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Title: The new terror

Author: Gaston Leroux

Illustrator: George W. Gage

Translator: Hannaford Bennett

Release date: July 13, 2025 [eBook #76493]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Macaulay Company, 1926

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76493

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Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEW
TERROR ***

The New
Terror

“My cry was torn from me by the vision of
Cordélia’s form ... rising between us at the
moment when our fingers were pressing the
triggers....”

The
New Terror
By GASTON LEROUX
AUTHOR OF “THE PHANTOM CLUE,” “WOLVES OF THE
SEA,” “MISSING MEN,” ETC.

FRONTISPIECE BY GEORGE W. GAGE

NEW YORK
T H E M A C A U L AY C O M PA N Y

Published in England under the title
THE BURGLED HEART

Copyright, 1926, by The Macaulay Company

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE

I My Betrothal to Cordélia 9
II The Portrait 12
III Vascoeuil and Hennequeville 20
IV The Wedding 29
V An Unexpected Present 39
VI Patrick 47
VII After the Wedding 72
VIII Dr. Thurel 77
IX I Discover a Change in Cordélia 92
X The Second Night 98
XI The Golden Chamber 111
XII The Thief 120
XIII Happiness Consists in Realities not in Dreams 128
XIV Happy Days 138
XV In Which My Anxiety About Cordélia’s Polygon is Revived 141
XVI The Appointment 146
XVII The Duel 164
XVIII And Now ... 178
XIX The Last Visit— 185
A Terrible Tale 189
The Gold Axe 229

THE NEW TERROR

CHAPTER I
MY BETROTHAL TO CORDÉLIA

OUR parents as good as betrothed us from our earliest infancy. When I was
twelve and she was eight, our friends used to remark that we made a
charming couple, and our mothers were lost in admiration of us. We would
gladly have been married at once we were so fond of one another. We were
first cousins, and were often brought together at holiday time. At that period
Cordélia had already given me her heart, the budding heart of a little maid
of eight.
I was a tall, sturdy boy for my age with a fair, almost reddish-brown
complexion, passionately devoted to every form of sport, but idle in the
school-room. Life in the open air was the one thing that attracted me.
Cordélia, who possessed an inclination for reading and the arts, acquired
her taste for outdoor life from me. Her mother was Italian. My uncle had
married her during a business trip to Turin. When Cordélia was eight years
old she was a talented musician, but she surprised us still more by the
facility with which she drew or painted anything which interested her or
struck her fancy. As for myself, whatever came from her hands seemed to
me in the nature of a marvel.
I loved her all the more for her gifts and I bestowed on her unstinted
admiration. It was I who taught her how to ride. She knew no fear.
Sometimes she gave me a fright, but I could not choose but follow her, and
she did with me as she pleased. I was never a dreamer. Once she said, “Let
us dream,” and I pretended as I stood beside her to dream, meaning thereby
that I kept silent. Then she eyed me with a queer expression and burst into
laughter.
“Kiss me,” she said.
I tried to kiss her and she fled.
We made merry in this way until I was nineteen. I had become a tall,
strongly-built fellow with a freckled face. She considered me the
handsomest of men. She always considered me the handsomest of men. She
herself had become beautiful beyond words. The slenderness of the unruly

young girl had given way to a form of ideal elegance and charm. She was
neither fair nor dark. The color of her hair, which I called a fluffy radiance
was all her own. Her eyes were green, flecked with gold, whose shades
were ever changing. And then her graceful figure! She was as supple as a
reed as the saying is, but by no means frail.
We continued to amuse ourselves like children.
Nevertheless one day we took each other by the hand and went thus
together to our parents asking them to consent to our marriage without loss
of time. We were filled with a wild desire to go for a wedding trip on
horseback. Our parents, to our infinite sorrow, refused to listen to us. They
postponed our trip on horseback for five years from then, and packed me off
to America, which seemed to me a cruel and bitter mockery. And then I
returned for my military service. And after that I was dispatched to America
once more.

CHAPTER II
THE PORTRAIT

MY father who was an iron manufacturer intended to take me into his
works, but first of all he was bent on my undergoing a complete course of
study in one of those Technical Institutes in the United States where one is
supposed to learn everything that can be useful to a mechanic and an
engineer, but where the practice of every form of sport is a particular and
glorious feature. I may say that I was the pride of the Institute though I was
the greatest dunce in it. Boxing, tennis, golf, riding, swimming, boating,
into which I fiercely threw myself, diverted my thoughts from Cordélia
without making me forget her.
I counted the months which stood between me and the happiness that
awaited me. Meanwhile my father and mother were carried off almost at the
same time during an epidemic of influenza, as it was then called. I fulfilled
their wishes by making no attempt to precipitate the course of events. They
were of opinion that I ought not to marry until I reached my twenty-fourth
year. I had no desire to thwart them, particularly now that they were in their
graves.
My uncle’s attitude towards me in the circumstances left nothing to be
desired. He took upon himself the management of my business affairs. I
was relieved from all trouble, notwithstanding that both my father and
mother had left me a considerable fortune.
He asked me if I wished to take up the succession to my father’s
business. I answered that I would readily have done so had such been
necessary, but since I was left with sufficient means to insure the happiness
of Cordélia and myself, I had made up my mind to live, in my own way,
upon my income.
He assured me that I would soon become bored unless I engaged in some
work. I answered that I had often felt bored when I was engaged in work
but never when I was not working. My uncle’s ideas belonged to a different

age which did not realize how full life is nowadays. I mean full of the
movement which brings with it health and beauty. An athlete is never bored.
For that matter, the argument that I am advancing on the subject of work
is by no means necessarily that of a “sportsman.” I have heard a man of
considerable intellectual power, an author—a novelist who worked his ten
hours a day—declare that he had a horror of work because work swallowed
up the best part of his time, leaving him no opportunity of seeing life which
was a marvelous occupation and a spectacle tedious only to imbeciles. He
looked upon work as an ignominious necessity to which mankind had been
doomed for some transgression or other, and he considered that those
mortals who by the favor of the gods were absolved from it, and yet
clamored for it because time hung heavily upon their hands, were deserving
of eternal punishment.
For my part, I hold the same opinion and I add: If they are feeling bored,
bless my soul, let them play football.
At length I reached my twenty-fourth year, and I sailed in the mail
steamer to Havre. I already pictured to myself Cordélia waiting for me on
the pier. I had not seen her for eighteen months. We had never ceased to
write to each other with the greatest freedom. And yet during the last period
of my stay in America I seemed to perceive some change in her.
True, her heart still remained mine but her mind had become unsettled; in
other words I did not comprehend everything that she said in her letters. I
have mentioned that Cordélia had always displayed an inclination for the
arts and in particular for painting. Well, it was in connection with a small
painting that she sent to me, a portrait of myself painted from memory,
which I considered a splendid likeness, that she wrote extraordinary things
which I scornfully called, without quite knowing why, a “deterioration,” for
they appertained to a sphere of knowledge in which we were not
accustomed to wander at my Technical Institute.
I said to myself: Cordélia thinks too much. It is high time that I was
home. You bet I’ll make her give up her books and painting and music, and
then to horse! as in the good old days.
But let me return to this portrait and in regard to it I will refer to my
“notes.” I am not, to be sure, one of those persons who write their

recollections from day to day. But I rejoice that I possess these memoranda,
and I will explain how they came to be made almost without my noticing it,
and why I happened to keep them.
I am very methodical and have always kept a strict record of my
expenditure. I still have my little account books. Thus in the evening after
casting up my accounts for the day, I used to sit gazing at the figures before
me and dreaming of Cordélia, and I seldom closed the book without setting
down some thought about her, or adding some comment upon her last letter.
These were often very simple remarks. For example, I find this entry
under the date of the 25th April, 19——.
“Thirty-five dollars ten cents.... Dearest Cordélia, we shall have heaps of
beautiful children crowding round our knee.” Or else a few words even
more simple still. Under the date of the 30th May of the same year I find:
“Twenty-five dollars ten cents.... Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!”
Here are my observations concerning the portrait:
“To-day I received my portrait painted by Cordélia. It is a speaking
likeness. It is complete in every respect, even to the scar which I still bear
under the right eyebrow, caused by an unlucky fall against the corner of the
stairs when I was eight. The wound bled copiously, and I call to mind
Cordélia’s sorrow, for we had been playing together. I feel certain that when
she portrayed this little scar she remembered that unfortunate mishap with
some feeling. Dear, dear Cordélia!”
A month later I wrote the following note:
“What is happening? I have received a letter from Cordélia and can make
nothing of it. She asks me to return the portrait. She considers the painting
unworthy. I don’t quite follow whether she considers it unworthy of me or
unworthy of her. Moreover she declares that while it resembles me it is not
like me. What is the meaning of this fantastic language?”
And still dwelling on the portrait which, however, I was careful not to
return to her because I was delighted with it, I wrote:
“Cordélia says in her letter that I ought to understand that a portrait
should represent something more than the mere lineaments of a person; for

instance, it should convey the expression of the soul and in so far as the
soul is not expressed in a portrait, it expresses nothing at all!”
Well, I was quite at a loss. I did not understand how she could materialize
my soul which was a thing essentially unseen. Had she meant by her words
that it is indispensable to put life into a portrait, I should agree with her, and
all that is needed for the purpose is a certain touch of animation in the
expression of the eyes, but to depict the soul!... I shall ask her to explain
what she means.
I pass over various comments expressing surprise at the tone of other
letters from Cordélia which, moreover, were becoming very brief and few
and far between. I am eager to arrive at Havre....
And here I was at Havre again.
Alas! Cordélia was not waiting for me on the pier.
On the other hand an old man-servant of my uncle’s came to meet me on
the Titan, which was a small steam-tug engaged in the pilot and post
service, and I learnt that Cordélia and her father had set out two days before
on “an urgent journey abroad.”
Though I was physically hardened by my devotion to sport, I could not
restrain my tears, for the news was so unforeseen and coincided so little
with my expectations, that I felt a presentiment that some irretrievable
calamity had befallen me.

CHAPTER III
VASCOEUIL AND HENNEQUEVILLE

IT was not that I entertained the slightest doubt of Cordélia’s love, but I
fancied that my uncle was no longer favorable to our union, and had
contrived the journey in order that I might understand for myself a position
which he would have found hard to explain by word of mouth.
“Have they gone away for any length of time?” I inquired in a trembling
voice.
Old Surdon, the man-servant, who was never a gossip, gave me to
understand by a gesture that he knew nothing.
“Where have they gone?”
Another gesture in like manner to the first completed my discomfiture.
Surdon, however, without undue haste drew a letter from the inside pocket
of his coat.
I snatched it from his hand, opened it, and read:
“My dear Nephew,
“We find ourselves suddenly compelled to leave for abroad. I have to deal with a matter
which, as you may readily imagine, is of the utmost importance. We shall not remain away
longer than we can help, but I scarcely think that we shall be able to return for a couple of
months. We shall frequently write to you through an indirect channel, because I am anxious
that you alone should know where we are. Be careful to keep the secret of our whereabouts
to yourself. Don’t worry about anything. Cordélia still loves you; and you will be married
before the end of the year. Look forward to seeing us at Vascoeuil where I am sending my
servants. Surdon will be your servant.”

While this letter and the remark, “You will be married before the end of
the year,” reassured me as to my uncle’s purpose, it greatly perplexed me as
to Cordélia. “Cordélia still loves you.” What was the necessity to add those
words? Moreover, the letter filled me with a vague misgiving for a number
of reasons. What was the meaning of this mysterious journey, and why

should I receive tidings from him through an indirect source? Most of all,
why should I be packed off to Vascoeuil?
My uncle and Cordélia were in the habit of spending the summer at
Hennequeville, where they owned “Clos Normand,” a splendid estate on the
main road to Honfleur. It was a huge, entirely new structure, by which I
mean that it was built some fifteen years before, and possessed the most
important thing in the world—modern comfort. Vascoeuil, on the other
hand, which we used to visit once during the year, at the beginning of the
hunting season, was a large country house not devoid of a certain style and
charm but antiquated and lacking in well-nigh everything that makes life
easy.
This manor house had always produced on me a peculiar impression,
with its high, colorless walls, its tower at one of the extremities casting its
reflection in the chill waters of the river, its great neglected courtyard, its
dilapidated out-houses, and its ill-kept grounds whose moss-covered paths
gave forth an odor of decay.
The rooms in the house with their paintings from which the freshness had
departed, and the faded mirrors, seemed to be haunted by shades which our
annual visit disturbed. I have never been a believer of ghosts, but Vascoeuil
invariably gave me an uncanny feeling.
Strange to say, Cordélia rather liked the place and found “poetry” in it.
When I began to analyze my feelings, the apprehension which Vascoeuil
caused me seemed to be explained by the fact that I was a man of sound
health and well-balanced mind, and everything round me which failed to
correspond with these solid realities was unendurable. Vascoeuil was not a
“healthy” place. That was enough to make me take a dislike to it.
My dislike was still further increased when I found myself there with old
Surdon and Mathilde, his wife, but without Cordélia.
I have mentioned that Surdon was never a gossip, but Mathilde was in
the habit of giving free play to her tongue. She had known us from our
infancy and was very fond of us; and for years had spoken with delight of
our future marriage. I had no sooner arrived than, taking her on one side, I
asked her without beating about the bush to tell me the meaning of the
whole thing.

She heaved a sigh and turned on her heel. I ran after her and caught her
by the skirt. She began to cry:
“I swear, monsieur, that it’s nothing,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It was
the master’s idea to live here. He did not ask our advice you may be sure.”
“Well, if it pleases him, let him come here instead of running about all
over Europe and taking Cordélia away from me. As for myself, I shall clear
out.”
“Where to?”
“Hennequeville.”
As soon as I uttered the word Mathilde betrayed the utmost excitement.
“No, no. Your uncle wouldn’t be pleased if he heard you were at
Hennequeville. He has taken it into his head that you mustn’t go there.”
Mathilde was a native of Darnetal in the Rouen district. That meant that
she was artful and obstinate. I saw that I should get nothing out of her. But I
made up my mind to go to Hennequeville. I reached the place next day. It
was about six o’clock in the evening when I got there.
Heavens! how pleased I was to see the country and how delightful the
grounds were! In truth, with the glossy and luxuriant verdure of the
meadows, and the sweet-scented hedgerows in full bloom, there was
nothing ghostly about Hennequeville. And yet when, at the turn of the road,
I came in sight of the empty house, my heart was filled with anguish. Never
before had it greeted me with such a vacant look. Its shuttered windows and
locked doors made a strange impression on me.
How remote it all seemed from Cordélia’s laughter and kisses and the
welcome I used to receive when formerly I crossed the beloved threshold.
There was no echo of the olden time. The house no longer knew me. I lay
my head heavily on the garden gate and thus I remained for I know not how
long, a prey to the gloomiest dejection.
Darkness had fallen by now, and when I looked up I was not a little
surprised to perceive a few steps away from me a dark form which I might
have taken for my own shadow, its posture so exactly resembled my own.
The shadow also heaved a sigh. I was struck dumb with fear.

But my amazement did but increase when I heard this shadow give
utterance aloud to feelings which I expressed to myself in a whisper. In
words whose exact form I am unable to set down, but which admirably
conveyed my thoughts, the dark form declared that it was impossible for a
mind endowed with any sensibility to pass this beautiful domain without
stopping long enough at least to regret that all that life of elegance and
enjoyment for which it had been built, seemed to have departed from it
forever.
Whereupon somewhat taken aback I made answer, lying to myself,—for
I say again that my prevision was the same as the shadow’s—that there was
no reason why this house which was closed for the time being, should not
be re-opened some day and be filled once more with joyous life and
activity. But the shadow sighed once more, shook its head, uttered the one
word “Never!” which sent a shudder through me, and gliding behind the
wall vanished from sight.
I left the place more cast down than when I arrived. My curious meeting
with a stranger who seemed to be stirred by an emotion singularly akin to
my own, unnerved me to a degree which at first I failed to realize; but as I
was descending the hill which led me back to the Tongues valley, I thought
I recognized in front of me the dark form of the man whose voice I had
heard near me, and I started to run in order to overtake him.
I came up with him outside an inn from whose partly-opened door a faint
glimmer of light could be seen. It was sufficient, however, to enable me to
perceive some of his features, for he turned round as I drew near. Apart
from a certain handsomeness, I was at once struck with his eyes, or rather
their brightness. They seemed to burn in the darkness.
Only the eyes of certain albinos, or the eyes of cats who are able to
distinguish things in the dark, unseen by human eyes, have produced a
similar effect on me. The man emerged from the light and I saw his burning
eyes as he stood in the road.
I would have liked to speak to him but my courage failed me.
I remained standing there as though dazed while he walked away. The
fresh breeze from the sea fortunately swept my brow. Some one spoke to
me. It was the innkeeper. I made my way into the inn and asked him if he

knew the man who had just passed his door. He told me that he was a
celebrated English painter, and people in the country round said of him that
he was “a bit touched.”

CHAPTER IV
THE WEDDING

When I returned to Vascoeuil a letter lay waiting for me. It bore the Paris
postmark, and the address was written in a handwriting unknown to me. On
opening it I found a line from my uncle who had written a hurried scrawl
from the Tyrol.
The Tyrol! People do not go to the Tyrol for business purposes.
What was his object in wandering about the Tyrol with Cordélia while I
was kept waiting for them in this wretched house? He did not attempt to
explain. He gave me an address to which I was to write to him.
“Write as often as you can; write every day. In the meantime I will suggest something
which will occupy your time until we return. I want you to redecorate Vascoeuil with
‘every modern comfort.’ I leave the matter entirely to you. Furnish it to your own taste. It
belongs to you and Cordélia. I intend to give it to you as a wedding present. You will be
married at Vascoeuil. I am well aware that the property has never greatly appealed to you.
Have it renovated in such a way that you will like it. But don’t have any alterations made
in the grounds. That will be Cordélia’s affair. She has ideas on the subject. We both send
you our love.”

