The Strange Case of Madeleine Seguin

by William Rose

Overview

A dazzling debut historical novel exploring the occult underbelly of 19th century Paris. 

It is Paris in the 1880s and the century is in its final decadent throes as it moves towards the fin de siecle.

New scientific ideas are countered by a resurgent interest in the practice of magic, whilst in the arts the Symbolists are exploring the strangeness of dream and the imagination.

In the Salpetriere Hospital, hundreds of female patients are suffering from the curious malady of 'hysteria'. Many of these are being treated by hypnosis under the regime of the celebrated and charismatic Professor J-M. Charcot.

One such patient is Madeleine Seguin, a young woman whose past is a mystery and who evokes a fascination and possessiveness in those who come close to her.

As well as the doctors Madeleine will encounter a young Symbolist artist, a Catholic priest, a powerful aristocrat, and most dangerously, those practising the darkest aspects of the occult, each of whom will try to save or corrupt her.

She must survive them all if she is to shape her own destiny.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781912573608
Publisher:	AEON BOOKS LTD
Publication date:	12/10/2018
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x (d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 18 Years

About the Author

William Rose was born and continues to live in London. He has had, for many years, a special interest in both the art of the Symbolist movement and the early development of psychoanalysis, two areas of cultural purpose that in their own very different ways, aimed to free the human psyche from the limitations of repression.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

A night at the Salpêtrière

From a Historical Archive of Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, created and maintained by Father Pierre Lambert, Chaplain to the hospital in the years 1874–1886.

Item: An extract from the diary of Jacques Bignan, blacksmith and resident of the faubourg Saint-Marcel, Paris. Dated 5th September 1792.

Two days ago we set out to free a goodly number of women from Salpêtrière. It was not difficult to gain access. A hundred men and some of our women too, well-armed and wearing our clothes of the revolution, our red caps and our honest coats and trousers — who in these days would dare to stop us? The guards were expecting us anyway, and clearly too were the governor and his assistants as they had removed themselves and were nowhere to be seen.

We had fortified ourselves well and some of us had been preparing our plans in Madame Bonnet's tavern. There was much refreshment thanks to the generosity of our hostess, herself a great supporter of the Revolution, and for a small charge whole jugs of wine were set before us. For me the first cup was sufficient. For a man to perform his duty the warmth and encouragement of strong, hearty, blood-red wine is a tonic indeed. But too much and we may err in the performance of those duties, ones that we carry out for the sake of our great and now free nation. Freedom has been our goal and freedom was our aim last night. To free the women, our sisters in affliction, who have been shamefully locked away — and for what? For selling their bodies when there was no other way for them to buy food or pay the few sous for a miserable leaking roof over their heads. The old rulers treated them with disdain, cleared them from the streets as if they were rubbish, prosecuted and incarcerated them and then sent many onto the boats, expelled to slavery in new lands, never to return. Now we were to march upon their gaol to free them. I saw some of our men who were looking to have instant reward for their actions and if some of these freed ladies would wish to show their gratitude through the skills of their profession, so be it. We live in times that are raw and many acts not even imagined by ordinary men are carried out in the streets now before our very eyes. I though am a man with a family and my dear Madame Bignan was awaiting my return to our home and my aim was to see our task through, deliver the women safely from the cells and be sure that I had carried out a goodly work for our cause and for freedom.

So we marched on to Salpêtrière. By the time we arrived our number had grown to more than a hundred. Most of us were armed. I carried my pike, but there were some axes and clubs and a sword or two as well. For me the pike is not really a weapon to be used. True, it can be, the staff is strong and the steel point sharp enough, but more than that it is the token of our new state, one carried by true soldiers of the Revolution. It is the pike that we march with in unison, a sturdy and visible sign of honest resolve.

Axes and swords, these are not for me, especially the swords. Too much a weapon for those that we have overthrown and when I think about the sword I think not of the need to show our new power and authority, but of killing, and dear God there is enough of that. Sometimes necessary I know, but now these streets and squares where we walk with our children show the actual stains of blood, seeped into the very stones on which we tread.

