, "no girl in this house is spared his attentions. And neither shall you be, my dear, sweet Therese."

***

As if to confirm this, several days later, while Justine was lying in bed, Rodin came in, his breath reeking of strong spirits, and announced, "Now, the time has come, my dear, sweet, Therese--ah, poor Therese!--that you must repay me. Now, here is what I want you to do."

And, making known to Justine the nefarious and sickening extent of his villainies, the girl, recoiling in horror where she lay, exclaimed, "Sir, there is no way on heaven and earth, it seems, that I can convince you that I would never stoop to such infamies as you suggest. However, I have a few miserable sous here. Please, take it as my offering to you for the kindness and generosity you have hitherto shown!"

And with that, Rodin, a most curious cast of expression suddenly written across his countenance, stated, "Ah, Therese! I was merely testing you. You didn't, honestly, expect that I wanted you to carry out the awful and degrading assignments which I have just been suggesting, did you? A man such as myself? Why, perish the thought! Now, here is what I propose to you: You shall stay on here as long as you like. I have three maids working for me. You'll only be a fourth."

Justine protested, rather weakly, "But, sir, I do not in any case think that that would be wise. For, the other maids will become jealous. They already treat me as if they think I am only putting on airs. How much more resentful will they be if they believe I am taking food out of their very mouths by my additional, and certainly unnecessary, employment?"

At this Rodin looked thoughtful a moment, and then said, "Well, you shall wait on my daughter, dear sweet Rosalie, and, in that way, we'll keep any fires of jealousy or envy from touching you. Matter of fact, I can pay you quite handsomely for your...services."

And with that, Justine was somewhat mollified. Inside of herself, she hoped and prayed there was still some, albeit submerged shred of decency left in the pious old fraud. She even entertained a fancy she might, if given the opportunity, convert him. However, she was soon disabused of that notion by a conversation she had with Rodin, one day, on the nature of 'good and evil':

"Do not believe," he began, "that the kind of homage I have rendered to virtue is a proof that I more greatly value virtue, preferring it to vice. Do not imagine it, Therese: you will deceive yourself; those who, from what I have said to you, would, according to this deduction, support the importance or the necessity of virtue, would fall into a great error, and I would be very sorry if you believed that such is my way of thinking. The hovel which shelters me in hunting, when the burning rays of the sun fall upon my body, is certainly not a great monument to architecture; its necessity is only circumstantial; I expose myself to a sort of danger, I find something that helps me survive, I use it... But is that something, thereby, less worthless? Can it be less contemptible? In a totally vicious society, virtue would serve no purpose; ours not being of this kind, it is absolutely necessary to project it, as in putting on a air of piety, in order to have less to fear from those who slavishly respect it. If no one adopts it, it will become useless.

He continued:

" I am not wrong when I maintain that its necessity is only opinion or circumstance; Virtue is not something that can not be argued about, as to how much it does or doesn't cost; it is only a way of behaving which varies according to each climate and which, consequently, has no real substance: this alone makes it futile. Only that which is constant is really good; what changes perpetually can not pretend to the character of goodness. This is why immutability has been placed in the rank of the perfections of the Lord. But virtue is absolutely deprived of this character: there are not two peoples on the surface of the globe who are virtuous in the same way; therefore virtue is not real, not intrinsically good, and thus, it does not deserve our worship; it is necessary for the state to enforce moral edicts to maintain control, to adopt it as a matter of pure political expediency, in the country where we happen to live, so that those who practice it by taste, or who ought to reverence it by nature, leave you at peace; of course this virtue, whle it may gain respect for you wherever you happen to live, will, by the fact that it is so conventional, win you slings and arrows from those who profess to follow the more sinful pathway of vice.

"But, once again, all of these are circumstances, and none of this gives real value to virtue. Indeed, for some men, virtue is impossible, it seems. Now, how will you persuade me that a virtue that fights or opposes natural inclinations can be found in nature? And if she is not there, how can she be good? Among the men who cannot follow the path of virtue, of course, to them is left only vice as preferable, since it will not be in any way possible for them to satisfy their physical or mental inclinations otherwise.

"In this hypothesis, then, there will be very useful vices. Now, how will you maintain the value of virtue as a sole admirable quality if, indeed, you show me that its opposite can be so? We've been told that virtue is its own reward, as it is good for our fellow man, and so, an individual receives good in accordance with the amount of it he gives. This reasoning is only a sophism; for the little good that I receive from others, because of the virtue they slavishly practice, by the obligation to practice it in my turn, I make a million sacrifices which do not compensate me in any way. Receiving less than I give, I make a bad bargain, I am much more unhappy with the privations I endure to be virtuous, than I receive good from those who are.

"The arrangement being not equal, I must not submit to it, and I will not force myself to it, it penalizing me to be so virtuous at the expense of my own interests and inclinations. It is not worth it.

"Plainly speaking: Is it not infinitely better that I give up giving them happiness, if by giving them so much I, myself, must pay a high price, myself suffering harm? Now consider the vicious harm I can do others, and they, in turn, can do to me. Admitting a complete circulation of vices, I certainly risk my own destruction at their hands, I'll admit; but the sorrow experienced by what I risk is compensated by the pleasure of what I do to others; here, then, equality is reestablished, and from then on everyone is almost equally happy: what is not sustained, and can not be, in a society where some are good and others bad; because it results from this mixture of perpetual snares, which do not exist in the other case. In a society of variant types, all interests are diverse: this is the source of an infinity of misfortunes; in the other, more uniform society, all interests are equal, each individual subject of such a kingdom is endowed with the same tastes, the same inclinations; all walk for the same purpose, all are happy.

"But, fools say to you, evil does not make you happy. No, when it is sure to incense the good; but degrade, degrade what you call good, you will reverence only what you had the foolishness to call evil; and all men will have pleasure in committing it, not because it will be permitted (it would sometimes be a reason to diminish its attraction), but it is because the laws will no longer punish it, and they diminish by the fear they inspire, the pleasure that nature has placed in crime.

"I suppose a society where it will be agreed that incest (let us admit this crime as any other), that incest, I say, be a crime: those who engage in it will be unhappy, because opinion, laws, worship, everything will come to glaze their pleasures; those who wish to commit it, that evil, and who dare not, according to these restrictions, will be equally unhappy; thus the law which will proscribe incest will have made only unfortunate ones. That in a neighboring society incest is not a crime, those who do not desire it will not be unhappy, and those who desire it will be happy. So the society that has enabled this action will be better suited to men than the one that has erected the same action as a crime. It is the same with all the other actions awkwardly considered as criminal: by observing them from this point of view, you make a crowd of unhappy people; by allowing them, no one complains; for he who loves this action does so in peace, and he who does not care or remains in a sort of indifference to it, which is not at all painful, or is compensated for the injury he may have received by a crowd of other lesions, which he in turn beats those he had to complain about.

"So everyone in a criminal society is or is very happy, or in a state of recklessness that is not painful; therefore nothing good, nothing respectable, nothing is done to render men happy in doing what is called virtue. That those who follow it, therefore, do not take pride in this kind of homage, which the kind of constitution of our society compels us to render to it: it is a matter of circumstances, of convention; but in fact, this cult is chimerical, and the virtue that obtains it for a moment is not for that reason more beautiful."

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