ffred's
nearly-forgotten treasures"Oh, the corruption and baseness of mankind! What an inexhaustible source of power to him who knows how to employ them!"
———
"...if we turn to Soulié, we find an imagination whose fertility and originality beggar even Victor Hugo's—Soulié, who crowds into one, the plots and action of twenty melodrames and novels..." —The White Slave, by Charles Frederick Henningsen
I first encountered a reference to Frédéric Soulié in The White Slave. Although I have not found a public domain translation of Memoirs of the Devil online, I did come across Samuel Spring's translation of Pastourel and decided to work with it. Taking place in 1708, roughly five hundred years after The Albigenses, it is quite reminiscent of the latter novel in that it is decidedly Gothic in character, yet any "supernatural" manifestations are only so in appearance.
The text is taken from this scan of the 1847 edition, backed up by this scan of the 1849 edition. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected, and some punctuation has been standardized. Some inconsistent or obsolete spellings also have been standardized. However, some inconsistencies in capitalization, and an inconsistently written passage in chapter 39 [where Pierre Couteau relates his encounter with Mother Vergne], have been left as is.
So here it is: the master HTML version, the home-brew Kindle version, and the actual Amazon publication.
June 11, 2025