text:
Title: The Seven Wives of Bluebeard
Author: Anatole France
Editor: J. Lewis May
Bernard Miall
Translator: D. B. Stewart
Release date: May 9, 2008 [eBook #25411]
Most recently updated: February 24, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by David Widger
THE strangest, the most varied, the most erroneous opinions have been expressed with regard to the famous individual commonly known as Bluebeard. None, perhaps, was less tenable than that which made of this gentleman a personification of the Sun. For this is what a certain school of comparative mythology set itself to do, some forty years ago. It informed the world that the seven wives of Bluebeard were the Dawns, and that his two brothers-in-law were the morning and the evening Twilight, identifying them with the Dioscuri, who delivered Helena when she was rapt away by Theseus. We must remind those readers who may feel tempted to believe this that in 1817 a learned librarian of Agen, Jean-Baptiste Pérés, demonstrated, in a highly plausible manner, that Napoleon had never existed, and that the story of this supposed great captain was nothing but a solar myth. Despite the most ingenious diversions of the wits, we cannot possibly doubt that Bluebeard and Napoleon did both actually exist.
An hypothesis no better founded is that which Consists in identifying Bluebeard with the Marshal de Rais, who was strangled by the arm of the Law above the bridges of Nantes on 26th of October, 1440. Without inquiring, with M. Salomon Reinach, whether the Marshal committed the crimes for which he was condemned, or whether his wealth, coveted by a greedy prince, did not in some degree contribute to his undoing, there is nothing in his life that resembles what we find in Bluebeard's; this alone is enough to prevent our confusing them or merging the two individuals into one.
Charles Perrault, who, about 1660, had the merit of composing the first biography of this seigneur, justly remarkable for having married seven wives, made him an accomplished villain, and the most perfect model of cruelty that ever trod the earth. But it is permissible to doubt, if not his sincerity, at least the correctness of his information. He may, perhaps, have been prejudiced against his hero. He would not have been the first example of a poet or historian who liked to darken the colours of his pictures. If we have what seems a flattering portrait of Titus, it would seem, on the other hand, that Tacitus has painted Tiberius much blacker than the reality. Macbeth, whom legend and Shakespeare accuse of crimes, was in reality a just and a wise king. He never treacherously murdered the old king, Duncan. Duncan, while yet young, was defeated in a great battle, and was found dead on the morrow at a spot called the Armourer's Shop. He had slain several of the kinsfolk of Gruchno, the wife of Macbeth. The latter made Scotland prosperous; he encouraged trade, and was regarded as the defender of the middle classes, the true King of the townsmen. The nobles of the clans never forgave him for defeating Duncan, nor for protecting the artisans. They destroyed him, and dishonoured his memory. Once he was dead the good King Macbeth was known only by the statements of his enemies. The genius of Shakespeare imposed these lies upon the human consciousness. I had long suspected that Bluebeard was the victim of a similar fatality. All the circumstances of his life, as I found them related, were far from satisfying my mind, and from gratifying that craving for logic and lucidity by which I am incessantly consumed. On reflection, I perceived that they involved insurmountable difficulties. There was so great a desire to make me believe in the man's cruelty that it could not fail to make me doubt it.
These presentiments did not mislead me. My intuitions, which had their origin in a certain knowledge of human nature, were soon to be changed into certainty, based upon irrefutable proofs.
In the house of a stone-cutter in St. Jean-des-Bois, I found several papers relating to Bluebeard; amongst others his defence, and an anonymous complaint against his murderers, which was not proceeded with, for what reasons I know not. These papers confirmed me in the belief that he was good and unfortunate, and that his memory has been overwhelmed by unworthy slanders. From that time forth, I regarded it as my duty to write his true history, without permitting myself any illusion as to the success of such an undertaking. I am well aware that this attempt at rehabilitation is destined to fall into silence and oblivion. How can the cold, naked Truth fight against the glittering enchantments of Falsehood?
SOMEWHERE about 1650 there lived on his estate, between Compiègne and Pierrefonds, a wealthy noble, by name Bernard de Montragoux, whose ancestors had held the most important posts in the kingdom. But he dwelt far from the Court, in that peaceful obscurity which then veiled all save that on which the king bestowed his glance. His castle of Guillettes abounded in valuable furniture, gold and silver ware, tapestry and embroideries, which he kept in coffers; not that he hid his treasures for fear of damaging them by use; he was, on the contrary, generous and magnificent. But in those days, in the country, the nobles willingly led a very simple life, feeding their people at their own table, and dancing on Sundays with the girls of the village.
On certain occasions, however, they gave splendid entertainments, which contrasted with the dullness of everyday life. So it was necessary that they should hold a good deal of handsome furniture and beautiful tapestries in reserve. This was the case with Monsieur de Montragoux.
His castle, built in the Gothic period, had all its rudeness. From without it looked wild and gloomy enough, with the stumps of its great towers, which had been thrown down at the time of the monarchy's troubles, in the reign of the late King Louis. Within it offered a much pleasanter prospect. The rooms were decorated in the Italian taste, as was the great gallery on the ground floor, loaded with embossed decorations in high relief, pictures and gilding.
At one end of this gallery there was a closet usually known as "the little cabinet." This is the only name by which Charles Perrault refers to it. It is as well to note that it was also called the "Cabinet of the Unfortunate Princesses," because a Florentine painter had portrayed on the walls the tragic stories of Dirce, daughter of the Sun, bound by the sons of Antiope to the horns of a bull, Niobe weeping on Mount Sipylus for her children, pierced by the divine arrows, and Procris inviting to her bosom the javelin of Cephalus. These figures had a look of life about them, and the porphyry tiles with which the floor was covered seemed dyed in the blood of these unhappy women. One of the doors of the Cabinet gave upon the moat, which had no water in it.
The stables formed a sumptuous building, situated at some distance from the castle. They contained stalls for sixty horses, and coach-houses for twelve gilded coaches. But what made Guillettes so bewitching a residence were the woods and canals surrounding it, in which one could devote oneself to the pleasures of angling and the chase.
Many of the dwellers in that country-side knew Monsieur de Montragoux only by the name of Bluebeard, for this was the only name that the common people gave him. And in truth his beard was blue, but it was blue only because it was black, and it was because it was so black that it was blue. Monsieur de Montragoux must not be imagined as having the monstrous aspect of the threefold Typhon whom one sees in Athens, laughing in his triple indigo-blue beard. We shall get much nearer the reality by comparing the seigneur of Guillettes to those actors or priests whose freshly shaven cheeks have a bluish gloss.
Monsieur de Montragouz did not wear a pointed beard like his grandfather at the Court of King Henry II; nor did he wear it like a fan, as did his great-grandfather who was killed at the battle of Marignan. Like Monsieur de Turenne, he had only a slight moustache, and a chin-tuft; his cheeks had a bluish look; but whatever may have been said of him, this good gentleman was by no means disfigured thereby, nor did he inspire any fear on that account. He only looked the more virile, and if it made him look a little fierce, it had not the effect of making the women dislike him. Bernard de Montragoux was a very fine man, tall, broad across the shoulders, moderately stout, and well favoured; albeit of a rustic habit, smacking of the woods rather than of drawing-rooms and assemblies. Still, it is true that he did not please the ladies as much as he should have pleased them, built as he was, and wealthy. Shyness was the reason; shyness, not his beard. Women exercised an invincible attraction for him, and at the same time inspired him with an insuperable fear. He feared them as much as he loved them. This was the origin and initial cause of all his misfortunes. Seeing a lady for the first time, he would have died rather than speak to her, and however much attracted he may have been, he stood before her in gloomy silence. His feelings revealed themselves only through his eyes, which he rolled in a terrible manner. This timidity exposed him to every kind of misfortune, and, above all, it prevented his forming a becoming connection with modest and reserved women; and betrayed him, defenceless, to the attempts of the most impudent and audacious. This was his life's misfortune.
Left an orphan from his early youth, and having rejected, owing to this sort of bashfulness and fear, which he was unable to overcome, the very advantageous and honourable alliances which had presented themselves, he married a Mademoiselle Colette Passage, who had recently settled down in that part of the country, after amassing a little money by making a bear dance through the towns and villages of the kingdom. He loved her with all his soul. And to do her justice, there was something pleasing about her, though she was what she was a fine woman with an ample bosom, and a complexion that was still sufficiently fresh, although a little sunburnt by the open air. Great were her joy and surprise on first becoming a lady of quality. Her heart, which was not bad, was touched by the kindness of a husband in such a high position, and with such a stout, powerful body, who was to her the most obedient of servants and devoted of lovers. But after a few months she grew weary because she could no longer go to and fro on the face of the earth. In the midst of wealth, overwhelmed with love and care, she could find no greater pleasure than that of going to see the companion of her wandering life, in the cellar where he languished with a chain round his neck and a ring through his nose, and kissing him on the eyes and weeping. Seeing her full of care, Monsieur de Montragouz himself became careworn, and this only added to his companion's melancholy. The consideration and forethought which he lavished on her turned the poor woman's head. One morning, when he awoke, Monsieur de Montragoux found Colette no longer at his side. In vain he searched for her throughout the castle.
