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(speaking in foreign language)

(clanging)

(liquid pouring)

(speaking in foreign language)

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Servant] Amen.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Servant] Amen.

(speaking in foreign language)

(bells ringing)

(speaking in foreign language)

- This creature, innocent perhaps,

is, however, treated like a criminal,

whilst all about me all is prosperity.

I who am soiled with crimes and horrors.

- Alas, Monsieur, I am a poor orphan not yet 14-years-old

and I have already become familiar

with every nuance of misfortune.

I implore your commiseration,

have pity upon me, I beseech you.

- The services of a child like yourself

are of no great use in a household.

You have neither the age nor the appearance

for the kind of place you are seeking.

You would be better advised in devoting yourself

to giving men pleasure,

to occupy yourself with discovering a man

who may consent to take care of you.

The virtue whereof you make such a conspicuous display

is worthless in this world.

In vain will you genuflect before its altars,

its ridiculous incense will nourish you not at all.

Here on this earth.

- Odious man, may the Heaven you have so grievously offended

some day punish your execrable heartlessness

as it merits to be.

You are worthy neither of the riches

you have put to such vile use,

nor of the very air you breathe

in a world you defile with your barbarities.

Madame, have pity.

- Yes, yes pity.

One need only have pity and one starves to death.

- [Dubourg] Thank Desroches, for it is as a favor to her

I intend to show you an instant's kindness.

You must surely be aware how little you deserve it

after your performance yesterday.

- [Man] Perform your duty, Sirrah.

This wretch has stolen from me a diamond

worth a thousand crowns,

you will find it in her chamber or upon her person,

the fact is certain.

(door closing)

(banging)

- Between seven and eight the Conciergerie will catch fire,

I have seen to it.

There's no question about it, many people will be burned.

It doesn't matter, Therese.

The fate of others is nothing to us

when our own lives are at stake.

Well, we're going to escape from this place,

of that you can be sure.

Four men, my confederates, will join us,

and I guarantee you you shall be free.

There you are, Therese, free.

You may now choose the sort of life you wish,

but were I to have any advice to offer you,

it would be to renounce the practice of virtue

which, as you have noticed, is the courting of disaster.

Therese, you're young and attractive,

heed me, and in two years I'll have led you to a fortune.

But don't suppose I'll guide you

along the paths of virtue.

When one wants to get on, my dear girl,

one must stop at nothing.

Decide, then, we have no security in this cottage,

we've got to leave in a few hours.

- Oh Madame, I am greatly indebted to you,

and am far from wishing to disown my obligation.

You saved my life.

In my view, 'tis frightful the thing was achieved

through a crime and, believe me,

had I been the one charged to commit it,

I should have preferred a thousand deaths

to the anguish of participating in it.

I am aware of all the dangers I risk

in trusting myself to the honest sentiments

which will always remain in my heart,

but whatever be the thorns of virtue, Madame,

I prefer them unhesitatingly and always

to the perilous favors which are crime's accompaniment.

There are religious principles within me which,

may it please Heaven, will never desert me.

If Providence renders difficult my career in life,

'tis in order to compensate me in a better world.

- Those are absurd doctrines

which will have you on the dung heap in no time, my girl.

Believe me, forget God's justice,

His future punishments and rewards,

the lot of those platitudes

will lead us nowhere but to death from starvation.

O Therese, the callousness of the Rich

legitimates the bad conduct of the Poor.

Let them open their purse to our needs,

let humaneness reign in their hearts

and virtues will take place in ours.

But as long as our misfortune, our patient endurance of it,

our good faith, our abjection's

serve only to double the weight of our chains,

our crimes will be their doing,

and we'll be fools indeed to abstain from them.

When they can lessen your yoke

wherewith their cruelty bears us down.

Nature has caused us all to be equals born, Therese.

If fate is pleased to upset

the primary scheme of the general law,

then it is up to us to correct its caprices

and through our skill to repair

the usurpations of the strongest.

I love to hear these rich ones,

these titled ones, these magistrates and these priests,

I love to see them preach virtue to us.

It is not very difficult to forswear theft

when one has three or four times what one needs to live.

It is not very necessary to plot murder

when one is surrounded by adulators and thralls

unto whom one's will is law,

nor is it very hard to be temperate and sober

when one has the most succulent dainties

constantly within one's reach.

They can well contrive to be sincere

when there's never any apparent advantage in falsehood.

