Voltaire · Complete work
Chapter XI
Chapter XI of 30. Read it here for reference, or continue through the entire work without leaving the reader.
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Histoire de la vieille.
Je n’ai pas eu toujours les yeux éraillés et bordés d’écarlate; mon nez n’a pas toujours touché à mon menton, et je n’ai pas toujours été servante. Je suis la fille du pape Urbain X et de la princesse de Palestrine[a]. On m’éleva jusqu’à quatorze ans dans un palais auquel tous les châteaux de vos barons allemands n’auraient pas servi d’écurie; et une de mes robes valait mieux que toutes les magnificences de la Vestphalie. Je croissais en beauté, en grâces, en talents, au milieu des plaisirs, des respects, et des espérances: j’inspirais déjà de l’amour; ma gorge se formait; et quelle gorge! blanche, ferme, taillée comme celle de la Vénus de Médicis; et quels yeux! quelles paupières! quels sourcils noirs! quelles flammes brillaient dans mes deux prunelles, et effaçaient la scintillation des étoiles! comme me disaient les poètes du quartier. Les femmes qui m’habillaient et qui me déshabillaient tombaient en extase en me regardant par-devant et par-derrière; et tous les hommes auraient voulu être à leur place.
[a] Voyez l’extrême discrétion de l’auteur; il n’y eut jusqu’à présent aucun pape nommé Urbain X; il craint de donner une bâtarde à un pape connu. Quelle circonspection! quelle délicatesse de conscience!—Cette note de Voltaire est posthume. Elle n’était même pas dans les éditions de Kehl. Je la tiens de feu Décrois. Le dernier pape du nom d’Urbain est Urbain VIII, mort en 1644. B.
Je fus fiancée à un prince souverain de Massa-Carrara: quel prince! aussi beau que moi, pétri de douceur et d’agréments, brillant d’esprit et brûlant d’amour; je l’aimais comme on aime pour la première fois, avec idolâtrie, avec emportement. Les noces furent préparées: c’était une pompe, une magnificence inouïe; c’étaient des fêtes, des carrousels, des opéra-buffa continuels; et toute l’Italie fit pour moi des sonnets dont il n’y eut pas un seul de passable. Je touchais au moment de mon bonheur, quand une vieille marquise, qui avait été maîtresse de mon prince, l’invita à prendre du chocolat chez elle; il mourut en moins de deux heures avec des convulsions épouvantables; mais ce n’est qu’une bagatelle. Ma mère au désespoir, et bien moins affligée que moi, voulut s’arracher pour quelque temps à un séjour si funeste. Elle avait une très belle terre auprès de Gaïète: nous nous embarquâmes sur une galère du pays, dorée comme l’autel de Saint-Pierre de Rome. Voilà qu’un corsaire de Salé fond sur nous et nous aborde: nos soldats se défendirent comme des soldats du pape; ils se mirent tous à genoux en jetant leurs armes, et en demandant au corsaire une absolution in articulo mortis.
Aussitôt on les dépouilla nus comme des singes, et ma mère aussi, nos filles d’honneur aussi, et moi aussi. C’est une chose admirable que la diligence avec laquelle ces messieurs déshabillent le monde; mais ce qui me surprit davantage, c’est qu’ils nous mirent à tous le doigt dans un endroit où nous autres femmes nous ne nous laissons mettre d’ordinaire que des canules. Cette cérémonie me paraissait bien étrange: voilà comme on juge de tout quand on n’est pas sorti de son pays. J’appris bientôt que c’était pour voir si nous n’avions pas caché là quelques diamants; c’est un usage établi de temps immémorial parmi les nations policées qui courent sur mer. J’ai su que messieurs les religieux chevaliers de Malte n’y manquent jamais quand ils prennent des Turcs et des Turques; c’est une loi du droit des gens à laquelle on n’a jamais dérogé.
Je ne vous dirai point combien il est dur pour une jeune princesse d’être menée esclave à Maroc avec sa mère: vous concevez assez tout ce que nous eûmes à souffrir dans le vaisseau corsaire. Ma mère était encore très belle: nos filles d’honneur, nos simples femmes de chambre avaient plus de charmes qu’on n’en peut trouver dans toute l’Afrique: pour moi, j’étais ravissante, j’étais la beauté, la grâce même, et j’étais pucelle: je ne le fus pas long-temps; cette fleur, qui avait été réservée pour le beau prince de Massa-Carrara, me fut ravie par le capitaine corsaire; c’était un nègre abominable, qui croyait encore me faire beaucoup d’honneur. Certes il fallait que madame la princesse de Palestrine et moi fussions bien fortes pour résister à tout ce que nous éprouvâmes jusqu’à notre arrivée à Maroc! Mais passons; ce sont des choses si communes, qu’elles ne valent pas la peine qu’on en parle.