Not a word came from Cordélia. Why did she not write to me? Did she
no longer love me? Ever since my return from Hennequeville I asked
myself the terrible question.
I wrote to my uncle and gave full expression to my misgivings.
I told him that it was impossible for me to apply myself to any task
whatsoever unless I knew how I stood with regard to Cordélia, and she
alone would be able to restore my peace of mind.
A fortnight elapsed without any reply. I spent those two weeks like an
idiot waiting for the postman. Surdon and his wife took pity on me and
endeavored to “argue” with me, but I refused to listen to them. At last I
received a letter. Again it bore the Paris postmark. How I leaped upon it!
A letter from Cordélia! That is to say a line or two:

“Of course I still love you my dear Hector. I have never ceased to love you. What an
idea! And what nonsense! We shall meet soon, my husband to be!”

Well, it was a letter which by no means satisfied me. “I still love you my
dear Hector,” seemed to me a sort of plaster to cure my pain. It was not
what I wanted; and even “We shall meet soon, my husband to be” was cold
comfort to me.
I wrote to Cordélia and poured out all my woes. I wept like a child over
the letter as I reminded her of our vows, and I assured her that I would
rather die in despair than lead to the altar a Cordélia who no longer loved
me as of yore.
Then, oh then, a few days later, I received eight pages from Cordélia—
eight long pages which made me weep for joy. I recognized in them my
little playmate of the long ago, her vivacity, her impulsiveness, her delight
in being with me, her adorable love of mischief. She seemed to have
plunged anew into the past with an abandon which she wished me to share.
She would have no difficulty in that!
And then suddenly after indulging in these memories she spoke of the
present with an assurance which at once restored my mental and physical
health. She was looking forward to the simple duties of marriage. She spoke
of our taking up our abode at Vascoeuil and entered into particulars which
caused me straightway to fall in love with the place. She went on:
“You will see how delightful Vascoeuil will look when, between us, we
have had it refurbished to our tastes. You must take a trip to Paris and buy
various things,”—here was a list of suggested purchases.—“I want you to
have everything ready by the time we return, because father wishes us to be
married at once. I shan’t be the one to stand in the way! Oh, while I think of
it: Don’t have anything done to the grounds. You have never understood
them. They have a beauty all their own, which I am longing to develop to
the utmost. I shall transform them into a garden fit for Pelléas and
Melisande. We will take our walks in them in days of depression, for
however happy one may be, life has its days of depression which, however,
are not without a charm of their own. In the meantime, how delightful it
would be to go for our honeymoon on horseback as though we were both
crazy. You will remember that when we were quite young we used to dream
of making such a trip, and we laughed at those respectable people who went

off by the ordinary train. But you will see that we shall take the train like
everybody else. What does it matter so long as there is a gondola at the end
of the journey? We will go to Venice. That was always understood. The
Tyrol is horrible. Nothing but mountains. And I loathe mountains,
particularly when they keep me apart from you!”

The eight pages continued in this strain. Dear, dear, dear Cordélia! How
could I ever have doubted you and your dear little heart, your dear little
heart!... Quick, to work! Come on bricklayers and painters and “the whole
blooming lot of you” as my uncle would say.
I stirred the men on to greater exertions by my good spirits and
generosity. I myself looked like a bricklayer’s laborer, and Surdon gave way
to silent laughter when he handed me a jug of cider which I emptied at a
gulp in order to show the others that I could do full justice to the amber
liquor.
I did well to hurry on with the work. My uncle and Cordélia arrived
home a week earlier than they had foretold. I expected them about the
eighth of October, whereas they reached Vascoeuil on the last day of
September. The work was not nearly finished.
Cordélia found me on the top of a ladder busily engaged in papering her
boudoir. I fell into her arms. She bore the shock quite well, exclaiming:
“Heavens, how ugly!” I made a gesture which caused her to burst out
laughing. I thought that she was speaking of me while she was referring to
the wallpaper. That was enough to throw us into a state of merriment which
brought my uncle on the scene.
He gave us his blessing and kissed us; kissed us and gave us his blessing
a second time; and recounted that he himself was married in that house, that
Cordélia was born in it, that our children and our grand-children would be
born in it. Whereupon Cordélia, who turned a deaf ear to him, exclaimed:
“My goodness, how nice the paint smells here. I say, look here, father, I
don’t want to be anything but a house-painter now. How does that strike
you?”
“I approve my dear. Oh, I quite approve. That’s a very healthy idea!”

I was rather surprised to hear him speak like that. I was always under the
impression that the health of a house-painter was subject to considerable
risk, owing, I think, to the white lead in his materials, and I raised the
objection to my uncle, whose only answer was to give me a friendly pat on
the back.
A few minutes later he said with his usual kindly smile:
“You are still the best of all Hectors. I hope you’ll never be any
different.”
I don’t know why he should have given utterance to such a sentiment,
because I have no intention of being any different. Nevertheless on thinking
it over, I have since concluded that he found a simplicity in me which
appealed to him, the unemotional and well-balanced temperament of a man
who is not in the habit of creating difficulties where there are none, and he
counselled me to remain as I was if I wished to insure our happiness.
The three following weeks passed so quickly and pleasantly that they
stand out in my memory as among the happiest weeks of my life. I
dismissed from my mind every preoccupation having no connection with
the diversions of the day, and these consisted, for Cordélia and me, of
upsetting the entire household, hiding behind doors, chasing one another
like school children and kissing until Cordélia, all flushed, gently pushed
me away exclaiming: “Hector that will do ... leave some for to-morrow!”
Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!
When she first came home I thought that she was looking rather pale,
overcome doubtless by the fatigues of the journey. Now she had regained
her beautiful color. She was still as slender as before, but I discerned that
none of the natural beauties of a woman were lacking in her. I hardly know
how to express my meaning, but to my mind women were never more
beautiful than they are nowadays; and I still adhere to my opinion. Mentally
and physically she was perfect. I cannot say more.
At last the great day arrived. It was a wonderful function and one that
will long be remembered and talked about at Vascoeuil. Cordélia’s father,
who was a great landed proprietor, had issued invitations to the entire
district after the fashion of his own day. I mean that representatives of the

families round about, the possessors of great names and great fortunes, were
present and entertained with princely magnificence.
My uncle would have liked the festivities to be kept up for three days, but
he yielded to Cordélia’s entreaties, for she declared that if the guests
remained after six o’clock we should take our departure. The wedding
breakfast, in accordance with Cordélia’s wishes, was called lunch. And it
was indeed a lunch!
But all this was nothing in comparison with the feast which was given
about a mile away at the farm of my uncle’s principal tenant. Tents had
been erected in a large field, and the country people who were assembled
therein let themselves go for all they were worth, like the guests at the
gargantuan wedding feast of Gamache.
Cordélia gracefully went the round of the tables without evincing the
least repugnance for all this excessive gorging and I was very glad. I
accompanied her like a little dog.
“They’re not at all stuck up. We hope they’ll be happy,” we heard our
guests exclaim on every hand.

CHAPTER V
AN UNEXPECTED PRESENT

ON returning to the house we found our guests in the drawing-room gazing
enraptured at the wedding presents which were on view. Heaven knows that
they were numerous enough!
It was at this juncture that Surdon came in carrying, with some difficulty,
a large flat package wrapped in canvas upon which a small square piece of
cardboard was pinned bearing in writing the words:
“My offering for the wedding”

The card was not signed.
Several guests had read the inscription, and were amused over the
wedding “offering.” Our attention was attracted by their laughter, and when
my uncle, Cordélia and myself drew near, they were already speaking of a
wedding surprise, and eagerly expressing a wish to see the present.
My uncle read the card, turned pale, lifted his eyes and looked at
Cordélia, who also read it. A deep blush suffused her cheeks. But she
displayed no confusion, and smiling said:
“It’s from him. He often uses one word instead of another. Sometimes he
does it on purpose as it amuses him. Besides, it’s his writing.”
To me the incident was a complete riddle. My uncle’s pallor, Cordélia’s
blushes, the words that passed between them—these things began to trouble
me.
“We might as well see what it is,” I said, pointing to the package.
“What’s the use?” returned my uncle. “We’ll have a look at it later on.”
Cordélia left us and went to an adjoining drawing-room.

Then I was seized with a feeling of curiosity and opened the package
myself. When the canvas which covered it was removed, I could not repress
a cry of admiration, and the guests around me were breathless with wonder.
It was a portrait—a portrait of Cordélia. And such a portrait!
It was a picture of a marvelous radiance. It seemed to have been painted
with the softest of lights. It was utterly impossible to conceive by what
magic of coloring a human being who had nothing at his command save
brushes and the pigments in metal tubes, was able to transmit to canvas so
ideal a visual image.
I had never before encountered anything which could lead me to suspect
the existence of such an art. I had had an opportunity, like all those who
assist at great public functions in Paris, and delight in such things, of
visiting one or two exhibitions of paintings which affected to be original,
and professed to revolutionize art. Those works expressed either an
exaggerated symbolism or flights of the wildest fantasy—were a great hoax
in fact. I say freely what I think and if any one takes offense the more’s the
pity. As a general rule these paintings are enshrouded in an erudite obscurity
from which shines a vague and eccentric glimmer of light.
But the miracle of this portrait consisted in this: It was the picture itself
which was painted in such a way that rays seemed to radiate from it of
themselves, without the intervention of any sort of trick.
The artist had succeeded in showing to the ordinary eye what it does not
usually perceive, that is to say, the invisible light which the body radiates
around itself....
I can speak of these things now that I have acquired the most painful and
terrible experience in this domain, but at that time I was conscious of it all
without comprehending it, and it would have been difficult for me to
express clearly my thoughts in a language of which I was ignorant.
In short, in this effulgent portrait it was as though Cordélia’s soul came to
greet you from the first with a divine smile which emanated from the entire
expression of her face.
And now I understood what she meant when she wrote: “A portrait
should represent something more than the mere lineaments of a person; it
should convey the expression of the soul.”

She was obviously acquainted therefore with painting like that which that
day had enraptured us, and also doubtless with the painter himself, who had
sent this “offering” for the wedding.
It was no longer possible for me to doubt it!
I bent over the canvas to discover if the portrait was signed. I deciphered
the one letter “P.”
My uncle and Cordélia were not present to satisfy my curiosity. I went to
look for them but could not find them. I was told that Cordélia had retired
to her room in order to have a short rest.
Our guests were beginning to take their leave. My uncle rejoined me. The
pallor which had made such an impression on me was gone. On the other
hand he was in high good humor and very talkative as he wished good-bye
to his guests. He glanced at me from time to time and smiled broadly as
how should say: “Be happy. All goes well.”
What was the cause of his sudden perturbation during that memorable
day?
Yielding to a latent impulse which had been growing in me since the
scene over the portrait, I returned to the drawing-room where the wedding
presents were on show. The portrait was gone.
I asked old Surdon what had become of the masterpiece. He made answer
that by “Mademoiselle’s” orders—he could not get accustomed to call her
“Madame”—he had himself taken it down into the cellar.
When I expressed my astonishment, he assured me that it was the very
place for the devil’s own painting.
I stopped him as he was making off and said:
“Do you know the man who painted the portrait?”
“You have other things to do, monsieur, to-day, than to bother about such
nonsense,” he returned, giving me a look and frowning.
He wanted to slip away, but I held him back.
“Look here, Surdon, I am going to ask you one question, but you will
have to answer me if we are to remain good friends. When I went to

Hennequeville I saw a man outside the garden gate looking up at the empty
house. I was told that this man was an English painter whom people in the
district regarded as slightly ‘touched.’ Is this the man who sent the portrait
to your mistress to-day?”
But Surdon stubbornly turned away, answering me in words which
exasperated me:
“I have already told you, monsieur, that the whole thing is nonsense.”
I was raging within myself and did not know what to say.
Surdon was right, however. That was a day on which nothing but my
happiness ought to have occupied my mind, and here was I questioning a
servant in secret upon incidents which, obviously, were not now serious,
and from which, to all appearance, it was desired to spare me out of good
feeling.
I retired in a more or less ill temper to a secluded part of the park, which
I never cared for because of my thinking it was a dreary place. I was
surprised to find myself harboring thoughts which were unworthy of
Cordélia and me. But, as has been said, man is a foolish animal.
Just then my uncle came up to me. He was in traveling clothes. He had in
fact decided to leave that same evening for Caen. He at once said that he
had something to tell me in confidence; something, however, of no great
importance to which he would certainly not have alluded but for Surdon,
who had acquainted him of my curiosity with regard to the portrait of
Cordélia.

CHAPTER VI
PATRICK

I FELT somewhat disconcerted, but as occasionally happens in moments of
trepidation, I managed to overcome the difficulty by a bold stroke.
“I say, Uncle, you must excuse me,” I began, “but accident led me across
the path of a man who was gazing gloomily at the house at Hennequeville,
and I was told he was a painter. I thought, perhaps, that there was some
connection between this painter and the portrait which came to-day, and
also certain incidents which caused me, before our marriage, a great deal of
pain.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your hurried departure to....”
“Well, that’s true, and it was about this that I wanted to speak to you, so
that the subject should never again be mentioned between us. You must
know that Cordélia came back to the house one evening with a stranger
whom she had discovered in a farmyard painting some wench feeding her
fowls. She declared that he was a wonderful artist and she was very grateful
to him for agreeing to accept her as a pupil.
“The stranger used to laugh at her youthful enthusiasm and he conducted
himself like a gentleman. He was an Englishman of good family, slightly
eccentric, possessing views on most things which were peculiar to himself.
I did not always follow what he meant, but his ideas cast a spell over
Cordélia for the time being. I saw no reason why they should not work
together either in the house or the country round. Patrick, for such is his
christian name, and the only one by which he signs his paintings, lived in a
cottage on the borders of Tongues forest.
“I was at that time greatly taken up with business which compelled me to
go frequently to Paris, and I failed to perceive the changes which were
taking place in Cordélia.

“It was Surdon and his wife who called my attention to the fact that she
had lost her vivacity, no longer played at farming, or mounted her horse, but
spent her whole time in painting or reading or dreaming, leaving the house
only when the stranger made an appointment to go sketching in some part
of the country, and returning thoughtful and silent.
“I then took stock of Cordélia and was amazed to discover a new look on
her face. She was now as grave as she used to be gay, and wore a curious
absorbed expression as though lost in a reverie. I bitterly reproached myself
for my carelessness and oversight. However, I said nothing, the better to
keep a watch over her. I soon saw for myself that Cordélia was living only
through the medium of this man Patrick’s thought.”
“Oh, good Heavens! that’s just what I feared,” I gasped.
“Don’t worry yourself,” went on my uncle, “for as you will see, the
whole business is of no consequence. Do you know the sort of man
Cordélia had to do with?”
“A rogue,” I returned.
“That’s just it. A sort of mountebank who tried to persuade her that the
moon was made of green cheese, and told her a pack of silly tales about his
psychic powers and such-like nonsense, which ended by turning her head.”
“But did she still love me?” I inquired.
“I believe she still loved you, only she didn’t want to be married!”
“Oh, good Heavens!” I exclaimed.
“I will tell you what happened, and you will see that the whole thing is of
no consequence.”
“Forgive me, Uncle, but I can plainly see that what you tell me is of the
utmost consequence. I never dreamt that it was going to be of so much
consequence!”
“Look here, my boy, you make me ill. Are you a man or not? Aren’t you
married to a girl whom you adore and who loves you now that her eyes
have been opened? If to-morrow morning there is any question of this
imposter of a Patrick may the devil take me! I’ll never shake you by the
hand again. So listen to me, for we must have done with this business.... I

discovered in a desk in the studio a regular correspondence carried on
between Cordélia and Patrick in secret.”
“Well, that’s about the limit!”
“This correspondence,” continued my uncle, “is what these people call a
correspondence between souls. And I can assure you, my dear Hector, it is
not this psychic communion, to use their own words, that will make me a
grandfather one of these days!... Almost at the same time I found in
Cordélia’s room, in addition to this rubbish, a new bookcase crammed with
works on magic. Yes, a library of occult science. An incredible number of
books on the unseen world, on faces and souls. Can’t you picture a book on
‘faces and souls’? Oh and an illustrated work on stigmatism, mediums,
thaumaturgy and what not....
“To prove to you, my dear fellow, that the whole business is of no
consequence, I must tell you that I had no need even to see Patrick to get rid
of him. Everything came out in the most natural way from Cordélia, who
was always a sensible girl, and herself realized the danger which she was
incurring by listening to this charlatan. When she discovered me in the thick
of all these books and Patrick’s letters before me, she threw her arms round
my neck and cried: ‘Save me, Papa!’”
“Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!” I could not help interjecting. “That’s like her
old self. I recognize her there!”
“‘Yes, I’ll save you from that madman, my Cordélia,’ I replied. ‘Hector
will soon be home from America, and you shall be married.’ And it was
then, my dear Hector, that she said: ‘But I can’t marry Hector. Patrick has
forbidden me.’”
“Ah, yes!” I said, gasping anew. “Ah yes!... This is too thick.... Really
this Patrick having the cheek to forbid her to marry me!”
“Yes, she declared that she was morally bound to obey Patrick, as her
mind belonged to him.”
“Her mind belonged to him! Why hang it all, this beats everything. And
what reply did you make, pray?”
“I said to her: ‘Pack up your things, my dear, and we’ll make a trip to
some part of Europe where there will be no danger of meeting this

delightful gentleman, and above all, let’s have no more letter writing. We’ll
talk about all this again in a couple of months’ time’.... Well, we left here as
you know and there was no need to wait a couple of months. At the end of
six weeks this Patrick was forgotten, and Cordélia thought only of you. And
now, my dear boy, say good-by. Cordélia is yours, and I hope that you
won’t have any difficulty in keeping her. Bless my soul, do your best to
make her happy!”
Having said which, he clasped me in his arms almost stifling me, and left
me, muttering between his teeth:
“Stuff and nonsense. Stuff and nonsense.”
When I got back to the house Mathilde, old Surdon’s wife, told me that
her mistress was expecting me in her room. I entered, and my eyes fell on a
dainty little champagne supper which lay ready for us, and it was none too
soon, for Cordélia and I had eaten nothing or scarcely anything during the
day, our attention being fully occupied in greeting our guests and returning
their civilities.
The table was set in the boudoir, and the door leading to Cordélia’s room
was closed. I stood there like a great stupid. I dared not knock at the door,
and I began to cough as I stared fatuously at the walls which I myself had
papered.
At that moment the door was softly opened and I heard Cordélia say once
more in her laughing voice: “Gracious, how ugly! Gracious, how ugly!”
I looked round and joined in the laugh, for this time I knew that she was
not alluding to me.
I was surprised to see her muffled up in a fur cloak.
“Hallo, have you caught cold?” I exclaimed.
“I haven’t caught cold,” she made answer. “I am cold. Don’t you find it
bitterly cold?”
I thought she was jesting, for as a matter of fact, the day had been
unusually warm for the time of the year, and a pleasant wood fire was
blazing in the boudoir which I could very well have dispensed with.