But we, Therese, we whom the barbaric Providence

you are mad enough to idolize,

has condemned to slink in the dust of humiliation

as doth the serpent in grass,

we who are beheld with disdain only because we are poor,

who are tyrannized because we are weak.

We, who must quench our thirst with gall

and who, wherever we go, tread on the thistle always,

you would have us shun crime

when its hand alone can open up unto us the door to life,

maintain us in it,

and is our only protection when our life is threatened.

You would have it that, degraded and in perpetual abjection,

while this class dominating

has unto itself all the blessings of fortune,

we reserve for ourselves naught but pain,

beatings, suffering, nothing but want and tears,

brandings and the gibbet.

No, no, no, Therese, no.

Either this Providence you reverence

is made only for our scorn,

or the world we see about us

is not at all what Providence would have it.

Become better acquainted with your Providence, my child,

and be convinced that as soon as it places us

in a situation where evil becomes necessary,

and while at the same time it leaves us the possibility

of doing it,

this evil harmonizes quite as well with its decrees

as does good,

and Providence gains as much by the one as by the other.

The state in which she has created us is equality.

- [Man] An instant.

- He who disturbs is no more guilty

than he who seeks to re-establish the balance.

Both act in accordance with received impulses,

both have to obey those impulses and enjoy them.

By God, here's an unhappy little one.

What, you shudder before the obligation

to serve four fine big boys one after another?

Listen to me, my sway over these dear lads

is sufficiently great for me to gain a reprieve for you

on condition that you can prove yourself worthy.

- Alas, Madame, what must I do?

Command me, I am ready.

- Join us, throw in your lot with us,

commit the same deeds, without show of the least repugnance.

Either that, or I cannot save you from the rest.

- I will go everywhere with you, Madame,

everywhere, I promise.

Shield me from the fury of these men

and I shall never leave your side while I live.

- Children, this girl is one of the company,

I'm taking her into it.

I want you to do her no ill.

Don't put her stomach off the m'tier

during her first days in it.

You see how useful her age and face can be to us.

Let's employ them to our advantage

rather than sacrifice them to our pleasures.

- [Man] Dear friend, the wasting of the seed

destined to perpetuate the human species,

is the only crime which can exist,

such is the hypothesis.

According to it, this seed is put in us

for the sole purpose of reproduction,

and if that were true I would grant you that diverting it

is an offense.

But once it is demonstrated that her situating

this semen in our loins is by no means enough

to warrant supposing that Nature's purpose

is to have all of it employed for reproduction,

what then does it matter, whether it be spilled in one place

or in another?

Does the man who diverts it perform a greater evil

than Nature who does not employ all of it?

Now, do not those natural losses,

which we can imitate if we please,

occur in an abundance of instances?

Our very ability to provoke them, firstly,

is an initial proof that they do not offend Nature

in the slightest.

- [Man] Quite so.

It would be contrary to all the equity

and profound wisdom we everywhere recognize in her laws

for them to permit what might affront her.

Secondly, those losses occur

a hundred hundred million times every day,

and she instigates them herself.

Nocturnal pollutions,

the inutility of semen during the periods

of woman's pregnancy,

are they not authorized by her laws,

enjoined by them,

and do they not prove that, very little concerned

for what may result from this liquid

which we so foolishly attach a disproportionate value,

she permits us its waste with the same indifference

she herself causes it every day to be wasted.

She tolerates reproduction, yes,

but much is wanting to prove reproduction

is one of her intentions,

she lets us go ahead with our reproducing to be sure,

but it being no more to her advantage

than our abstaining therefrom,

the choice we happen to make is as one to her.

(birds chirping)

- Why, Monsieur, do you oppose my flight?

- Because, Therese, we have got you.

And the stronger is always the better reason.

La Fontaine made the remark ages ago.

All men are born isolated, envious, cruel and despotic,

wishing to have everything and surrender nothing,

incessantly struggling either to maintain their rights

or achieve their ambition,

the legislator comes up and says to them,

Cease thus to fight.

If each were to retreat a little, calm would be restored.

I find no fault with the position implicit in the agreement,

but I maintain that two species of individuals

should not and cannot submit to it, ever.

Those who feel they are the stronger

have no need to give up anything in order to be happy,

and those who find themselves the weaker

also find themselves giving up infinitely more

than what is assured them.

However, society is only composed

only of weak persons and strong.