The door of the Cabinet of the Unfortunate Princesses was open. It was through this door that she had gone to reach the open country with her bear. The sorrow of Bluebeard was painful to behold. In spite of the innumerable messengers sent forth in search of her, no news was ever received of Colette Passage.
Monsieur de Montragoux was still mourning her when he happened to dance, at the fair of Guillettes, with Jeanne de La Cloche, daughter of the Police Lieutenant of Compiègne, who inspired him with love. He asked her in marriage, and obtained her forthwith. She loved wine, and drank it to excess. So much did this taste increase that after a few months she looked like a leather bottle with a round red face atop of it. The worst of it was that this leather bottle would run mad, incessantly rolling about the reception-rooms and the staircases, crying, swearing, and hiccoughing; vomiting wine and insults at everything that got in her way. Monsieur de Montragoux was dazed with disgust and horror. But he quite suddenly recovered his courage, and set himself, with as much firmness as patience, to cure his wife of so disgusting a vice, Prayers, remonstrances, supplications, and threats: he employed every possible means. All was useless. He forbade her wine from his cellar: she got it from outside, and was more abominably drunk than ever.
To deprive her of her taste for a beverage that she loved too well, he put valerian in the bottles. She thought he was trying to poison her, sprang upon him, and drove three inches of kitchen knife into his belly. He expected to die of it, but he did not abandon his habitual kindness.
"She is more to be pitied than blamed," he said.
One day, when he had forgotten to close the door of the Cabinet of the Unfortunate Princesses, Jeanne de La Cloche entered by it, quite out of her mind, as usual, and seeing the figures on the walls in postures of affliction, ready to give up the ghost, she mistook them for living women, and fled terror-stricken into the country, screaming murder. Hearing Bluebeard calling her and running after her, she threw herself, mad with terror, into a pond, and was there drowned. It is difficult to believe, yet certain, that her husband, so compassionate was his soul, was much afflicted by her death.
Six weeks after the accident he quietly married Gigonne, the daughter of his steward, Traignel. She wore wooden shoes, and smelt of onions. She was a fine-looking girl enough, except that she squinted with one eye, and limped with one foot. As soon as she was married, this goose-girl, bitten by foolish ambition, dreamed of nothing but further greatness and splendour. She was not satisfied that her brocade dresses were rich enough, her pearl necklaces beautiful enough, her rubies big enough, her coaches sufficiently gilded, her lakes, woods, and lands sufficiently vast. Bluebeard, who had never had any leaning toward ambition, trembled at the haughty humour of his spouse. Unaware, in his straightforward simplicity, whether the mistake lay in thinking magnificently like his wife, or modestly as he himself did, he accused himself of a mediocrity of mind which was thwarting the noble desires of his consort, and, full of uncertainty, he would sometimes exhort her to taste with moderation the good things of this world, while at others he roused himself to pursue fortune along the verge of precipitous heights. He was prudent, but conjugal affection bore him beyond the reach of prudence. Gigonne thought of nothing but cutting a figure in the world, being received at Court, and becoming the King's mistress. Unable to gain her point, she pined away with vexation, contracting a jaundice, of which she died. Bluebeard, full of lamentation, built her a magnificent tomb.
This worthy seigneur overwhelmed by constant domestic adversity, would not perhaps have chosen another wife: but he was himself chosen for a husband by Mademoiselle Blanche de Gibeaumex, the daughter of a cavalry officer, who had but one ear; he used to relate that he had lost the other in the King's service. She was full of intelligence, which she employed in deceiving her husband. She betrayed him with every man of quality in the neighbourhood. She was so dexterous that she deceived him in his own castle, almost under his very eyes, without his perceiving it. Poor Bluebeard assuredly suspected something, but he could not say what. Unfortunately for her, while she gave her whole mind to tricking her husband, she was not sufficiently careful in deceiving her lovers; by which I mean that she betrayed them, one for another. One day she was surprised in the Cabinet of the Unfortunate Princesses, in the company of a gentleman whom she loved, by a gentleman whom she had loved, and the latter, in a transport of jealousy, ran her through with his sword. A few hours later the unfortunate lady was there found dead by one of the castle servants, and the fear inspired by the room increased.
Poor Bluebeard, learning at one blow of his ample dishonour, and the tragic death of his wife, did not console himself for the latter misfortune by any consideration of the former. He had loved Blanche de Gibeaumez with a strange ardour, more dearly than he had loved Jeanne de La Cloche, Gigonne Traignel, or even Colette Passage. On learning that she had consistently betrayed him, and that now she would never betray him again, he experienced a grief and a mental perturbation which, far from being appeased, daily increased in violence. So intolerable were his sufferings that he contracted a malady which caused his life to be despaired of.
The physicians, having employed various medicines without effect, advised him that the only remedy proper to his complaint was to take a young wife. He then thought of his young cousin, Angèle de La Garandine, whom he believed would be willingly bestowed upon him, as she had no property. What encouraged him to take her to wife was the fact that she was reputed to be simple and ignorant of the world. Having been deceived by a woman of intelligence, he felt more comfortable with a fool. He married Mademoiselle de La Garandine, and quickly perceived the falsity of his calculations. Angèle was kind, Angèle was good, and Angèle loved him; she had not, in herself, any leanings toward evil, but the least astute person could quickly lead her astray at any moment. It was enough to tell her: "Do this for fear of bogies; comes in here or the were-wolf will eat you;" or "Shut your eyes, and take this drop of medicine," and the innocent girl would straightway do so, at the will of the rascals who wanted of her that which it was very natural to want of her, for she was pretty. Monsieur de Montragouz, injured and betrayed by this innocent girl, as much as and more than he had been by Blanche de Gibeaumex, had the additional pain of knowing it, for Angèle was too candid to conceal anything from him. She used to tell him: "Sir, some one told me this; some one did that to me; some one took so and so away from me; I saw that; I felt so and so." And by her ingenuousness she caused her lord to suffer torments beyond imagination. He endured them like a Stoic. Still he finally had to tell the simple creature that she was a goose, and to box her ears. This, for him, was the beginning of a reputation for cruelty, which was not fated to be diminished. A mendicant monk, who was passing Gulllettes while Monsieur de Montragouz was out shooting woodcock, found Madame Angèle sewing a doll's petticoat. This worthy friar, discovering that she was as foolish as she was beautiful, took her away on his donkey, having persuaded her that the Angel Gabriel was waiting in a wood, to give her a pair of pearl garters. It is believed that she must have been eaten by a wolf, for she was never seen again.
After such a disastrous experience, how was it that Bluebeard could make up his mind to contract yet another union? It would be impossible to understand it, were we not well aware of the power which a fine pair of eyes exerts over a generous heart.
The honest gentleman met, at a neighbouring château which he was in the habit of frequenting, a young orphan of quality, by name Alix de Pontalcin, who, having been robbed of all her property by a greedy trustee, thought only of entering a convent. Officious friends intervened to alter her determination and persuade her to accept the hand of Monsieur de Montragoux. Her beauty was perfect. Bluebeard, who was promising himself the enjoyment of an infinite happiness in her arms, was once more deluded in his hopes, and this time experienced a disappointment, which, owing to his disposition, was bound to make an even greater impression upon him than all the afflictions which he had suffered in his previous marriages. Alix de Pontalcin obstinately refused to give actuality to the union to which she had nevertheless consented.
In vain did Monsieur de Montragoux press her to become his wife; she resisted prayers, tears, and objurgations, she refused her husband's lightest caresses, and rushed off to shut herself into the Cabinet of the Unfortunate Princesses, where she remained, alone and intractable, for whole nights at a time.
The cause of a resistance so contrary to laws both human and divine was never known; it was attributed to Monsieur de Montragoux's blue beard, but our previous remarks on the subject of his beard render such a supposition far from probable. In any case, it is a difficult subject to discuss. The unhappy husband underwent the cruellest sufferings. In order to forget them, he hunted with desperation, exhausting horses, hounds, and huntsmen. But when he returned home, foundered and overtired, the mere sight of Mademoiselle de Pontalcin was enough to revive his energies and his torments. Finally, unable to endure the situation any longer, he applied to Rome for the annulment of a marriage which was nothing better than a trap; and in consideration of a handsome present to the Holy Father he obtained it in accordance with canon law. If Monsieur de Montragoux discarded Mademoiselle de Pontalcin with all the marks of respect due to a woman, and without breaking his cane across her back, it was because he had a valiant soul, a great heart, and was master of himself as well as of Guillettes. But he swore that, for the future, no female should enter his apartments. Happy had he been if he had held to his oath to the end!