Maroc nageait dans le sang quand nous arrivâmes. Cinquante fils de l’empereur Muley Ismael avaient chacun leur parti; ce qui produisait en effet cinquante guerres civiles, de noirs contre noirs, de noirs contre basanés, de basanés contre basanés, de mulâtres contre mulâtres: c’était un carnage continuel dans toute l’étendue de l’empire.
A peine fûmes-nous débarquées, que des noirs d’une faction ennemie de celle de mon corsaire se présentèrent pour lui enlever son butin. Nous étions, après les diamants et l’or, ce qu’il avait de plus précieux. Je fus témoin d’un combat tel que vous n’en voyez jamais dans vos climats d’Europe. Les peuples septentrionaux n’ont pas le sang assez ardent; ils n’ont pas la rage des femmes au point où elle est commune en Afrique. Il semble que vos Européans aient du lait dans les veines; c’est du vitriol, c’est du feu qui coule dans celles des habitants du mont Atlas et des pays voisins. On combattit avec la fureur des lions, des tigres, et des serpents de la contrée, pour savoir qui nous aurait. Un Maure saisit ma mère par le bras droit, le lieutenant de mon capitaine la retint par le bras gauche; un soldat maure la prit par une jambe, un de nos pirates la tenait par l’autre. Nos filles se trouvèrent presque toutes en un moment tirées ainsi à quatre soldats. Mon capitaine me tenait cachée derrière lui; il avait le cimeterre au poing, et tuait tout ce qui s’opposait à sa rage. Enfin je vis toutes nos Italiennes et ma mère déchirées, coupées, massacrées par les monstres qui se les disputaient. Les captifs, mes compagnons, ceux qui les avaient pris, soldats, matelots, noirs, basanés, blancs, mulâtres, et enfin mon capitaine, tout fut tué, et je demeurai mourante sur un tas de morts. Des scènes pareilles se passaient, comme on sait, dans l’étendue de plus de trois cents lieues, sans qu’on manquât aux cinq prières par jour ordonnées par Mahomet.
Je me débarrassai avec beaucoup de peine de la foule de tant de cadavres sanglants entassés, et je me traînai sous un grand oranger au bord d’un ruisseau voisin; j’y tombai d’effroi, de lassitude, d’horreur, de désespoir, et de faim. Bientôt après mes sens accablés se livrèrent à un sommeil qui tenait plus de l’évanouissement que du repos. J’étais dans cet état de faiblesse et d’insensibilité, entre la mort et la vie, quand je me sentis pressée de quelque chose qui s’agitait sur mon corps; j’ouvris les yeux, je vis un homme blanc et de bonne mine qui soupirait, et qui disait entre ses dents: O che sciagura d’essere senza coglioni!
Musean translation
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from the French text of all thirty chapters (Beuchot edition, 1829) for fidelity, the author’s force and cadence, and modern clarity. The editor’s notes are omitted.
The Old Woman’s Story.
“I have not always had bloodshot eyes ringed with scarlet; my nose has not always met my chin, and I have not always been a servant. I am the daughter of Pope Urbain X and the princess of Palestrine[a]. Until I was fourteen I was raised in a palace for which all your German barons’ castles would not have made a stable; one of my dresses was worth more than all the splendors of Westphalia. I grew in beauty, grace, and accomplishment amid pleasures, honors, and hopes. Already I inspired love; my breasts were taking shape—and what breasts! White, firm, formed like those of the Venus de’ Medici. And what eyes! What eyelids! What black eyebrows! What flames burned in my pupils, outshining the glitter of the stars, as the poets in our neighborhood used to tell me! The women who dressed and undressed me fell into raptures at the sight of me from front and back, and every man wished he were in their place.
[a] Observe the author’s extreme discretion: there has never yet been a pope named Urbain X; he is afraid to give a bastard daughter to a known pope. What circumspection! What delicacy of conscience!—This note by Voltaire is posthumous. It was not even in the Kehl editions. I received it from the late Décrois. The last pope named Urbain was Urbain VIII, who died in 1644. B.