Well, if the pact must perforce displease

both weak and strong,

there is great cause to suppose

that it will fail to suit society,

and the previously existing state of warfare

must seem infinitely preferable,

since it permitted everyone the free exercise

of his strength and his industry,

whereof he would discover himself deprived

by a society's unjust pact

that takes too much from the one

and never accords enough to the other.

Hence, the truly intelligent person

is he who, indifferent to the risk

of renewing the state of war

that existed prior to the agreement,

lashes out in irrevocable violation of that agreement,

violates it as much and often as he is able,

full certain that what he will gain from these ruptures

will always be more than what he would lose

if he happens to be a member of the weaker class,

for such he was when he respected the agreement.

By breaking it he may become one of the stronger,

and if the laws return him to the class

from whence he wished to return,

the worst that can befall him is the loss of his life,

which is a misfortune infinitely less great

than that of existing in wretchedness and opprobrium.

Hence, there are two positions available to us.

Either crime, which renders us happy,

or the noose, which stops us from being unhappy.

I ask if there can be any doubt, pretty Therese,

and where will your little mind find an argument

able to combat that one?

- Softly, my friends.

It was not for the sake of their purses

that I exhorted you not to spare those travelers,

it was solely in the interests of our security.

The law's to be blamed for these crimes,

the fault's not ours.

So long as thieves are hanged like murderers,

thefts shall never be committed without assassination.

The two misdeeds are punished equally.

Why then abstain from the second

when it may cover up the first?

One must never appraise values

save in terms of our own interest.

And what makes you suppose, furthermore,

that two hundred louis are not worth three killings?

The cessation of the victims' existences

is as nothing compared to the continuation of ours,

not a mite does it matter to us

whether any individual is alive or in the grave.

Consequently, if one of the two cases involves

what in the smallest way affects our welfare,

we must, with perfect unremorse,

settle the thing in our own favor.

For in a completely indifferent matter we should,

if we have any wits and are master of the situation,

undoubtedly act so as to turn it to the profitable side,

completely indifferent to whatever may befall our adversary.

For there is no rational commensuration

between what affects us and what affects others.

The first touches us physically,

the other only touches us morally,

and moral feelings are made to deceive,

none but physical sensations are authentic.

Thus, not only do two hundred louis

suffice for three killings,

but even 30 centimes would have sufficed,

for those 30 centimes would have procured for us

a satisfaction which, although light,

must necessarily affect us

to a much more lively degree than would three men murdered,

who are nothing to us,

and by the wrongs done whom we are not in the least touched,

no, not even scratched.

Our organic feebleness, careless thinking,

the accursed prejudices in which we were brought up,

the vain terrors of religion and law,

those are what hamper idiots

and confound their criminal careers,

those are what prevent them from arriving at greatness.

Every strong and healthy individual,

endowed with a fully active mind,

who preferring himself to others, as he must,

will know how to weigh their interests

in the balance against his own,

will laugh God and mankind to the devil,

will mock at the law,

fully aware that it is to himself

that he must be faithful,

by himself all must be judged,

will sense that the vastest multitude of wrongs

committed on others cannot offset

the least pleasure lost to himself,

nor be as important as his smallest enjoyment

purchased by an unheard-of host of villainies.

Joy pleases him, it is in him, it is his own,

crime's effect touches him not, is exterior to him.

Well, I ask you,

what thinking man will not prefer

what causes his delectation

to what is alien to him?

And who will not commit to those deeds

whereof he experiences nothing unpleasant,

in order to obtain what moves him most agreeably?

- Friend, you understand, don't you,

that after having robbed you, we cannot leave you alive.

- Oh Monsieur, I beseech you not to present me

the horrible spectacle, upon my reception into your band,

of this poor man's death.

Allow him to live, do not refuse this first request

I ask of you.

The name Monsieur has just given himself

causes me to believe we are nearly related.

Be not astonished, Monsieur,

be not at all surprised to find a kinsman

in these circumstances.

I will explain it all to you.

In the light of this, Monsieur,

grant me the unlucky creature's life.

I will show my gratitude for the favor

by the completest devotion

to all that will be able to serve your interests.

- You know upon what conditions I can accord you

what you ask, Therese.

You know what I demand from you.

- Ah, very well, Monsieur, I will do everything.

- Let him live.

But he has got to join us, that last clause is crucial.

I can do nothing if he refuses to comply with it,

my comrades would be against me.

(birds chirping)

- Oh, Madame, I have no idea what that man

afterward said or did.

The state I was in when I returned to my senses

advised me only too well

to what point I had been his victim.

It was darkest night when I awoke.