SOME years had elapsed since Monsieur de Montragoux had rid himself of his sixth wife, and only a confused recollection remained in the country-side of the domestic calamities which had fallen upon this worthy seigneur's house. Nobody knew what had become of his wives, and hair-raising tales were told in the village at night; some believed them, others did not. About this time, a widow, past the prime of life, Dame Sidonie de Lespoisse, came to settle with her children in the manor of La Motte-Giron, about two leagues, as the crow flies, from the castle of Guillettes. Whence she came, or who her husband had been, not a soul knew. Some believed, because they had heard it said, that he had held certain posts in Savoy or Spain; others said that he had died in the Indies; many had the idea that the widow was possessed of immense estates, while others doubted it strongly. However, she lived in a notable style, and invited all the nobility of the country-side to La Motte-Giron. She had two daughters, of whom the elder, Anne, on the verge of becoming an old maid, was a very astute person: Jeanne, the younger, ripe for marriage, concealed a precocious knowledge of the world under an appearance of simplicity. The Dame de Lespoisse had also two sons, of twenty and twenty-two years of age; very fine well-made young fellows, of whom one was a Dragoon, and the other a Musketeer. I may add, having seen his commission, that he was a Black Musketeer. When on foot, this was not apparent, for the Black Musketeers were distinguished from the Grey not by the colour of their uniform, but by the hides of their horses. All alike wore blue surcoats laced with gold. As for the Dragoons, they were to be recognized by a kind of fur bonnet, of which the tail fell gallantly over the ear. The Dragoons had the reputation of being scamps, a scapegrace crowd, witness the song:
"Mama, here the dragoons come, Let us haste away."
But you might have searched in vain through His Majesty's two regiments of Dragoons for a bigger rake, a more accomplished sponger, or a viler rogue than Cosme de Lespoisset. Compared with him, his brother was an honest lad. Drunkard and gambler, Pierre de Lespoisse pleased the ladies, and won at cards; these were the only ways of gaining a living known to him.
Their mother, Dame de Lespoisse, was making a splash at Motte-Giron only in order to catch gulls. As a matter of fact, she had not a penny, and owed for everything, even to her false teeth. Her clothes and furniture, her coach, her horses, and her servants had all been lent by Parisian moneylenders, who threatened to withdraw them all if she did not presently marry one of her daughters to some rich nobleman, and the respectable Sidonie was expecting to find herself at any moment naked in an empty house. In a hurry to find a son-in-law, she had at once cast her eye upon Monsieur de Montragoux, whom she summed up as being simple-minded, easy to deceive, extremely mild, and quick to fall in love under his rude and bashful exterior. Her two daughters entered into her plans, and every time they met him, riddled poor Bluebeard with glances which pierced him to the depths of his heart. He soon fell a victim to the potent charms of the two Demoiselles de Lespoisse. Forgetting his oath, he thought of nothing but marrying one of them, finding them equally beautiful. After some delay, caused less by hesitation than timidity, he went to Motte-Giron in great state, and made his petition to the Dame de Lespoisse, leaving to her the choice of which daughter she would give him. Madame Sidonie obligingly replied that she held him in high esteem, and that she authorized him to pay his court to whichever of the ladies he should prefer.
"Learn to please, monsieur," she said. "I shall be the first to applaud your success."
In order to make their better acquaintance, Bluebeard invited Anne and Jeanne de Lespoisse, with their mother, brothers, and a multitude of ladies and gentlemen to pass a fortnight at the castle of Guillettes. There was a succession of walking, hunting, and fishing parties, dances and festivities, dinners and entertainments of every sort. A young seigneur, the Chevalier de Merlus, whom the ladies Lespoisse had brought with them, organized the beats. Bluebeard had the best packs of hounds and the largest turnout in the countryside. The ladies rivalled the ardour of the gentlemen in hunting the deer. They did not always hunt the animal down, but the hunters and their ladies wandered away in couples, found one another, and again wandered off into the woods. For choice, the Chevalier de la Merlus would lose himself with Jeanne de Lespoisse, and both would return to the castle at night, full of their adventures, and pleased with their day's sport.
After a few days' observation, the good seigneur of Montragoux felt a decided preference for Jeanne, the younger sister, rather than the elder, as she was fresher, which is not saying that she was less experienced. He allowed his preference to appear; there was no reason why he should conceal it, for it was a befitting preference; moreover, he was a plain dealer. He paid court to the young lady as best he could, speaking little, for want of practice; but he gazed at her, rolling his rolling eyes, and emitting from the depths of his bowels sighs which might have overthrown an oak tree. Sometimes he would burst out laughing, whereupon the crockery trembled, and the windows rattled. Alone of all the party, he failed to remark the assiduous attentions of the Chevalier de la Merlus to Madame de Lespoisse's younger daughter, or if he did remark them he saw no harm in them. His experience of women was not sufficient to make him suspicious, and he trusted when he loved. My grandmother used to say that in life experience is worthless, and that one remains the same as when one begins. I believe she was right, and the true story that I am now unfolding is not of a nature to prove her wrong.
Bluebeard displayed an unusual magnificence in these festivities. When night arrived the lawns before the castle were lit by a thousand torches, and tables served by men-servants and maids dressed as fauns and dryads groaned under all the tastiest things which the country-side and the forest produced. Musicians provided a continual succession of beautiful symphonies. Towards the end of the meal the schoolmaster and schoolmistress, followed by the boys and girls of the village, appeared before the guests, and read a complimentary address to the seigneur of Montragoux and his friends. An astrologer in a pointed cap approached the ladies, and foretold their future love-affairs from the lines of their hands, Bluebeard ordered drink to be given for all his vassals, and he himself distributed bread and meat to the poor families.
At ten o'clock, for fear of the evening dew, the company retired to the apartments, lit by a multitude of candles, and there tables were prepared for every sort of game: lansquenet, billiards, reversi, bagatelle, pigeon-holes, turnstile, porch, beast, hoca, brelan, draughts, backgammon, dice, basset, and calbas. Bluebeard was uniformly unfortunate in these various games, at which he lost large sums every night. He could console himself for his continuous run of bad luck by watching the three Lespoisse ladies win a great deal of money. Jeanne, the younger, who often backed the game of the Chevalier de la Merlus, heaped up mountains of gold. Madame de Lespoisse's two sons also did very well at reversi and basset; their luck was invariably best at the more hazardous games. The play went on until late into the night. No one slept during these marvellous festivities, and as the earliest biographer of Bluebeard has said: "They spent the whole night in playing tricks on one another." These hours were the most delightful of the whole twenty-four; for then, under cover of jesting, and taking advantage of the darkness, those who felt drawn toward one another would hide together in the depths of some alcove. The Chevelier de la Merlus would disguise himself at one time as a devil, at another as a ghost or a were-wolf in order to frighten the sleepers, but he always ended by slipping into the room of Mademoiselle Jeanne de Lespoisse. The good seigneur of Montragoux was not overlooked in these games. The two sons of Madame de Lespoisse put irritant powder in his bed, and burnt in his room substances which emitted a disgusting smell. Or they would arrange a jug of water over his door so that the worthy seigneur could not open the door without the whole of the water being upset upon his head. In short, they played on him all sorts of practical jokes, to the diversion of the whole company, and Bluebeard bore them with his natural good humour.
He made his request, to which Madame de Lespoisse acceded, although, as she said, it wrung her heart to think of giving her girls in marriage.
The marriage was celebrated at Motte-Giron with extraordinary magnificence. The Demoiselle Jeanne, amazingly beautiful, was dressed entirely in point de France, her head covered with a thousand ringlets. Her sister Anne wore a dress of green velvet, embroidered with gold. Their mother's dress was of golden tissue, trimmed with black chenille, with a parure of pearls and diamonds. Monsieur de Montragoux wore all his great diamonds on a suit of black velvet; he made a very fine appearance; his expression of timidity and innocence contrasting strongly with his blue chin and his massive build. The bride's brothers were of course handsomely arrayed, but the Chevalier de la Merlus, in a suit of rose velvet trimmed with pearls, shone with unparalleled splendour.
Immediately after the ceremony, the Jews who had hired out to the bride's family and her lover all these fine clothes and rich jewels resumed possession of them and posted back to Paris with them.
FOR a month Monsieur de Montragoux was the happiest of men. He adored his wife, and regarded her as an angel of purity. She was something quite different, but far shrewder men than poor Bluebeard might have been deceived as he was, for she was a person of great cunning and astuteness, and allowed herself submissively to be ruled by her mother, who was the cleverest jade in the whole kingdom of France. She established herself at Guillettes with her eldest daughter Anne, her two sons, Pierre and Cosme, and the Chevalier de la Merlus, who kept as close to Madame de Montragoux as if he had been her shadow. Her good husband was a little annoyed at this; he would have liked to keep his wife always to himself, but he did not take exception to the affection which she felt for this young gentleman, as she had told him that he was her foster-brother.
Charles Perrault relates that a month after having contracted this union, Bluebeard was compelled to make a journey of six weeks' duration on some important business. He does not seem to be aware of the reasons for this journey, and it has been suspected that it was an artifice, which the jealous husband resorted to, according to custom, in order to surprise his wife. The truth is quite otherwise. Monsieur de Montragouz went to Le Perche to receive the heritage of his cousin of Outarde, who had been killed gloriously by a cannon-ball at the battle of the Dunes, while casting dice upon a drum.
Before leaving, Monsieur de Montragoux begged his wife to indulge in every possible distraction during his absence.
"Invite all your friends, madame," he said, "go riding with them, amuse yourselves, and have a pleasant time."
He handed over to her all the keys of the house, thus indicating that in his absence she was the sole and sovereign mistress of all the seigneurie of Guillettes.
