[He doesn't know half the races and technical terms he uses, but he is smart enough to connect the dots in most places. Honestly, the boy could be talking gibberish and make as much sense.]
Very well.
[He sits back.]
Deemed not wicked enough to execute or jail criminally, Napoleon saw virtue in having me institutionalized for life instead -- with a little gentle prodding from my wife and her somehow still-influential harridan for a mother. I could have had the bitch killed when I had sway in the assemblies -- while I didn't appreciate the asylum much more, it was better than jail until the end. I suppose she remembered that. Continued to publish in secret, employing a friend of mine to smuggle manuscripts for me.
[His tone becomes more cordial, then, more like that of a storyteller rather than someone blandly spouting off figures.]
When the publication of my novel, Justine, started to draw public attention, the good Emperor sent a new doctor to Charenton to silence me.
The man running the asylum, the Abbe de Coulmier, had been an unusual sort for his profession -- preferring to employ the arts as a way to calm the minds of the insane. Not only could I write, but I was given permission to direct plays as well -- the asylum had a tiny theatre, and patients played the roles. The Abbe was content to permit me my ink and parchment that I might have a place to put all the terrible things moving about in my head -- until he discovered that I had published. His new overseer had to be assured I would not continue, and the Abbe's only failing was that he trusted a madman to keep his word against his own compulsion. I did not publish. However, I did take some interest in the rumors surrounding the new Doctor's recent marriage, to a girl he could have grandfathered three times over, not yet adult, plucked from a convent. It was glorious pretext for farce. I wrote a play on the subject, slipped it into the next programme, and saw it performed before a most receptive audience.
[He doesn't mention its being disrupted when Bouchon attacked Madeleine, but he hasn't forgotten, either. It occurs to him then that he should have been more careful after that.]
The Abbe confiscated my quills and ink. While I had kept my promise, this was considered an egregious offense. Our friendship took a turn for the worse after that. But I continued to find ways to write. I could not simply abstain, of course. I was compelled. First with a bone from my dinner plate and red wine on my bedsheets. After that, my bed was removed; I was denied wine at meals, and all my dinners were to be deboned. I shattered a mirror. That one, to be precise.
[He indicates an ornate mirror hanging on the wall near his bed.]
Using a shard I began pricking my fingers and wrote upon my best suit in my own blood. Every inch covered in my glorious text, beginning at my right cuff, continuing across my back, and completing itself at the base of my left shoe. For this, and for escaping my room, the remainder of my belongings were taken, including my clothes. The good Doctor suddenly saw fit to attempt to rehabilitate me himself, having lost patience for the Abbe's tactics. Flogging ensued -- but I rather enjoyed that, but soon after came the waterboarding. The self-righteous fuck had no understanding that the harder he tried to silence me the more firmly he cemented my ideals in my heart.
To a friend who had been punished for my misbheavior, about to be sent away, I chose to dictate my last book. I would whisper into the cell next to mine, and so forth, finally to the writer, who would record it all. I did not finish. Fires broke out in the asylum, inmates escaped, and some died -- orderlies, servants, patients alike. Among them someone who should not have been harmed.
[The Marquis' voice has slowly lost some of the pride and candor, though now he looks a little drawn and not completely there anymore.]
I was blamed. My tongue was removed and I was thrown in the dungeons. I composed my last story with what few materials remained at my disposal, succumbed to infection, and died.
[He brushed by the last of it. Without detail. Without mentioning his last exchange with the Abbe or his final defiance. He downs the rest of his wine.]
[Action]
Very well.
[He sits back.]
Deemed not wicked enough to execute or jail criminally, Napoleon saw virtue in having me institutionalized for life instead -- with a little gentle prodding from my wife and her somehow still-influential harridan for a mother. I could have had the bitch killed when I had sway in the assemblies -- while I didn't appreciate the asylum much more, it was better than jail until the end. I suppose she remembered that. Continued to publish in secret, employing a friend of mine to smuggle manuscripts for me.
[His tone becomes more cordial, then, more like that of a storyteller rather than someone blandly spouting off figures.]
When the publication of my novel, Justine, started to draw public attention, the good Emperor sent a new doctor to Charenton to silence me.
The man running the asylum, the Abbe de Coulmier, had been an unusual sort for his profession -- preferring to employ the arts as a way to calm the minds of the insane. Not only could I write, but I was given permission to direct plays as well -- the asylum had a tiny theatre, and patients played the roles. The Abbe was content to permit me my ink and parchment that I might have a place to put all the terrible things moving about in my head -- until he discovered that I had published. His new overseer had to be assured I would not continue, and the Abbe's only failing was that he trusted a madman to keep his word against his own compulsion. I did not publish. However, I did take some interest in the rumors surrounding the new Doctor's recent marriage, to a girl he could have grandfathered three times over, not yet adult, plucked from a convent. It was glorious pretext for farce. I wrote a play on the subject, slipped it into the next programme, and saw it performed before a most receptive audience.
[He doesn't mention its being disrupted when Bouchon attacked Madeleine, but he hasn't forgotten, either. It occurs to him then that he should have been more careful after that.]
The Abbe confiscated my quills and ink. While I had kept my promise, this was considered an egregious offense. Our friendship took a turn for the worse after that. But I continued to find ways to write. I could not simply abstain, of course. I was compelled. First with a bone from my dinner plate and red wine on my bedsheets. After that, my bed was removed; I was denied wine at meals, and all my dinners were to be deboned. I shattered a mirror. That one, to be precise.
[He indicates an ornate mirror hanging on the wall near his bed.]
Using a shard I began pricking my fingers and wrote upon my best suit in my own blood. Every inch covered in my glorious text, beginning at my right cuff, continuing across my back, and completing itself at the base of my left shoe. For this, and for escaping my room, the remainder of my belongings were taken, including my clothes. The good Doctor suddenly saw fit to attempt to rehabilitate me himself, having lost patience for the Abbe's tactics. Flogging ensued -- but I rather enjoyed that, but soon after came the waterboarding. The self-righteous fuck had no understanding that the harder he tried to silence me the more firmly he cemented my ideals in my heart.
To a friend who had been punished for my misbheavior, about to be sent away, I chose to dictate my last book. I would whisper into the cell next to mine, and so forth, finally to the writer, who would record it all. I did not finish. Fires broke out in the asylum, inmates escaped, and some died -- orderlies, servants, patients alike. Among them someone who should not have been harmed.
[The Marquis' voice has slowly lost some of the pride and candor, though now he looks a little drawn and not completely there anymore.]
I was blamed. My tongue was removed and I was thrown in the dungeons. I composed my last story with what few materials remained at my disposal, succumbed to infection, and died.
[He brushed by the last of it. Without detail. Without mentioning his last exchange with the Abbe or his final defiance. He downs the rest of his wine.]
And now I am here.