I was at the foot of a tree, away from any road,

injured, bleeding, dishonored.

Such had been the reward for all I had just done

for the unlucky man,

and carrying infamy to its ultimate degree,

the wretch, after having done to me all he had wished,

after having abused me in every manner,

even in that which most outrages Nature,

had taken my purse

containing the same money I had so generously offered him.

He had torn my clothing,

most of it lay in shreds and ribbons about me.

I was virtually naked,

and several parts of my body were lacerated, clawed.

You may appreciate my situation.

There in the depths of the night, without resources,

without honor, without hope,

exposed to every peril.

I wished to put an end to my days.

Had a weapon been presented to me,

I would have laid hands on it

and abridged this unhappy life,

full only of plagues for me.

The monster, what did I do to him, I asked myself,

to have deserved such cruel treatment at his hands?

I save his life, restore his fortune to him,

he snatches away what is most dear to me.

A savage beast would have been less cruel.

O man, thus are you when you heed nothing

but your passions.

Tigers that dwell in the wildest jungles

would quail before such ignominies.

- [Man] Monsieur.

- [Woman] Your candor and naivete do not permit me

to think you untruthful.

I will inquire after no other information

save what will authorize me to believe

you are really the daughter of the man you indicate.

As for the du Harpin affair,

I will assume responsibility for settling it

with two visits paid to the Chancellor.

We have but to prove your innocence to him.

All the charges leveled against you will crumble

and be withdrawn.

(lively music)

- [Man] All religions start from a false premise, Therese.

Each supposes as necessary the worship of a Creator,

but that creator never existed.

In this connection, put yourself in mind

of the sound precepts of that certain Coeur-de-fer

who, you told me, used to labor over your mind as I do.

If all Nature's productions are the resultant effects

of the laws whereof she is a captive,

if her perpetual action and reaction

suppose the motion necessary to her essence,

what becomes of the sovereign master

fools gratuitously give her?

That is what your sagacious instructor

said to you, dear girl.

What, then, are religions if not the restraint

wherewith the tyranny of the mightier

sought to enslave the weaker?

Motivated by that design,

he dared say to him that a God had forged the irons

with which cruelty manacled him,

and the latter, bestialized by his misery,

indistinctly believed everything the former wished.

Can religions, born of these rogueries, merit respect?

Is there one of them, Therese,

which does not bear the stamp of imposture and stupidity?

What do I descry in them all?

Mysteries which cause reason to shudder,

dogmas which outrage Nature,

grotesque ceremonies which simply inspire derision

and disgust.

But if amongst them all there were one

which most particularly deserves our scorn and hatred,

O Therese, is it not that barbaric law of the Christianity

into which both of us were born?

Is there any more odious?

One which so spurs both the heart and mind to revolt?

How is it that rational men

are still able to lend any credence

to the obscure mutterings, to the alleged miracles

of that appalling cult's vile originator?

Has there ever existed a rowdy scoundrel

more worthy of public indignation!

What is he but a leprous Jew

who, born of a slut and a soldier

in the world's meanest stews,

dared fob himself off for the spokesman of him who,

they say, created the universe.

With such lofty pretensions,

you will have to admit, Therese,

at least a few credentials are necessary.

But what are those of this ridiculous Ambassador?

What is he going to do to prove his mission?

Is the earth's face going to be changed?

Are the plagues which beset it going to be annihilated?

Is the sun going to shine upon it by night

as well as by day?

Vices will soil it no more?

Are we going to see happiness reign at last?

Not at all.

It is through hocus-pocus, antic capers, and puns

that God's envoy announces himself to the world.

It is in the elegant society of manual laborers,

artisans, and streetwalkers

that Heaven's minister comes to manifest his grandeur.

It is by drunken carousing with these,

bedding with those, that God's friend,

God himself, comes to bend the toughened sinner

to his laws.

It is by inventing nothing for his farces

but what can satisfy either his lewdness

or his gourmand's guts

that the knavish fellow demonstrates his mission.

However all that may be, he makes his fortune,

a few beef-witted satellites gravitate toward the villain,

a sect is formed.

This crowd's dogmas manage to seduce some Jews.

Slaves of the Roman power,

they joyfully embrace a religion which,

ridding them of their shackles,

makes them subject to none but a metaphysical tyranny.

Their motives become evident,

their indocility unveils itself,

the seditious louts are arrested,

their captain perishes,

but of a death doubtless much too merciful

for his species of crime,

and through an unpardonable lapse of intelligence,

this uncouth boor's disciples

are allowed to disperse instead of being slaughtered

cheek to jowl with their leader.