"This," he said, "is the key of the two great wardrobes; this of the gold and silver not in daily use; this of the strong-boxes which contain my gold and silver; this of the caskets where my jewels are kept; and this is a pass-key into all the rooms. As for this little key, it is that of the Cabinet, at the end of the Gallery, on the ground floor; open everything, and go where you will."
Charles Perrault claims that Monsieur de Montragoux added:
"But as for the little Cabinet, I forbid you to enter that; and I forbid you so expressly that if you do enter it, I cannot say to what lengths my anger will not go."
The historian of Bluebeard in placing these words on record, has fallen into the error of adopting, without, verification, the version concocted after the event by the ladies Lespoisse. Monsieur de Montragoux expressed himself very differently. When he handed to his wife the key of the little Cabinet, which was none other than the Cabinet of the Unfortunate Princesses, to which we have already frequently alluded, he expressed the desire that his beloved Jeanne should not enter that part of the house which he regarded as fatal to his domestic happiness. It was through this room, indeed, that his first wife, and the best of all of them, had fled, when she ran away with her bear; here Blanche de Gibeaumex had repeatedly betrayed him with various gentlemen; and lastly, the porphyry pavement was stained by the blood of a beloved criminal. Was not this enough to make Monsieur de Montragoux connect the idea of this room with cruel memories and fateful forebodings?
The words which he addressed to Jeanne de Lespoisse convey the desires and impressions which were troubling his mind. They were actually as follows:
"For you, madame, nothing of mine is hidden, and I should feel that I was doing you an injury did I fail to hand over to you all the keys of a dwelling which belongs to you. You may therefore enter this little cabinet, as you may enter all the other rooms of the house; but if you will take my advice you will do nothing of the kind, to oblige me, and in consideration of the painful ideas which, for me, are connected with this room, and the forebodings of evil which these ideas, despite myself, call up into my mind. I should be inconsolable were any mischance to befall you, or were I to bring misfortune upon you. You will, madame, forgive these fears, which are happily unfounded, as being only the outcome of my anxious affection and my watchful love."
With these words the good seigneur embraced his wife and posted off to Le Perche.
"The friends and neighbours," says Charles Perrault, "did not wait to be asked to visit the young bride; so full were they of impatience to see all the wealth of her house. They proceeded at once to inspect all the rooms, cabinets, and wardrobes, each of which was richer and more beautiful than the last; and there was no end to their envy and their praises of their friend's good fortune."
All the historians who have dealt with this subject have added that Madame de Montsagoux took no pleasure in the sight of all these riches, by reason of her impatience to open the little Cabinet. This is perfectly correct, and as Perrault has said: "So urgent was her curiosity that, without considering that it was unmannerly to leave her guests, she went down to it by a little secret staircase, and in such a hurry that two or three times she thought she would break her neck." The fact is beyond question. But what no one has told us is that the reason why she was so anxious to reach this apartment was that the Chevalier de la Merlus was awaiting her there.
Since she had come to make her home in the castle of Guillettes she had met this young gentleman in the Cabinet every day, and oftener twice a day than once, without wearying of an intercourse so unseemly in a young married woman. It is Impossible to hesitate, as to the nature of the ties connecting Jeanne with the Chevalier: they were anything but respectable, anything but chaste, Alas, had Madame de Montragoux merely betrayed her husband's honour, she would no doubt have incurred the blame of posterity; but the most austere of moralists might have found excuses for her. He might allege, in favour of so young a woman, the laxity of the morals of the period; the examples of the city and the Court; the too certain effects of a bad training, and the advice of an immoral mother, for Madame Sidonie de Lespoisse countenanced her daughter's intrigues. The wise might have forgiven her a fault too amiable to merit their severity; her errors would have seemed too common to be crimes, and the world would simply have considered that she was behaving like other people. But Jeanne de Lespoisse, not content with betraying her husband's honour, did not hesitate to attempt his life.
It was in the little Cabinet, otherwise known as the Cabinet of the Unfortunate Princesses, that Jeanne de Lespoisse, Dame de Montragoux, in concert with the Chevalier de la Merlus, plotted the death of a kind and faithful husband. She declared later that, on entering the room, she saw hanging there the bodies of six murdered women, whose congealed blood covered the tiles, and that recognizing in these unhappy women the first six wives of Bluebeard, she foresaw the fate which awaited herself. She must, in this case, have mistaken the paintings on the walls for mutilated corpses, and her hallucinations must be compared with those of Lady Macbeth. But it is extremely probable that Jeanne imagined this horrible sight in order to relate it afterwards, justifying her husband's murderers by slandering their victim.
The death of Monsieur de Montragouz was determined upon. Certain letters which lie before me compel the belief that Madame Sidonie Lespoisse had her part in the plot. As for her elder daughter, she may be described as the soul of the conspiracy. Anne de Lespoisse was the wickedest of the whole family. She was a stranger to sensual weakness, remaining chaste in the midst of the profligacy of the house; it was not a case of refusing pleasures which she thought unworthy of her; the truth was that she took pleasure only in cruelty. She engaged her two brothers, Cosme and Pierre, in the enterprise by promising them the command of a regiment.
IT now rests with us to trace, with the aid of authentic documents, and reliable evidence, the most atrocious, treacherous, and cowardly domestic crime of which the record has come down to us. The murder whose circumstances we are about to relate can only be compared to that committed on the night of the 9th March, 1449, on the person of Guillaume de Flavy, by his wife Blanche d'Overbreuc, a young and slender woman, the bastard d'Orbandas, and the barber Jean Bocquillon.
They stifled Guillaume with a pillow, battered him pitilessly with a club, and bled him at the throat like a calf. Blanche d'Overbreuc proved that her husband had determined to have her drowned, while Jeanne de Lespoisse betrayed a loving husband to a gang of unspeakable scoundrels. We will record the facts with all possible restraint. Bluebeard returned rather earlier than expected. This it was gave rise to the quite mistaken idea that, a prey to the blackest jealousy, he was wishful to surprise his wife. Full of joy and confidence, if he thought of giving her a surprise it was an agreeable one. His kindness and tenderness, and his joyous, peaceable air would have softened the most savage hearts. The Chevalier de la Merlus, and the whole execrable brood of Lespoisse saw therein nothing but an additional facility for taking his life, and possessing themselves of his wealth, still further increased by his new inheritance.
His young wife met him with a smiling face, allowing herself to be embraced and led to the conjugal chamber, where she did everything to please the good man. The following morning she returned him the bunch of keys which had been confided to her care. But there was missing that of the Cabinet of the Unfortunate Princesses, commonly called the little Cabinet. Bluebeard gently demanded its delivery, and after putting him off for a time on various pretexts Jeanne returned it to him.
There now arises a question which cannot be solved without leaving the limited domain of history to enter the indeterminate regions of philosophy.
Charles Perrault specifically states that the key of the little Cabinet was a fairy key, that is to say, it was magical, enchanted, endowed with properties contrary to the laws of nature, at all events, as we conceive them. We have no proof to the contrary. This is a fitting moment to recall the precept of my illustrious master, Monsieur du Clos des Lunes, a member of the Institute: "When the supernatural makes its appearance, it must not be rejected by the historian." I shall therefore content myself with recalling as regards this key, the unanimous opinion of all the old biographers of Bluebeard; they all affirm that it was a fairy key. This is a point of great importance. Moreover, this key is not the only object created by human industry which has proved to be endowed with marvellous properties. Tradition abounds with examples of enchanted swords. Arthur's was a magic sword. And so was that of Joan of Arc, on the undeniable authority of Jean Chartier; and the proof afforded by that illustrious chronicler is that when the blade was broken the two pieces refused to be welded together again despite all the efforts of the most competent armourers. Victor Hugo speaks in one of his poems of those "magic stairways still obscured below." Many authors even admit that there are men-magicians who can turn themselves into wolves. We shall not undertake to combat such a firm and constant belief, and we shall not pretend to decide whether the key of the little Cabinet was or was not enchanted, for our reserve does not imply that we are in any uncertainty, and therein resides its merit. But where we find ourselves in our proper domain, or to be more precise within our own jurisdiction, where we once more become judges of facts, and writers of circumstances, is where we read that the key was flecked with blood. The authority of the texts does not so far impress us as to compel us to believe this. It was not flecked with blood. Blood had flowed in the little cabinet, but at a time already remote. Whether the key had been washed or whether it had dried, it was impossible that it should be so stained, and what, in her agitation, the criminal wife mistook for a blood-stain on the iron, was the reflection of the sky still empurpled by the roses of dawn.
Monsieur de Montragoux, on seeing the key, perceived none the less that his wife had entered the little cabinet. He noticed that it now appeared cleaner and brighter than when he had given it to her, and was of opinion that this polish could only come from use.
This produced a painful impression upon him, and he said to his wife, with a mournful smile:
"My darling, you have been into the little cabinet. May there result no grievous outcome for either of us! From that room emanates a malign influence from which I would have protected you. If you, in your turn should become subjected to it, I should never get over it. Forgive me; when we love we are superstitious."
On these words, although Bluebeard cannot have frightened her, for his words and demeanour expressed only love and melancholy, the young lady of Montragoux began shrieking at the top of her voice: "Help! Help! he's killing me!" This was the signal agreed upon. On hearing it, the Chevalier de la Merlus and the two sons of Madame de Lespoisse were to have thrown themselves upon Bluebeard and run him through with their swords.