“You know that those sables suit you to perfection, and it’s a little
affectation on your part. Not that I have the faintest objection, but you’ll be
suffocated in them.”
She replied with a shiver and summoned Mathilde to put more wood on
the fire.
My heart sank within me, for I imagined that she must be really out of
sorts.
“I tell you there’s nothing the matter with me,” she said, taking things
very simply, “I feel cold. It might happen to any one to feel cold. I won’t
have you worrying yourself about me. I can’t pretend to be warm when I’m
cold. What a tyrant you are!... I say, we’re beginning our married life well,”
she went on in the funniest manner, as she kissed me before Mathilde, who
did not seem to mind, accustomed as she was for so many years to see us
kiss each other.
It was Cordélia who told Mathilde to leave the room. Then she at once
asked:
“What has father been talking to you about? You and he have been
wandering about the park, which you dislike, for more than half-an-hour.
What did he tell you?”
“He told me a lot of things of no consequence,” I returned. “Let’s have
something to eat. Aren’t you hungry?”
“Oh yes. But you know you may as well tell me what he said. It was I
who sent him out to you. I wanted you to know all, dearest, before you
came upstairs to me here. Believe me the whole thing is utter nonsense. Tell
me that you forgive me.”
“Do I forgive you!... Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!”
As she carved the truffled galantine, she went on:
“When I think of it now I see how silly I was, but he was such an odd
person. Indeed he really seems to have fascinated me.”
“Don’t let us speak of it,” I entreated. “Don’t let us speak of it.”
“You ought to be glad to hear me speak so calmly of it. It shows that I am
entirely cured. And I can assure you that I am quite as pleased as you are.

One must not touch such things as occultism, hypnotism, and magic you
know. One gets carried away and ceases to be master of oneself. It is a
morbid condition to be in.... What do you think of this galantine? Come,
pour me out some champagne.... And kiss me.... What are you thinking
about? Surely you’re not going to trouble about Patrick now. There! To
mention his name makes me feel quite queer.”
A shiver passed through her.
“I’m certain, Hector, there’s a draught coming from somewhere.”
“No, dearest, all the doors are closed.”
“An ice-cold draught.”
Her teeth chattered. I rose from the table filled with an indescribable
uneasiness. And suddenly, as I looked at her, I saw her turn pale.
“What is it? What’s the matter Cordélia dearest?”
“I see now what’s the matter,” she returned, drawing her cloak more
closely round her. “It’s the portrait.”
“The portrait! What do you mean?”
“The portrait which Patrick sent to me and I ordered to be taken down
into the cellar.”
“Well?”
“Well, the portrait is cold.”
Cordélia’s words were Greek to me and the look of blank amazement in
my eyes bore witness, not only to my inability to comprehend her, but also
to my uneasiness.
“You don’t understand. You don’t understand,” declared Cordélia in a
quavering voice. “That is what they call the externalization of sensibility.
They assert that men of science have made conclusive experiments in this
respect. For instance, the celebrated M. de Rochas has demonstrated
scientifically that one can take a person’s sensibility from him and transport
it to a glass of water and make that person suffer by plunging a pin into the
glass of water.”

I sprang from my chair utterly dismayed by the tone in which Cordélia
uttered what I regarded as “devil’s tales.”
“Are you going crazy, Cordélia? Surely you don’t believe in such
preposterous stuff. Come.... Come.... Do say something.”
“I feel cold,” she replied, in an increasingly quavering and far-away
voice. “I feel cold. I am as cold as my portrait. I see that I shall be ill if the
portrait is left in the cellar. Besides it was wrong of me to send it down
there. He must be displeased.”
I realized with a feeling of intense sorrow that my Cordélia was not so
completely cured of her strange malady as she imagined, and with tears in
my eyes I exclaimed:
“Where would you like me to put it? I don’t want to go against your
wishes in such a trifling matter.”
“Wherever you please, wherever you please, but don’t leave it in the
cellar. And be careful not to knock it about.”
“Of course not. I’ll go and fetch it,” I said, greatly perturbed.
“You must forgive me, dearest, but it’s not my fault, is it? I’m very sorry
he sent it to us.”
“So am I.”
I went downstairs. I was fuming. I called Surdon and gave him
instructions to fetch the portrait and then I told him not to bother about it,
for after what Cordélia had said, I feared lest he should subject it to rough
usage.
I myself descended into the cellar. I seized the wretched canvas and
carried it to the drawing-room on the first floor, taking care in spite of
myself not to knock it against the furniture or walls. Some people may say
—some people are so clever!—that I behaved like a great simpleton, an ass.
May be. But we shall see about that. We shall see about that.
The fact is that Cordélia held such sway over my mind that I could not
choose but accede to her wishes.
Nevertheless after I deposited the portrait against the foot of a round
table I flung wide open the French windows of the balcony which was not

calculated to make it warm. The cool freshness of the night after a beautiful
day, floated into the room. No blame could attach to me. I had treated the
portrait with care and it was not now in the cellar. That was all that was
asked of me, and if Cordélia was no longer feeling cold I should at once be
able to cure her of her strange obsession.
When I returned to her she was still shivering in her cloak, and she gave
me a mournful look.
“Why did you put the portrait in a draught?” she asked. “I was certain
that you would play some trick. It’s too bad of you. I am still cold. Bring it
here, and then I shall be quite easy in my mind.”
“Certainly, that’s the best thing to be done,” I exclaimed, and I went off
again, bitterly regretting my mistaken calculation. I should have done better
to put the thing near the fire; and then, if Cordélia had taken it into her head
that I had left it in the cold, out of spite, she would have been confounded
once for all.
When the portrait was brought into the boudoir, Cordélia, of course,
declared that she was no longer cold. She removed her fur cloak, and I
perceived that she was clad in a charming loosely-fitting robe. Oh what a
delightful, sweet little thing she was!
“My dearest, you can’t think how beautiful you are,” I cried. “That’s the
honest truth, and no mere idle fancy, and when I kiss you I don’t feel as if I
am kissing a portrait!”
“I agree with you,” she said laughing merrily. “You are taking my breath
away.”
Truth to tell I held her somewhat tightly in my arms, for I was quivering
with happiness. She had become entirely normal again, so much so that she
recalled me to the realities of our supper. And we started afresh to eat with
good appetite and a light heart. We drank out of the same glass like
children. Nevertheless, warned by my experience with the portrait, I was
careful to keep the conversation from straying to the past. Our plans for the
future and our impending travel about the world engrossed our attention.
“How happy we shall be!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, my dear Cordélia, we shall be very happy. We must think of
nothing else.”
I had uttered a word too many.
“What do you expect me to think about, my dear Hector?” she returned,
as she regarded my air of embarrassment. “Oh, of course, you say that
because of the portrait. I admit that I was greatly impressed by it, or rather
by its being sent here, because I have never seen it, and I don’t want to see
it,”—I had placed it in a corner with its face to the wall—“but the whole
thing is over now—quite. Oh quite, I assure you. And when I think of it,
now that I am all right again, I feel a little foolish of course.”
Nothing could have given me greater pleasure than these last words. I did
not lose the opportunity to score.
“You admit, dear, that just now you were not very well. The exertions of
the day, and the necessity to recover your strength—you were simply
hungry—these things were the cause of the trouble and brought about that
fit of shivering, you may be sure.”
“Yes, I am inclined to think so.”
I kissed her again for these last words, but I thought it as well to add with
the greatest good humor.
“Personally, I have no fear of the ‘externalization of sensibility.’”
I had no sooner made the remark than Cordélia’s face grew serious once
more.
“We make a mistake, I think, to treat these matters lightly. I may have
given way to fancies, but I repeat that the ‘externalization of sensibility’ has
been scientifically proved. It is our modern material conception of things
which has imprisoned the soul within the body, but in the Middle Ages....”
Oh come, I say, I thought to myself. We are flying off at a tangent again.
We are in the Middle Ages now!
“In the Middle Ages the soul was easily liberated from the body.”
“We are not in the Middle Ages now, my dearest.”
“How wonderful were its wanderings outside its prison!”

“Yes, yes, of course.... I say do try some of this fruit.”
“Have you ever heard of persons being bewitched?”
“Never, and I don’t want to know anything about them.”
“What a great big silly you are, Hector! It is impossible to talk seriously
with you. There are certain things you must know, unless you want to
remain a blockhead.”
“Thank you.”
“The casting of spells is bound up in the history of France, and modern
discoveries have proved to us that these things are not pure imagination.
When a person wanted to cast a spell on any one, he made a small wax
image which resembled as nearly as possible the person whom he wished to
be rid of.”
“Indeed, and what then?” I inquired, slyly putting my arm round her
waist.
“And then after, of course, externalizing the sensibility of this person to
the wax image, he stuck a pin into the image and the person died.”
“Are you certain that the person died?”
“Am I certain! No, I am not certain about it.”
“I’m glad of that,” I returned as I gazed into my Cordélia’s face with the
tenderest expression.
“But there are persons who are certain of it; persons who even maintain
that many mysterious deaths in the Middle Ages can be accounted for only
on this assumption.”
I dared not ask who those persons were. I was greatly perturbed that the
conversation should once more stray to a subject which was distasteful to
me. Suddenly she stood up.
“Show me the portrait,” she requested, “I want to have a look at it.”
Not five minutes before she had assured me that she had no wish to see
it!
“Is it really necessary, my dear Cordélia?” I asked, not afraid to show a
distrust which I hoped she might share.

But unfortunately her thoughts were once more entirely centered on the
portrait, and it was with a regret which I shall feel all my life that I saw her
bend over the canvas and turn its face towards us.
Though it remained in the shadow, the outline of the figure stood out
clearly in its peculiar radiance.
“Oh how beautiful it is!” whispered Cordélia.
She stood for a few minutes still and silent, and then asked my opinion:
“Don’t you think it is beautiful, Hector?”
“Very beautiful,” I answered. “Very beautiful.”
To be sure I had no wish to contradict her, and moreover I had expressed
my real opinion. Truth to tell, I did not know how to keep my countenance.
When a woman dabbles in high art the simplest gesture by a man may
appear to her a piece of stupidity.... Still I ventured to press her hand softly
to remind her of my presence. She turned her head towards me, and with a
delightful and gentle look in her eyes, pointing to the canvas, said:
“You can say what you like about the man who painted that portrait, my
dear Hector, you can say that he is cracked, and, in fact, I quite think that he
is a bit crazy, but you must admit that he is a great artist.”
And as I made the mistake of not replying at once, she went on:
“Oh, can’t you speak.... Besides he is the first artist to paint the ‘aura.’”
“Just so.”
“What do you mean, ‘Just so’? Do you know what the ‘aura’ is?”
“No.”
“Then why did you say ‘Just so’? I will tell you what the ‘aura’ is: it is
the cloud of light which emanates from each individual and is discernible
by the trained consciousness.”
“Indeed! So the consciousness must be trained?”
Cordélia released herself from my arm which was round her waist, and
gave me a stern look:

“Don’t, my dear Hector, adopt an attitude of making game of what you
don’t understand. You would do better to think of all the matter round us
which radiates light. Why should not the human body shed a radiance? It is
not only a trained consciousness which can perceive these light-rays, but
they are visible to the open eyes of certain persons, I can tell you. Look at
this portrait! Besides, the negative of a photograph can develop these light-
rays for us even far from the body whence they emanate, and sometimes
they retain their actual shape. That is the aura.”
“Really the negative of a photograph?”
“You are the only person to be ignorant of it.”
“I am very sorry.”
“This fluid substance,” she went on with intense seriousness, “represents
our perceptions and something more than our perceptions, our intellectual
life, which emanates from us and precedes us and is conscious of things
long before our body is. It is this force which, when I am in the street,
makes me think of a person whom I shall meet in another five minutes,
because my aura is conscious of him before he is discernible by my
physical vision. Do you follow me? Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” I acquiesced, absolutely terrified by the turn which the
conversation had taken, “I am beginning to understand.”
“Well, it is none too soon! If you only knew how interesting in reality the
whole thing is. It is indeed the new thought—the only one that will matter
in a few years’ time. And this aura—your perceptions and my perceptions—
is a force which can operate from a distance; and be made to operate from a
distance; that is a well-known phenomenon. In this particular aspect it is
called suggestion; and suggestion is a reality which is as indisputable as a
mathematical formula—as two and two make four, for instance. By means
of suggestion, auras have been seen at an incredible distance from the body,
if not separated from it altogether, for that would involve death at least ...
almost to forget the body.”
And after uttering these last words in tones of rapt excitement which
utterly overwhelmed me, she became once more plunged in thought.
What was she thinking about? What was she thinking about?

I sank into a chair and as I gazed at her a sense of hopelessness came
over me. I saw her in profile as she stood erect facing the infernal picture.
The light wrap which covered her shoulders had slipped off, and I beheld
her bare young throat, the adorable outline of her arm as it hung with
infinite grace by her side. My feeling of dejection gradually gave way to an
admiration which longed to find expression.
I drew myself up cautiously and stole towards her like a thief; and I
closed my arms round her to seize her as though I already feared lest my
dear beauteous treasure should be torn away from me.
Taken aback, a slight cry escaped her and she turned round with a
peculiar look in her eyes which I had never beheld in them before, and
stared at me as if she no longer knew me.
“Cordélia, I am your husband and I adore you,” I whispered.
And I pressed my lips to hers, but the terror of it! I met lips which were
as cold as stone, and I had no sooner placed a kiss upon them than she
became a statue in my arms. I was holding to my heart an inanimate form; a
form not devoid of life, but from which life had taken wing elsewhere.
Cordélia had fallen on my shoulders in a cataleptic-like sleep. I called to
her. I used the most endearing words. I implored her to speak to me. She did
not hear me. So far from returning my kisses she was unconscious of them.
“Cordélia! Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!” I cried. “Where are you? Where
are you?”
At last, after laying her on the sofa in her deadly immobility, I began to
shout and summon assistance like a madman.

CHAPTER VII
AFTER THE WEDDING

MATHILDE and Surdon came hurrying into the room and were not less
terrified than I was to discover Cordélia in this statue-like condition. The
only thing which we could be certain about was that she was not dead. I
cannot remember all that we attempted, Mathilde and I, to “bring her back
to her senses,” while Surdon went to fetch the nearest doctor.
We carried Cordélia in her state of insensibility on to the balcony. We
brought her back again. We tried the effects of cold and heat in turn. We
placed hot bricks to her feet and cold compresses to her forehead. What
alarmed us more than anything else was the complete rigidity in which she
lay in our arms, and nothing that we could do succeeded in relaxing the
tension.
I employed a phrase just now with the full meaning of which I was
unacquainted. I said that Cordélia fell on my shoulder in a cataleptic-like
sleep. That was true, but I more or less learned for the first time the
meaning of catalepsy from the village doctor whom Surdon brought back.
And even then I failed to grasp the significance of what he was saying
except that Cordélia was suffering from a nervous malady which had
reached the critical point, and must have been brought about by great
mental and physical strain and the unwonted excitement of a wedding day.
He did not tell us anything new from this point of view, for it was in this
sense that we regarded her illness. To what other cause could we, in our
ignorance, attribute it save to excitement and fatigue?
Unfortunately this blockhead of a doctor proved his inability to awaken
Cordélia. After blowing on her eyes without effect he seemed greatly
perplexed. He knew more about it than we did, perhaps, but he was as
powerless as we were. To our stormings and complaints he could but reply:
“She will wake up of her own accord just as she fell asleep.” And he
counseled me to have patience.

