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I was brought up in the small village of S only a few leagues from Rouen. The people there are quiet peaceful and devout. My mother died when I was very young. I remember milking the cows with her, sweeping the sheds, gathering wild mushrooms in the forest and clinging to her skirts as she cast grain amidst frightening hordes of poultry.My father was a modest trader and farmer. He raised me with tenderness and love and imparted to me the tenets of the most holy faith. He taught me to read and we would spend edifying nights by the fireside, our great tom cat Pierre dozing in my lap, pondering the scriptures and the lives of the saints.I learned also with my heart. I felt a strong affinity for my namesake St Agnes. I gasped in awe as my father read of her who preferred martyrdom to the loss of her consecrated virginity. This devotion made me feel destined for a life of marriage with God and the Paraclete.Even as I grew older I did not strongly feel the sins and temptations of the flesh. My father would tell me that my heart was pure as running water. But I began to notice, through the burgeoning of my own physical charms, that boys and men admired me while women treated me with spiteful envy.Boys I had known since childhood who once threw rocks at me or pulled my hair in church would now shyly walk at my side, faces blushed, anxious to pluck any passing flower for me, praising the fairness of my skin, the brilliance of my eyes, the exquisite charms of the lineaments of my young form. They were always wishing to help with my chores, to tell me stories, to take me to favorite secret places in the deep wood and many a time I suffered one to hold my hand although I knew it was unmaidenly.The coarser boys of course simply stared long and hard and made filthy allusions as I passed. Things which kaçak iddaa even my innocent mind could comprehend.Older men, friends of my fathers and various villagers would cease their conversations if I stepped into view. Exchanging winks and low whispers followed by boisterous if slightly muffled laughter.My figure became more supple and bountiful by the day. My father said that great physical beauty was at once a blessing and a test sent by God. Many a maiden before me had failed this test and suffered perdition for it. Examples abound in our local lore.As I blossomed into marriagable age I still did my best for us cooking, cleaning, tending the animals. All of the humble industry that I was taught pleases our Creator as it diminishes our worldly vanity. Yet I knew my days under my fathers’ roof were numbered.And then one day we received a strange and unexpected visitor. M. Beautoix was a very short man, square built and paunched. At least fifty years old with sparse greasy greyish hair that lay flattened over his pointed skull in long waxed mats like the viscous trails of black worms.His teeth were small, irregular and quite black.An odor equally sepulchral and cloacic wafted from his mouth when he spoke. His eyes were perpetually bloodshot and rolled like jellied eggs in their tiny pits. He was coarse and spoke a vulgar gutter-French patois.But, as my father pointed out, he was rich.My father feigned obliviousness to the horror and repulsion which this man inspired in me revealing a side of himself hitherto unknown to me, a disappointing one.To my observation he had always possessed a noble, selfless, giving and independent spirit. But now in front of this man whose only “virtue” consisted in the possession of vast amounts of cash he appeared a slavish lickspittle, only too eager to kaçak bahis barter my maidenhood and my future happiness for the sake of wealth, lands, chattels, security.Soon the dreaded day came when my father and M. Beautoix announced to me with smiling complacency that the matter had been settled. I would marry M. in the Spring and we would thereafter retire to his estates at Rouen to live out our lives in wedded bliss.I have alluded to the grace by which God made me immune, or so I thought, to the temptations of the flesh, even with respect to the comeliest and ruggedest lads of our village. So reader guess my fear, my anxiety, my terror, the disgust, poisoning the well of my soul as I pondered the prospect of lifelong fidelity to this chancre of a man.A man who judged me as he judged all else in life, as a commodity, as one whose beauty and spirit was only precious insofar as it could be purchased and owned.I will not describe my wedding, blessed by God and the Church. I will spare the reader details of that night and other nights to come.My only solace during this period was the presence of my chambermaid Cordelia. But for her I was isolated in M’s enormous dreary castle apart from everyone I had ever known and loved. But M. had allowed me to bring her, my dearest friend from childhood, to be my attendant.It was she into whose arms I flung myself when M. became too much for me. It was she who comforted me, she that dried my tears and held me, she who talked me through as I struggled to find a reason to stay alive.She was a sweet bright peasant girl like myself blessed with a pure untutored goodness of heart. Of fair, fresh and voluptuous appearance she was famous as one of our villages great beauties. Fresh, ruddy and irrepressibly optimistic with blue eyes and golden waves of hair. illegal bahis That was my Cordelia.I had not been long eighteen when my namesake St Agnes appeared to five young girls at the famous mineral cure at Rouen. The children stated that Agnes had materialized above the mineral waters as they were playing nearby one day. She was described as an intensely beautiful woman with radiant skin that glowed like gold. She told the children that these waters would help the pregnant, hysterics, ones who had been abused or violated. It was to be a special cure for distressed women.New reports of miracles were coming to me through my ladies-in-waiting by the day. A woman had been cured of leprosy, another had received a labor that was nearly painless, another had been exorcised of demons.It seemed that every woman in France had attempted, or would soon attempt to bathe, in the waters blessed by holy Agnes.Monsieur performed the outward signs of respect and devotion but I always knew that the god Mammon alone ruled his niggardly heart. However he could not very well deny to me what was so en vogue among all the ladies of quality in France at that time.And so myself, Cordelia, my other ladies, at least those that M. could spare from the maintenance of the castle and many of my friends and peers from the aristocracy of Rouen found ourselves on pilgrimage.We rode slowly, savoring the fragrant spring. We made flower garlands, weaving them into each others hair. We were happy, excited and at peace.We were due to arrive at the cure in a couple of hours. It would be twilight when we arrived but the sun was still bright in the sky and the birds still vented their joy. We were hungry and the horses and mules needed water so we stopped, spread a blanket and ate a humble meal. Some of the girls led the animals to be watered, some did their private business. I, in a grateful and hopeful mood walked along a deserted path, careful not to go too far.Light, filtered and softened, fell through the bowers of the trees.

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