But the Chevalier, whom Jeanne had hidden in a cupboard in the room, appeared alone. Monsieur de Montragoux, seeing him leap forth sword in hand, placed himself on guard. Jeanne fled terror-stricken, and met her sister Anne in the gallery. She was not, as has been related, on a tower; for all the towers had been thrown down by order of Cardinal Richelieu. Anne was striving to put heart into her two brothers, who, pale and quaking, dared not risk so great a stake. Jeanne hastily implored them: "Quick, quick, brothers, save my lover!" Pierre and Cosme then rushed at Bluebeard. They found him, having disarmed the Chevalier de la Merlus, holding him down with his knee; they treacherously ran their swords through his body from behind, and continued to strike at him long after he had breathed his last.
Bluebeard had no heirs. His wife remained mistress of his property. She used a part of it to provide a dowry for her sister Anne, another part to buy captains' commissions for her two brothers, and the rest to marry the Chevalier de la Merlus, who became a very respectable man as soon as he was wealthy.


text:
Our Kids Know We're Failing Them on Climate Change
Youths all over the world are insisting that we adults make some sacrifices to keep their planet from becoming uninhabitable. It's time we listen.Kids are taking over the streets in other countries, rallying and chanting and refusing to go to school one day a week.
Young people across the world are striking to draw attention to the ravages of climate change. They are demanding — with their bodies and their voices — that the catastrophe each of them will inherit be a priority for the grown-ups around them. They are insisting that we adults make some sacrifices to keep their planet from becoming uninhabitable.
"We are the voiceless future of humanity… We will not accept a life in fear and devastation. We have the right to live our dreams and hopes." You know who said that? A teenager. Actually, lots of them, since it's part of a letter, a call to action, from the organizers of Fridays for a Future. I'm hearing them loud and clear and it's driving me crazy!
The map of activities that those teenagers planned for their March 15 global day of action represented a mind-popping collection of locations, including Tromso, Norway; Port Louis, Mauritius; Diliman, the Philippines; Osorno, Chile; Whitehorse, Canada; Bamako, Mali; and Tehran, Iran. You don't have to be a cartographer to notice that there were way more actions planned around the world than in Donald Trump's United States.
This clarion call comes from teenagers, the crew we characterize here in America as eye-rolling creatures suspended in a helpless state of consumerism, hyper-sexualization, and crushing academic pressure. Of course, there are kids in the streets (and sitting in at congressional offices) for climate change (and for a host of other issues) here, too, but, there are far more doing nothing but playing Fortnite on their phones or tablets and uploading DIY lip-balm videos on YouTube.
Seventy-three percent of Americans now acknowledge the reality of human-caused climate change — by far the biggest number since the question was first asked in 2008 — but too few want to pay to make it go away. Asked if they'd spend even $10 a month to address the crisis, 72% of Americans took a hard pass, 57% of them opting for $1 a month instead. Set that against the cost of your favorite large iced latte with a shot of caramel, a Netflix subscription, or the Uber ride you summoned when you could have walked.
If global warming continues at current rates, however, Solomon Hsiang, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues found that it would impact our economy in a huge way. It would shave "3 to 6 percentage points off of the country's gross domestic product by century's end — the warmer it gets, the bigger the hit to the economy." The Trump administration's own report assessing the risks of climate change found that global warming "is expected to cause substantial net damage to the U.S. economy throughout this century… With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century — more than the current gross domestic product of many U.S. states."
Time for another latte, folks, because this is our problem, whether we're facing it or not.
How Do We Parent Generation Hot?
I'm almost 45. My kids, Seamus and Madeline, are 5 and 6; my stepdaughter Rosena is 12. They are part of what journalist Mark Hertsgaard calls Generation Hot, "some two billion young people, all of whom have grown up under global warming and are fated to spend the rest of their lives confronting its mounting impacts."
On a good day, I quip that "I'm halfway to 90." On a bad day, I can't imagine what the world will look like in 2064, for me or them.
I was named for my paternal grandmother, Frida. Born in 1886 in the Black Forest of Germany, she emigrated here with her family when she was very young, grew up in Minnesota, and married my grandfather in June 1911. I was married exactly a century later. I wear her wedding ring, a battered little gold band that connects me to a woman who died before I turned two. The world she bore six sons into wasn't an easy one. She spent a lot of her time washing laundry, mending clothes, tending crops, caring for animals, preparing food, and raising children, a life I can romanticize the heck out of in the right mood.
Had she been able to leave her small world and travel into my future, so much of my daily life would undoubtedly be a marvel, a mystery, or a concern to her. I suspect, for example, that the hours I sit in front of this computer wouldn't even look like work to Grandma Frida.
And if I could fast-forward 45 years into the future, what would I see? On the marvels and mysteries, I haven't a clue, but I do know one thing: I would certainly see an extreme version of today when it comes to climate change. In other words, the indiscriminate damage from extreme weather, hitting vulnerable populations particularly hard, will only have intensified dramatically. After all, 2018, the wettest year in America in 35 years, saw 14 weather catastrophes, each of which cost a billion or more dollars. It was also the fourth-hottest year on record for the planet as a whole (the other three being the previous three years), according to data tracked by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reporto only predicts more and far worse of what we have already been seeing: droughts, floods, rising sea levels and heat indices, increasingly fierce wildfires, more food shortages and famines to come, and ever larger populations on the move as people flee the weather and the destruction, look for food and shelter, and try to escape the manmade conflicts fueled by such events.
Worries for the World
That's Rosena's future I'm writing about, and Seamus's and Madeline's, too. I've been making a concerted effort as a parent of small children and an almost-teenager, as a citizen of the United States, and as an environmentalist (or at least someone who would like to wear that mantle) to face my own denial reflex on climate change. Until now, thanks in part to my own parents, I've spent most of my life worrying about nuclear weapons destroying the planet. So maybe it's just a matter of layering one world-destroying phenomenon on another.
The strange thing is that I find it easier to think about nuclear war than climate change. After all, when it comes to those nukes, either the button gets pushed or it doesn't. A finite number of nuclear warheads exist on this planet and they could be dismantled one by one in a relatively short period of time if policymakers chose to do so. The genie could potentially be put back in the bottle. Climate change is another matter.
Oh, and talking to my kids about it? That's a terrifying thought. They're already deeply afraid of volcanoes for no reason whatsoever. Going to Chicago for a wedding? First question: "Are there volcanoes there?" A weekend trip to New York: "Wait, mom, volcanoes in New York? No, right?" Now, imagine introducing them to the human-made, carbonized version of volcanoes that will actually impact their future.
I'd rather not, but I'm thinking I must. That, I suppose, is the work of parenting in 2019.
Rosena has a few months more before she becomes a teenager and there is not (yet) a lot of eye-rolling in our household. Thankfully, she remains more kid than adult wannabe on the cusp of womanhood. But the climate-change kids have me thinking harder about her and the fate of her earth. I'm thinking she should know more than she does about the mess the baby boomers got her into.
But who or what is really to blame for all of this, anyway? The Industrial Revolution? The war machine? Big Oil? When you're talking about a staggering 1.5 to 2 (or even 4) degree Celsius increase in global temperatures, I suppose there's bound to be plenty of blame to spread around.
My husband and I bug Rosena for taking long showers and for her urge to turn on every light in the house. We make her walk to and from school and try to walk as a family as much as possible. We point out how much of what she loves to buy is packaged in non-recyclable, landfill-clogging insta-garbage. We joke that slime is the cause of icebergs melting, bee colony collapse, and every other ill in the world, but we haven't yet started harping on global warming, greenhouse gases, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events.
For a while, I hesitated, not wanting to worry her pointlessly. But there is a point to worrying! As I've watched the next generation pour into the streets, I've been rethinking things. I've started to feel that our family needs to be learning all of this together. It needs to be united in the fight against climate change and in the preparations for a very different future, for Rosena's future.
Is It Time to Panic Yet?
After my own version of a survey of the recent literature, here's what I know: we're screwed.
David Wallace-Wells, a legit climate Cassandra, is tired of public intellectuals and scientists candy-coating the bleakness of the future that awaits us unless everything changes fast. So, in a new book, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, he looks at the worst case scenarios and says it's time to PANIC! A fellow at the New America Foundation, he recently told Rachel Martin of NPR's Morning Edition:
"When I talk about being optimistic, I'm talking about a range that starts at a death toll of 150 million people and extends to a world 4 degrees warmer where we would have, eventually, hundreds of feet of sea level rise, horrible impacts on agriculture and public health beyond our comprehension. Now, a lot of people would want to just sort of recoil from even that best-case scenario."
Where do you go from that version of "best case"? Is there such a thing as productive panic? David Wallace-Wells still thinks so.
Climate change certainly makes me consider my occasional hamburger, or retail therapy at T.J. Maxx, or my low-key Amazon Smile addiction — it can't be bad if it's for a good cause, right? — where things I "needish" are wrapped in countless layers of the paper and plastics that contribute to those dead seas of plastic junk that now clog our oceans. At this point, human activity reportedly consumes 1.7 Earths' worth of materials annually. As the Global Footprint Network points out:
"This means it now takes the Earth one year and six months to regenerate what we use in a year. We use more ecological resources and services than nature can regenerate through overfishing, overharvesting forests, and emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than forests can sequester."