Have patience!... He was the limit!... I asked him in a voice strained with
anxiety, how long this torpor could last. His only answer was to shake his
head. He exasperated me.
“But, look here, will it last one hour—two hours?”
“One can never tell.... One can never tell.”
“Still it can’t go on for a couple of days, I suppose?” I cried, incensed.
“Well, there have been such cases, but generally speaking....”
I could have struck him. And yet he was a worthy man who strove to
comfort me, to persuade me that the case was not very serious, to lead me to
hope that we were confronted with a phenomenon which, if due precautions
were taken, might not recur, and, moreover, would yield to treatment. And
at the finish he recommended me to consult a specialist in nervous diseases.
Having said so much, he gave me the slip.
I at once sent Surdon in the car to Rouen, whence he was to bring back
Dr. Thurel, celebrated in the district for certain unusual cures which
bordered on the miraculous.
I turned Mathilde out of the room, for since the doctor’s remedies and her
own nostrums were of no avail, she imagined that we were the victims of
the devil, and she wearied me with her lamentations and exorcisms. I had
the utmost difficulty in preventing her from going for the priest. What a
honeymoon!
Left alone before the sofa on which Cordélia’s statue-like form lay, I felt
less affected by the pitiable spectacle of my beloved than by a sort of almost
childish frenzy against the fate which had played this trick upon me.
Heaven knows I deserved to be pitied! To have waited so long for this day
and to pass it with a woman who had been turned to stone! By what fatality
had Cordélia fallen asleep at the very moment when she was in my arms? It
was indeed, to use my uncle’s words, “utterly silly.”
In my intense selfishness, knowing now that Cordélia’s life was in no
danger, I mourned rather for myself than for her. I was, so I thought, the
victim.... Thus many men when they are balked of something on which they
have set their hearts, or when the object of their desire escapes them, act
like brutes. I am ashamed when I think of myself cursing Heaven in this

room in which Cordélia and I were “at last alone.” I am bound to say,
however, in my own favor, that by degrees this blind resentment which
arose in me against things in general, gave way to a feeling of great
compassion and sorrow for the beloved being who still slept.
As the hours slipped away I was oppressed by an ever-increasing
anguish. Now I kept watch over Cordélia as though she were dead, and I
bowed in wonder before this great mystery, which was not less terrifying
than the mystery of death itself. Poor, poor, poor Cordélia!

CHAPTER VIII
DR. THUREL

THE day was beginning to dawn when Surdon returned with Dr. Thurel.
He had to seek the famous doctor at an official function. Not that he had,
however, to drag him away by main force. The story which he told,
straightway induced the doctor to leave, and he did not even take the
trouble to return to his house and change his clothes.
I shall always remember his arrival in the wan light of day with his white
shirt-front, his long, pallid face, his colorless eyes whose expression of deep
thought it was impossible to forget when once you had encountered it.
From that day the image of Dr. Thurel has lingered in my memory. He
brought with him so much that was new to me as I stood struggling on the
threshold of this mysterious drama, and shed so much light on it. True, I
was not at first dazzled, but I was at once “stirred” by the depths of my
ignorance.
While the facts themselves had merely aroused my wrath without making
any impression on my mind, he was able in a few words to reveal a new
world to me. He was a man who was constantly saying the most astounding
things and yet they were always impregnated with good sense. One felt
compelled to understand the meaning and to believe in him unless one
wished to be taken for a fool.
He gazed at Cordélia for some time, used the stethoscope, drew himself
up and said:
“This is not exactly a case of catalepsy. It is what is called hypnotic sleep
with muscular rigidity. Have no fear. We shall get the better of it.”
Thereupon he bent over her, blew on her eyes and made some curious
gestures, but obtained no greater success than his country colleague.
Nevertheless after each futile experiment he seemed quite satisfied.

“That must be it. That must be it. Of course,” he muttered.
Strange to say, whatever he did, and even the fact that his efforts were of
no avail inspired me with perfect confidence. I felt sure that, thanks to him,
we should soon be out of our misery.
He requested me to step into the boudoir and questioned me at great
length. He told me that, on the way, he had drawn out the servant, and the
man had acquainted him of his mistress’s peculiar mental condition a few
months before our marriage. He begged me to confide everything to him
without reserve, and regard him not only as a doctor, but as a father
confessor.
Then I recounted the story of the English painter and the portrait and the
various incidents relating to it, and how Cordélia had complained of being
“as cold as the portrait.”
He asked to be allowed to see the canvas, and after examining it,
observed:
“All the trouble comes from this picture. There is no doubt about that.
Your wife, monsieur, is under the influence of this man Patrick, but we will
rid her of it, you may be certain.”
“But she hasn’t seen the man Patrick for several months.”
“Very likely, but then there is the portrait. Patrick can do a great deal
through the instrumentality of this portrait. He has renewed the link with
her through it.”
After that he told me facts about the externalization of sensibility
compared with which Cordélia’s remarks were so much child’s play, and
told them so simply and accompanied them by such logical explanations
that they no longer astounded me.
There could be no doubt that Dr. Thurel possessed the gift of persuasion.
“So my wife’s sensibility was really in the portrait?” I said.
“Yes, to some extent. The body may be in one place and its sensibility in
another. A clairvoyant’s body, for instance, does not move, but his
individual vision is at the spot which he is describing. In like manner your
wife’s sensibility was transmitted to the portrait by means of thought.”

“By means of thought?”
“Her thought yielded to that of another person. But her sensibility was
there, for thought holding absolute command over sensibility is able to
produce on it the desired effect.... Dr. Charcot, the master of us all, made an
experiment in this regard by applying a sheet of paper to the epidermis of a
patient whom he had hypnotized, and indicated by suggestion that he had
employed a blistering plaster. At once the usual effects of a blistering
plaster were apparent, such as the swelling of the skin and so forth. I am
quoting this experiment because it is the most typical case, and you will see
for yourself the conclusion that may be drawn from it.”
Suddenly he stopped, looked steadily at the portrait which had been left
in the boudoir. Like every one else, he was enraptured by it. He lifted it and
blew upon it.... He blew sharply upon the eyes.
Then he replaced it in its position and walked on tiptoe towards the next
room, the door of which had been left ajar, making a sign to me to remain
where I stood. He looked into the room. Almost at once he turned around
with the light of victory shining on his face.
He came back to me still walking on tiptoe.
“She’s waking up,” he said in an undertone. “Don’t say anything of all
this to her. Pretend to think that she’s been in a natural sleep. I can do
nothing more here for some hours. I shall go and have a rest. Never mind
about me. Look after her. I must tell you this: If you kiss her, kiss her as a
brother.”
“What do you mean—as a brother?”
“Well, be kind and gentle to her as a brother. I assure you....”
But I did not wait to hear more. Already I stood in the doorway.
Cordélia’s eyes were wide open and she seemed to be looking for me. And
yet when her eyes alighted on me there was a look of astonishment in them
as if she had not expected to see me there.
“Hullo, there you are,” she breathed. “Where are we now?”
“Why, at home, my dear Cordélia.”
I saw her cheeks flush, her eyes smile, her lips bloom again.

“Oh yes, of course,” she returned. “Oh my dear Hector, what a lovely
night! But why didn’t you go to bed when you came in? You haven’t caught
cold? There was a cool breeze by the riverside. What a couple of sillies we
are? Who would have thought of a honeymoon in the moonlight? Well,
what did I tell you about my park? Can you imagine a more beautiful bridal
chamber?”
I listened to her incomprehensible chatter with a feeling of consternation.
Her first words: “What a lovely night!” struck a pang at my heart. It was
indeed a lovely night! And what did she mean by her “beautiful bridal
chamber?” And why, as she spoke, did she look round as if she beheld our
room for the first time? From what sort of dream had she awakened? I had
no opportunity to put these questions to her. Her head drooped again on the
pillow, her eyes closed, and this time she fell into a calm, natural sleep. A
soft regular breathing escaped from her lips, and she wore a smile which
ought to have delighted, but which perturbed me. For, after all, what was
she smiling at? I was afraid in my dazed condition to ask myself whom was
she smiling at. She had awakened out of her first torpor but to fall into
another, without giving me time to kiss her even as a brother. What was this
walk along the riverside? What was this bridal chamber of which I knew
nothing? I was once more alone, alone with her, and I could not restrain my
tears, while she continued to smile in her sleep. It was more than I could
bear.
And so the hours went by. At last it was morning.
I set my forehead against the window-pane and watched as in a sort of
dream the life of the country outside awakening around me. For that matter
the entire episode seemed to me a dream, an optical illusion.
Was the night through which I had just passed, this incredible wedding
night, a reality? Had I indeed emerged from it and were my eyes now
looking out upon everyday things? Were not those carts which rolled along
the roads, phantom carts? I was in the last stage of exhaustion, and yet I was
conscious that it would be impossible for me to seek forgetfulness in the
sleep which was essential to my physical and mental health. My suffering
mind was never more restless.
And my thoughts were revolving, endlessly revolving, round the
extraordinary language uttered by Cordélia in the interval between the two

sleeps. “Why didn’t you go to bed when you came in?” Well, I said to
myself with a feeling of dull resentment against my wavering and insensate
imagination, well, what is there in all this to cause so much painful
excitement. Cordélia dreamt that she was wandering with you in the park
during the night. Why make such a fuss about it?
Of course, of course. I wished Dr. Thurel was awake. I longed to talk to
him. I longed to talk to him.
He had been given a room in the left wing of the château. From where I
stood I could perceive the windows with their closed wooden shutters.
Truth to tell, I stared at nothing else.
Cordélia on the bed behind me was sleeping her peaceful sleep and still
smiling. I turned away from her. No, and again no! I failed to understand
how she could smile, even in her sleep, when I was so much to be pitied.
And then I saw the shutters in the doctor’s room being opened. I slipped
out of the room. I crossed the courtyard. I knocked at his door.
“It’s I, Doctor.”
“Well?” he questioned as I entered.
“Well, she is still asleep. She is sleeping in the most peaceful manner as
if nothing had happened.”
“That was to be expected, and all is for the best.”
“She said a few things before she fell asleep.”
“What did she say? Tell me what she said.”
I repeated her words, and observing that the doctor was in deep thought,
added:
“Apparently she was recalling a dream that she had when she was in her
trance.”
“A dream! You think it was a dream? It may have been. But....”
“But what?”
“Why, there’s another theory which the undoubted fact that your wife
was under the influence of suggestion renders quite plausible.”

“What theory?”
“Well, we are plainly confronted with the phenomenon which we call the
externalization....”
“I know, I know.... The externalization of sensibility.”
“One moment. The phenomenon of the externalization of sensibility finds
its counterpart here in another phenomenon: the externalization of motive
power.”
“What then?”
“Why then her active individuality, her vital force, her aura, as the
magicians call it, might really have left her last night, and taken that walk,
and it would have been no dream.”
“It’s amazing.”
“Not at all.”
“Still, if she actually left us, how do you account for her talk about
having a walk with me? I personally did not leave here either in body or
mind.”
“I have already explained,” returned the doctor, “that we are not dealing
in this case”—these were his own words “in this case” spoken with the
composure of an expert which did but increase my agitation—“we are not
dealing with a cataleptic condition, properly so called, for, in that event, she
would not have remembered what she had been doing, but of a rigid
hypnotic condition from which the subject sometimes awakes with vague
recollections.... Here obviously there were vague recollections.”
“You mean,” I exclaimed, “that she thinks she remembers going out with
me, but that, in reality, to use your own language, she went for a walk with
another person. It’s ridiculous ... utterly ridiculous.”
“Or she went alone.... Calm yourself.”
It was all very well for him to say, “Calm yourself.” I refused to be
pacified.
“All this, Doctor, seems to me appalling. You don’t mean to say that a
person can do such things while the body is asleep, and not dream of

them?”
“My dear fellow, have you still to learn that an ignorant person in a
condition of somnambulism can become a scholar, can spend his nights
furnishing his polygon with multifarious learning, and even acquire foreign
languages? That is what can be done while one is asleep.”
“What do you mean by his polygon?”
“We will deal with that another time, young man. It would lead us too far
from the subject we are discussing.”
“Meanwhile there is one thing that I do understand,” I returned. “My
wife is suffering from some terrible mental disorder.”
“But, my dear fellow, there is no reason to lose hope,” returned the
doctor in a confident voice. “An illness of the mind can be cured by the
mind. Have confidence in my treatment, and take me to your wife.”
Cordélia had just risen. I found her clad in a kimono, her hair falling
loosely over her shoulders, standing in front of the glass making faces. As
soon as she saw me she threw herself into my arms and cried in a mocking
voice:
“Oh, my poor husband!”
Then all of a sudden she asked:
“Who is in the next room?”
No movement of any kind could be heard. Dr. Thurel had seated himself
in the boudoir without a sound, and I had closed the door behind me. I was
so greatly surprised that I made no answer.
“Is it one of your friends?” she asked. “Why don’t you introduce him to
me?”
She forgot the place and her incomplete toilette—everything. She made
for the door with a firm tread, opened it softly, caught sight of the strange-
looking old gentleman in evening dress, seemed in no way disconcerted,
smiled, and went up to him with outstretched hand.
“This is Dr. Thurel,” I said. “He is, in fact, a friend—one of my best and
most reliable friends.”

“Indeed, I have often heard of you,” she returned. “Oh, doctor, how
pleased I am to meet you.”
She sat down beside him. He still held her hand. And now he kept his
eyes fixed on hers, and her gaze seemed riveted on him.
“Leave us,” he whispered peremptorily, “I want to talk to her.”
I left them together, and I descended into the garden, impelled by an
irritability which made my teeth chatter.

Ten minutes elapsed, which seemed so long drawn out that I could have
shouted aloud. At length Dr. Thurel appeared. He was beaming.
“Cheer up,” said the old gentleman, “I think I have rid her mind of any
thought of the other person. All the same he had exerted a magical power of
attraction over her. Good-bye, my dear fellow.”
“If that is so,” I cried excitedly, “how shall I ever be able to express my
gratitude to you?”
“Stuff! Look here, give me the portrait. I will place it in my private
collection.”
I gave him the portrait and, Heaven only knows, with a glad heart!

CHAPTER IX
I DISCOVER A CHANGE IN CORDÉLIA

I MUST admit that, at first, I thought I should have but to rejoice, for as the
worthy doctor had led me to anticipate, Cordélia displayed, after his
departure, a perfectly free and normal mind.
It was as though nothing out of the way had happened. When she came
downstairs clad in a gossamer robe, and clung to my arm with a grace and
trustfulness which enchanted me, old Surdon and Mathilde complimented
her on her appearance, and conveyed to me by certain signs that all was as
well as well could be.
Surdon wanted to saddle Thunder and Monarch, or to get out the gig so
that we might go for a long drive before lunch, but Cordélia would not hear
of it. She expressed a wish to stroll through the fields, to wander on my arm
along the country lanes.
“We don’t want to ride or drive to-day,” she said, leading me away and
gently pressing my hand. “We don’t need anything or anybody. Let us think
only of ourselves. I have so many things to say to you now that I am your
wife.”
These last words were spoken in a serious and intense voice which I
failed to recognize; and I could not help giving a start when I looked at her.
As she uttered them, she lifted her eyes to me and they seemed to contain
an expression which, like her voice, was new to me. I read in them, beyond
the shadow of a doubt, an emotional tenderness and gratitude which startled
me without my knowing exactly why. At all events, I could not at the
moment analyze what was passing within me. But one thing was certain: I
felt distinctly uneasy. I fully expected, indeed, to see a look in my dear
Cordélia’s eyes like that one day; to see this impulse, this quivering emotion
of thankfulness towards the man who had become everything to her, but I

did not expect to see that look after the dreadful time through which we had
just passed.
In a word, I was unspeakably surprised. Our walk, our conversation at
lunch, the sweet surrender with which, leaning upon my shoulder, she
confided to me her plans for the future—all this did nothing to remove from
my mind the curious impression that I was confronted with a new Cordélia
who was no longer the young girl of the day before. I turned pale at the
thought of it.
She noticed it and in her turn betrayed a certain anxiety at my agitation.
“But dearest what is the matter? Are you not feeling well? You don’t say
anything.”
I kissed her hair and whispered tritely:
“I love you.”
My heart was pounding as though it would burst. She could hear it.
“I really believe that you do love me,” she said, “and, besides, your heart
tells me so. Listen to my heart which will tell you, too, how it loves you.”
She took my head between her two little hands, and placed it on her
young, heaving bosom with the quiet gesture of a woman who is giving
herself up to the husband to whom she belongs.
I was speechless.
She went on as she stroked my hair:
“What a night! What a beautiful night! Oh how well you understand me!
You are wonderful, my Hector.”
I am unable to say whether I really seemed wonderful to her, but I drew
myself up roughly. My face underwent a fierce contortion. She looked at
me with disquiet.
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.... Nothing. It’s over—a slight attack of neuralgia.”
“Ah my love, you are tired. You had no sleep.”
“Yes, you’re right. I had no sleep.”

“You ought to have gone to bed. I told you so when we came back from
our walk in the park.”
“Ah yes.... Our walk in the park.... Of course, of course.”
“But what is the matter with you?”
“Nothing I tell you.... A slight headache.”
“Well, be sensible. You must go to bed, dearest.”
I had to give way. She came with me to the door of my room. I let myself
be led by her little hands. Strange to say I made no effort to keep her. She
left the room, and I threw myself on the bed as an animal lies down. And
soon, in order to cease thinking about things which seemed either appalling
or ridiculous, I fell asleep.
The light was waning when I woke up feeling greatly refreshed. I have
always been able to sleep soundly. A shower bath helped to restore my self-
possession. My uncle had returned during my nap. He had come from Caen,
and was leaving that same evening for Paris. I discovered from his first
words that he knew nothing of the incidents of the previous night. Surdon
and Mathilde, perceiving that “all was well as well could be,” had not
considered it necessary to enlighten him. I could not but approve of their
discretion.
My uncle had been for a short walk with Cordélia, and when she returned
her face was beaming with happiness.
“Have you had a good sleep, dearest?” she asked as she threw herself
into my arms. “Has that awful headache gone?”
I kissed her ardently in return.
My uncle wore a smile as he contemplated the pleasant spectacle. He
endeavored to take me aside to express his gratification.
“Well, what did I say? There you are, the happiest of men and she is the
happiest of women. She told me so. I congratulate you—you rascal!”
I could have struck him. I could have struck him. He gave me no
opportunity. He embraced us and went off muttering repeatedly:
“What a handsome couple they make!”

