VOICE: You’re turning out to be a true son of the Enlightenment, my dear baron. If all those who survived are here, whoever’s not here must be dead. That’s logical. Apparently very logical. What’s not at all logical is being accused of murder and not knowing who’s been murdered. You have to be awake to enjoy the pleasure of murder, the greatest of all pleasures.
BARON: That’s what I’ve said a thousand times over. I’m telling you I didn’t kill anyone! I’m innocent! Or at least, as far as I know. I don’t remember anything. The last thing I remember was swallowing the Spanish fly paste, your formula.
VOICE: I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.
BARON: I’m not accusing you, but the baroness assured me she’d followed your recipe. I spent the night unconscious. When I came round, the crime had already been committed, so they told me, and I was being arrested. They think I’m mad because I don’t know who died, much less who did the killing. But they won’t tell me, either. That’s what my defence depends on! Can’t you see? I have to find out who died to deduce the murderer’s motives. Before they condemn me. Before they commit an injustice. Only you can help me uncover the crime, whose principal details are unknown to me. At least I’ll be able to make them believe that it wasn’t me if I can manage to explain what happened. But I don’t even know that. That’s what they’re trying to prevent. They don’t want me to know who died, because that way I won’t be able to defend myself either.
VOICE: And what proves it wasn’t you? That you’re not lying? The fact that you don’t remember doesn’t mean much. Who can tell if you’re not really mad, and committed the crime in a fit?
BARON: Master, I swear it!
VOICE: Don’t call me master!
BARON: I beg of you. My defence depends on you helping me.
VOICE: How can my help be of any use to you? And why be so sure that I’m prepared to help you?
BARON: You’re a man of the world. You’ve experienced many excesses. You’ve known women and men. Perhaps if I told you the whole story . . .
VOICE: Then what?
BARON: Well, perhaps together we could reach a solution.
VOICE: What? There is no solution!
BARON: A disinterested soul can see and interpret better.
VOICE: Who said I have a soul? And even if I had, why mine and not some other, any other?
BARON: Because you don’t believe in feelings.
VOICE: What?
BARON: I’m not a proper libertine. I’ve got love and jealousy against me. Not like you. I’m a worm, a miserable slave to my feelings. I suffer from love and jealousy. Depending on who the victim is – and that’s what I fear most – there’ll be no lack of motives to incriminate me. But you, master, are the only one who won’t take that into account. Your gaze is not only disinterested, but it ignores what they call the truth of feelings, which is no more than a great lie. You know that only the instincts tell the truth that hypocrites don’t want to hear. You’re the only one capable of reaching a right view of my story. You can ignore my feelings, which whatever they are have nothing to do with this crime, and unveil the real murderer, as well as giving me the arguments for my defence.
VOICE: And what, after all, is your story about?
BARON: My nuptials.
VOICE: You said it was a night of excess and debauchery.
BARON: Exactly. But for you to understand I have to go back to the afternoon I got a letter from the baroness, days after our first meeting, fifteen years ago, when she led me to understand that she also desired me and wanted to marry me, and prove with me that God doesn’t exist. Those were her words. I like women who know how to use words. It was the Count of Suz, my cousin and confidant, who brought me the letter, days after that first meeting. In fact, it was he who introduced the baroness to me, in what was left of his property. In the letter, she announced that she was leaving the country with her parents, emigrating to flee from the Terror. Suddenly, just like that. Apparently, nothing of this was planned when we were introduced to one another days before. In the letter, she explained nothing else. She only said she had to leave with her family. She begged patience of me. And for the sake of love I gave way. Out of despair, to see her again at the end of seven interminable months, I agreed to marry, which went against all my principles, and even against the Revolution; marrying a repentant émigrée only made my already delicate situation even more uncomfortable. At the end of seven months’ separation, I got a letter from her in which she agreed to return, to give way to my pleas and, at the risk of being taken for an emigrant, to suffer the punishment due to a traitor to the fatherland – she knew how to use her imagination to excite me! – so long as she could marry me. She said she was ready for anything for the sake of love. She would come back in secret, if that was needful. I am a slave to my feelings, and it didn’t take long for me to fall in love when the count introduced the baroness to me in what was left of his property. It only took a few hours. What a woman! When she disappeared into exile, my passion only grew. Passion makes one give way. I gave way again when, after fifteen years of marriage, she appeared, no more no less, in the château of Lagrange, in its ruins rather, the bit that was left when my other goods were confiscated, asking me for the first time to take part in one of the nights I had been organising in her absence. She spent the greater part of our fifteen years of marriage away from here. In Marseilles and Bordeaux, doing God knows what. Little did she know that this time, exceptionally, unlike all the other nights she had no doubt heard about in Marseilles and Bordeaux, there would be no orgy. I am a weak man. As I said, a slave to my feelings. And, with the baroness’s travels, after fifteen years together, fifteen years of debauchery, given over to my instincts, fifteen years no different from my bachelor existence, I ended up falling under the spell of a girl. That night was to be the second time we met.