The Mother of Monsters
I was reminded of this horrible story and this horrible woman on the seafront the other day, as I stood watching—at a watering-place much frequented by the wealthy—a lady well known in Paris, a young, elegant, and charming girl, loved and respected by all who know her.
My story is now many years old, but it is impossible to forget such things.
I had been invited by a friend to make a long stay with him in a small country town. In order to do the honours of the district, he took me about all over the place; made me see the most celebrated views, the manor houses and castles, the local industries, the ruins; he showed me the monuments, the churches, the old carved doors, the trees of specially large size or uncommon shape, the oak of St. Andrew and the Roqueboise yew.
When, with exclamations of gratified enthusiasm, I had inspected all the curiosities in the district, my friend confessed, with every sign of acute distress, that there was nothing more to visit. I breathed again. I should be able, at last, to enjoy a little rest under the shade of the trees. But suddenly he exclaimed:
“Why, no, there is one more. There’s the mother of monsters.”
“And who,” I asked, “is the mother of monsters?”
He answered: “She is a horrible woman, a perfect demon, a creature who every year deliberately produces deformed, hideous, frightful children, veritable monsters, and sells them to peepshow men.
“The men who follow this ghastly trade come from time to time to discover whether she has brought forth any fresh abortion, and if they like the look of the object, they pay the mother and take it away with them.
“She has eleven of these offspring. She is rich.
“You think I’m joking, making it all up, exaggerating. No, my friend, I’m only telling you the truth, the literal truth.
“Come and see this woman. I’ll tell you afterwards how she became a monster-factory.”
He took me off to the outskirts of the town.
She lived in a nice little house by the side of the road. It was pretty and well kept. The garden was full of flowers, and smelt delicious. Anyone would have taken it for the home of a retired lawyer.
A servant showed us into a little parlour, and the wretched creature appeared.
She was about forty, tall, hard-featured, but well built, vigorous, and wealthy, the true type of robust peasantry, half animal and half woman.
She was aware of the disapproval in which she was held, and seemed to receive us with malignant humility.
“What do the gentlemen want?” she inquired.
My friend replied: “We have been told that your last child is just like any other child, and not in the least like his brothers. I wanted to verify this. Is it true?”
She gave us a sly glance of anger and answered:
“Oh, no, sir, oh dear no! He’s even uglier, mebbe, than the others. I’ve no luck, no luck at all, they’re all that way, sir, all like that, it’s something cruel; how can the good Lord be so hard on a poor woman left all alone in the world!”
She spoke rapidly, keeping her eyes lowered, with a hypocritical air, like a sacred wild beast. She softened the harsh tone of her voice, and it was amazing to hear these tearful high-pitched words issuing from that great bony body, with its coarse angular strength, made for violent gesture and wolfish howling.
“We should like to see your child,” my friend asked.
She appeared to blush. Had I perhaps been mistaken? After some moments of silence she said, in a louder voice: “What would be the use of that?”
She had raised her head, and gave us a swift, burning glance.
“Why don’t you wish to show him to us?” answered my friend. “There are many people to whom you show him. You know whom I mean.”
She started up, letting loose the full fury of her voice.
“So that’s what you’ve come for, is it? Just to insult me? Because my bairns are like animals, eh? Well, you’ll not see them, no, no, no, you shan’t. Get out of here. I know you all, the whole pack of you, bullying me about like this!”
She advanced towards us, her hands on her hips. At the brutal sound of her voice, a sort of moan, or rather a mew, a wretched lunatic screech, issued from the next room. I shivered to the marrow. We drew back before her.
In a severe tone my friend warned her:
“Have a care, She-devil”—the people all called her She-devil—“have a care, one of these days this will bring you bad luck.”
She trembled with rage, waving her arms, mad with fury, and yelling:
“Get out of here, you! What’ll bring me bad luck? Get out of here, you pack of unbelieving dogs, you!”
She almost flew at our throats; we fled, our hearts contracted with horror.
When we were outside the door, my friend asked:
“Well, you’ve seen her; what do you say to her?”
I answered: “Tell me the history of the brute.”
And this is what he told me, as we walked slowly back along the white high road, bordered on either side by the ripe corn that rippled like a quiet sea under the caress of a small gentle wind.
The girl had once been a servant on a farm, a splendid worker, well-behaved and careful. She was not known to have a lover, and was not suspected of any weakness.
She fell, as they all do, one harvest night among the heaps of corn, under a stormy sky, when the still, heavy air is hot like a furnace, and the brown bodies of the lads and girls are drenched with sweat.
Feeling soon after that she was pregnant, she was tormented with shame and fear. Desirous at all costs of hiding her misfortune, she forcibly compressed her belly by a method she invented, a