CHAPTER X
THE SECOND NIGHT

I HAVE taken particular care to trace in detail the various stages of this
extraordinary story in order that the reader who would fain judge us,
notwithstanding the jury’s verdict, may know as much about the facts as I
do, and be in a position to fix the responsibility definitely as between me
and the man who was the greatest thief that ever lived. If the reader will
follow me step by step he will understand me, and it will be open to any
candid person of average intelligence to measure the extent of the calamity
which befell me.
I now come to the second night, which will throw a light upon the events
which occurred at Vascoeuil and those which were to follow; a light which
others may regard as supernatural, but which I am compelled, unfortunately,
to proclaim as entirely natural after what I know and saw with my own
eyes.
At least that is what I maintain to-day, but considering that I was sailing
on an unknown sea, it will be realized how far I had to go before I
recognized the truth.
Cordélia wished to wind up the day, as on the previous evening, by a
little homely supper in her boudoir, and, to be sure, I should have been the
last person to think of raising any objection. Anything that could bring me
closer to her gave me the constantly renewed hope that I might succeed in
driving away, once for all, the delusions which kept us apart. I use the word
delusions advisedly, because that is how I regarded the matter on that
second evening when I sat down beside her at dinner.
And how could it have been otherwise? How could I fail to cling to this
word when I take into consideration the abyss over which my poor
distracted mind hung suspended for a moment in the course of this startling
day. Just think. Remember the altogether unforeseen attitude of a Cordélia
filled with gratitude and affection. Delusions! Delusions! I appealed to you,

O delusions, in defense of her, and, as the lesser of my enemies, to her
unhealthy imagination, at once ardent and poetic—for the whole thing was
but the aberration of a highly sensitive mind. I tried to convince myself of
it.
And thus I no longer wished to remember anything but Dr. Thurel’s
reassuring words: “I have rid her mind of any thought of the other person.
She is cured.”
Upon my word, when I think of her as I beheld her on that second
evening seated at our little domestic fête, helping me as though I were a
spoiled child, anticipating my every wish, stirring the fire lest I should catch
cold, assuming the superior and tyrannical graces of a nurse which caused
us to burst out laughing, I cannot but cry: “There she was as God made her,
and as He gave her to me—my dear, dear, dear Cordélia!”
Before she met the thief, she was sweet and fresh and girlish and
perfectly natural, slightly inclined to be mischievous and self-willed, but
born to make a husband happy who would have made her happy. And, take
it from me, it is not necessary to be clever or brilliant to make a woman
happy. It is a question of being an ordinarily decent man; at least I still think
so, and I have yet to meet the person who can prove the contrary. I know
what I mean. One must also be in love with her. Who ever loved her more
than I did? And did she love any one more than she loved me? Did she love
the thief? Lord above, let those persons who know everything tell me if the
dove which is transfixed in its flight loves the hawk whom it encounters on
its way from the nest....
But let us return to our little supper.
I forget on what subject Cordélia was good-humoredly making fun of me.
I have always possessed an equable temper. I can allow myself to be teased
without taking offense, just as a pet dog will permit his ears to be pulled by
those to whom he is attached. Thus Cordélia could throw herself into the
game to her heart’s content.
But suddenly I sprang to my feet with a look of ferocity on my face, a
very excellent look of ferocity, and walked up to her, grinding my teeth, as
if I had sworn to gobble her up alive. She started to run round the table,
laughing boisterously. I for my part, while I continued to give chase, strove

to keep my countenance and to assume a more ferocious air than ever. At
length she pretended to be frightened as I was pretending to be in a rage;
and when I mention that in our race round the room the light wrap which
she wore rose higher, caught on to a piece of furniture and even became
torn, revealing a glimpse of some new loveliness, it will be gathered that the
game had become an extremely attractive one; so much so that I thought the
best thing I could do was to finish it by capturing the fugitive and holding
her in my arms.
She had taken refuge in a recess of the window, and it was there that I
dived after her. I caught her, but straightway I was impressed by the fact
that she had stopped laughing. I lowered my eyes to her face, but it was no
longer the face of a young girl. She gazed at me with a look of grave
distress yet, I must say, full of love. I felt her young heart beat against mine.
I held her closer, calling her the most endearing names.
“Oh dearest,” she breathed. “Have you seen the park? Look at the park.
How beautiful it is!”
She was not now looking at me. Her eyes were turned to the park which
gleamed ghost-like in the moonlight. The night was a dream of brightness
and opalescent light. The tall trees whose leaves had already fallen, stood
erect like huge silver chandeliers, their wondrous shadows lengthened, as
though by the brush of an artist, on the luminous grassy slopes and gravel
paths. In the distance the unseen mystery of the park into which I had never
set foot, stirred under the motionless, effulgent, impassive moon.
I tried to turn Cordélia’s eyes away from the ill-omened sight, and bring
her back to our own interests. She thrust me aside with her little hands and
returned to the window, pressing her forehead against the pane. I may be
asked: “Why did you not compel her to leave the window and the perilous
spectacle of the park in the moonlight?” Let those who are unable to
understand that more power sometimes lies in a young girl’s little finger
than in an elephant’s foot, cease to read me!
This is the answer that I have to make:
Men of science, or those who call themselves men of science, have not
yet, perhaps, given a name to this “psychic” force, but if they were to take
the trouble to study and weigh its power mathematically, and dignify it with

a Latin or Greek name, there would be less astonishment, perhaps, that the
aura of a marriageable girl yielded to the suggestion of a sham-necromancer
than to realize that a mass of flesh and blood weighing about thirteen stone,
for that is approximately my figure, could offer no more resistance to the
little hand of the maid in question than could the sigh of a new-born babe.
Indeed, here we have in all its wonder the phenomenon of levitation. And
from what I saw, it is the mind only that has any weight!

I was perhaps lacking in mind that evening. It does not become any one
to reproach me. In life one must do the best one can. And I was powerless
against Cordélia’s determination to remain at the window. It was then that
she visibly lived over again her experiences of the night before, and as I
listened to her, I began to suffer infinite pain. It will at once be seen why—
at least I hope so.
Her hand had furtively sought mine and she drew me beside her in the
shining moonlight. Her head was resting on my shoulder and, seen from
below, we must have borne some resemblance to those saints linked
together on stained-glass windows which adorn and illumine the chancel of
a church. I set down this thought because it occurred to me at the time,
which shows that in my mind’s eye I realized that we were somewhat
absurd, but, through that very fact, it indicates also that I was absolutely
bereft of any power of resistance.
Poor dear Cordélia was able to do anything, anything she pleased with
me!
“Shall we take a stroll in the park as we did yesterday, dearest?”
“Come, Cordélia, I say....”
“Let’s take this path,”—we did not stir from the window—“Let’s go
along by the poplars.”
Here she uttered some curious sentences about the song of the poplars
when the wind whispers among the branches.
“Let’s go by the river side,”—more strange sentences in the form of
stanzas about the floating heart of the water lily and the tiny cradles of the

fairies sailing over the stream. “This is the path which will lead us to the
marriage-chamber.”
“What marriage-chamber?” I could not help asking.
“You know as well as I do, dearest. The chamber which has been
prepared for us, all in gold.”
And thereupon she gave me a description of the marriage-chamber all in
gold. I cannot recount the exact words which Cordélia used in speaking of
this chamber. From that moment onward, indeed, her language seemed to
lose sight of earth and even mundane things, to become a kind of music
befitting the understanding of angels or poets who are never unduly
troubled to discover the significance of unconventional words. However
that might be with the fanciful melody which flowed from my beloved’s
lips, my natural common sense restored the dream-palace in which, in
Cordélia’s imagination, I had been wandering for sometime to its proper
proportions. I gathered that this chamber all in gold, was neither more nor
less than a small glade in the wood, shaped like an arbor, sheltered by
lovely trees on whose branches some foliage still lingered while beneath
them, on the earth, lay a rich, dense carpet of leaves, yellowed by autumn.
The beginning of my cruel experience on this occasion was that these
flights of fancy, which accompanied our promenade in the golden chamber,
were intoned in English. Cordélia and I knew English perfectly, but we did
not speak it when we were together. My pained surprise reached its
culminating point when Cordélia, with the utmost seriousness, asked me to
recite as, it would appear, I had recited in the golden chamber the night
before, a few lines from “Lara” and “The Corsair.” I must have opened my
eyes in dumb amazement, for Cordélia became more and more importunate:
“Come, come, dearest, don’t wait to be pressed. Don’t waste time. It’s so
fine, so pathetic, so splendid. And then you can wind up with Childe
Harold’s farewell. You know the lines:

Adieu, adieu! my native shore
Fades o’er the waters blue:
* * * * *
Come hither, hither, my little page:
* * * * *

My Native Land—Good Night!

“And while you are reciting I will place my head on your shoulder, as I
did yesterday, so as to hear your delightful voice.”
While she was speaking she laid her head on my shoulder, but I raised it
in my trembling hands and forced her to look into my eyes which doubtless
were disturbing to see, for she suddenly grew restless.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“A very simple matter, Cordélia. I have never known by heart a line of
Byron or any other poet, and I have never read ‘Lara,’ ‘The Corsair,’ or
‘Childe Harold.’”
“What do you say?”
“I say that it was not I who was with you in the golden chamber.”
“Be quiet, you poor dear, be quiet.”
“I say that it was not on my shoulder that you laid your head.”
I came to a stop. Her appearance filled me with dismay. Her eyes were
staring at me with a strange light as if she saw me for the first time.
She gasped a dull moan of despair, and a cry escaped her lips like the cry
of a soul at the point of death striving to cleave to earth:
“Save me, Hector, save me!”
She uttered that cry and uttered it to me proving that she belonged to me,
to me alone, and had never belonged to any one but me. The thief might say
what he liked, he was but a thief. It was all very well to assume an arrogant
attitude at the Assize Court; and the world was able to grasp his meaning
when he said that her heart belonged to him. He had burgled it. The shame
of it!
I replied to Cordélia’s poignant cry of “Save me, Hector, save me!” with
a transport of supreme delight. Yes, my love would indubitably rescue her
from those frightful delusions. It would be no difficult task for my arms to
wrench her this time from the accursed window. She weighed but a feather
in my grasp. Her head, with its hair in disarray, lay adorably on my
shoulder. The look of mingled fear and love depicted on her face immensely

stimulated my strength. I really believed that I was at length able to
dominate this frail and quivering anguish, and I pressed my lips to hers.
And straightway it seemed as if I had killed her, and was kissing a dead
woman ... I held in my arms, as on the night before, a marble statue.

CHAPTER XI
THE GOLDEN CHAMBER

I DID not now summon any assistance. I was seized with a cold grim fury
of despair which called for no witnesses. I carried Cordélia into the next
room and laid her on the bed, and gazed at her in impotent rage.
I called to mind every word that Dr. Thurel had said in describing the
condition of bodily immobility in which I now beheld her, and I had not a
doubt from what I heard from Cordélia’s own lips that her mind, which a
little before had given animation to that now lifeless form, had left it for
some other place.
What other place? Was it hard to guess? Was she not at the very moment
when she escaped from me making at full flight for the bridal-chamber of
which I knew nothing?—the bridal-chamber to which, it seemed, an
influence that was independent of her will and mine lured her with a force
which I had vainly striven to shatter with a kiss?
Or rather did it not seem that I had but to press Cordélia’s lips with my
own to cause a repetition of the catastrophe of the night before?
I remembered then, in the growing irritation of my mind, Dr. Thurel’s
amazing words: “If you kiss her, kiss her as a brother.” What did that mean?
I shook with horror and the most terrible resentment. Was I to understand
that every time my lips united with Cordélia’s I should stand in fear of this
awful phenomenon and that she would never be anything to me but a wife
of stone?
At the thought that so infernal a suggestion was within the bounds of
possibility, a tremendous wrath made the blood surge in my veins, and I felt
capable of murdering the man who was responsible—the villain who was
making me suffer agonies to say nothing of the hideous ridicule which
would attach to so grotesque a marital position as mine. I was perfectly

aware of that fact also, and I did not fail to derive from it a capacity for
revenge which in the end swept me off my feet.
In any case I could not consent to remain any longer an impassive and
inactive spectator of a scene which offered me but the image of an inert
body; and I made my way in haste towards the spot where I knew that
Cordélia’s mind was wandering in thought with the mind of another person.
A few minutes later in the dead silence, under the hostile moon which
looked down, perhaps, upon things invisible to my own eyes, I passed along
the line of tall trees which screened the edge of the park into which I had
never entered.
As soon as I had traversed this screen I found myself in a wood so
densely entangled that I was at a loss at first which way to go; and I began
to think of Cordélia’s words when she described it; a forest full of snares for
those who did not know it and hospitable only to lovers of woods and
solitude.
I was certainly no lover of these woods, and in spite of all my efforts, I
did not succeed in ploughing my way through it, and I made scarcely any
progress. The branches laid hold of me on every side and held me back with
their thousand small arms, or transfixed me, by stealth, with their thorns.
The bridal-chamber which lay within its recesses was well guarded!
Hardly knowing what she did, however, Cordélia had sufficiently
enlightened me. Nevertheless I knew that before she betook herself, in
mind, to the place, she must have visited it more than once in body, or else,
as I imagined like a simpleton, she would not have described it to me so
fully. That was another opinion which I have since been constrained to
abandon.
And yet how did she get through? I suddenly remembered that the bridal-
chamber stood beside the river. Cordélia’s actual words were:
“In the bridal-chamber there is the great mirror of the river set in a frame
of gold and the rays of the moon make the surface of the water like a silver
sheet. You see yourself in it from head to foot. Owing to this you are never
alone. When you think that you are one, you are two, and when you think
that you are two, you are four. You have to keep your eyes open!”

“If I follow the river’s bank,” I said to myself, “I shall be certain to reach
the bridal-chamber,” and I made for this bank through the avenue of
poplars.
At first I congratulated myself on my idea, and my path for some way
was properly marked out. My pace, however, began to slacken when I left
the poplars behind me; and soon I had considerable obstacles to surmount
in order to follow the stream. Every trace of a path had disappeared, and I
was forced to hold on to the willows to prevent myself from falling into the
water.
The Andelle, at Vascoeuil, is not a very imposing river. It cannot be used
for towing, and its banks are visited only by an occasional angler who
wishes to savor the delights of solitude among the reeds.
Such as it was, it flowed that night with so much quiet grace between its
pleasant banks, reflecting so coquettishly its clumps of reeds and rushes,
like little silvery chignons, in the midst of this wild nature where all was
beauty and delight—the moon smiled strangely at me from the river—that
despite the mortal horror which stirred me, I was impressed by its charm,
and I interrupted my course, for a moment, to exclaim from my heart “I
understand you, O Cordélia!”
What was it that I understood? In truth, was I about to become affected
by it? Was this park, under the moon, so amazing a sight that my mind
would remain for ever impressed, preferring this wild retreat for my
honeymoon, to the luxurious modern nest which I had built at so great a
cost?
Still, let us pull ourselves together.
Besides, where was the bridal-chamber? Suddenly I caught sight of it in
the distance, or rather I half-saw it. It was the sort of rotunda which, in the
light of day or the twilight, would resemble a red-gold arbor fashioned by
the miracle of autumn on the bank of the murmuring stream.
With infinite caution I drew nearer. I stole through the grass and sprigs
like a Red Indian on the war path. I no longer felt the sting of thorns. I held
my breath.
And all this—all this—in order to take by surprise, two minds which had
made an appointment to meet in a clearing!

I cannot say if the reader realizes the enormity of my proceedings. For
my part, I performed these actions in a manner at once entirely unconscious
and yet entirely natural. It must be understood from this that I did not apply
my reason, but yielded to a spontaneous impulse which flung me in the
wake of Cordélia’s runaway mind; and while I experienced the influence of
Dr. Thurel’s fantastic though scientific explanations, I acted altogether like
an ordinary, deceived husband, bent on avoiding the least imprudence
which might warn the culprits and prevent me from obtaining the proof of
my misfortune.
In what shape would the proof become manifest? I certainly could not
tell, nor did I even ask myself the question, but I so little doubted that I was
about to learn the truth through one of those psychic phenomena with which
Dr. Thurel had crammed my brain, that when at last I stealthily made my
way on all fours into the bridal-chamber, I was completely bewildered to
behold merely an empty space; that is to say an atmosphere as pure and
clear as crystal, pierced by the brilliant rays of the moon which had
transformed the chamber all in gold into a chamber all in silver!
It was none the less beautiful, but truth to tell, the scene and the charm of
this sylvan bower were just then the least of my preoccupations. An empty
space and silence! I rose from my stooping posture and stood awhile
breathing hard before this void.
An empty space and silence! And perhaps they were there. But I was
unable, with the eyes of the flesh, to see them!
I looked about me in sheer amazement. I walked round creeping between
the shadow of the trees like a shadow myself searching for two shadows!
Suddenly I burst out laughing. I felt that I was committing a monstrous
piece of folly.
But then, if I was acting with such sheer lunacy, why did my laughter
break in the middle? Why did it come to a stop all of a sudden in my
parched throat, when a gleam of light and a slight shade quivered above an
old moss-covered stone bench within the arbor? Why did I go towards the
bench, leaning forward with clenched fists? What did I intend to do with my
big fists, the fists of a heavy-weight boxer? Challenge the light? Knock out
a moonbeam? Oh the irony of it all! Why do some people see while others

are blind? I felt that if I could see I should be less afraid, for now I was
afraid.... Well I was afraid of what I was about to see, for though I could not
yet see, I could hear!

