Countess Satan

"Countess Satan," a novella by Guy de Maupassant, tells the haunting tale of a mysterious and alluring woman, the Countess Satan, who captivates those around her with her beauty and charm. Set against the backdrop of late 19th-century France, the story explores themes of seduction, deception, and the morally ambiguous nature of love. As relationships unravel and dark secrets emerge, the characters are drawn into a web of intrigue and existential dread, highlighting Maupassant's keen insight into human nature and the complexities of desire.

• Short story

								
I

They were discussing dynamite, the social revolution, Nihilism, and even
those who cared least about politics, had something to say. Some were
alarmed, others philosophized, while others again, tried to smile.

"Bah!" N---- said, "when we are all blown up, we shall see what it is
like. Perhaps, after all, it may be an amusing sensation, provided one
goes high enough."

"But we shall not be blown up at all," G---- the optimist, said,
interrupting him. "It is all a romance."

"You are mistaken, my dear fellow," Jules de C---- replied. "It is like a
romance, but with that confounded Nihilism, everything seems like one,
but it would be a mistake to trust to it. Thus, I myself, the manner in
which I made Bakounine's acquaintance ..."

They knew that he was a good narrator, and it was no secret that his
life had been an adventurous one, so they drew closer to him, and
listened religiously. This is what he told them.

II

"I met Countess Nioska W----, that strange woman who was usually called
Countess Satan, in Naples; I immediately attached myself to her out of
curiosity, and I soon fell in love with her. Not that she was beautiful,
for she was a Russian who had all the bad characteristics of the Russian
type. She was thin and squat, at the same time, while her face was
sallow and puffy, with high cheek bones and a Cossack's nose. But her
conversation bewitched every one.

"She was many-sided, learned, a philosopher, scientifically depraved,
satanic. Perhaps the word is rather pretentious, but it exactly
expresses what I want to say, for in other words, she loved evil for the
sake of evil. She rejoiced in other people's vices, and liked to sow the
seeds of evil, in order to see it flourish. And that on a fraud, on an
enormous scale. It was not enough for her to corrupt individuals; she
only did that to keep her hand in; what she wished to do, was to corrupt
the masses. By slightly altering it after her own fashion, she might
have adopted the famous saying of Caligula. She also wished that the
whole human race had but one head; but not in order that she might cut
it off, but that she might make the philosophy of Nihility flourish
there.

"What a temptation to become the lord and master of such a monster! And
I allowed myself to be tempted, and undertook the adventure. The means
came unsought for by me, and the only thing that I had to do, was to
show myself more perverted and satanical that she was herself.--And so I
played the devil.

"'Yes,' I said, 'we writers are the best workmen for doing evil, as our
books may be bottles of poison. The so-called men of action, only turn
the handle of the mitrailleuse which we have loaded. Formulas will
destroy the world, and it is we who invent them.'

"'That is true,' she said, 'and that is what is wanting in Bakounine, I
am sorry to say.'

"That name was constantly in her mouth, and so I asked her for details,
which she gave me, as she knew the man intimately.

"'After all,' she said, with a contemptuous grimace, 'he is only a kind
of Garibaldi.'

"She told me, although she made fun of him as she did so, about his
Odyssey of the barricades and of the hulks which made up Bakounine's
legend, and which is, nevertheless, only the exact truth; his part of
chief of the insurgents, at Prague and then at Dresden; his first death
sentence; about his imprisonment at Olmütz and in the casemates of the
fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul; in a subterranean dungeon at
Schüsselburg; about his exile to Siberia and his wonderful escape down
the river Amour, on a Japanese coasting-vessel by way of Yokohama and
San Francisco, and about his final arrival in London, whence he was
directing all the operations of Nihilism.

"'You see,' she said, 'he is a thorough adventurer, and now all his
adventures are over. He got married at Tobolsk and became a mere
respectable, middle-class man. And then, he has no individual ideas.
Herzen, the phamphleteer of Kolokol inspired him with the only fertile
phrase that he ever uttered: Land and Liberty! But that is not yet the
definite formula, the general formula; what I will call, the dynamite
formula. At best, Bakounine would become an incendiary, and burn down
cities. And what is that, I ask you? Bah? A second-hand Rostopchin! He
wants a prompter, and I offered to become his but he did not take me
seriously.' ...

"It would be useless to enter into all the Psychological details which
marked the course of my passion for the Countess, and to explain to you
more fully the attraction of curiosity which she offered me more and
more every day. It was getting exasperating, and the more so, as she
resisted me as stoutly as the shyest of innocents could have done, but
at the end of a month of mad Satanism, I saw what her game was. Do you
know what she had thought of? She meant to make me Bakounine's prompter,
or, at any rate, that is what she said. But no doubt she reserved the
right to herself, and that is how I understood her, to prompt the
prompter, and my passion for her, which she purposely left unsatisfied,
assured her that absolute power over me.

"All this may appear madness to you, but it is, nevertheless, the exact
truth, and, in short, one morning she bluntly made the offer: 'Become
Bakounine's soul, and you shall have me.'

"Of course, I accepted, for it was too fantastically strange to refuse;
do you think so? What an adventure! What luck! A number of letters
between the Countess and Bakounine prepared the way; I was introduced to
him at his house, and they discussed me there. I became a sort of
Western prophet, a mystic charmer who was ready to nihilate the Latin
races, the Saint Paul of the new religion of nothingness, and at last a
day was fixed for us to meet in London. He lived in a small, one-storied
house in Pimlico, with a tiny garden in front, and nothing noticeable
about it.

"We were first of all shown into the commonplace parlor of all English
homes, and then upstairs. The room where the Countess and I were left,
was small, and very badly furnished, with a square table with writing
materials on it, in the middle. That was his sanctuary; the deity soon
appeared, and I saw him in flesh and bone; especially in flesh, for he
was enormously stout. His broad face, with prominent cheek-bones, in
spite of the fat; and with a nose like a double funnel, with small,
sharp eyes, which had a magnetic look, proclaimed the Tartar, the old
Turanian blood, which produced the Attilas, the Gengis-Khams, the
Tamerlanes. The obesity, which is characteristic of the nomad races, who
are always on horseback or driving, added to his Asiatic look. The man
was certainly not a European, a slave, a descendant of the deistic
Aryans, but a descendant of the Atheistic hordes, who had several times
already almost overrun Europe, and who, instead of any ideas of
progress, have the belief in nihility, at the bottom of their hearts.

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