The Vampire of Ropraz Read Online Free Page A
Author: Jacques Chessex
soil in the three lonely little graveyards, and they know that the monster will have the last word in this vale of bitter tears and richly deserved darkness that God has granted us.
8
The Beaupierre crime in the Ferlens graveyard, in its rehearsal of the ritual, had surpassed the worst imaginings. Would there ever be an end to this butchery?
A new incident at Ferlens, the “Café du Nord affair”, as it was instantly baptized, might have given the impression that the guilty party had been caught.
The owner of the Café du Nord, M. Georges Pasche, had been complaining since winter that in the cowshed adjoining his farm and café – which together formed a single, sizeable building – his cows and heifers were being subjected to unnatural practices. Indeed, that winter, and
all through the spring, the vulvas, anuses and recta of several animals had been injured by the introduction of a penis of large proportions, a stick or pick handle, or some other pointed instrument, for the membranes and recta of the young females were found to be punctured or torn, very often bleeding, at morning milking time, and the orifices of several animals were still smeared with sperm.
At first Georges Pasche kept watch, not daring to reveal what was happening for fear people would accuse him of dealings with the Vampire of Ropraz. But as it continued, and even grew worse, Pasche finally offered two five-franc pieces – heavy silver coins of the Federation and a substantial sum in this countryside at the time – to whoever would denounce the guilty party or help to surprise him. It is Monday the 11th of May, 1903.
Nothing more was needed, just two days after the reward was announced, for the little serving girl from the café to catch Favez, the farmhand, in the cowshed in the middle of the night, standing on a stool with his trousers around his ankles,
busily having his way with a hobbled heifer. The little serving girl held up the lantern: “This time I’ve got you, my lad!” Pasche comes running when he hears the fray, and old Madame Pasche, and of course the Pasche children, all in their nightshirts in the cowshed, which reeks and fumes with heavy smells, steam and brandished oil lamps. The labourer is forcibly dressed, tied up and shut in the cellar, to wait for the police from Mézières to lift him into their van at dawn, and lock him up in the prison in Oron, the chief town of the district.
The full name of the unfortunate fellow is Charles-Augustin Favez. He is twenty-one years old, but looks twice that: strangely deformed, receding brow, alcoholic, perverted, taciturn. And he pleasures himself on our animals! Maybe he haunts graveyards too? What if Favez were the guilty one, Favez at Rosa’s grave, Favez at Carrouge, Favez at Ferlens too! Of course it is Favez, sadist that he is. Favez is the monster. He is the Vampire of Ropraz. With no human victim, he perforates cows and heifers as he waits for other dead young women to come his way.
Or maybe living ones, who knows? Warm little quails in their innocent slumbers, schoolgirls, girls in catechism class or young mothers for him to lie on top of and rub his foul snout against.
On that Thursday, the 14th of May, a single cry goes up from the Jorat and from farther abroad across the whole countryside: “They’ve caught the Vampire! He’s the Vampire!” Yes, that’s him all right, worse than the legendary wolf or bear, the one who desecrated the bodies of three young dead women in Ropraz, Carrouge and Ferlens, the one who spread terror among us, and who now will be judged, the one for whom the ultimate punishment must be brought back. That morning, in the countryside and villages, everyone is talking about the death penalty, even though it was abolished thirty-six years ago. 1 Only the death penalty is appropriate, in the firmly held opinion of the entire population, for such abominable offences.
But who is he, this lover of dead girls, this abuser of cattle and author
8
The Beaupierre crime in the Ferlens graveyard, in its rehearsal of the ritual, had surpassed the worst imaginings. Would there ever be an end to this butchery?
A new incident at Ferlens, the “Café du Nord affair”, as it was instantly baptized, might have given the impression that the guilty party had been caught.
The owner of the Café du Nord, M. Georges Pasche, had been complaining since winter that in the cowshed adjoining his farm and café – which together formed a single, sizeable building – his cows and heifers were being subjected to unnatural practices. Indeed, that winter, and
all through the spring, the vulvas, anuses and recta of several animals had been injured by the introduction of a penis of large proportions, a stick or pick handle, or some other pointed instrument, for the membranes and recta of the young females were found to be punctured or torn, very often bleeding, at morning milking time, and the orifices of several animals were still smeared with sperm.
At first Georges Pasche kept watch, not daring to reveal what was happening for fear people would accuse him of dealings with the Vampire of Ropraz. But as it continued, and even grew worse, Pasche finally offered two five-franc pieces – heavy silver coins of the Federation and a substantial sum in this countryside at the time – to whoever would denounce the guilty party or help to surprise him. It is Monday the 11th of May, 1903.
Nothing more was needed, just two days after the reward was announced, for the little serving girl from the café to catch Favez, the farmhand, in the cowshed in the middle of the night, standing on a stool with his trousers around his ankles,
busily having his way with a hobbled heifer. The little serving girl held up the lantern: “This time I’ve got you, my lad!” Pasche comes running when he hears the fray, and old Madame Pasche, and of course the Pasche children, all in their nightshirts in the cowshed, which reeks and fumes with heavy smells, steam and brandished oil lamps. The labourer is forcibly dressed, tied up and shut in the cellar, to wait for the police from Mézières to lift him into their van at dawn, and lock him up in the prison in Oron, the chief town of the district.
The full name of the unfortunate fellow is Charles-Augustin Favez. He is twenty-one years old, but looks twice that: strangely deformed, receding brow, alcoholic, perverted, taciturn. And he pleasures himself on our animals! Maybe he haunts graveyards too? What if Favez were the guilty one, Favez at Rosa’s grave, Favez at Carrouge, Favez at Ferlens too! Of course it is Favez, sadist that he is. Favez is the monster. He is the Vampire of Ropraz. With no human victim, he perforates cows and heifers as he waits for other dead young women to come his way.
Or maybe living ones, who knows? Warm little quails in their innocent slumbers, schoolgirls, girls in catechism class or young mothers for him to lie on top of and rub his foul snout against.
On that Thursday, the 14th of May, a single cry goes up from the Jorat and from farther abroad across the whole countryside: “They’ve caught the Vampire! He’s the Vampire!” Yes, that’s him all right, worse than the legendary wolf or bear, the one who desecrated the bodies of three young dead women in Ropraz, Carrouge and Ferlens, the one who spread terror among us, and who now will be judged, the one for whom the ultimate punishment must be brought back. That morning, in the countryside and villages, everyone is talking about the death penalty, even though it was abolished thirty-six years ago. 1 Only the death penalty is appropriate, in the firmly held opinion of the entire population, for such abominable offences.
But who is he, this lover of dead girls, this abuser of cattle and author
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