So as we marched to Salpêtrière I for one had no killing in mind. My aim was to put right the sad injustices carried out within the walls of that grim building. But as our numbers grew there was other talk. Some were greatly fearing the war with Prussia. The invaders will soon be in Paris, they said. They will free the aristocrats and it will be we, the sans-culottes, who will be thrown in the dungeons with those now in them our gaolers. "Kill the priests and the royalists," they were crying, and "Kill the criminals who are their lackeys!" And some said that Danton himself would wish it so.

I myself have little power. Yes I wear the insignia of a sans-culotte, and when all is calm and we discuss and plan our purpose and gather together for the task, my voice is heard and considered and carries its own weight. I spoke now to some around me and asked how poor, miserable women locked up in Salpêtrière, most for trifling crimes, could be a danger to our Revolution, or be allies of the Prussian army! But there was a madness starting up and the muttering became shouting and the women that some had come to free had for others now become the new enemies of the state.

And what can I, Jacques Bignan, do when our force of men swells in the street to a small army, when some have drunk so much wine that they sing and curse in ways that suit no true militia? Where is the pride? And the singing and cursing were nothing to what was to come. There were some amongst us, and I know them and have heard their views, who are most ruthless. They believe that if a mortal existence impedes the cause, then that human life should be snuffed out with the ease of fingers on the wick of a candle. But there are some who are more dangerous still. When we talk amongst ourselves, when we debate on the society we will forge, when we cry out aloud against injustice and the acts of those tyrants who have ruled us, these others are the ones who sit quietly. They are waiting there with their swords, axes and daggers, hoping for the only part they want to play, the only reason for them to be there at all: a time for torture and killing. They were there with us now. One or two I recognised as they grouped together. They know each other from their previous deeds and their own shared lust for blood.

We came to Salpêtrière and some were singing, some chanting and already I feared we were less a band of dedicated men and more a rabble in the making. So I cried out loudly for our Revolution and for our purpose of honour and there were those whose voices joined with mine. Real comrades in arms and we marched through the outside gate and to the main doors and there we stood and demanded that we should be given entry to that place and that it should be done in the name of the Republic. Such demands have their strong effect. Who would dare resist and be seen to be against the Revolution and the Commune? So the doors were opened to us and we required that those who had been within remain and serve us as guides and that they should bring with them every key to every lock for doors and chains alike.

It had been agreed that I, who had also been there at the Bastille, would be one of those to enter, but all order and plans were cast aside and many burst through those doors ahead of me and some of them were the quiet ones with the swords and the daggers and the glint in their eyes. I and a group of comrades had a Salpêtrière guard as our guide. Now we were in we ceased to shout and it was a pure, grim purpose that drove us through those corridors. Very long corridors they were with locked doors side by side and dim lights, and because our voices had ceased there was a strange and unnatural quiet. Those women, cowed behind the locked doors, listening to strange footfalls, could not have guessed that we wished them freedom, but when the doors were opened, we declared ourselves for just that and what a wonderful sight to see their relief and joy.

But there were others whose views were against us. "No one to be released!" they cried. And their group, more numbered and grown strong through wine and their fear of Prussians, held sway. "There must be a trial," they said. "Tomorrow we will find the traitors within, the degenerates and the enemies of France."

It makes me sad to think of our sisters shut away. But to see the very site of their captivity, with its filth and stink and the bodies all huddled together — it showed me that we would have done well to set those women free. True, the next day some would be released, but many bad things would come before.

