CHAPTER 14. JUST REVENGE.

"August 14, 1720.

With a swiftness often characteristic of a diligent ant that is constantly craving something useful not only for itself but also for its family, a charcoal-colored rat, having just perfectly studied all the features of this cobblestone street in Marseille, like a British sailor studying all the distinguishing features of the route from foggy Albion to Calcutta, the City of Spices, was getting closer and closer to that sickly sweet smell, which was tirelessly emanating from an already thoroughly rotted pelargonium, whose color before, until the present state of the flower, was entirely similar to the ruby color of wine from the caves of Saumur—it ran towards the smell of decay with the same joy and at the same time with the same constancy as a dark-faced bee climbs the stem of a furiously fragrant flower: indeed, this uncommonly mobile rat, without realizing it at all, was truly a kind of diligent bee, however, unlike the latter, the former brought to this world by no means sweetness, but an indescribable bitterness, which, it must be admitted, the current inhabitants of Massalia were able to feel to a great extent—it diligently, but unconsciously, unlike the very same bee, produced not honey, but the bubonic plague. Successfully overcoming the silent, gloomy spaces of the aforementioned Marseille street, this black rat was currently struggling with a special, extremely burdensome diligence with its chaotically intertwined thoughts, which were entirely devoted to understanding the reason for the appearance of such a sweet smell for its sense of smell, as well as, just as importantly, the source of these volatile substances—it struggled with them as zealously as the well-known Laocoön once resisted the will of uncommonly poisonous, but by no means invulnerable, long-tongued snakes.

Having hastily penetrated through an already familiar passageway into the depths of an uncommonly dark, damp house, the aforementioned charcoal-colored rat suddenly heard a distinct, thin voice, which belonged to none other than a human being of the female gender—it was the unusually homely mistress of this house. By the nature of her occupation, she was a relatively successful baker—she was one until the very moment when a young, but by no means inexperienced, baker appeared in the neighborhood where she lived and carried out her activities: with his appearance in this area, her success melted with the same speed with which low-quality butter melted in her house—with each passing day, she became more and more aware of the nature of this loss. And what did she do? Did she intend, with the help of painstaking and honest work, to get it back? No! She immediately began to spread false rumors about this young baker—she intended to destroy, to harm his reputation. Her unbridled tongue was so rich in foul language directed at the baker who had so quickly gained popularity and recognition that the only, and quite apt, comparison that could arise in any human mind in the moments of the creation and hearing of those words was to compare her tongue to the balantine of a Rotterdam merchant—she was inexhaustible! Could she, was she able to forgive him this success? Absolutely not! She was self-loving and vain, like a Catholic vicar! Being the only successful baker in this neighborhood, of course, until the appearance of that young baker, she often showed her self-love and vanity to her poor and less well-off customers than she was—with wealthy customers, this woman was kind and uncommonly restrained: depending on the circumstances, the views, thoughts, and words of this baker went from one side to the other with the same swiftness with which, after the destruction of the Phrygian Kingdom, France passed from hand to hand, invariably losing a particle of its being with each such lightning-fast transition.

It should be noted that the black rat, which was nothing more and nothing less than a constant guest in this house, in the house of the homely baker, had already to a great extent managed to study the mistress of this receptacle of not only physical dirt, but also spiritual dirt—it loved this house, it liked it, if it was at all capable of having a soul: however, despite this, there was something it, nevertheless, did not like about this abode of moral and physical dirt—it was the voice of the mistress of this house. It always, truly, always had a paralyzing effect on this, permanently insatiable, rat—this voice, in truth, was uncommonly disgusting, but... but even more disgusting than that voice was the baker's laughter: in the blink of an eye, it appeared without cause and disappeared just as causelessly, invariably leaving behind an extremely painful, ringing laceration—the rat often thought that the owner of that laughter was instantly plunged into that very state that is called epilepsy by representatives of the human race. Now, this laughter sounded doubly unpleasant to its hearing. Despite a great fondness for the mistress of this house, this dark-faced rat hastily hid under the low legs of the originally beige table—it strove to get as far away as possible from that very being which so mercilessly emitted the aforementioned impulses. It did not know the human, invisible nature of this being, but even in these moments, the physical nature of the baker that had previously attracted it, now aroused considerable disgust in it—what would have happened if that rat had been able to reason thoroughly and profoundly? It would have realized that that baker, being unusually homely, considered herself the most charming woman in Marseille! It would have realized that that baker, making low-quality flour products, perceived herself as the most skillful and most competent baker in all of Marseille! She was unable to grasp the true reality—and in those cases when she did grasp it, she was unable to accept it. She envied all other bakers, and especially—the young baker! Her life consisted entirely of envy! Unable to create something charming and something great, she enjoyed the failures of other people with unchanging joy. Having achieved nothing in this life, she, with an indescribable frenzy, wished harm to everyone who was significantly more successful than her. She, daily putting on a sloppy cap, continuously believed that on her head was by no means a sloppy cap, but an uncommonly shining crown—her self-esteem and her conceit raised her above the heavens, however, her hands were in flour every day. At a certain moment in her life, for unknown reasons, she ceased to treat people with due respect, for which she was punished by herself, or rather by those very laws that are an integral part of the Universe. But was she like this in everything? Absolutely! In her moral life, she was the same as in her physical life—like Pasiphae, for the sake of passion, she instantly rejected reason! However, despite such a way of life, she wanted nothing more than to bind her being with another's being with the bonds of Hymen—in this respect, she was entirely like the well-known Johan van Oldenbarnevelt.