Beauregard de Farniente
The Adventures of Father Silas
PART THE FIRST
CHAPTER ONE
When I look back at the strange vicissitudes that have chequered my existence, and compare the troubles of the past with the serenity of the present, I can scarcely regret the misfortune which made me retire from active service under the standard of the mighty Venus, and thus afforded me leisure to lay the fruits of my own bitter experience before those who may hereafter serve under the same banners.
I am the fruit of the incontinence of the reverend Celestine Fathers of the town of B-. I say of the reverend Fathers, because all of them boasted of having contributed a share in the formation of my individual person. But what so suddenly arrests me? My heart is agitated-is it through fear that I shall be reproached with revealing the mysteries of the Church? Alas! I must overcome this compunction. Who does not know that all men are men, and especially the monks? they have certainly the faculty of cooperating in the propagation of the species; and why should we hinder them, when they acquit themselves so well in that particular?
Perhaps the reader is impatient for the commencement of a detailed account of my origin. I am sorry that I cannot so soon satisfy him on that head, but I will at once introduce him to the acquaintance of a worthy peasant, upon whom for a long time I looked as my father.
Ambrose, for that was the good man's name, was gardener at a country house belonging to the Celestines, in a little village at some leagues from the town: his wife, Annette, was chosen for my nurse. She had brought a son into the world, who lived but a few days, and his death helped to conceal the mystery of my birth. This child was privately buried, and the offspring of the monks put in his place.
As I grew up, everybody supposed me to be the gardener's son, as I myself also believed.
I may say, however, if the reader will pardon my vanity, that my inclinations betrayed my origin. I do not know what divine influence operates in the works of monks, but it seems that the virtue of the frock is communicated to every thing they touch. Annette was a proof of this. She was the most frisky female I ever saw, and I have seen a pretty number. She was stout, but somewhat attractive, with little black eyes and a turned-up nose, lively and amorous, and dressed rather better than peasants in general. She would have been an excellent makeshift for a respectable man; guess what she must have been for the monks.
When the jade was decked out in her Sunday corset, which enclosed a bosom that the sun had never browned, and allowed a glimpse of her breasts, struggling, as it were, to escape from its constraint; ah! how did I then feel that I was not her son, or that I was quite prepared to resign that honor.
My disposition was altogether monkish. Led by instinct, I never saw a girl without embracing her, or passing my hand over her wherever she would allow me; and although I did not positively know what I wanted, my heart told me that I should have gone further, had no opposition been offered to my transports.