「It's not even a proper novel. It's nothing but an encyclopedia of perversions. Frankly, it even fails as an exercise in craft. Characters are wooden. The dialogue is inane. Not to mention the endless repetition of words like "nipple" and "pikestaff."
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There I was taxed, it's true.
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And such puny scope. Nothing but the very worst in man's nature.
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I write of the great eternal truths that bind together all mankind the whole world over. We eat, we shit, we fuck, we kill and we die.
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But we also fall in love. We build cities, we compose symphonies and we endure. Why not put that in your books as well?
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It's a fiction, not a moral treatise.
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But isn't that the duty of art to elevate us above the beast?
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I'd have thought that was your duty, Abbe, not mine.」
「What's the point of all your valiant attempts at rehabilitation if, when I finally succumb, when at long lasr I pledge myself to righteous conduct, you regard me with nothing but suspicion? Have you no faith in your own medicine?」
「We merely held up a mirror. Apparently, he didn't like what he saw.」
「It's beyond perversity that honor should carry a price tag.」
「I didn't create this world of ours. I only record it. I write what I see: the endless procession to the guillotine. We're all lined up, waiting for the crunch of the blade. The rivers of blood are flowing beneath our feet, Abbe. I've been to hell, young man. You've only read about it.」
「That's the first rule of politics, isn't it? The man who orders the execution never drops the blade!」
「I failed to save your soul in life. I won't fail in death. There is in each of us such beauty and such abomination. No man is exempt.」
「Oh. Listen to me... Abbe, and listen well. I've stared into the face of evil and I've lived to tell the tale. Now, I beg you, for your sake, let me write it down. If you've an ounce of Christian charity, then you'll bring me parchment, ink and a quill.」
「Beloved reader, I leave you now with a tale penned by the Abbe du Coulmier, a man who found freedom, in the most unlikeliest of places: at the bottom of an inkwell, on the tip of a quill. However, be forewarned, it's plot is blood-soaked, it's characters depraved, and it's themes... unwholesome at best. But in order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice. Only then can we know the full measure of man. So come... I Dare you... Turn the page...」
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