Abbe Flogged

Throughout France the lash is by no means entirely taboo, either as a subject for the profuse disquisitions of literary flagellants, or as a means of provoking those alleged pleasures and undoubted pains which were erected into a system by the notorious Count Donatien Alphonse Franc,ois Sade (1740-1814), the so-called "Marquis de Sade."

Last week a notable scandal developed when a group of bourgeois sadists set out from Bordeaux to the little town of Bombon, once the seat of Marshal Foch's General Staff, and there flogged an alleged recalcitrant member of their cult, the Abbe des Noyers.

The Bordeaux cult, the noted order of Notre Dame des Pleurs (Our Lady of Tears), has flourished for 21 years, since its foundation by one Mme. Marie Mesmin, "Sainted Mother Marie" (onetime concierge), and a Syrian priest, "The Archimandrite Sibourgi," who in 1920, quarreled with Mme. Mesmin, "laid a curse upon her," and returned to Syria.

The Abbe des Noyers declared last week that, far from being a member of the cult, he had originally been called to Bordeaux at the request of Mme. Mesmin, who wished him to dispel her curse:

"I exorcised her in the oratory of Notre Dame des Pleurs, and wish to add that she was completely dressed at the time, as stories told and written about me afterward were that I had obliged her to undress before exorcising her.

"I have been accused of all sorts of indecencies for making the visit, and the chief of the sect instead of thanking me for attempting to free her from her evil spirits, turned her congregation against me."

Mme. Mesmin's followers, "chiefly of the well-to-do middle class, men and women from 17 to 70," declared on the other hand, that the Abbe had not only joined the cult and participated in its rites of flagellation, but had aspired to supersede Mme. Mesmin, and had accordingly instigated a young girl to murder her on Christmas night. The girl failed in this alleged attempt, but early in the week Mme. Mesmin's loyal adherents set out for Bombon, "to discipline the Abbe des Noyers."

Naturally it occurred to them to push the ordinary flagellant rites of their order to the last extremes. Despatches carried the following details: "The Abbe was set upon, in the vestry of his church by a crowd of men and women carrying pepper pots and lengths of knotted rope. . . . They threw pepper in his eyes, stripped him as naked as a pair of tongs and bound him to the vestry table. . . .

"One by one they flogged him in turn with the knotted ropes. . . bastinadoed his feet until he swooned . . . unbound him and left him lying on the table. . . ."

It was regarded as significant that, although the Abbe's screams were audible at a considerable distance, none of his flock appears to have considered this sufficiently unusual to call the police. . . ."

The Abbe when he eventually recovered consciousness, appealed to the police, who arrested a number of his alleged flagellants. They all declared: "The safety of our Sainted Mother Marie depended upon our carrying out our mission." One Mme. Robert, "the widow of a French officer recently killed in Syria," openly exulted before the magistrate that she had been the last to flog the Abbe before he swooned. Her 17-year-old daughter declared: "In chastising the Abbe des Noyers I consider that I have performed a deed of grace."

The examining magistrate announced that he intends to call "Mother Marie" and all her disciples as witnesses. Meanwhile the Abbe des Noyers asserted that he has written a letter to the Bishop of Meaux, "although scarcely able to hold his pen in his hand": "I have come into contact with a group of visionaries and fanatics. I declare before God that I am not one of them."