CHAPTER XII
THE THIEF

I HEARD a kind of whisper, a kind of soft whisper. It was still some
distance away, but it indubitably came from a human being who was
drawing nearer, but drawing nearer without making any other sound; and it
was this which filled me with affright.
I expected to hear the twigs and dead leaves crack under the feet of the
persons who were coming, but there was nothing, no sound in the dead
silence of the night but this human murmur which seemed to be wafted on
the air not far from me, and was approaching closer and closer.
I gave no further thought to the stone bench which I had left. The voice,
soft and clear, was growing more and more distinct, so distinct that I
seemed to hear a few words which sent a shiver through me from head to
foot, and made me draw back and conceal myself in the wood.
I withdrew in haste, in great haste, for the voice was drawing still nearer.
It now seemed borne along by the water, and I turned my head towards the
river. A word, a terrible word—I could distinguish only this one word—
reached my ear from the river. It was the one English word love.
I was standing at no great distance from the bank of the river. Suddenly I
saw the reeds bend and the hearts of innumerable water-lilies on the silver
surface of the water give way to a small skiff which glided to the bank
facing the bridal-chamber.
A man was seated in this light skiff and I at once recognized him by the
curious beating of my heart and his strange sad-looking eyes, eyes like
those of a cat, which seemed to light up his pale face. I recognized him, too,
from other details. He was clad in the same loose clothes, the same sports
jacket open at the neck worn by him on the evening when I encountered
him for the first time. And, he was bare-headed, as on that evening, and his

hair was well brushed back, disclosing the high white forehead which he
had pressed against the garden gate.
My first impulse was to make a rush at him. I had every reason to settle
my account with him once for all. His presence in my park, on my property,
fully entitled me to take the law into my own hands. It was the finishing
touch to his audacity and his felonious love-making. It explained quite
clearly why my poor dear Cordélia was the victim of these perverse and
uncanny influences. Dr. Thurel’s intervention had been fruitless, because
the instigator of the mischief was near at hand, prowling round us, prowling
round her. During the last two days the scoundrel must have remained
hidden in this obscure retreat, or have left it only to approach Cordélia like
a thief; to ensnare, surprise and recapture her by fixing a gaze upon her
which would enable him to overcome her mind, and carry her away with
him to his lair.
Alas! Why did I not that very night make an end of the man who had
burgled Cordélia’s heart? For he was there right enough in flesh and blood;
and Heaven knows that I could have made good use of my fists despite his
great eyes, like the eyes of a mournful cat.
Now this is what happened: He dropped his sculls and stood up in the
skiff, and I was about to throw myself on him when I heard him utter this
sentence in English: “My love I am yours with all my heart,” and then
leaning over the boat he went on: “There is nothing I would not do for
you.”
To whom was he speaking, since he was alone in the skiff?
“Come, come, now,” I said to myself, “You know quite well to whom this
man is speaking these soft words of love and their meaning is obvious. To
whom is he saying ‘My love’? No need to look far. She is seated beside
him. He is leaning over her, whispering in her ear words that she
comprehends as well as you do.... For she is there! Cannot you see her?
Cannot you see her? And yet you know that she is seated in the skiff.”
Well, no, I was unable to see her. In truth I did my utmost to see her, for I
was conscious that he saw her, but I did not possess his vision. Yet there
was no doubt that she was there ... I had only to look at him. And to listen to
him.

He affected an attitude as he drew himself up, and then with his airs and
graces sat down beside her. To me he was grotesque, hideous. I sincerely
pitied Cordélia for having to listen to such an unmitigated bore. At one
moment he was spouting poetry to her. What a comedian!
Suddenly he sat down again, leaned on one side and threw out his arm as
though to place it round her waist. It was more than I could bear. I resolved
to put an end to this grim farce, when a new scene riveted me to the spot. I
could now see her!
I must explain what I saw and endeavor to make myself understood. I am
setting down the facts for public information and to relieve my mind, and
also to lay bare the terrible truth. Thus I confine myself to what I saw, and I
do not wish any person to go beyond my own interpretation of my
testimony, nor do I wish any person to stop short of it.
I would urge the reader to be not less courageous than I was in venturing
on this startling voyage into the abyss of psychical research in which the
best hope for the future of mankind lies.
Let this terrifying love story serve at least one purpose. Let the world
learn once for all how mortifying it is to remain a heavy-weight,
hermetically closed in a mass of flesh, when faced by the mind which in its
wanderings is unsubstantial and intangible or at least as elusive as a handful
of water.
The man stood up in the skiff, his head still a little on one side and his
arm round a waist which I was unable to see. For I saw him only in the
skiff; saw him making the gesture of a ladies’ man which had infuriated me.
But though I saw but one person in the skiff, I could distinguish both of
them in the mirror of the water.
In the slight swirl caused by the swing of the boat I discerned in the
moonlight the reflection of the pair of them standing up.
Was it an optical illusion? Was it the result of defective vision? Were my
senses playing me false? At the present time, after having gathered together
and placed in compact form my recollections, I am bound to say: No it was
no optical illusion. I saw. I saw. I saw the reflection of the skiff in the water,
and below it, also in the water, Patrick and Cordélia leaning against one
another.

I am convinced of the fact, for though I turned my eyes, after seeing the
double vision on the water, to the boat, to confirm the reality, and saw only
Patrick alone with his arm thrust out and his head a little on one side, on the
other hand, when I looked again at the water I beheld the double
presentment once more.
I lay stress upon these details because they obviously represent a
phenomenon which unites in a peculiarly interesting manner physical
science with psychic science. I offer it as a subject for investigation to those
men of science who are engaged in their laboratories in endeavoring to
probe the secrets of every aspect of Force.
It would seem that my eyes passed through Cordélia’s aura, as it stood in
the atmosphere, without being in the least aware of it, while, on the other
hand, I could perceive the outlines—somewhat faint, I confess, but
unmistakable for all that—by fixing my gaze on that part of the water which
had taken the picture, just as photographic negatives were taken of pictures
of Katie King during the time that one of the most renowned scientists of
the last century was making his experiments in psychical phenomena—I
mean Professor Sir William Crookes.
It will be readily understood that these interesting scientific
considerations, which I set down here by the way, occurred to my mind
subsequently, and that, at the time, I was much more absorbed in the
phenomenon itself than in attempting to discover an explanation of it. I was
unable, unfortunately, to suppress a cry of fury when I beheld in the mirror
of the river the great thief press a kiss upon my beloved’s forehead. The
picture at once vanished, that is to say, nothing remained on the surface of
the water but Patrick’s reflection. Cordélia’s silhouette had disappeared,
while I heard the villain exclaim: “Remember! Remember!”

CHAPTER XIII
HAPPINESS CONSISTS IN REALITIES NOT IN DREAMS

WHEN I reached the bank, Patrick and the skiff were hidden from view
behind the reeds which had closed in upon him. A few hundred yards
farther on the river made a bend and left the park. I had no hope of
overtaking my man, and after shouting a few offensive remarks at him, to
which he made no response, I returned to the château as quickly as I could.
I ran and woke up Surdon telling him that the Englishman was in the
park and ordering him to get his gun out. He grasped the situation at once.
“Don’t kill him if you can help it,” I cried, “but send a few shots through
him so as to make him feel sick of the place.”
“You can rely on me,” replied Surdon, adding: “That explains
everything.”
“Yes, Surdon, it explains everything.”
After that I went up to Cordélia’s room. She had just wakened. I was in
no way surprised.
“Do you know where you’ve been?” I asked, but she could make no
reply. On this occasion she remembered nothing; at all events she did not
seem to remember anything.
I then described what I had just witnessed. Events were taking such a
turn that we should have to face them together if we ever hoped to gain the
mastery over them. And moreover I realized quite clearly that I should be
powerless without Cordélia’s assistance. She was either on my side or on
his. If she was with me, she was bound to help me to wage war on him and
I did not doubt her.
I was sure of her. My intervention on the bank was so involuntary that I
had no time to perceive, from the mirror of the river, Cordélia’s particular
attitude towards him, but I was only too firmly convinced, since Dr.

Thurel’s visit, that she was under the spell of prolonged magnetization, in
other words, her astral body was held captive, so that I could not find fault
with her for not spurning the arm which clasped her waist with too much
affection, or for yielding to a kiss which she was unable to avert.
When she learned of the thief’s audacity in setting foot into our property
and of his being, doubtless, still in the neighborhood, she threw her arms
round my neck and cried:
“Take me away. Take me a long, long way from here. He is capable of
anything. He is capable of keeping me with him for good.”
Dear, dear, dear Cordélia! I did not wait to be asked a second time, and a
hand-bag was soon packed. Moreover I left word for Surdon to join us in
Paris the following day with our luggage; and we went off in the small car,
which I drove myself.
I soon congratulated myself on introducing my beloved to the
distractions of Paris. She was so delighted that she forgot the strain of the
terrible forty-eight hours through which we had passed. She entered into the
spirit of everything. A walk in the Avenue des Acacias in the Bois de
Boulogne helped her to forget the amazing promenade in the park in the
moonlight; at least I preferred to think so. We lunched at a smart restaurant
in the country, and we emerged from it laughing at the least thing like
children carried away by their first glass of wine.
Cordélia for the first time tried to smoke, and she discovered an Egyptian
brand of cigarettes which she liked so well that she consumed a goodly
number of them. The result was that when we returned to the Palace Hotel
she had to lie down and take a short rest. I left her in the custody of Surdon.
When I went out I could not repress an exclamation, for I recognized,
standing at the hotel entrance, Dr. Thurel.
He was not less surprised than I was. He at once asked after Cordélia,
and was so greatly interested in my story of what happened on the second
night of my honeymoon, that he took me off with him to his flat. Here, he
got me to repeat the facts in detail, taking notes the while, and then he said:
“The thing is quite logical. As long as your wife was under the direct
influence of the man who was close by, anything that I was able to do to
release her was bound, of course, to be reduced to naught as soon as I left

you. That is precisely what did happen, but it shows also that your wife is
subject to this influence only when the hypnotizer is comparatively near.
There are patients who are in worse case than she is,” went on the doctor
thoughtfully, “and you certainly must not lose hope. You did well to bring
her away from Vascoeuil. You must travel about the world. The case will
respond to treatment. Everything depends on you.”
He repeated this last sentence with emphasis, and I could not help giving
vent to my impatience and ill-humor.
“Everything depends on me!” I cried. “That is easy enough to say. But
what influence, if you please, can I exert if every time my lips touch hers
she falls into a trance? You must be fair and admit that I am at least as much
to be pitied as she is.”
“I have advised you to kiss her as a brother.”
“Do you really believe that a brother’s influence will be enough to rid her
of that man?”
“No, I don’t say that, but I believe that it is absolutely necessary, if you
wish to risk a kiss, to remove your wife’s recollection from that man’s
power of suggestion through time and space. Travel about, and have
patience until you both feel yourselves the master of her ‘O’ and have
nothing more to fear from her ‘polygon.’”
I held my head in my hands. For the second time this geometrical term
occurred when Dr. Thurel was speaking. What was this “polygon” and what
did he mean by the “O” of which it was incumbent upon me to obtain the
mastery?
The doctor vouchsafed the explanation that these were figures of
psychical speech employed by Dr. Grasset in his work entitled “Spiritualism
in relation to Science” in order to explain fully certain characteristics. I
should like, in my turn, to enable the reader to understand them as the
kindly old gentleman explained them to me. I should not attempt to do so if
it were not that he had the goodness to lend me certain books to read; so
that I might become acquainted with a science which would prove useful to
me in Cordélia’s condition of mind—books which I strove to assimilate
from love of her without her knowledge.

It would seem, then, that there is a superior psychicism, that is to say,
there are psychic acts which are deliberate and carried out by the free will
of a person, and preceded by thought which Dr. Grasset symbolizes by the
letter O, and an inferior psychicism which is quasi-automatic and
symbolized by the nervous centers which are connected together in the
shape of a polygon.
This polygon must be regarded either in its physiological condition—
absent-mindedness, sleep, dreams—or its extra-physical condition—
artificially induced hypnotism—or its pathological condition—
somnambulism, ambulatory automatism and so forth.
When the O is no longer concerned with the polygon, the latter does
more or less what it pleases, and thus one can do with it almost what one
wills. For this reason it suffices for the O to be absent-minded—for instance
I am thinking of one thing while I continue with my polygon to pour from a
jug into a glass which is already full—and it suffices also for the mind of
another to take possession for the time being of the O. In that case the
polygon can be transmitted to a remote distance.
All this seemed to me as clear as noonday, so lucidly did the doctor
explain it, and I exclaimed:
“You can rely on me, Doctor. I will keep a watch over Cordélia’s
polygon! And it won’t be my fault if it slips away from me!”
“Meanwhile take the train,” returned the worthy doctor. “And be quick
about it. You might possibly meet that man here as you met me. This Palace
Hotel is not a place where one can prevent one’s self from being seen. And
besides, no city in the world is so small as Paris!”
I hastened to the station and inquired about sleeping-cars, and that same
evening we caught the train for Rome. We took Surdon with us.
When two days later we beheld the walls of Servius Tullius, Cordélia
uttered shouts of joy. On alighting from the train she had a mind to make
for the Forum, but by hurrying her a little I soon managed—the thing was to
acquire some influence over her—to make her forget for the time being all
those old things, and give her a taste of more modern pleasures such as are
found in the thorough comfort of the best hotel in Rome. We lunched in the
Italian manner at the Castello di Constantino, where we were served on the

terrace from which the eye took in a landscape of rare loveliness, though it
was somewhat marred by the sight of ruins which are supposed to be
impressive but which, for my part, I have always found tedious.
We had, however, to visit some of the ancient monuments. The
Colosseum greatly attracted Cordélia, who told me mournful stories about
the martyrdom of the early Christians. I hastened to take her away to less
dismal scenes. A promenade at the fashionable hour in the gardens of
Pincio, iced-drinks in a café in the Corso, and in the evening, after dinner,
the tarantella danced by pretty girls in the grand hall of the hotel, threw us
into the vortex of life in Rome.
Cordélia took an immense pleasure in these elegant displays of Italian
manners. I was myself greatly stirred to see her eyes shining with
happiness. She never seemed to me more beautiful. When we returned to
our rooms I held her close and told her so, but I acted cautiously, and at the
same time with a feeling of great anxiety. Had I become sufficient master of
her O to be no longer in fear of the whims of her polygon? The thought that
if I kissed her she might at once fall into a trance, in my arms, brought
beads of perspiration trickling down my forehead.
“Good gracious, how hot you are, Hector!” she cried as with an adorable
gesture she wiped my forehead with her handkerchief.
I no longer knew what I was doing. Her lips smiled at me. The fragrance
that clung to her carried me away, and, in truth, I forgot all my good
resolutions and kissed her passionately.
Marvel of marvels, she did not fall into a sleep!

CHAPTER XIV
HAPPY DAYS

DEAR, dear, dear Cordélia! What splendid weeks were ours and how
completely we forgot the doleful Patrick! I am bound to say that I neglected
nothing to bring about this result. I proceeded to overwhelm my Cordélia
with every attention that a husband in love could offer to his young wife in
order to divert her thoughts.
Entertainment followed entertainment, and I wanted my beloved to be the
best-dressed and the most beautiful woman of them all. We made a few
acquaintances. By the good offices of a Secretary to an Embassy who was a
friend of mine, the most exclusive drawing-rooms were open to us, and
Cordélia was the queen of them. She no longer worried me about visits to
ancient ruins. I acted in such a way that her whole time was taken up by our
life of amusement. The museums were forgotten. I had very good reason to
be suspicious of pictures!
When she was weary of Rome we set out for Naples where new joys
awaited us. The wonderful bay with its most beautiful seashore was a
witness to our love. We went to Capri Sorrento and Castellammare. The
boatmen sang as they plied their oars. I burned those little works which are
called “guides,” for I had observed that when Cordélia was carrying them
with her wherever she went, she spoke of nothing but the dead, which was
anything but cheerful.
My holocaust spared us many a story about Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and
the rest of them. That was something to the good. We could not, of course,
escape Pompeii, which, however, is not a tiresome promenade. Always a
great concourse of people is wandering about the ruins; tourists dressed in
such a way that one feels inclined to laugh, and they alone are worth the
trouble....
Dear, dear, dear Cordélia! She was all mine in those happy hours when
we thought only of rejoicing at the beauty of the day, and of our love,

without concerning ourselves with what had existed before our time and
would exist after we were gone. Was not that the essential condition of
happiness? We must not let ourselves give way to too much thought. No,
no, we must not let ourselves think too much.
Observe how happy we had both become since we began to think as little
as possible. In point of fact, though we were always together, facing each
other, we had no occasion to ask the question: “What are you thinking of?”
It is during fits of abstraction, when the mind is preoccupied, that the
“polygon” is up to its tricks. The best method of preventing one’s thoughts
from wandering is to refuse to think at all. I know what I am talking about.
But the mind must be occupied. After Naples we retraced our steps to
Florence, and finally we reached Venice which I had reserved for the last. A
disastrous town! But let us not anticipate events.