It was then that one of those quiet ones — his name is Giraud and no brethren of mine — came out of the main doors and into the courtyard where we were and behind him was a woman and he had hold of her by her long hair and he was pulling her like she was a dog on a leash. He was laughing but she was crying in a piteous way and she looked all unkempt and uncared for and with a strange, wild look in her eyes. I could see that she was no normal woman, and for sure that was why he had picked her. So helpless, and she could only make the strangest of sounds, a sort of wittering, and there were no words I could make out that belong to our own good language. So he pulled her out and left her there cringing and making her strange sounds with her eyes swivelling around and I could see that she was as frightened as anyone can be. He, the quiet one, went back inside and came out with two more, and I could tell that these were the same as the first and these were not women of the streets, but were from the mad women of Salpêtrière. The ones locked away because there is nothing that any caring person can do to bring them back to the world we all share. No, they live in a world that is all their own and what a terrible place that must be. But no worse than the one they were dragged into on this terrible night.

Then a henchman of Giraud, another quiet and sinister one, came out through the doors and with him was a young girl. Still in her teenage years, and I straight away had to avert my eyes because she was naked and whatever tatters of clothes she had were now stripped from her body, and the only thing still attached to her was the chain that had held her to the wall inside and which was now the leash used to drag her into the night and into the full view of us all. And there was much muttering of disgust amongst us at these shameful things carried out by so-called brothers-in-arms. But there were also those who looked, and without doubt they looked at this poor girl with lust, and there was laughing too, and some were gathering round and mocking these poor creatures and making noises in that same sort of gibberish that mad women speak. And so there were four of them there and one of these women was screaming, screaming so terribly that I will never forget that sound, the worst cry of fear that a man could hear. And I think that that is what made the difference — that is what brought about the first death because the sound was too horrible to hear and one of those there, one of those drunken henchman of Giraud swung his axe and the screaming was no more. Then two of the others, scared as they already surely were, were taken with a terror that jumped between them, wailing, screaming, clanking their chains, sprawling on the ground, tearing at their hair. It was as if those cries were the very summons to murder, because the louder they became the more those amongst us struck out, with clubs, axes, swords, and even with pikes. And then standing there in the middle of it all was that same girl who had been pulled out with her modesty so usurped, but she, and I can see it now and will forever, just stood there upright and calm as could be as if she was in another world, and I glanced, God forgive me for I could not help but look, and I saw her eyes looking far off into some other place, certainly some other place that was far from that scene of carnage, and there she was, the last of them still alive. In a way too strange to kill, or were they just saving her till the last?

I do not write here to keep a record for myself, to have something to stir the memory in later years, or to keep the history for those who will follow us. I need not do that for the pictures in my mind, the things I saw that night, will never leave me and no single day will pass when I am not compelled to remember the scene of those poor broken bodies and hear the cries of their tormented souls. No, I write in the hope that in some way I might find relief for I can never tell these things to another and, like an inmate of Salpêtrière, I am trapped with them forever.

It finished. One of them went up close to the girl and plunged a dagger into her and then they dragged her, and she was still alive, back into the building, six or seven of them, and the door slammed shut. What then took place in there must have even shamed those accursed walls.

We outside were quiet then. Those inside were not of our kind. We felt only despair. Whatever we had tried to do, and there had been good and honourable wishes with generosity in our hearts, had been snatched from us and cruelly twisted to a form so grotesque that it came from the darkest recess of the human soul.

The next day we were all to be assembled again for the so called "trial" and Giraud and his friends stood there, pride of place, arms crossed and heads in the air, like the new nobility. They had had their will with the mad women the night before, poor wild creatures that no one would miss. Now they were the judge, the jury and to their pleasure, the executioners of the women held as criminals. All was a mockery. Many women were pulled before them. There are hundreds of women gaoled in Salpêtrière — for what? Some are women who work the streets and give their services to the very men who condemn them. There were some, and their names and charges were read out, though little else was said, whose crimes had been so small that if it were your own child a cuff around the ears would be punishment enough. And how many could they try anyway? They went on for as long as their need to kill, and indeed there were more than thirty poor souls who were condemned that day and passed on to the mob, and I will never call these men sans-culottes; they were like wolves in a pack that tear apart their prey. There were to be no easy deaths, no dignity, no prayers, only jeers as the last sounds heard in a life.