But the personal stuff — not driving, eating meat, or buying plastic crap — won't, of course, do the trick. Collective action is needed. Frida Berrigan becoming a vegan won't reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45%.To get there, we need a whole new set of relationships, as well as rules and regulations. We need to live collectively, not just individually, as if the planet matters. We need, as Guardian columnist George Monbiot has put it, "a complete revision of our relationship with the living planet."
Look for Action
Turning toward this catastrophe is hard work. Here's just a sampling of the titles of recent books about climate change: The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption; Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change; Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity; The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable; and This Is the Way the World Ends: How Droughts and Die-offs, Heat Waves and Hurricanes Are Converging on America.
You get the idea. No wonder I struggle with what to do with all this information, this mixture of artful alarmism and sober grappling with the facts on the ground. I'm sure Greta Thunberg would be impatient with my waffling and indecision, my fervent wish that this would all just go away. She was 15 years old when she sat down outside the Swedish parliament and "school striked for the climate." She was inspired by the young people of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who began organizing a true gun control movement after 17 of their schoolmates and staff were killed by a mass shooter. She was motivated by her understanding of the existential threat posed by a warming world, driven to action by her observation that none of the adults with the power to change the rules were doing anything. That includes me, doesn't it?
They — we — were failing, she concluded. Why, she wondered, wasn't it illegal to burn carbons? Why wasn't it forbidden to trash the planet? Greta, who has a young person's passion and absolutism, is also diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, which, as she told a crowd at a TED Talk, makes her see the world in black and white. "There are no grey areas when it comes to survival," she noted, her voice dry and lightly accented. She ended that TED Talk by saying, "We do need hope. Of course we do. But one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So, instead of looking for hope, look for action."
So she acted and the school strikes for climate change she launched soon spread across the world. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal could be considered one answer to Greta's call for action. Along with the venerable Senator Ed Markey, Ocasio-Cortez, the freshman representative and youngest woman ever elected to Congress, is proposing that Green New Deal "to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers; to create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States; [and] to invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century."
And I'm all for it. Every single word, even the ones that are being denounced as too expensive, unrealistic, challenging, and anti-corporate. And I'm even more for the new conversation this wave of climate concern is catalyzing. One of these days, we might even have an actual national debate about what it will take to arrest the increases in global temperature that could lead to the demise not of the planet itself, but possibly of human civilization.
Everything Is… (Not) Fine
The fact that many of us still look at the possible cataclysm to come through a distracting everything-is-fine vision of America makes that conversation all the harder. Here in Connecticut, for instance, gas is still only $2.39 a gallon, the local Stop and Shop has three-for-one pints of blueberries from Peru or Chile on offer, and on a recent wintry Friday it was almost 50 degrees.
It can be hard to tap into one's sense of urgency living here in the northeast. And yet we are not immune. Our library hosted an event on city trees at the end of January and I learned that New London's six square urban miles had lost more than 1,000 trees in the last 10 years. They've been cut down after storm damage, removed for new sidewalks, died of old age and of the hard life of a tree living at the street's edge. A college senior who had counted all the city's trees and assessed their health told us about how they filter pollutants while offering shade. My community is organizing to get those trees back (and plant even more of them), but we'll probably fall a few short of the 1.2 trillion new trees that one recent study suggests would be needed to cancel a decade of carbon dioxide emissions.
Like all the other homeowners in New London, I now find a $15 stormwater surcharge on the water bill that arrives every quarter. It's not quite the $10 a month climate change tax Americans were polled on, but it is related to a warming world and it's hitting some of my neighbors pretty hard. Our community, after all, is bordered on three sides by water and (like increasing numbers of American communities) our water infrastructure is antiquated. It gets overwhelmed by even a modest downpour. We're not talking about Miami-level sunny-day flooding, but we could get there and, if so, it will probably take a lot more than $60 a year to keep us reasonably safe.
Southeastern Connecticut isn't on the front lines of climate change. Ours are still third- or fourth-level problems related to a warming, more resource-pinched world. Our community probably won't be uninhabitable in the next generation. Our home is likely to withstand the next round of mega-storms. Still, we are all beginning to pay for climate change, even if the costs and consequences have yet to fully register. Taken individually in New London (if not Puerto Rico or Houston), it's been a matter of minor inconveniences and background noise, little more than so many phantom twinges.
Still, I have no doubt that we're in trouble. Trouble deep. And I'm not going to lie to my kids. I'm not going to deny that I'm terrified about their future. I'm not going to fail as an adult. I still have work to do. I can still do my small part to help the school strikers and the members of Generation Hot who have identified the "right to live our dreams and hopes" as a right worth defending. I'm not going to fail as a parent. I'm already listening to the school strikers, many just a few years older than Rosena. I'm going to heed their leadership. I plan to join them, to learn and listen, to do my best to share my still unarticulatable fears and, with my children, to face this future together.
Your support matters…Independent journalism is under threat and overshadowed by heavily funded mainstream media.
You can help level the playing field. Become a member.
Your tax-deductible contribution keeps us digging beneath the headlines to give you thought-provoking, investigative reporting and analysis that unearths what's really happening- without compromise.
Give today to support our courageous, independent journalists.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
New Delhi (India), August 4: Over years there is a massive drift in the population from conventional stores to online stores from electronic to every single thing of personal needs. E-commerce websites have been flourishing all over the world pretty vigorously. In the emerging worldwide economy, ecommerce has progressively turned into a crucial part of business techniques and a strong catalyst for global economic development. Brandmaart.com is one such luxury e-commerce website that tends to provide its prospects with the best luxurious commodities. With a series of luxurious and trendsetting items in its catalogue, it appeals to every fashionista and those who like to be in sync with the ongoing trends as one of the best luxury fashion e-commerce websites.
Starting from the funkiest sneakers to the most gorgeous pieces of denim and sturdy watches and sunglasses, Brand Maart is a perfect choice to deck up your wardrobe with luxury. Brand Maart always believes that one size never fits all and thus it offers you a range of sizes of trending apparel. You can now benefit the fashionista in you with the availability of various sizes from XS to 5XL. Moreover, the payment and transaction process of the website is so smooth that you can ensure a happy purchase. From placing the order to delivering it to your doorstep, Brand Maart Luxury always keeps your experience at priority and thus offers you a smooth one.
Let us take you through what other benefits are complimentary with the all-in-one fashion website.
- No hustles, just a few clicks
You don't need to move even an inch from your seatings. Just select the product or products that you want to purchase and click on the order button. You are done with the process. Ordering your choices from the website is as easy as it gets.
- No opening time boundaries
This is one common obstacle that you might face in conventional store shopping. You can't expect them to be a helping partner 24*7. Brandmaart serves you with our commodities every minute of the day and night too. Along with it, Brand Maart Customer Care is always there to help you with your queries and resolve the issues regarding the products and services.
- Reduce your cost
Shopping online at Brand Maart can help you cut on the additional costs like the travelling costs to the offline stores. You can order the product of your choice or requirement through your screen. Additionally, there are offers every now and then where you can save a big amount on your luxury needs.
- Authentic goods
Unlike other fake websites, you will get only genuine and authentic products on the site. Brandmaart authenticity is what makes it worthwhile. Be stress-free as you will get original branded products within your comfort range.
And what would be the best time to ace these offers? The festive season is the right time to spend which has just started. Brand maart introduces sales and offers with the advent of festive seasons. You can get your hands on your favourites at the most attractive prices. There is an ongoing sale on the website where you can save up to 70% on your favourite fashion statements.
5. Make your opinion stand
You can make your opinion stand by leaving a review on the product that you purchased. Doing the same will make you help other prospects know what the product actually looks and feels like.
Brand Maart Reviews suggest that it is the best platform to bloom the fashionista in you and make a style statement with the latest and best fashion brands. In case of any issues, customer care is always there to help you out in resolving them.
If you have any objection to this press release content, kindly contact email@example.com to notify us. We will respond and rectify the situation in the next 24 hours.


text:
Fancy Happy Birthday Standard 285ml Beer Glass
Personalised laser engraved glassware is now availableSuper easy to make, just select from our range of beer glasses, pick your favourite from the wide range of designs, input your personalisation and pop on through to the check out to finalise your order.
Available in standard or premium, 285ml or 425ml glasses.
285ml Beer Glass285ml Beer Glass (Height: 130mm & Capacity: 285ml)
425ml Beer Glass425ml Beer Glass (Height: 145mm & Capacity: 425ml)


text:
To not default, Greece's current deficit of 14% of GDP will have to fall to 5% which is unlikely, says Martin Feldstein.
Greece will default on its national debt. That default will be due, in large part, to its membership of the European Monetary Union. If it were not part of the euro system, Greece might not have gotten into its current predicament and, even if it had gotten into its current predicament, it could have avoided the need to default.
Greece's default on its national debt need not mean an explicit refusal to make principal and interest payments when they come due.