CHAPTER XV
IN WHICH MY ANXIETY ABOUT CORDÉLIA’S POLYGON IS REVIVED

SURDON had engaged a suite of rooms for us at the Hotel Danieli on the
Riva degli Schiavoni. It was in this hotel, it seems, that Alfred de Musset
fell ill and learned the treachery of his lady love, George Sand. Cordélia
heard the story of this lamentable event on the second day after our arrival,
and it seemed unduly to depress her. I hated the bungler and his story and
wanted to leave the hotel. But Cordélia had taken a fancy to it, and I had to
give way to her.
One day I found her with a book in her hand. It was de Musset’s
correspondence with this George Sand. I read a few lines and threw the
book out of the window, went over to my beloved and embraced her, and
told her that it was a crime to spoil our perfect happiness by opening the
door to disagreeable thoughts about two persons who did not know how to
love.
Was I not right?
“Oh, my dear, now you are preventing me from reading,” she made
answer. “Think, Hector, you have already refused to let me visit the
museums.”
“Heaven forbid, Cordélia, that I should refuse you anything whatever,” I
exclaimed. “I am your slave as you know. If you are really keen on seeing
some pictures, we’ll go this afternoon to your museum. Would you like me
to countermand our trip to the Lido?”
“That would be too much,” she returned, smiling. “We’ll go to the Lido
for dinner and supper. All the same I shall be glad if you will show a little
more eagerness to see the ‘wonders of art.’”
“Lord above, what string are you harping on now?” I exclaimed. “Did we
not go, as was proper to the Doge’s Palace and see the dungeon in which
Marino Faliero was imprisoned?”

“Oh, Hector, it amused you to slip our cards into the secret letter-box
which was used at one time for anonymous accusations to the Council of
Ten. And you call that seeing the ‘wonders of art!’”
“Yes, and I denounced the proprietor of our hotel, accusing him of trying
to poison us! You had a good laugh at the time, you must admit.”
She was not laughing now. What new shadow was passing over her
brow? She seemed carried away by a depression of spirits which rendered
her more beautiful still, but which filled me with alarm, because it was akin
to sadness. And, indeed, her eyes were bedewed with tears. I threw myself
at her feet.
“I have hurt your feelings,” I exclaimed.
“No, let me cry,” she returned in a broken and far away voice. “Tears that
we owe to the emotion caused by beautiful things are sweet tears. I
remember those happy moments when we left our gondola and entered the
church of Santa Maria della Salute. Just think of the lagoon, the grand canal
—all that marvel of walls and towers and opalescent water.”
“A walk in the Salute!” I cried, making no effort to conceal my
amazement. “We were never together in the Salute, dear.”
“Oh you don’t mean it,” she protested. “We went through the church
thoroughly.”
Thereupon she took a great deal of trouble to describe it to me. And then
suddenly, observing my bewilderment, she came to a stop, and declined to
say another word about her visit to the Salute. She went as red as a cherry;
and I left her in a state of profound uneasiness.
I felt the need of being alone to ponder over what had come to pass.
While we were at Venice we had not parted from each other. I left her
sometimes in her room, but I remained in the hotel. She could not,
therefore, have visited the Salute.
I hurriedly made my way there, and I was dumbfounded to discover that
her description of the church was accurate.
I was intensely alarmed, for I could no longer doubt that Cordélia’s
polygon was beginning to play its tricks again. While she was supposed to

be asleep her polygon was wandering about the Salute! I recalled to mind
Dr. Thurel’s words:
“Just as cases are quoted in which the subject discovers in a dream,
memories placed therein without his cognizance by his polygon while
awake—the O being then in a state of abstraction—so there are numerous
instances in which the subject while awake discovers memories placed
therein, without his cognizance, by the polygon which has been at work
while he was asleep—the O being lulled to sleep or under the influence of
suggestion.”
When I landed from the gondola and found myself again on the Riva
degli Schiavoni I could not help exclaiming:
“The misery of it! It’s that confounded polygon again. Still we in Venice
are a long way from Patrick.”
I had no sooner uttered these words than a voice behind me exclaimed:
“You make a mistake, monsieur. Patrick is here!”

CHAPTER XVI
THE APPOINTMENT

IT was Surdon who had spoken. He seemed not less perturbed than I was. I
took him in hand with an excitement which may easily be imagined.
“Patrick here!” I cried. “How do you know that?”
“I’ve seen him.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“And since this morning couldn’t you....”
“I’ve followed him, monsieur, and I can assure you that I haven’t wasted
my time.”
“Out with it! Tell me what you know. The whole thing is awful.”
“Yes, monsieur, awful.”
“I shall kill him.”
“Of course, that would be the best thing to do, for there’s no question that
he isn’t chasing you.”—The worthy Surdon dared not make any allusion to
“madame”—“This Patrick assumed that you would be passing through
Venice. He’s been expecting you here for the last three weeks. And since
you came here he has pretty well lost his head.”
“Oh, come, he has done that before, Surdon. But tell me everything you
know down to the least detail.”
“Well, it’s like this. I was brushing your clothes this morning when I
happened to put my nose out of a window, and caught sight of a man in a
gondola staring with such persistence at our windows that I stopped my
work. He did not see me. To come to the point—his eyes were fixed on
madame’s room.”

“Was madame out?” I inquired breathlessly.
“No, monsieur, she was getting ready to go out, and you were waiting for
her in the hall. Just then I recognized Patrick, and I continued to watch his
game.”
“Do you know if madame saw him?”
“I don’t know. I can’t be positive. The gondola stopped for a moment,
then having changed its course turned down towards the lagoon. I rushed
out of the hotel just as you were leaving it with madame, and had the luck
to reach the bend of the Riva degli Schiavoni as Patrick’s gondola rounded
the point. I took a gondola and followed him. My intention was to find out
where he was staying. For hours he dragged me about to impossible and
apparently uninteresting places. Finally he landed at the Grand Hotel where
I was told that he had taken a room with the windows on the ground floor—
I mean on a level with the water of the Grand Canal opposite Santa Maria
della Salute.”—At the mention of this church I gave another start.—“The
servant who waits upon him had no objection to give me certain particulars
which, for that matter, show Patrick as the laughing-stock of the staff at the
Grand Hotel....
“It seems, monsieur, that during the last four days he has regularly shut
himself up in his room between five and seven o’clock after ordering a light
meal for two persons to be served on a small round table.”
“A meal for two persons between five and seven o’clock!” I exclaimed,
feeling a shiver pass through me from head to foot.
“Just so, monsieur. The servant has to lay two places, and the beauty of it
is that no one has ever seen our man enter his room with another person,
while he is always seen to come out alone. And yet this servant hasn’t the
least doubt that two persons sit down to this small round table and partake
of the meal which has been served. It’s a mystery which amuses every one,
though Patrick doesn’t appear to be aware of it, for he never speaks to a
soul. He is generally looked upon as eccentric and even slightly mad. Most
sensible people are of opinion that he is playing a part with himself and
living upon past recollections.... Good Lord, how pale you are! Perhaps I
made a mistake to tell you all this. It would have been better to keep it from
you that he was here.”

“No, Surdon, you were quite right. You are a sharp and faithful servant.
But, tell me, when did you leave the Grand Hotel?”
“Just now, monsieur.”
“What about Patrick?”
“I left him shut up in his room as usual at this time.”
I looked at my watch which shook in my hand.
“That’s true,” I said. “This is the hour for his meal. Wait for me in this
gondola, Surdon. I shall be back soon.”
I hastened to the hotel in a state of agitation which bordered on frenzy. I
was unnerved, be it understood, less by the evidence which Surdon brought
me of Patrick’s renewed efforts to secure control of Cordélia’s O, than by
the apparent willingness with which my beloved consented to allow her
polygon to be influenced by this most dangerous of tempters. The mere
thought of it made me shake with fever, but could I doubt the truth when I
recalled what had passed that very day between Cordélia and me? She had
spoken in the most natural terms of her visit to the church of Santa Maria
della Salute, and then perceiving, from my look of amazement, that her
polygon had chattered too freely, she at once enjoined it to be silent,
blushing to the roots of her hair.
Not long before when she observed something abnormal passing between
us, she threw her arms round my neck and cried: “Save me, Hector, save
me!” but now she seemed to display only a certain embarrassment for
having allowed the secret of a psychic condition to be discovered which
ought to have been kept from me; the secret of another existence which she
considered perhaps that I was unworthy to share, and which, in any case, no
longer gave her a fright seeing that her O, after reflection, made no such
request as: “Take me away!”
Was it not another who now took her away wherever he wished, if not
with her complete assent—for in my delirium I strove to be just—at least
with very little opposition from her? The pity of it! No, she made very little
resistance, or else she would have warned me and cried aloud: “He has
come back, the thief—the man who stole my love!”

Her O and her polygon were now in league to conceal this ignominy
from me. For after all, the nervous fluid, to use Dr. Thurel’s words, is not
strongly united to the body in certain subjects—and obviously Cordélia was
among these—yet it is impossible to lure it far from its visible focus, the
body, without producing a certain amount of suffering which in Cordélia’s
case formerly caused her to resist, while now she accepted it. Cordélia was
failing me, for she was now accepting her suffering. It was a dreadful
thought, a thought beyond all bearing.
These tragic considerations did not enter my mind, as may be imagined,
only as the result of inferences which I drew from the scene with Cordélia
that morning, but from my memory of various other little scenes of this
kind which had impressed me less, because they were of less importance,
but which now acquired their full significance, and that, too, from the first
hour of our arrival in Venice.
Still, it was the terrible thought that during the last few days she had
asked me to let her take a short rest before dressing for dinner, that made
me mount the stairs four at a time, for the request, perhaps, concealed a
subterfuge intended to keep me away during the great secret of the
polygonal promenade.
Everything that Surdon had told me about Patrick’s curious behavior at
the Grand Hotel at that hour, merely strengthened the infernal idea which
led to my accusing Cordélia of a veritable crime, the crime of
premeditation, whereas it may have been simply a coincidence; but jealousy
invariably goes to extremes and never feels satisfied unless it has multiplied
its torments by some new supposition.
When out of breath I reached our rooms, however, I clung for a while to a
last hope, the hope of discovering Cordélia standing before the glass putting
the finishing touches to her evening toilet; but unfortunately the door of her
room was locked and it was in vain that I shook it with all my strength.
“Cordélia! Cordélia!” I shouted, but there was no reply. I bent down and
looked through the keyhole, and I saw her lying at full length on a sofa near
the window in the rigid posture which had so greatly perturbed me at
Vascoeuil.

I could not restrain a yell of fury and, clenching my fists and grinding my
teeth, I ran to join Surdon in the gondola.
“As quickly as you can to the Grand Hotel,” I ordered.
The gondola took us there in a few minutes. As we drew near, Surdon
pointed to a window which was lit up on the right of the principal entrance,
for at this time of the year it grew dark early.
“There you are,” he said.
I at once propelled the gondola forward so that we hugged the foot of the
wall and became merged in its shadow. We did not make the least sound.
When the gondola stopped under the window, I stood up and managed
without difficulty to hold on to a small cornice, resting my elbow on the
stone embrasure of the window. The latter was partly opened. I could thus
both see and hear.
My excitement had reached its height, and I shall not attempt to describe
it. Moreover, it is not difficult to conceive what passed through my mind
from that moment, and the feelings with which I was stirred by the
spectacle which I alone could understand, and from which I alone was to
suffer.
The two covers on the small round table which occupied the center of the
room were close together; the two chairs were side by side. In one of them
Patrick was seated, leaning over the other in an attitude of sentimental
tenderness, while his face, like the face of a mournful cat, wore an
expression of peace, not to say bliss, which made me long to rush into the
room and box his ears. But I restrained myself.
A chandelier which shed a soft light on persons and things stood on the
table. Why do I say “persons”? I observed only Patrick, and as to Cordélia,
I failed to perceive her in spite of my concentrated will and strained
attention. I would have given, at that moment, everything that I possessed to
be able to see with the same facility as Patrick, who was assuredly caressing
the exquisite outlines of Cordélia’s astral figure.
O those eyes like the eyes of a mournful cat, calm and content, while I
was seething with excitement at the window!

How was it that I had the power to control my impulse?... I wanted to
know more.... And now I listened, for as he stretched out his hand to take an
apple from the fruit-dish and place it on Cordélia’s plate, he began to speak:
“A union of minds begets sympathy, and from this sympathy is born real
love, compared with which the other is but the blind instrument of nature in
the fulfilment of its essential functions.”
I shall remember that sentence for the rest of my life.
“The bond which unites us, O Cordélia”—he used the words “O
Cordélia” and I felt as if my heart were being pierced with a sword—“the
bond which unites us recognizes no impediment; nothing can restrain it,
nothing can shatter it; it can penetrate walls, traverse space, set time at
defiance. It partakes of the divine essence,” and so on and so forth.
I could not repeat everything that he said in this strain while peeling a
pear which he shared with her—I mean the half of which he laid on the
plate beside his own.
I must confess that his gestures perplexed me more than his speechifying.
To me it was unendurable that he should lean over the next chair, and I
experienced an uncanny feeling as I saw him lift a glass of wine to his lips
which he had previously placed in space on his right on a level with a
mouth, which had, perhaps also drunk from it.
“The wretches are drinking out of the same glass,” I muttered between
my teeth. “Don’t mind me!”
I was in such “good training” by the psychic phenomena of which I had
been the victim since my wedding-day, and also by the scientific
explanations to which I had listened, and by that which I still saw, that
nothing could surprise me, and the impossibility for an astral body to
swallow the material substance of a meal did not occur to me at first. It was
not until I had seen for myself that the wine was entirely drunk by Patrick,
and the food on Cordélia’s plate conveyed in the end to his plate, that I gave
up this absurdly fantastic idea, which shows once more that the mind
deflected from its accustomed groove easily loses all sense of proportion,
and is ready to open the door to every form of self-deception; and my
delusion at that cruel moment when others beside myself might likewise
have lost their common sense, was to believe in the reality of this fallacy—

of this farce which was being played between Patrick and Cordélia’s astral
body when under his influence. The real truth was that they provided
themselves with the vision and delight of a little dinner for two in this room,
but the person who was in fact eating it could only be Patrick.
And as he drank wine for two, which seemed to me to be tokay, he
looked less like a mournful cat, and began to talk nonsense which was not
without a touch of humor.
As it happened he spoke of the material limits which his magnetic power
encountered.
“It is a pity,” he said, “that I cannot attract your body here as I can attract
your sensibility, but that is a miracle, for all we know, which psychic
science, which is still in its infancy, may achieve in the near future. See
what has already been done in the matter of table turning. The day when
those idiots—I am referring to official experts—cease to laugh at these
phenomena, we shall not be far from discovering the method which will
enable the unseen mind to control visible matter. On that day we shall learn
something that Newton did not know, namely, that gravitation is a variable
quantity in space.[1]
[1] Einstein has since merely repeated the words used by Cordélia’s admirer and
given a mathematical formula to his theory. Author’s Note.

“That reminds me of a rather amusing story that old Surdon used to tell,
my dear Cordélia”—how it hurt me to hear him say “My dear
Cordélia!”—“He said ‘I can make this table jump out of the window when
and as I please. One day two friends were taking their coffee on it. I
commanded the table to move. It remained motionless. When they left I
lectured the table. Do you know what it said in reply? “They are such
fools!”’”
Whereupon Patrick began to laugh, and I seemed to hear Cordélia laugh
as well. Their gaiety disturbed me more than their gloom of a few minutes
before. Suddenly they stopped laughing, and began to converse in complete
silence.
I was absolutely convinced of it.
They were talking and understanding each other. It is generally
recognized that subjects and mediums and persons who have it in them to

control the mind can converse among themselves without the aid of sounds,
by the mere power of suggestion, and communion. When Patrick spoke
from the throat it was done over and above his psychic power, from habit,
and possibly to give himself the illusion to which, whatever he may have
said, he seemed to set store, of Cordélia’s bodily presence beside him in his
room, but the use of his voice was unnecessary. He was now speaking to
her with the voice of the mind.
And there could be no doubt that Cordélia was answering him, for it must
not be assumed that I was witnessing, in this extraordinary and loathsome
seance, a monologue. Far from it. But when Patrick used his ordinary voice
there were pauses which were undoubtedly furnished with Cordélia’s
answers. Patrick’s remarks which followed were a sufficient proof of it.
I was more or less aware of what was passing, but now they were
conversing in silence. What were they saying? Why was Patrick bending
over her with his right arm resting on the back of her chair?... I could
perceive a tremulous movement of his arm....
Suddenly he raised his head and said aloud: “It is unfair of me to
reproach heaven for not giving you to me body and soul, because your soul
is mine and I have the best part of your body.” And then he took his glass in
his left hand without moving his right hand which still shook as it lay on the
back of Cordélia’s chair, and exclaimed: “I have tasted your lips, O
Cordélia. I have tasted your life. I drink to our longing for everlasting
love!”
He had no sooner poured the glass of wine down his throat than I sprang
into the room.
It seemed that I was literally foaming with rage. He himself said so
afterwards, and it was, in truth, quite possible, for my patience which my
restless and insidious curiosity had held in check, was exhausted, and I was
overcome with fury.
I rushed up to them and cried:
“I’m thirsty too. Aren’t you going to invite me?”
He stood up and thrust himself in my path as though to shield her.