Fanaticism gets minds in its grip, women shriek,

fools scrape and scuffle,

imbeciles believe, and lo!

The most contemptible of beings,

the most maladroit quacksalver,

the clumsiest impostor ever to have made his entrance,

there he is, behold, God,

there's God's little boy, his papa's peer.

And now all his dreams are consecrated,

and now all his epigrams are become dogmas.

And all his blunders mysteries.

His fabulous father's breast opens to receive him

and that Creator, once upon a time simple,

of sudden becomes compound, triple,

to humor his son, this lad so worthy of his greatness,

but does that sacred God stick at that?

No, surely not, his celestial might

is going to bestow many another and greater favor.

At the beck and call of a priest, of, that is to say,

an odd fellow foul with lies,

the great God is going to abase himself

to the point of descending 10 or 12 million times

every morning in a morsel of wheat paste.

This the faithful devour and assimilate,

and God Almighty is lugged to the bottom of their intestines

where he is speedily transmuted

into the vilest excrement,

and all that for the satisfaction of the tender son,

odious inventor of this monstrous impiety

which had its beginnings in a cabaret supper.

- My hand!

Have you been able, Monsieur, to conceive such projects?

No, dispose of my life if you must,

but imagine not you will ever obtain from me

the horror you propose.

- Hear me, Therese.

I indeed foresaw your distaste for the idea,

but, as you have wit and verve,

I flattered myself with the belief

I could vanquish your feelings

could prove to you that this crime,

which seems to you of such enormity, is, at bottom,

a very banal affair.

Two misdeeds present themselves

to your not very philosophic scrutiny.

The destruction of a creature bearing a resemblance to us,

and the evil with which this crime

is augmented when the said creature

is one of our near kinsmen.

With regard to the crime of destroying one's fellow,

be persuaded, dear girl, it is purely hallucinatory.

Man has not been accorded the power to destroy,

he has at best the capacity to alter forms,

but lacks that required to annihilate them.

Well, every form is of equal worth in Nature's view,

nothing is lost in the immense melting pot

where variations are wrought.

All the material masses which fall into it

spring incessantly forth in other shapes,

and whatsoever be our interventions in this process,

not one of them, needless to say,

outrages her, not one is capable of offending her.

Our depredations revive her power,

they stimulate her energy, but not one attenuates her,

she is neither impeded nor thwarted by any.

Why, what difference does it make to her creative hand

if this mass of flesh today wearing the conformation

of a bipedal individual is reproduced tomorrow

in the guise of a handful of centipedes?

Dare one say that the construction

of this two-legged animal

costs her any more than that of an earthworm,

and that she should take a greater interest

in the one than in the other?

If then the degree of attachment,

or rather of indifference, is the same,

what can it be to her if, by one man's sword,

another man is transspeciated into a fly

or a blade of grass?

When they will have convinced me

of the sublimity of our species,

when they will have demonstrated to me

that it is really so important to Nature,

that her laws are necessarily violated

by this transmutation,

then I will be able to believe that murder is a crime,

but when the most thoughtful and sober study

has proven to me that everything that vegetates

upon this globe is of equal value in her eyes,

I shall never concede

that the alteration of one of these creatures

into a thousand others can in any sense

upset her intentions or sort ill with her desires.

I say to myself,

all men, all animals, all plants growing, feeding,

destroying and reproducing themselves by the same means,

never undergoing a real death,

but a simple variation in what modifies them all,

I say, appearing today in one form

and several years or hours later in another,

all may, at the will of the being who wishes to move them,

change a thousand thousand times in a single day,

without one of Nature's directives

being affected for one instant.

What do I say?

Without this transmuter having done anything but good,

since, by dismantling the individuals

whose basic components again become necessary to Nature,

he does naught by this action,

improperly qualified as criminal,

but render her the creative energy

of which she is necessarily deprived by him who,

through brutish indifference,

dares not undertake any shuffling, as it were, of the pack.

O Therese, it is man's pride alone

erects murder as a crime.

This vain creature, imagining himself

to be the most sublime of the globe's inhabitants,

its most essential, takes his departure

from this false premise

in order to affirm that the deed

which results in his undoing can be nothing but an infamy,

but his vanity, his lunacy alter the laws of Nature

not one jot.