There were women that were freed. Over a hundred. What made them different to the ones who were condemned is unknown to me. One thing I do know is that none of them, dead or alive, had the strength in a single finger to endanger France. Some of those freed ones wept whilst some raged at the walls that had enclosed them. They had few clothes and belongings, but the day was fine and many vanished as soon as they were touched by that clean warm air. Others, the bolder and the more brazen, stayed outside joking and laughing, some of them flicking their hair at their saviours, and they were greatly pleased to partake of the flagons that were handed around. And then, to their terrible shame, there were even those who now looked on and gave vent to their pleasure in the massacre.

I walked home and away from that accursed scene and there were companions with me, men that I trust, but it brought no comfort. No words were said. We were citizens, soldiers of freedom, but no longer with pride. Our great aims now lay in ruins, bleeding amongst the bodies that were piled like mangled sacks in the courtyard of the hospital of the Salpêtrière.

So now, cursed by the visions of these last two days, I write. My only hope is that in years to come, as I remember this woeful time, it may be that instead of the torture of its memory I will have sadness instead, as heavy as it need be, for I would rather live with grief than with the horror that besets me now.

Jacques Bignan
5th September 1792

I too live with your horror. There are those who maintain that evil will always be the companion of good — that each exists only through its relation to the other.This is useless.Evil is its own entity.As the greatest love is pure and unadulterated, so is the greatest evil.It resides now and again gathers strength in our city.

Lambert (Chaplain and Archivist) January 1885

CHAPTER 2

The patient Madeleine Seguin

Notes on the case of Mademoiselle Madeleine Seguin

Joseph Babinski Chef de clinique Hospital of the Salpêtrière Paris

June 6th 1885

The patient Madeleine Seguin, now twenty years old, was first admitted to Salpêtrière on 18th August 1881, aged seventeen. The girl had been brought to the hospital by an elderly lady who identified herself as an aunt and whose exit was so rapid that one can only say that Madeleine was practically left on the doorstep. On the departure of the aunt the poor girl collapsed upon the floor. She had with her the clothes that she was dressed in and a valise that contained apparel for one more change, along with some items for personal toilet use. Charles Féré, the intern who received her, was intrigued by the fact that, though there was an apparent austerity about the look of the girl — the clothes being mainly grey and dark blue, with her long hair tied up in a most utilitarian and indecorous fashion, and no jewellery whatsoever — the material of her clothing was of an excellent quality; so too apparently the quality of her toilet items. I believe the handle of her hairbrush was made of pure ivory and the main body of silver. Whether such a valuable item has survived the clutches of some of the more deviant amongst her fellow patients, I cannot say.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Strange Case of Madeleine Seguin"
by .
Copyright © 2019 William Rose.
Excerpted by permission of Aeon Books Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

1) A night at the Salpêtrière
2) The patient Madeleine Seguin
3) The artist
4) From a student at the Salpêtrière
5) Dinner at Charcot’s
6) Charcot’s study
7) A letter from the Countess of Bolvoir to Roberto V.
8) A reply from Roberto V. to the Countess of Bolvoir
9) A further note from the Countess of Bolvoir to Roberto V.
10) Madeleine is free and Louis visits the Countess
11) The Countess of Bolvoir confirms. A letter to Louis Martens
12) The Mardiste
13) The Countess writes to Félicien Rops
14) A short note from the Countess to Roberto V.
15) An exhibition
16) A letter to the Archbishop of Paris from his Vicar General
17) Notes on the case of Madeleine Seguin, now in the care of Dr Jacques Lamond
18) An anxious letter from Louis to Marcel
19 Louis’ despair
20) A second letter to the Archbishop of Paris from his Vicar General
21) Félicien Rops corresponds with the Countess
22) Jacques Lamond writes to Sigmund Freud
23) A family visit

Acknowledgements
About the Author

Editorial Reviews

A dazzling debut historical novel exploring the occult underbelly of 19th century Paris. 

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