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Date:         Mon, 14 Sep 1992 16:09:00 EDT
From:         Gilbert Smith <N567126@NCSUADM.ACS.NCSU.EDU>
Subject:      WHTMITL9 (TGTAA)
Comments: To: English Language Discussion Group <words-l@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>

What Happened To Me In The Library 9
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> Subject: (Copy) The Gospel Truth About Agnes
> .
> Agnes von Krusenstjerna was born in 1894 to an Austrian mother who
> had found herself visibly pregnant after a dalliance with a certain
> Armenian teenager who was in Stockholm taking the baths and, on the
> side, training to be an altar boy in the local parish church.  Agnes
> was christened in the church only because the local priest, who
> was hesitant to dignify the birth out-of-wedlock of this sweet little
> girl, was blackmailed by the Austrian mother, who had just happened
> to catch the priest in flagrante in a confession booth with the
> Armenian teenager, on his knees, in fact, doing penance with a
> vengeance, according to a fairly reliable historical source written
> in an almost untranslatable Swedish.
>   Some authorities report that the insanity for which Agnes was
> well-known in literary circles started at the age of five, though
> others document the onset of this mental instability as coinciding
> with her Austrian mother's disappearance when Agnes was twelve.
> Local newspapers in 1906 reported that the mother had retreated
> to the paradise of a local brothel, from which she was then
> kidnapped by the ambassador to Sweden from Portugal, who took her
> first to Lisbon, and then to his country estate, where she pined
> away for her daughter and finally committed suicide by poisoning
> herself, after having castrated the ambassador with a finely honed
> set of pruning shears.
>   The ambassador, now a eunuch, returned to Stockholm after his
> convalescence and sought out Agnes, who had by then (at the age of
> fifteen) published the first of her seven Misses von Pahlen novels,
> (contrary to the erroneous information provided by Mr. Torkel
> concerning the publication dates of 1930 to 1935).  Agnes agreed,
> after much persuading and not a little promise of financial
> reward, to marry the ambassador, who then served as an inspiration
> to Agnes in her quest for more and more grotesque examples of
> sexual pathology.  The ambassador, no longer equipped for normal
> avenues of sexual expression, having lost certain parts of his
> congenital equipment to the pruning shears, entertained himself
> by inventing prosthetic devices that would allow him to satisfy
> both himself and his partners.  The actual scenes of satisfaction
> took place in the bedroom which adjoined Madame's boudoir, and
> to which it was joined by numerous discreet openings through which
> could travel both light and sound.  Literary historians have claimed
> not without cause, that these scenes provided the inspiration for
> most of the seedier portions of the Misses von Pahlen novels.
>   Agnes grew more and more unstable toward the end of the 1930's and
> then disappeared, after being seen entering the sewers beneath the
> streets of the Swedish capital, dressed in a white wedding dress
> similar to the one worn by the character Melissa von Stumpinshump
> at her wedding to the Baron von Trupshick in the third of the
> novels in question.  Her body was later found in a canal near the
> edge of the city.  Rumour had it at the time that her corset was
> reinforced with remnants of the prosthetic devices invented and
> manufactured by her somewhat perverted, disfigured husband, the
> former ambassador from Portugal.
>   Agnes was buried in a simple, unmarked grave in the Swedish
> countryside.  Although there are various bits of evidence indicating
> the location of her grave, it has never actually been found.
> The mystery of her death has been explored in several doctoral
> dissertations, but most critics and historians dismiss as pure
> hypothesis most of the theories that have been put forth.
> .
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