“I was betrothed to a sovereign prince of Massa-Carrara. What a prince! As handsome as I was beautiful, made of gentleness and charm, brilliant in mind and burning with love. I loved him as one loves for the first time, with adoration, with abandon. The wedding was prepared: there was unheard-of pomp and splendor, endless festivities, tournaments, and comic operas; all Italy wrote sonnets for me, not a single one of them passable. I was on the threshold of happiness when an old marchioness, who had been my prince’s mistress, invited him to take chocolate with her. He died in less than two hours amid dreadful convulsions. But that is a mere trifle. My mother, in despair though far less afflicted than I was, wished to escape so fatal a place for a while. She had a magnificent estate near Gaïète. We embarked on a galley of the region, gilded like the altar of Saint Peter’s in Rome. Then a corsair from Salé swooped down and boarded us. Our soldiers defended themselves like soldiers of the pope: they all fell to their knees, threw down their weapons, and begged the corsair for absolution at the moment of death.
“At once they were stripped naked as monkeys, as were my mother, our ladies-in-waiting, and I. The speed with which these gentlemen undress people is astonishing. What surprised me still more was that they put a finger into a place where we women ordinarily allow nothing but a syringe to be put. This ceremony seemed very strange to me: such is how one judges everything when one has never left home. I soon learned that they were checking whether we had hidden any diamonds there. It is a custom established since time immemorial among civilized nations that roam the seas. I have learned that the reverend Knights of Malta never neglect it when they capture Turkish men and women: it is a law of nations from which no one has ever departed.
“I will not tell you how hard it is for a young princess to be carried off as a slave to Morocco with her mother: you can readily imagine everything we suffered on the corsair’s ship. My mother was still very beautiful. Our ladies-in-waiting, even our ordinary maids, had more charms than can be found in all Africa. As for me, I was ravishing; I was beauty and grace themselves, and I was a virgin. I did not remain one long: that flower, reserved for the handsome prince of Massa-Carrara, was taken from me by the corsair captain, a hideous black man who believed he was doing me a great honor. Truly, the princess of Palestrine and I must have been very strong to endure all that happened to us before we reached Morocco! But let us pass over that: such things are so common that they are scarcely worth speaking of.
“Morocco was swimming in blood when we arrived. Fifty sons of the emperor Muley Ismael each had his own faction; this brought about fifty civil wars, black men against black men, black men against brown men, brown men against brown men, mixed-race men against mixed-race men. It was ceaseless slaughter across the whole empire.
“We had scarcely disembarked when black men of a faction hostile to my corsair’s appeared to seize his spoils. After the diamonds and gold, we were the most precious thing he possessed. I witnessed a battle unlike any you ever see in your European climes. Northern peoples do not have blood ardent enough; their passion for women never reaches the fury common in Africa. It seems your Europeans have milk in their veins; it is vitriol, it is fire, that runs through the veins of the inhabitants of Mount Atlas and the neighboring lands. They fought with the fury of the region’s lions, tigers, and serpents over who would possess us. A Moor seized my mother by the right arm; my captain’s lieutenant held her by the left. A Moorish soldier took one of her legs, and one of our pirates held the other. Almost all our ladies were caught at once between four soldiers in the same fashion. My captain kept me hidden behind him, scimitar in hand, killing anyone who stood in the way of his fury. At last I saw all our Italian women and my mother torn apart, cut up, slaughtered by the monsters fighting over them. The captives, my companions, their captors, soldiers, sailors, black, brown, white, mixed-race men, and finally my captain: all were killed, and I lay dying upon a heap of corpses. Similar scenes were taking place, as everyone knows, over more than three hundred leagues, without anyone neglecting the five daily prayers ordained by Muhammad.
“With great difficulty I freed myself from the mass of piled-up, bloody corpses and dragged myself beneath a great orange tree beside a nearby stream. There I collapsed from fright, exhaustion, horror, despair, and hunger. Soon my overwhelmed senses yielded to a sleep more like fainting than rest. I lay in that state of weakness and insensibility, between life and death, when I felt something pressing on me and moving over my body. I opened my eyes and saw a handsome white man who was sighing and muttering between his teeth: ‘Oh, what a misfortune to be without balls!’”
Plain English translation
Mouseia’s complete Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the French text of all thirty chapters (Beuchot edition, 1829). The editor’s notes are omitted.
The Old Woman's Story.