No person exists who in the depths of his heart

does not feel the most vehement desire

to be rid of those by whom he is hampered,

troubled, or whose death will be of some advantage to him.

And do you suppose that the difference between this desire

and its effect is very great?

Now, if these impressions come to us from Nature,

can it be presumed they irritate her?

Would she inspire in us what cause her downfall?

Ah, be at ease.

Dear girl, we experience nothing that does not serve her.

All the impulses she puts in us

are the agents of her decrees.

Man's passions are but the means she employs

to attain her ends.

If she stands in need of more individuals,

she inspires lust in us and behold there are creations.

When destructions become necessary to her,

she inspires vengeance, avarice,

lechery, ambition into our hearts and lo!

You have murders.

But she has not ceased to labor in her own behalf,

and whatever we do, there can be no question of it,

we are the unthinking instruments of her caprices.

But my aunt is the creature I am going to destroy.

Oh, Therese, in a philosopher's view

how frivolous are these consanguinary ties.

Forgive me, but I do not even wish to discuss them,

so futile are they.

These contemptible chains,

the fruit of our laws and our political institutions

can they mean anything to Nature?

Desert your prejudices, Therese.

Leave them behind, and serve me.

Your fortune is made.

- Oh Monsieur, your mind invents this theory

of an impassive, indifferent Nature.

Deign rather to heed your heart,

and you will hear it condemn

all libertinage's false reasonings.

- [Man] I see very well I was mistaken, Therese.

I regret it, perhaps as much on your account as on my own.

No matter, I shall discover other means,

and it will be much you shall have lost

without your mistress gaining anything.

(laughing)

You are delicious, my child.

A gleam of wisdom seems to have penetrated into your mind.

That such charming mind as this should have lain in darkness

for so long.

Incredible.

You are the first woman I have ever held in my arms,

and truly, it is with my soul.

- [Justine] But the abominable crime was to be consummated,

some inconceivable permission must have been granted

by Heaven that virtue might be made to yield

to villainy's oppressions.

The animal upon which we had experimented

revealed everything to the Count.

He heard it howling,

knowing of his aunt's fondness for the beast,

he asked what had been done to it.

Those to whom he spoke knew nothing of the matter

and made him no clear answer.

From this moment, his suspicions began to take shape,

he uttered not a word, but I saw that he was disquieted.

I mentioned his state to the Marquise,

she became further upset,

but could think of nothing

to do save urge the courier to make yet greater haste,

and, if possible, still more carefully

to hide the purpose of his mission.

She advised her nephew that she was writing to Paris

to beg the Duc de Sonzeval

to waste not a moment to take up the matter

of the recently deceased uncle's inheritance

for if no one were to appear to claim it,

there was litigation to be feared.

She added that she had requested the Duke to come

and give her a complete account of the affair,

in order that she might learn whether or not

she and her nephew would be obliged

to make a journey to Paris.

At the time I knew nothing, I was the dupe of everything.

Were the appalling crime to be committed

as the Count's actions informed me later,

he would of course have to commit it himself,

but I did not know how.

I conjectured much, what good would it do to tell you

what I imagined?

Rather, let us move ahead to the cruel manner

in which I was punished

for not having wished to undertake the thing.

- The criminal capable of having poisoned my aunt

is brazen indeed to dare thus write to me

after her execrable deed.

Better still is the care with which

she conceals her retreat,

for she may be sure she will be discomfited

if she is discovered.

But what is it she has the temerity to demand?

What are these references to money?

Does what she left behind equal the thefts she committed,

either during her sojourn in the house

or while consummating her final crime?

Let her avoid sending a second request similar to this,

for she is advised her ambassador

will be arrested and held

until the law acquaints itself

with the place where the guilty party is taking cover.

- Certainly, dear friend,

my father could make ends meet

without pursuing either of these two occupations.

He pursues both at once,

it is because of the two motives

I am going to reveal to you.

He practices medicine because he has a liking for it,

he takes keen pleasure in using his skill

to make new discoveries, he has made so many of them,

he has written so many authoritative texts

based upon his investigations

that he is generally acknowledged

the most accomplished man in France at the present time.

He worked for twenty years in Paris,

and for the sake of his amusements

he retired to the country.

The real surgeon at Saint-Marcel

is someone named Rombeau

whom he has taken under his tutelage

and with whom he collaborates upon experiments,

and now, Therese,

would you know why he runs a school?

Libertinage, my child, libertinage alone,

a passion he carries to its extremes.

