Alors! What do you say?”
“I hear you have already etched your name into one of those famous murals,” Olympe replied in her driest tones. “It seems no place is secure from that maddening habit of yours. Indeed, you brand the streets and sights of Paris with the impunity of a gaucho branding cattle! I was sitting in a pretty little cabriolet the other day, its doors nicely painted, and there saw carved into the wood beside me your initials, the date, and the cryptic message: The Wheel Has Turned . ‘The Wheel of megalomania, * for certain!’ I said to my companion, who informed me that her favorite bridge flourishes no less than six of your portentous graffiti! You have, sir, in a silent medium, begun to create a certain cacophony that I, for one, resent.”
Restif trotted off as fast as he could. Later, when Olympe left the gardens, she saw a gentleman standing before a large oak tree freshly carved with the pest’s initials and the date, and a phrase she could not decipher. * She asked that it be read aloud; the gentleman obliged:
“L’eau des marais n’est ni saine, ni claire, ni agréable à boire.”
“Little does the scurvy creature know how sweet it is to drink from your cup,” Gabrielle would tell Olympe when she heard the tale. “But I shall fear for you, knowing how Restif hurt my friend Sade, who, at this moment, languishes in a tower, and this in great part because of Restif’s fabulations. He is as much a chronic mouchard as he is a slanderer, and a defacer of public property.”
“It is true,” Olympe sighed, “that before he scrambled off, he looked at me with such rage that I am certain he would have—if he could have—had me sent to Salpêtrière at once to be chained inside a kennel.”
“It has happened to women as spirited as yourself,” Gabrielle replied knowingly.
Having told Gabrielle her story, Olympe de Gouges was eager to hear mine.
“It’s an old story,” Gabrielle told her, “most recently revived by a fiction of Sade’s that reveals to the utmost degree the horrors of incest, and although as yet unpublished, a manuscript is in circulation. Everyone knows of Restif’s incestuous behavior—”
“Not I!”
“One night, Restif awoke his eldest daughter lustily with kisses. In his excitement, he forgot the candle he held in his hand and set fire to his wig! His wife came running, and the Owl of Paris spent the night in the street in his singed wig and chemise.”
“Well done!”
“Restif—whose nose, like a street dog’s, is everywhere at once, and whose entire oeuvre is an act of self-justification—”
“When it is not glorification!.”
“—is convinced that Sade is pointing his finger—”
“The manuscript’s title?”
“Eugénie de Franval . Restif blames Sade, as do so many others—and I cannot stress this enough: as do so many others enfevered by Restif’s lies—for what he calls Sade’s ‘aberrant and violently disordered imagination.’”
“And Sade?”
“Sade says: ‘My imagination is aberrant, perhaps: but it is mine.’” (Exactly so!)” ‘A man—especially one denied access to the world and its diversity, its infinite pleasures and even its pain’ “—(for yes! here in my tower, steeped in despair and humiliation, the pain of Real Life evokes wistful longing)—” ‘a man, I say, has the intrinsic right to imagine! . If they wanted to keep me from dreaming nightmares, they should not have locked me up! The less one acts, the more one imagines, and that is the truth. And so, here I am, instead of wenching, writing books fit to plague Mephistopheles Himself and all his troop of lesser demons!’” (How well she quotes me! How carefully has she read my letters! Ah! My exemplary fan-maker!)
“And you, lovely Gabrielle,” Olympe says, pressing;—or so I imagine—her lips to Gabrielle’s wrist: “What do you think of this fiction that so maddens Restif?”
“Sade worships ambiguity. In other words, the story
“I hear you have already etched your name into one of those famous murals,” Olympe replied in her driest tones. “It seems no place is secure from that maddening habit of yours. Indeed, you brand the streets and sights of Paris with the impunity of a gaucho branding cattle! I was sitting in a pretty little cabriolet the other day, its doors nicely painted, and there saw carved into the wood beside me your initials, the date, and the cryptic message: The Wheel Has Turned . ‘The Wheel of megalomania, * for certain!’ I said to my companion, who informed me that her favorite bridge flourishes no less than six of your portentous graffiti! You have, sir, in a silent medium, begun to create a certain cacophony that I, for one, resent.”
Restif trotted off as fast as he could. Later, when Olympe left the gardens, she saw a gentleman standing before a large oak tree freshly carved with the pest’s initials and the date, and a phrase she could not decipher. * She asked that it be read aloud; the gentleman obliged:
“L’eau des marais n’est ni saine, ni claire, ni agréable à boire.”
“Little does the scurvy creature know how sweet it is to drink from your cup,” Gabrielle would tell Olympe when she heard the tale. “But I shall fear for you, knowing how Restif hurt my friend Sade, who, at this moment, languishes in a tower, and this in great part because of Restif’s fabulations. He is as much a chronic mouchard as he is a slanderer, and a defacer of public property.”
“It is true,” Olympe sighed, “that before he scrambled off, he looked at me with such rage that I am certain he would have—if he could have—had me sent to Salpêtrière at once to be chained inside a kennel.”
“It has happened to women as spirited as yourself,” Gabrielle replied knowingly.
Having told Gabrielle her story, Olympe de Gouges was eager to hear mine.
“It’s an old story,” Gabrielle told her, “most recently revived by a fiction of Sade’s that reveals to the utmost degree the horrors of incest, and although as yet unpublished, a manuscript is in circulation. Everyone knows of Restif’s incestuous behavior—”
“Not I!”
“One night, Restif awoke his eldest daughter lustily with kisses. In his excitement, he forgot the candle he held in his hand and set fire to his wig! His wife came running, and the Owl of Paris spent the night in the street in his singed wig and chemise.”
“Well done!”
“Restif—whose nose, like a street dog’s, is everywhere at once, and whose entire oeuvre is an act of self-justification—”
“When it is not glorification!.”
“—is convinced that Sade is pointing his finger—”
“The manuscript’s title?”
“Eugénie de Franval . Restif blames Sade, as do so many others—and I cannot stress this enough: as do so many others enfevered by Restif’s lies—for what he calls Sade’s ‘aberrant and violently disordered imagination.’”
“And Sade?”
“Sade says: ‘My imagination is aberrant, perhaps: but it is mine.’” (Exactly so!)” ‘A man—especially one denied access to the world and its diversity, its infinite pleasures and even its pain’ “—(for yes! here in my tower, steeped in despair and humiliation, the pain of Real Life evokes wistful longing)—” ‘a man, I say, has the intrinsic right to imagine! . If they wanted to keep me from dreaming nightmares, they should not have locked me up! The less one acts, the more one imagines, and that is the truth. And so, here I am, instead of wenching, writing books fit to plague Mephistopheles Himself and all his troop of lesser demons!’” (How well she quotes me! How carefully has she read my letters! Ah! My exemplary fan-maker!)
“And you, lovely Gabrielle,” Olympe says, pressing;—or so I imagine—her lips to Gabrielle’s wrist: “What do you think of this fiction that so maddens Restif?”
“Sade worships ambiguity. In other words, the story
Similar Books