“My eyes were not always bloodshot and rimmed with red. My nose did not always touch my chin, and I was not always a servant. I am the daughter of Pope Urban X and the princess of Palestrine. Until I was fourteen, I was raised in a palace so grand that all your German barons' castles together would not have made a stable for it. One of my dresses was worth more than all the splendor of Westphalia. I was growing more beautiful, graceful, and talented amid pleasures, honors, and high hopes. I was already inspiring love. My breasts were developing—and what breasts! White, firm, shaped like those of the Venus de' Medici. And what eyes, what eyelids, what black eyebrows! What fire shone in my eyes and put the stars to shame, as the neighborhood poets told me! The women who dressed and undressed me were overcome with wonder when they looked at me from the front and the back. Every man would have liked to take their place.
“I was engaged to the sovereign prince of Massa-Carrara. What a prince! He was as beautiful as I was, full of kindness and charm, brilliantly witty and burning with love. I loved him the way you love for the first time, with devotion and wild passion. Preparations were made for the wedding. The ceremony and splendor were beyond belief. There were constant celebrations, riding tournaments, and comic operas. All Italy wrote sonnets for me, and not one of them was any good. I was on the verge of happiness when an old marquise, who had been my prince's lover, invited him to drink chocolate at her house. He died within two hours, in terrible convulsions. But that's a small detail. My mother was in despair, though far less upset than I was, and wanted to get away from such an unlucky place for a while. She had a very fine estate near Gaeta. We boarded a local galley, gilded like the altar of St. Peter's in Rome. Then a privateer from Salé swooped down on us and boarded our ship. Our soldiers defended themselves as the pope's soldiers would: they all fell to their knees, threw down their weapons, and asked the privateer to absolve them as they faced death.
“They immediately stripped the soldiers naked, and my mother, our ladies-in-waiting, and me too. It is amazing how quickly these gentlemen undress people. But what surprised me even more was that they put a finger into a place where we women usually allow nothing but an enema tube. This ceremony seemed very strange to me. That is how you judge everything when you've never left your own country. I soon learned that they were checking whether we had hidden diamonds there. This is an age-old practice among the civilized nations that sail the seas. I have learned that the religious knights of Malta never fail to do it when they capture Turkish men and women. It is a law among nations that has never been set aside.
“I won't tell you how hard it is for a young princess to be taken as a slave to Morocco along with her mother. You can easily imagine everything we suffered on the privateer's ship. My mother was still very beautiful. Our ladies-in-waiting, even our ordinary maids, were more attractive than any women you could find in all Africa. As for me, I was gorgeous. I was beauty and grace itself, and I was a virgin. I did not remain one long. The privateer captain took the virginity that had been reserved for the handsome prince of Massa-Carrara. He was a horrible Black man who thought he was doing me a great honor. The princess of Palestrine, my mother, and I must have been very strong to survive everything we went through before arriving in Morocco! But let's move on. Such things are so common they aren't worth talking about.
“Morocco was drowning in blood when we arrived. The fifty sons of Emperor Muley Ismael each had his own faction. The result was fifty civil wars: Black men against Black men, Black men against brown-skinned men, brown-skinned men against brown-skinned men, and mixed-race men against mixed-race men. There was constant slaughter throughout the empire.
“We had barely disembarked when Black men from a faction hostile to my privateer came to take his plunder. After the diamonds and gold, we were the most valuable things he owned. I witnessed a fight unlike anything you ever see in Europe. Northerners do not have blood hot enough. Their passion for women does not reach the frenzy common in Africa. It seems that you Europeans have milk in your veins. The people of Mount Atlas and the lands nearby have acid and fire flowing through theirs. They fought with the fury of the region's lions, tigers, and snakes over who would possess us. A Moor grabbed my mother's right arm, and my captain's lieutenant held her left. A Moorish soldier took one leg, and one of our pirates held the other. Almost all our ladies were pulled in four directions by soldiers in the same way. My captain kept me hidden behind him. Sword in hand, he killed anyone who stood in the way of his fury. At last I saw my mother and all our Italian women torn apart, cut up, and butchered by the monsters fighting over them. The captives who had sailed with me, their captors, soldiers, sailors, Black men, brown-skinned men, white men, mixed-race men, and finally my captain—all were killed. I was left dying on a heap of bodies. As everyone knows, scenes like this were taking place across more than three hundred leagues, without anyone missing the five daily prayers prescribed by Muhammad.
“I struggled free of the pile of bloody bodies and dragged myself beneath a large orange tree beside a nearby stream. There I collapsed from fear, exhaustion, horror, despair, and hunger. Soon my overwhelmed senses gave in to a sleep more like fainting than rest. I lay weak and unconscious, between life and death, when I felt something pressing on me and moving against my body. I opened my eyes and saw a good-looking white man. He was sighing and muttering, ‘Oh, what a misfortune to have no testicles!’”