My father finds in his pupils of either sex

objects whose dependence submits them to his inclinations,

and he exploits them.

But wait a moment, come with me,

today is Friday, one of the three days during the week

when he corrects those who have misbehaved.

It is in this kind of punishment

my father takes his pleasure.

Follow me, I tell you, you shall see how he behaves.

Everything is visible from a closet in my room

which adjoins the one where he concludes his business.

Let's go there without making any noise,

and above all be careful not to say a word

both about what I am telling you

and what you're about to witness.

Don't believe a word of it,

these are trifles my invents by way of pretext.

That little creature is an angel,

it is because she resists him he treats her harshly.

- Dear Heaven!

How is one able to surrender oneself to such excesses?

How can one find pleasure in the torments one inflicts?

- Ah, you do not know everything.

Listen, what you have seen has perhaps enabled you

to understand that when my father discovers some aptitudes

in his young pupils,

he carries his horrors much further.

He abuses the girls in the same manner

as he deals with the boys.

By this means the girls are not in the least dishonored,

there are no pregnancies to fear,

and nothing prevents them from finding a husband.

Not a year goes by without his corrupting

nearly all the boys in this way,

and at least half the other children.

Of the 14 girls you have seen,

eight have already been spoiled by these methods,

and he has taken his pleasure with nine of the boys,

the two women who serve him are submitted

to the same horrors.

O Therese, O dear girl,

and I too, yes I, he seduced me in my earliest years.

I was barely 11 when I became his victim,

when, alas I was unable to defend myself against him.

Come hither, that room where he chastises his students

is the same wherein he enjoys us.

The lessons are over now,

it is the hour when, warmed by the preliminaries,

he is going to compensate himself

for the restraint his prudence sometimes imposes upon him.

Go back to where you were, dear girl,

and with your own eyes behold it all.

- Anatomy will never reach its ultimate state of perfection

until an examination has been performed

upon the vaginal canal of a 14 or 15-year-old girl

who has expired from a cruel death.

It is only from the contingent contraction

we can obtain a complete analysis

of a so highly interesting part.

- The same holds true for the hymeneal membrane.

We must, of course, find a young girl for the dissection.

What the deuce is there to be learned

after the age of puberty?

Nothing.

The menstrual discharges rupture the hymen,

and all research is necessarily inexact.

Your daughter is precisely what we need.

Although she is 15, she is not yet mature.

The manner in which we have enjoyed her

has done no damage to the membranous tissue,

and we will be able to handle her

with complete immunity from interference.

I must say, I am delighted you have decided

to go ahead at last.

- Oh, I certainly have.

I find it odious that futile considerations

should check the progress of science,

did great men ever allow themselves to be enslaved

by such contemptible chains?

And, when Michelangelo

wished to render a Christ after Nature,

did he make the crucifixion of a young man

the occasion for a fit of remorse?

Why no.

He copied the boy in his death agonies.

But where it is a question of the advance of our art,

how absolutely essential such means become,

and how the evil in permitting them

dwindles to insignificance.

Only think of it.

You sacrifice one, but you save a million, perhaps,

can one hesitate when the price is so modest?

Is the murder operated by the law of a species

different from the one we are going to perform?

And is not the purpose of those laws,

commonly found so wise,

the sacrifice of one in order to save a thousand?

- But what other way can one approach the problem?

There is certainly no other way

by which to obtain information.

In those hospitals where I worked as a young man

I witnessed similar experiments by the thousand,

but I must confess that I, in view of the ties

which attach you to this creature,

I would have thought you might hesitate.

- What?

Because she's my daughter?

A capital reason.

And what rank do you then suppose this title

must allot her in my heart?

I place roughly the same value upon a little semen

which has hatched its chick,

and upon that I am pleased to waste while enjoying myself.

One has the power to take back what one has given,

amongst no race that has ever dwelled on earth

has there been any disputing the right

to dispose of one's children as one sees fit.

The Persians, the Medes, the Armenians,

the Greeks all used this right in its fullest latitude.

The constitution decreed by Lycurgus,

that paragon of lawgivers,

not only accorded fathers every right over their offspring,

but even condemned to death

those children parents did not care to feed,

or those which were discovered malformed.

A great proportion of savage peoples

kill their young immediately they are born.

Nearly all the women of Asia, America, Africa,

practice abortions, and are not for that reason

covered with discredit.

Cook discovered the custom widespread

in all the South Sea islands.

Romulus permitted infanticide,

the law of the 12 tables similarly tolerated it,

and until the era of Constantine

the Romans killed or exposed their children with impunity.

