Misfortune

It is beyond doubt that everything has been said, written, printed, cried out or moaned regarding misfortune, only with this reserve, that it is never misfortune itself that speaks but some fortunate prattler in the name of misfortune; which would allow one, furthermore, to make the ignoble accusation that he is speaking of misfortune in the same fashion as if he were speaking of good manners (one would have the dim awareness of being a pompous ass). It would be a matter of speaking, writing, printing, crying out, groaning that vice is a terrifying misfortune, that vice is an underhand and presumptuous abuse of one's wretched person, that vice, in a red robe, is a magistrate or a cardinal, a police officer rather than a murderer, at all events something that assumes all the sinister and ambiguous trappings of misfortune; which also of course means that misfortune is everything that is hypocritical and mute. Moreover, the streets one likes have an air of misfortune about them, and one only walks along them with the look of mangy dog. Further on, nobody would be able to say where, or indeed when, anything at all would certainly be possible, that is to say that the enigma posed by misfortune (which does so, all unknowing, to the inspector of police) would find itself subsumed under the form of vice. That is why we so often say: let's not speak of misfortune...

It is of no importance whether or not this be taken for a circumlocution: that fact is that a certain Crépin, one-time Don Juan and a handsome fellow, who after having killed his mistress and his rival sought to kill himself with a third blast from his shotgun, lost his nose and his mouth (he moreover lost the power of speech), found himself rebuked by a magistrate for having eaten chocolate mouth-to-mouth with Madame Delarche, she whom he was to kill one fine day when he saw red. One is lost in conjecture as to how this infamous phrase from the Assize Court, applied in this context, so faithfully reconstructs the image of vice.