More likely would be an IMF-organised restructuring of the existing debt, swapping new bonds with lower principal and interest for existing bonds. Or, it could be a 'soft default' in which Greece unilaterally services its existing debt with new debt rather than paying in cash.
But, whatever form the default takes, the current owners of Greek debt will get less than the full amount that they are now owed.
The only way that Greece could avoid a default would be by cutting its future annual budget deficits to a level that foreign and domestic investors would be willing to finance on a voluntary basis. At a minimum, that would mean reducing the deficit to a level that stops the rise in the debt-to-GDP ratio.
To achieve that, the current deficit of 14 per cent of GDP would have to fall to 5 per cent of GDP or less. But to bring the debt-to-GDP ratio to the 60 per cent level prescribed by the Maastricht Treaty would require reducing the annual budget deficit to just 3 per cent of GDP -- the goal that the eurozone's finance ministers have said Greece must achieve by 2012.
Reducing the budget deficit by 10 per cent of GDP would mean an enormous cut in government spending, or a dramatic rise in tax revenue -- or, more likely, both. Quite apart from the political difficulty of achieving this would be the very serious adverse effect on aggregate domestic demand and, therefore, on production and employment.
Greece's unemployment rate is already 10 per cent, and its GDP is already expected to fall at an annual rate of more than 4 per cent, pushing joblessness even higher.
Depressing economic activity further through higher taxes and reduced government spending would cause offsetting reductions in tax revenue and offsetting increases in transfer payments to the unemployed.
So, every planned euro of deficit reduction delivers less than a euro of actual deficit reduction. That means that planned tax increases and cuts in basic government spending would have to be even larger than 10 per cent of GDP in order to achieve a 3 per cent-of-GDP budget deficit.
There simply is no way around the arithmetic implied by the scale of deficit reduction and the accompanying economic decline: Greece's default on its debt is inevitable.
Greece might have been able to avoid that outcome if it were not in the eurozone. If Greece still had its own currency, the authorities could devalue it while tightening fiscal policy. A devalued currency would increase exports and cause Greek households and firms to substitute domestic products for imported goods.
The increased demand for Greek goods and services would raise Greece's GDP, increasing tax revenue and reducing transfer payments. In short, fiscal consolidation would be both easier and less painful if Greece had its own monetary policy.
Greece's membership in the eurozone was also a principal cause of its current large budget deficit. Because Greece has not had its own currency for more than a decade now, there has been no market signal to warn Greece that its debt was growing unacceptably large.
If Greece had remained outside the eurozone and retained the drachma, the large increased supply of Greek bonds would cause the drachma to decline and the interest rate on the bonds to rise. But, because Greek euro bonds were regarded as a close substitute for other countries' euro bonds, the interest rate on Greek bonds did not rise as Greece increased its borrowing -- until the market began to fear a possible default.
The substantial surge in the interest rate on Greek bonds relative to German bonds in the past few weeks shows that the market now regards such a default as increasingly likely.
The combination of credits from the other eurozone countries and lending by the IMF may provide enough liquidity to stave off default for a while. In exchange for this liquidity support, Greece will be forced to accept painful fiscal tightening and falling GDP.
In the end, Greece, the eurozone's other members, and Greece's creditors will have to accept that the country is insolvent and cannot service its existing debt. At that point, Greece will default.
The author is a professor of economics at Harvard, was chairman of President Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors and president of the National Bureau for Economic Research © Project Syndicate, 2010.
Image: The Greek national flag flutters in the air next to a statue of Athena in Athens. Photograph: Yiorgos Karahalis/Reuters


text:
Leaders at more than 200 U.S.-based companies signed an open letter Monday urging Congress to accept the results of the Electoral College and declare president-elect Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election.
The letter, which was signed by executives like BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink, United Airlines executive chairman Oscar Munoz and PwC U.S. chair and senior partner Timothy Ryan, said that there should be "no further delay in the orderly transfer of power."
"This presidential election has been decided and it is time for the country to move forward," the letter reads. "President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have won the Electoral College and the courts have rejected challenges to the electoral process. Congress should certify the electoral vote on Wednesday, January 6. Attempts to thwart or delay this process run counter to the essential tenets of our democracy."
"The incoming Biden administration faces the urgent tasks of defeating COVID-19 and restoring the livelihoods of millions of Americans who have lost jobs and businesses during the pandemic. Our duly elected leaders deserve the respect and bipartisan support of all Americans at a moment when we are dealing with the worst health and economic crises in modern history."
The letter was put together by Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit comprised of business leaders from some of the city's top employers.
On Wednesday, Congress will meet in a joint session to tally the results of the Electoral College vote. While the procedure is typically more than a rubber stamp approval of the Electoral College results, 12 GOP Senators and dozens of Republican House members have promised to raise objections to the result, citing unproven claims of widespread voter fraud.
President Donald Trump has also pushed Vice President Mike Pence to act outside his Constitutional duties and "object" to the Electoral College results on Wednesday.


text:
Two U.S. appeals courts Tuesday reached opposite conclusions about the legality of subsidies in the Affordable Care Act, a key part of the law that brings down the cost of coverage for millions of Americans.
In Washington, a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Internal Revenue Service lacked the authority to allow subsidies to be provided in exchanges not run by the states.
That 2-1 ruling in Halbig v. Burwell could put at risk the millions of people who bought insurance in the 36 states where these online insurance marketplaces are run by the federal government. Judge Thomas Griffith, writing the majority opinion, said they concluded "that the ACA unambiguously restricts" the subsidies to "exchanges 'established by the state.' "
Different court, different ruling
But within hours, a unanimous three-judge panel for the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., ruled exactly the other way in King v. Burwell – that Congress always intended to allow subsidies to be provided in both state and federally run exchanges.
"It is therefore clear that widely available tax credits are essential to fulfilling the Act's primary goals and that Congress was aware of their importance when drafting the bill," said the decision written by Judge Roger Gregory.
The Obama administration said it will appeal the Halbig decision. The Justice Department will ask the entire appeals court panel to review it, and that panel is dominated by judges appointed by Democrats, 7-4.
Similar cases are pending in lower courts elsewhere around the country, but the decision by the District of Columbia court is the first to suggest that subsidies being offered the federal exchange might be invalid.
Should the decision eventually stand, it could mean at least 5 million Americans would face an average premium increase of 76 percent, according to a projection done by the consulting firm Avalere Health.
"We believe .. decision is incorrect, inconsistent"
The Obama administration said it is confident, however, that the ruling will be overturned.
"You don't need a fancy legal degree to understand that Congress intended for every eligible American to have access to tax credits that would lower their health care costs, regardless of whether it was state officials or federal officials who were running the marketplace," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
"We believe that this decision is incorrect, inconsistent with Congressional intent, different from previous rulings, and at odds with the goal of the law: to make health care affordable no matter where people live. The government will therefore immediately seek further review of the court's decision," said a statement from the Justice Department.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Wydra, chief counsel for the Constitutional Accountability Center, said the ruling wouldn't take effect right away. "The court's rules are that it doesn't happen for 45 days," to give the government time to ask for a full en banc hearing, "or 7 days after the en banc hearing has been denied."
Supporters and opponents of the health law were quick to react to the Halbig decision.
"The law is what Congress enacts"
"There is no credible evidence in the record that Congress intended to condition subsidies on whether a State, as opposed to HHS, established the Exchange," said Wydra, who wrote a brief on behalf of members of Congress who wrote the law. "Nor is there credible evidence that any State even considered the possibility that its taxpayers would be denied subsidies if the State opted to allow HHS to establish an Exchange on its behalf."
Jonathan Adler, the law professor at Case Western Reserve University who helped craft the case, disagreed. "The heart of the decision today is a reaffirmation of the principle that the law is what Congress enacts, not what Congress wanted to enact or what some, with the benefit of hindsight, wish Congress had done differently," he said.
This article is from kaiserhealthnews.org and published with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.


text:
Spring has come and we here at JHS bring you the washed out layers that only true amp style spring reverb can give you in the Spring Tank. This compact reverb pedal brings you an arsenal of settings to tweak, yet with utilitarian simplicity and usability.
The Spring Tank gives you the ability to create the perfect spring reverb for your sound with controls for Depth, Length, Highs, Boost (to control your overall volume), and two independent and switchable reverb mixes called Tank 1 and Tank 2. The Depth controls the size of the room, while Length controls how long the reverb reverberates. Highs gives you the ability to control the tone of the reverb by adding or subtracting high frequencies. Tank 1 acts as your main reverb mix control, while Tank 2 is your secondary mix control engaged by the Tank 2 switch. So you have two reverb mix options on the fly! We've also added a Boost control so you can regain any perceived volume loss from the reverb.
– Dial in the perfect reverb with Depth and Length controls.
– Set your primary reverb mix with the Tank 1 control.
– Set your secondary reverb mix with the Tank 2 control and switch it on the fly with the Tank 2 switch.
– Set the reverb tone with the highs control.
– Boost your overall volume with the Boost control.
The Spring Tank has an effects loop so you can put any effect on the reverb tails only. This gives you the ability to create amazing soundscapes with different effects. Just plug in a TRS splitter cable into the effects loop jack and insert any pedal into the loop and you're set. There is also an internal switch to choose to have the effects loop on only when Tank 2 is engaged or on all the time.