Aristotle recommended this pretended crime,

the Stoic sect thought it praiseworthy.

It's still very much in use in China.

Every day one stays lying in the streets

and floating in the canals of Peking,

over 10 thousand individuals immolated or abandoned

by their parents,

and in that wisely-governed empire

no matter what a child's age may be

a father need but put it into the hands of a judge

to be rid of it.

According to the laws of the Parthians,

one killed one's son, one's daughter, or one's brother,

even at the age of nubility.

Caesar discovered the custom universal amongst the Gauls.

Several passages in the Pentateuch

prove that amongst the children of God

one was allowed to kill one's children,

and, finally, God Himself ordered Abraham to do just that.

It's long been believed,

declares a celebrated modern author,

that the prosperity of empires

depends upon the slavery of children.

This opinion is supported by the healthiest logic.

Why, a monarch will fancy himself

authorized to sacrifice 20, 30 thousand of his subjects

in a single day

in order to achieve his own ends,

and a father is not to be allowed,

when he esteems it propitious

to become the master of his children's lives.

(chuckles)

What absurdity!

O folly!

What is this inconsistency,

this feebleness in them upon whom such chains are binding.

A father's authority over his children,

the only real one, the one that serves as basic

to all others,

that authority is dictated

by the voice of Nature herself,

and the intelligent study of her operations

provides examples of it at every turn and instant.

Czar Peter was in no doubt as to this right.

He used it habitually,

and addressed a public declaration to all the orders

of his empire,

in which he said that, according to laws

of human and divine,

a father had the entire and absolute right

to sentence his children to death,

without appeal and without consulting the opinion

of anyone at all.

It is only in our own barbarous France

that a false and ludicrous pity

has presumed to suppress this prerogative.

No, no, my friend,

I will never understand how a father,

who's had the kindness to provide it with life,

may not be at liberty to bestow death upon his issue.

'Tis the ridiculous value

we place upon life

which eternally makes us speak drivel

about the kind of deed to which a man resorts

in order to disencumber himself with a fellow traveler.

But the cessation of this existence,

or rather what follows it,

is no more an evil than life is a good,

or rather, if nothing dies,

if nothing is destroyed,

if nothing at all is lost to Nature,

if all the decomposed parts

of any body whatsoever merely await dissolution

to reappear immediately under new forms,

then how indifferent is this act of murder?

And how dare one find any evil in it?

In this connection I act according to my own whim.

I ought to regard the thing as very simple indeed,

especially so when it becomes necessary

to an act of such vital importance to mankind,

when it can furnish such a wealth of knowledge.

Henceforth it is a crime or an evil no longer, my friend.

No, not a petty misdemeanor,

it is the best, the wisest,

the most useful of all actions,

and crime would exist only in refusing oneself

the pleasure of committing it.

- Dear fellow.

I applaud you, your wisdom enchants me,

but I find your indifference astonishing.

I would have thought you would have been more amorous.

- I, in love with a girl?

(laughs) Rombeau.

I supposed you knew me better.

I employ these creatures when there's

nothing better to hand.

The extreme penchant I have for pleasures

of the variety you have

make very precious to me

all the temples at which this sort of incense

may be offered,

and to multiply my devotion

I sometimes assimilate a little girl

into a pretty little boy,

but should one of these female personages

unhappily nourish my illusions for too long,

my disgust energetically manifests itself,

and I have yet found but one means

to satisfy it deliciously.

You understand me, Rombeau.

Chilperic, the most voluptuous of France's kings,

held the same views.

His boisterous organ proclaimed aloud

that in an emergency one could make use of a woman,

but upon the express condition

one exterminated her as soon as one had done with her.

This little wench has served my pleasures for five years,

now it's time she paid for my loss of interest

with her loss of existence.

- Ah, wretch, where are you going?

Why, here's the rascal who has encouraged your flight.

Therese, now we see the results

of your great virtuous principles,

the kidnapping of a daughter from her father!

- Certainly, and I must do so when that father

is so barbarous as to plot against his daughter's life.

- Well, well!

Espionage and seduction.

All a servant's most dangerous vices.

Upstairs, up with you, I say.

The case requires to be judged.

- Let's punish her a thousand times more

than we would were we to take her life.

Let's brand her.

This disgrace, joined to all the sorry business

about her body,

will get her hanged if she does not first die of hunger.

And our more prolonged vengeance

will become the more delicious.