Read the poem: “Mademoiselle Bistoury”

by Charles Baudelaire

Extract of The Flowers of Evil

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French Literature – French Poetry – Charles Baudelaire
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Mademoiselle Bistoury

When I had reached the heart of the slums, under the gaslights, I felt an arm which slid softly under mine, and I heard a voice which whispered: “You are a doctor, sir?”

I looked: it was a big girl, robust, slightly rouged, her eyes wide open, her hair floating in the wind with her bonnet strings.

“No, I am not a doctor. Let me pass.”

“Oh yes! you are a doctor. I can see it well. Come to my house. You will be quite satisfied, I assure you. I shall doubtless go to see you, but later, after the doctor, goodness me!… Ha! Ha!” she exclaimed, still clinging to my arm and bursting into laughter. “You are a physician jokester. I have known several of that sort. Come.”

I am passionately in love with mystery, because I always hope to unravel it. So I let myself be led by my companion, or rather, by the unlooked-for enigma.

I omit description of the hovel; it can be found in several well known old French poets. Only, detail unnoticed by Regnier, two or three portraits of renowned physicians were hung upon the wall.

How I was pampered! A great fire, warm wine, cigars; and while offering me these fine things and lighting a cigar for herself the comical creature said to me: “Make yourself at home; be quite at ease. This will bring back the hospital and the happy days of your youth…. Oh look! where did you win those white hairs? You were not like that, not so long ago, when you were interne at L——. I remember it was you that helped at the major operations. There was a man that loved to cut, hew, lop off! It was you that handed him the instruments, the threads and the sponges…. And how proudly, the operation performed, he used to say, looking at his watch, ‘Five minutes, gentlemen!’ Oh! I, I go everywhere! I know these people well!”

A few moments later, in more familiar tone, harping on the same theme, she said: “You are a doctor, aren’t you, darling?”

That unintelligible refrain brought me to my feet “No!” I cried, furious.

“Surgeon, then?”

“No! No! unless it be to cut off your head!”

“Wait,” she continued, “you shall see.”

And she drew from a closet a file of papers which was nothing else than the collection of illustrious doctors of the day, lithographed by Maurin, that was displayed for several years on the Quay Voltaire.

“Look, do you recognize this one?”

“Yes, it’s X——. The name is at the bottom, besides; but I know him personally.”

“I should say so! Look! Here is Z——, the one who said in his course, speaking of X——, ‘this monster, bearing on his face the blackness of his soul!’ all because the other did not agree with him in a certain case! How they laughed at that in the school, at the time! Do you remember?… Look! here is K——, who denounced to the authorities the rebels he was caring for at his hospital. That was at the time of the riots. How is it possible so handsome a man can have so little heart? … This one is W——, a famous Englishman; I captured him on his visit to Paris. He looks like a girl, doesn’t he?”

And as I touched a little tied-up parcel, also on the table: “Wait a while,” she said, “In this one are the internes; and that package has the dressers.”

And she spread out, fanlike, a mass of photographs, picturing much younger faces.

“When we see each other again, you will give me your portrait, won’t you, deary?”

“But,” I said to her, I also following my fixed idea, “what makes you think I am a doctor?”

“It’s because you are so amiable and good to women!” “Peculiar logic,” I said to myself.

“Oh! I am hardly ever mistaken; I have known quite a number. I love them so much that, even though I am not sick, I sometimes go to see them, only to see them. There are some who say coldly: ‘You are not sick at all!’ But there are others who understand me, because I ogle them.”

“And when they do not understand?”

“Well, since I have disturbed them fruitlessly, I leave ten francs on the mantel…. They are so good and so kind, these folk! I discovered a little interne at the Pieté, pretty as an angel, and so refined! and a worker, the poor boy! His comrades told me he didn’t have a sou, because his parents were poor folks who couldn’t send him anything. That gave me confidence. After all, I am a fairly good looking woman, although not too young. I said to him: ‘Come to see me, come to see me often. With me you needn’t bother: I have no need of money.’ But you know that I made him understand that in a host of ways, I didn’t tell it to him bluntly; I was so afraid of humiliating him, the dear child!… Oh well! would you believe that I had a queer fancy I didn’t dare to tell him?… I should have liked him to come to see me with his instrument case and his apron, even with a little blood on it.”

She said this in the most candid manner, as a feeling man would say to an actress that he loved: “I want to see you dressed in the costume you wore in this famous rôle that you created….”

I, persisting, continued: “Can you remember the time and the occasion when this so special passion was born in you?”

I made her understand with difficulty; finally I succeeded. But then she answered in a very sad tone, and even, as well as I can recall, lowering her eyes: “I don’t know…, I can’t remember.”

What oddities can be found in a great city, if one knows how to walk about and watch. Life swarms with innocent monsters.—

Lord, my God! You, the Creator, You the Master, You who have created Law and Liberty; You, the Sovereign that doth not interfere; You, the Judge that pardoneth; You who are full of motives and causes, and who perhaps have planted a taste for horror in my mind in order to convert my soul, as the recovery after a sword; Lord, have pity, have pity on madmen and mad women! O Creator, can monsters exist in the eyes of Him who alone knows why they exist, how they are made, and how they need not have been made?

Translated by Joseph T. Shipley

< < < Let us Flay the Poor
Mistresses’ Portraits > > >

French Literature – French Poetry – Charles Baudelaire

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by Charles Baudelaire

Extract of The Flowers of Evil

Mademoiselle Bistoury

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