With options a plenty and easy to use controls, blast your signal into the stratosphere with the Spring Tank!
Payment & Security
Your payment information is processed securely. We do not store credit card details nor have access to your credit card information.


text:
[Page 381]
Year | Jews | Total |
1830 | 9 | 414 |
1870 | 62 | - |
1910 | - | 1571 |
1921 | - | 1510 |
1930 | 152 | 1952 |
1941 | - | 2423 |
We regret that we were unable to interview a single person who came from Leh. We did, however, find in the Yad Vashem archives three documents referring to this village. According to those documents, the Jews of Leh were taken to the Tecs ghetto, and from there were transported to Aushwitz. One family, by the name of Rosenthal, consisting of 8 individuals and the head of which was by profession a melamed (teacher), hid in a bunker in the forest near the village. After four months in hiding, they were discovered by a local gentile, who turned them in to the gendarmes. They were taken to the jail of the city of Debrecen, and from there were taken to the camp at [Shveiner-Neustadt (?)], where there were other families. The Rosenthal family survived.
In the 1735 census was listed a Jew by the name Eliyahu Coleman, with a wife and two children. He was poor and owned no property. He paid no land-rental tax.
[Translator's notes:Seeing as the compilers of Sefer Marmaros did not succeed in interviewing any survivors of this village, I will here take the liberty of adding a few words of my own. My own grandfather Benish Davidovits was born in this village Szeleslonka (Leh, in Yiddish) in approximately 1875. His family had lived in the village from at least the 1820s, as his grandfather Leba Davidovits appears in a Hungarian Tax Census as living in Szeleslonka in 1828. Benish himself left for America (Cleveland) in 1903. From my own research, and from interviews with holocaust survivors and from old family letters, I was able to piece together a bit of the history of this village.
With the defeat of the Hapsburg Austro-Hungarian empire in WW1 and the death of King Franz Josef in 1919, the Austro-Hungarian empire disintegrated. When the Russian revolution broke out in that same year, there was an abortive attempt by ethnic Ukrainians who lived both in Russia and in the northeastern regions of Hungary (bordering the Russian Ukraine) to establish an independent Ukrainian state. In terms of repeated Jewish history, Ukrainian power or unrest usually translated into bloody antisemetic pogroms. The Ukrainian uprising of 1919 was no exception. For example, in the Russian Ukraine, the Ukrainian leader Simon Petlura led a widespread series of pogroms (about 1,400 separate pogroms in the Ukraine alone) in which seventy thousand Jews were murdered and about an equal number wounded.
As a part of this larger attempted political uprising by the Ukrainians, there was a local antisemetic pogrom carried out in 1919 by the ethnic Ukrainians-Ruthenians in the village Szeleslonka. The Ruthenians rioted and destroyed Jewish property and homes and forcibly drove the Jews out of town in the freezing winter. I don't know if anyone was actually killed in Szeleslonka, but in the Chust Yizkor Book it is mentioned that people were in fact killed during this uprising in the nearby city Chust.
The Jewish refugees from Szeleslonka hid in the forests and found refuge in neighboring towns where the local Jewish population was larger and better able to defend themselves. I am in possession of family letters giving some details of this pogrom. I was told other details in speaking with various Holocaust survivors from Szeleslonka and vicinity.
When some of the young Jewish men from Szeleslonka who had served in the Hungarian army in WW1 returned home from the war and found out what the local Ruthenians had done, they took revenge by torching and burning down most of the village.
Order was restored to the area when in 1920 Subcarpathian Ruthenia (including northern and central Marmaros) was added to the newly formed state of Czechoslovakia. The Czech army entered the area and put down the local Ukrainian rabble. Our village Szeleslonka (now renamed Shirukiy Luh) was rebuilt, and many of the Jews who had fled eventually returned. At around this time (in the early to mid 1920s) a number of additional Davidovits relatives are known to have attempted to leave the area for America.
During the 1941 Hungarian-Nazi deportations of foreign nationals, it seems that our family members who had remained in Leh were able to obtain citizenship papers attesting to their Hungarian taxpayer status since the mid 1800s, and thus were not deported to Poland at that time.
However, when the Germans invaded the area in the spring of 1944, it seems that all of the Jews of Leh were rounded up and deported to one of the ghettos which had been set up in the area, probably in the ghetto in Mateszalka, Tecs and/or Chust (see Sefer Marmaros Chapter 7, from which it seems that they might have been sent to Mateszalka). From there the Jews were deported to Aushwitz, where Davidovits family members are known to have arrived in a transport during the first week of June, 1944. None are known to have survived.]
Translated and edited by Moshe A Davis. This translation is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather Benish Davidovits (in America, Bennie Davis), and to the members of his family (family surnames mainly Davidovits, Markovits, and Katz) from this village Leh (a.k.a. Szeleslonka, Shirukiy Lug), who were murdered by the accursed Nazis and their accomplices. Hashem Yenakam Damam!
In this translation, I have endeavored to maximize ease of readability and the grammatical flow of the material, while keeping true to the spirit and the content of the information contained therein. To this end, in many places I have taken the liberty of rearranging the sentence and/or paragraph structure from that of the original Hebrew in order to improve the clarity and natural flow of ideas in English. Also, in many places I have slightly expanded the material, in order to clarify ideas or to define concepts which may not be familiar to readers who lack background in traditional Jewish customs and who are unfamiliar with Jewish Law. My own additions I have set apart by enclosing them in square brackets [].
Please note that many of the original sources used by the authors of Sefer Marmaros were written in languages other than Hebrew, which is the language of the text of Sefer Marmaros itself. Those original sources were not available to the translator, and thus most of the surnames and/or place names as transliterated here may in fact have been spelled somewhat differently in the original source.
List of Jewish surnames mentioned in this article:
JewishGen, Inc. makes no representations regarding the accuracy of
the translation. The reader may wish to refer to the original material
for verification.
JewishGen is not responsible for inaccuracies or omissions in the original work and cannot rewrite or edit the text to correct inaccuracies and/or omissions.
Our mission is to produce a translation of the original work and we cannot verify the accuracy of statements or alter facts cited.
Maramures Region, Ukraine Yizkor Book Project JewishGen Home Page
Copyright © 1999-2024 by JewishGen, Inc.
Updated 22 Jun 2008 by LA


text:
Double click image to zoom in
Jonti-Craft® 8 Cubbie-Tray Mobile Unit - with Colored Trays
- Price
- $504.17
A mobile manipulative station for any space. Features eight colored Cubbie-trays.
Shipping Information
Our on-line store is open 24/7 and we ship Monday through Friday, excluding some holidays. Orders in high demand will have an estimated production time listed on its product page and will ship according to the date listed. Most products are custom made to order as most products have various colors, sizes and shapes.
About Us
We have been designing and manufacturing bags and cases in our own backyard from the start. This lets us turn prototypes to production very quickly and ensure products are made just right.


text: Hello, I have a problem minimizing a solvated RNA-hairpin: With SOLVENT I put 2 shells of water molecules around the hairpin. VDW-Bump_Factor was set to 0.7. Dielectric constant was set to a constant value of 1.0, as described in the Theory Manual (before invoking SOLVENT). The stem of the hairpin had been defined as an aggregate before using the SOLVENT command. Then I invoked MAXIMIN2 (Kollman_All_Atom force field) to minimize the loop. Electrostatics should be calculated and periodic boundary conditions were applied (default values). The Minimizer produced a lengthy list of messages like: Missing atom types for atom G6.O6 Missing atom types for atom G6.H21 and so on.... The list ended with: MISSING DATA - Force Field atom type is unknown What have I done wrong? Please help me, Thanks in advance, Peter Reinert


text:
Looking how to get Gmail sign in page? This is the right page – where you will find ways on how to you can get to the sign in page. There are two ways you can get to Gmail sign in Page. One is from – Google page and another is directly. Below we have explained the easy step-by-step process for both ways to get Gmail sign-in page
via Google main page.
- On the address bar of your web browser you'll have to type-in 'Google.com'
- When the pages load, look for Gmail.
- You can find the 'Gmail' link on your top right hand top corner of the web-browser. Check the image below for reference.
- Click on the Gmail link that will link you to Gmail page.
Gmail Sign-In: Directly
- Open a new window and type-in or enter 'Gmail.com' on the address bar and press Enter/Return key on your keyboard.
- Doing this you will directly directed to Gmail sign-in page.
How to do secure Gmail sign in?
Gmail Sign-In page – from mobile devices
- Open any web browser installed in your mobile or smart device.
- On the address of the web-browser enter/type-in gmail.com and tap on GO.
- Once it loads you will have to enter your Gmail id and password to get to complete your Gmail sign in process.
For Android users –
Pre-installed app you can find in your menu from which you can enter directly to your Gmail.
For ISO device users –
You will have to download the Gmail App from App Store to get your Gmail page.
How to install Gmail App in ISO devices?
- Open your App store and tap on 'search icon'
- Type-in 'Gmail' and tap on 'Search'
- Tap on 'Get' to download the Gmail app.
Cheers!! For more on how to's check other posts as well.