Justine (Library of Essential Reading) by Marquis de Sade

Author:Marquis de Sade [Sade, Marquis de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781411430501
Publisher: Barnes&Noble
Published: 2009-09-01T07:00:00+00:00

END OF PART FIRST

PART II

I was on my second day’s journey, perfectly calm about the fears I had had at first of being pursued; it was extremely warm, and according to my economical custom, I had wandered from the road to find shelter where I might make a slight repast which would put me in a way of waiting for the evening. A small grove on the right of the road, through the midst of which a limpid stream meandered, appeared to me suitable for refreshing me. My thirst being quenched with this pure and fresh water, nourished with a little bread, my back propped against a tree, I allowed a wholesome and serene breeze to circulate in my veins; it refreshed me, it tranquillized my senses. There I reflected on that almost unexampled fatality which, notwithstanding the thorns with which I was surrounded in the career of virtue, always brought me back, whatever might become of it, to the worship of that Divinity, and to acts of love and resignation towards the Supreme Being from whom it proceeds, and whose likeness it is. A sort of enthusiasm had just set upon me: Alas! said I to myself, he does not abandon me, this good God whom I adore, since I have just found on this very instant the means of repairing my strength. It is not to him I owe this favor? And are there not on earth beings to whom it is refused? I am not therefore wholly unhappy, since there are still others more to be pitied than I am. . . . Ah! am I not less so than the unfortunate girls whom I am leaving in this den of vice, out of which God’s goodness has caused me to go as by a kind of miracle?. . . And full of gratitude, I threw myself upon my knees; fixing the sun as the finest work of the Divinity, as the one which best manifests his grandeur, I drew from the sublimity of this planet fresh motives for prayer and thanks-giving, when all of a sudden I feel myself seized by two men who, having enveloped my head to prevent me from seeing and crying, hand-cuff me as a criminal, and drag me without uttering a word.

We march thus almost two hours without its being possible for me to see what route we are taking, when one of my conductors, hearing me breathe with difficulty, proposes to his comrade to rid me of the veil which is incommoding my head; he agrees to it, I breathe and perceive at last that we are in the midst of a forest following a pretty large route, although but little frequented. A thousand fatal ideas present themselves then to my mind, I fear I am taken again by the agents of those shameful Monks. . . . I fear I am being brought back to their hateful convent. “Ah!” said I to one of my guides, “Sir, may I

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