“How clumsy you are! You have wounded her,” he murmured, stooping
to pick up a knife which, when I darted to the table had fallen to the floor.
“What do you mean—‘wounded her?’” I said excitedly.
“Calm yourself, monsieur,” he returned with characteristic English
coolness. “Indeed, it’s nothing, though it might have been serious. Let this
be a lesson to you. Another time, don’t forget to knock at the door or the
window.” He spoke in a tone which set me beside myself.
“It shall never happen again,” I said hoarsely, casting a glance in the
direction of Cordélia’s chair.
“Oh, you may finish what you were saying,” he interrupted with a
gesture of encouragement. “We are alone. She is no longer here.”
“Well, monsieur, what I wish to say is simply this—there are two of us
here, which is one too many.”
“That’s my opinion, monsieur,” he acquiesced, “but it’s not I who am in
the way.”
“We shall see about that—to-morrow!”
“Just as you please.”
I had nothing more to say to him that day, and I turned towards the
window, but he opened the door for me, and we bowed to each other with
perfect propriety.

CHAPTER XVII
THE DUEL

WHEN I read over again the preceding pages I find nothing in them to
eliminate, for they truthfully set down the intolerable situation in which I
found myself after Surdon informed me of Patrick’s presence in Venice. In
my belief I had good reason for suspecting that my beloved’s ego had
yielded without any great resistance to the whims of culpable hypnotic
suggestion. And when I conjure up the vision of the meeting in the little
room in the Grand Hotel, I see myself again as I was then, that is to say, less
distracted by rage against Patrick than tortured by Cordélia’s apparent
acquiescence.
Fool that I was! Ought I not in my ignorance of the tremendous nature of
psychic mystery, or in my mistrust of it as an entirely new initiate, to have
warned Cordélia of all that appeared suspect and impossible to understand
in it? And yet I took a bitter pleasure in my misery!
In short, my blood was fired by those fatuous words: “It wouldn’t have
happened if she hadn’t wanted it to happen.” And it was with these words
on my lips and this injustice to her in my heart, that I hastened back to the
Hotel Danieli.

Cordélia, whom I found still lying on the sofa, had just awakened from
her sleep, and was wrapping a piece of linen round her finger, an incident to
which in my agitation I attached no importance. The chamber maid was
offering her a thread of cotton. I requested her to leave us.
At the sound of my voice Cordélia gave a start and raised her head, and I
perceived that she was deadly pale.
“Patrick is here and you know it,” I cried savagely. “Why didn’t you tell
me?”

She contemplated my wrath first with dumb amazement, and then with
dismay. She seemed no longer to know me. I had ceased to be her Hector.
She wisely remained silent. What could she say to a raging lion who neither
heard nor understood reason?
Then I went on wildly:
“You deny yourself nothing. Trips in gondolas, art galleries, churches—
the Santa Maria della Salute!”
At these last words she murmured:
“Oh, good gracious, so it was true! I thought it was only a dream.”
Her words ought to have enlightened me and taught me that she was still
the victim of the endless machinations of that man. But I had set out to
make us both suffer, and I was not to be stopped mid-way.
“You meet every day between five and seven o’clock.”
“What do you say?”
And Cordélia lifted herself, and opened her eyes wide with wonder, as if
she began to discover from the sound of my voice now that she was awake,
the impressions which had been transmitted to her polygon while she was
asleep.
“I say that you take advantage of my confidence. While I thought that
you were resting here, you were off having a meal with Patrick in his room
in the Grand Hotel.”
She uttered a cry and covered her face with her hands.
“Oh don’t deny it. I saw you. I heard you.”
“What did you hear? Did I tell him that I loved him?” she asked in a
voice strained with anxiety.
“I didn’t hear you say that,” I returned, surprised at the tone in which she
asked the question, “but you know quite well that I cannot hear your ‘silent
voice.’”
“If I didn’t say that I said nothing,” she declared gazing at me with
staring eyes. “All else is beyond me.”

So saying she lay back on the sofa, her whole body shaken by a fit of
sobbing.
I fell on my knees. The horror of my conduct and at the same time
Cordélia’s innocence, became manifest to me. Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!
I hated myself. I strove to assuage her grief. I took her hand, and then I
saw that the strip of linen round her finger was quite red.
“Your finger is bleeding, Cordélia. Have you cut it?”
“I suppose I knocked it against a piece of furniture when I woke up,” she
said between her tears.
“It’s not imagination,” I said with a tremor, unwinding the linen, for Dr.
Thurel’s explanation of the meaning of the externalization of sensibility
flashed through my mind. “No, it was not imagination, unfortunately, and
here we have the sad proof of it. When you, in mind, were at the Grand
Hotel, I burst into the room with such violence as to disturb everything, and
a knife which was on the table fell to the floor and Patrick exclaimed: ‘She
is wounded!’”
This time Cordélia rose to her feet so white-faced, that she might have
been taken for her own ghost.
“How could you think that I did not love you?” she breathed. “It’s my
heart’s blood that is flowing from the wound which you inflicted on me in
Patrick’s room. Do you understand what I mean?”[2]
[2] The following note was discovered among Hector’s papers:
In regard to pains and wounds transmitted to a subject from a distance as in the
peculiar case of the glass of water mentioned by Dr. Rochas, see also instances quoted
by Dr. Chazalin in his work on “Materializations.” Cases have been known where
violent blows have been transmitted from a distance to subjects in profound trance, in
plain daylight, with the result that these subjects have borne marks of the hand and
scratches and bruises on the face. Author’s note.

I was still on my knees, and when I heard those glorious words I clasped
her in my trembling arms and implored her to forgive me, but her mind was
possessed with some other thought, and I realized that it was this thought
which was the cause of her pallor.
“What did you say to each other afterwards?” she asked.

I was at a loss for an answer and could but stammer a falsehood.
“Swear to me, that there will be no fighting.”
I was constrained to swear that there should be no fighting, but she was
unconvinced.
“You have sworn falsely. That’s too bad of you. Never mind. I don’t want
you to fight each other. You mustn’t fight each other. I shall go with you
everywhere.”
I could have wished that she had said: “I don’t want you to fight him.”
She so managed that it was impossible for me to leave the hotel, and as I
was bent on getting rid of my adversary, once for all, I was obliged to send
Surdon to him, without her knowledge, in order to let him know what was
happening, and to request him to take upon himself the burden of providing
weapons, seconds and so forth. I asked that the duel should take place at
dawn, for I intended to slip away while Cordélia was in her morning sleep
which would not fail to be a heavy one after the excitement through which
she had passed.
Surdon came back to tell me that there was no need for me to trouble
about anything except to appear at daybreak at the Comte de C——’s
house, which stood at the far end of what are called the “public gardens.”
Cordélia had regained her composure. We strolled to the Piazzetta, and
even went as far as the Café de Florian, where we drank port to the music of
the guitar. The scene around us was one of great gaiety. I did my utmost to
appear cheerful also, but Cordélia remained gloomily wrapped in thought.
When we returned to the hotel she declared that she would not go to bed.
“I don’t believe you. You didn’t speak the truth. If I go to bed you’ll seize
the opportunity to leave the hotel and fight a duel. I don’t want you to fight
each other.”
I shrugged my shoulders to indicate that it was a matter of indifference to
me, but I was intensely annoyed. I had a wonderful and legitimate
opportunity of getting rid of the author of my misfortunes—we were to
fight with pistols, and I was certain of bringing my man down—and now
Cordélia’s obstinacy bid fair to compromise everything. Fortunately I was
able to send Surdon again to tell Patrick what was happening, for I saw no

way out of the difficulty unless he consented to send Cordélia into a
hypnotic trance so that I might be able to get away and fight him. I would
never have believed that one day I should be making an appeal of this
character to the man whose psychic powers were the cause of my troubles.
But let that pass. The whole incident shows once more that whatever
conception we may form of the world, and the relation which subsists
between spirit and matter, we are but an atom of dust dancing in a
momentary ray of the sun.
Surdon came back with a message from the Englishman that he was not
less anxious than I was for the duel to take place, and he would carry out
my wishes.
I passed a grievous night, a night which seemed interminable. The torture
of it! If I had but known what was about to happen! If I had but known!
With what dread I should have counted the minutes as they all too quickly
sped past!
Cordélia kept her word. Say and do what I might, she would not go to
bed. She lay on the sofa reading, or pretending to read. And I—I stood
watching her.
I was waiting with impatience for the event which my adversary had
promised to bring about. It occurred shortly after five o’clock in the
morning. Her eyes closed, her book fell from her hands to the floor, and her
body assumed the rigid posture which I recognized only too well.
I locked the door of the room, put the key in my pocket, and then called
Surdon. At six o’clock we arrived at the Comte de C——’s house.
Patrick had not yet come, but the doctor and the seconds were already
there. Two seconds were allotted to me. I made their acquaintance and was
entirely satisfied. The Comte de C——, who belonged to the old Venetian
nobility, was away, but he was, it seems, greatly interested in art and artists,
and had placed his house at Patrick’s disposal.
The public gardens in Venice are well known. They occupy one of the
few islets in the old city which have not been encroached upon by the
builder. Nevertheless the Comte de C——’s mansion stood there and
possessed a private entrance to the gardens after the manner of private
houses in the Monceau Gardens in Paris. Here the Comte de C—— alone

enjoyed this privilege, so that at that hour, when the gardens were closed, it
was as though we were in the Comte’s own private property.
Meantime Patrick made his appearance, unarmed, as I swore at the
Assize Court. The revolvers were in the cases which the seconds brought
with them, and which they obtained the evening before at a gunsmith’s.
Patrick had no knowledge of the weapons; at least so he declared, and I
believe him. Moreover we drew lots and agreed that the revolvers which the
seconds had brought with them should be used.
We were now in the great central walk of the gardens. I have heard that in
spring it is a lovely spot, an enchantment, with beds of roses which are
nothing short of marvelous; but it was the fall of the year, and I beheld in
the wan light of early morning a somewhat dreary place, well suited to be
the scene of a terrible tragedy.
And, indeed, the thing happened with incredible rapidity. The twenty-five
paces which were to separate us were marked out. We were to exchange
four shots. But I am a crack shot with a revolver, and I felt certain of
bringing my man down at the first attempt. I had made up my mind to it,
and I had no scruple of remorse. I felt that there was no happiness for me
with Cordélia in this world as long as Patrick was alive. Let him go to the
devil!
I was perfectly cool when the words rang out: “Fire! One ... two ...
three!” We fired almost simultaneously as the second in charge of the duel
shouted: “Two!” Patrick, however, fired in the air uttering a despairing cry.
I had already fired my shot on a level with his heart, and yet I must confess
that I was conscious that he had not uttered that cry because he was struck
by my bullet. Indeed he was not hit. To this cry another cry of unutterable
anguish went up. It sprang from my throat, and my heart, and yet I was not
hit either. The only person whose cry of agony we did not hear, was the
person who was smitten. And I swear before God and man that my cry was
torn from me by the vision of Cordélia’s form which suddenly arose
between us at the moment when our fingers were pressing the trigger; but
Patrick had the time to raise his weapon, while I fired mine.
The image vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. I swear that
Cordélia’s astral body, which until then—save in the mirror of the water,
and here I must ask myself whether I was not the sport of the water and my

imagination—had remained unseen by my physical vision, now appeared
before me quite distinctly. This phenomenon, moreover, so fully supported
the many other well-known instances where the spirit of a person has
appeared to beloved relatives at the very moment when it throws off, for
ever, its mortal covering, that I grasped the meaning of Patrick’s cry of
dismay, for he too had seen.
“Unhappy man!” he cried. “Unhappy man, what have you done!”
My hair must have stood on end with horror and both of us were
conscious only of a feeling of unspeakable dread.
Without concerning ourselves with the seconds, or making the least
explanation, we left the entire business of the duel and hurriedly flung
ourselves into a gondola. Not a word was spoken on the way. Moreover I
felt that I should go mad.
On reaching the hotel we made a rush for Cordélia’s room. Everything
seemed quiet, and precisely as I had left it. I was filled with a great hope;
and yet my hand shook so much that I was unable to put the key in the lock.
It was Patrick who opened the door.
We darted into the room. Cordélia was still lying on the sofa, but her face
already wore an unearthly look, and drops of blood stained her dressing-
gown near her throat. She had been killed by a bullet through the heart.

CHAPTER XVIII
AND NOW ...

AND now this pierced heart which the greatest thief that ever lived had
burgled from its bodily prison is all mine. I can kneel in peace before the
urn in which I have reverently enclosed it. No one can rob me of it now.
It was when it was still swayed by all the emotions of life, it was when its
ardent beating animated an adored wife, that a villain strove to make a
splendid victim of it, and to take it by force from my very arms; but now
when it is no more than a little dust and a great memory, no one will
contend with me for it.
During the terrible proceedings at the Assize Court, where the case was
regarded as the most extraordinary that had come before the ordinary
judicial bench within the memory of man, I clearly perceived that the man
who stole Cordélia’s heart no longer cared about her who had been his
victim. Not once in the course of the trial, which excited, without satisfying,
the world’s curiosity—not once did the thief cast a glance on the table in
which lay the material evidence—this sacred relic which had come from the
hands of the “experts”; while I, alas, could not remove my sorrow-stricken
eyes from it.
O heart of Cordélia, I alone loved thee! My rival was never anything but
an artist.... But I, O Cordélia, I was never anything but a poor man in love,
and I am still but a poor man in love before your dead heart as I was before
your living heart.... The little that I may have of you I am taking away. With
a trembling hand I have removed your beloved heart from its legal
receptacle to this funeral urn. It will never, I think, be stolen from me again.
I no longer feel the shadow of the thief over me. And yet in spite of my
perfect assurance of peace I have had another lock placed on the door of the
retreat to which I have withdrawn from my fellow-men.

I have endeavored in this seclusion to fulfil the chief duty which I owe to
myself and others. I have set down here the various circumstances which, to
my knowledge, preceded, paved the way for, and accompanied the terrible
tragedy. I have told in plain language how these things came to pass, even
though they may seem entirely improbable. If the reader will follow me step
by step and believe me, he will understand.
It was because the Assize Court did not believe me that they failed to
understand. And yet I did not spare myself. I took on my own shoulders the
responsibility for the whole fatal incident. Why did they not proceed against
me? I say that it was I who killed her.... The misery of it! I may rejoice to-
day that Cordélia’s heart will not again be stolen from me, because it is
dead. And it was I who killed it. I shout it aloud and I repeat: Do not doubt
it since I myself no longer doubt it.
The preliminary investigation took some time, and was postponed by the
illness which came upon me as a result of the tragedy. When I was in a
position to give evidence I found that the authorities were on the wrong
scent as was to be expected.
Surdon, for instance, was arrested on the plea that he possessed a
revolver from which one bullet had been discharged. It was alleged that he
had made his way into his mistress’s room while she was asleep in order to
steal her jewelry.
This was so much obtuseness and stupidity, and how could it be
otherwise? The judges were confronted with the case of a woman killed by
a bullet through the heart in a room every part of which was closed, the
windows being shut on the inside and the door locked.
The most amazing thing was that a minute search failed to reveal the
bullet. It had passed through the body, but it could not be found either in the
sofa or walls. I myself knew where the bullet was. It was somewhere in the
public gardens in Venice.
The police were obliged to release Surdon, but they afterwards arrested
Patrick and kept him in custody until the trial at the Assize Court. A post-
mortem examination was held, and the expert’s report showed that death
was caused not by a shot from a revolver, but by a shot from a pistol of the

same bore as that of the pistols which Patrick had procured for use at the
duel.
As the magisterial enquiries proved that Patrick was prowling round the
Hotel Danieli during the night preceding and the morning of the duel,
nothing more was needed to enable the authorities to accuse him of having
entered Cordélia’s room at the hotel by means of some master key, or some
key that he managed to obtain beforehand from an accommodating servant
whom he had bribed to assist him in his nefarious purpose. He had shot
Cordélia out of jealousy to prevent her from belonging to another if he were
killed in the duel.... It was simple.... How very simple it was!... Poor human
nature!
The trouble was that a pistol shot causes a concussion, and no one in the
hotel had heard the least sound.
In vain Patrick denied the charge, recounting stories about the power of
suggestion and the communion of minds which made the Court laugh. The
reason for his presence near the Hotel Danieli on this particular night was
that I had requested him to send Cordélia to sleep so that she should not
interfere with our plan to fight each other, and Cordélia could only be
influenced by suggestion within a limited distance.
When I corroborated his statement, and gave it as my opinion that
Cordélia had been killed in the Hotel Danieli by a shot fired by me in the
public gardens in Venice, the judges ceased to smile and evinced
considerable wrath. I was looked upon as a madman by some, and a fool by
others, and these people were greatly incensed with me for not joining them
in crushing Patrick. Cordélia’s father could not forgive me for it, and left
me to myself with contempt.
The press agencies reported the result as far as Patrick was concerned in
a few lines. The material proofs were too slight to justify a conviction, and
the jury acquitted him in spite of the efforts of the public prosecutor.
Had the European political situation been less troubled, and had the trial
not taken place in a foreign country, the facts would not have failed to
create a tremendous sensation, as they deserved, for they brought the
judicial bench face to face with the greatest conceivable drama, namely that
which is enacted between the seen and the unseen worlds.

Those dullards were utterly nonplused. I can still picture to myself their
look of confusion when Dr. Thurel, who was called as a witness for the
defense, explained that it was not absolutely impossible, from the scientific
standpoint, for Cordélia to have been killed by a bullet which struck her
astral body in the public gardens in Venice. That is what Dr. Thurel called
death by astral traumatism....
There is a Latin phrase which expresses it, a phrase which was in use in
the Middle Ages, but I cannot call it to mind.

CHAPTER XIX
THE LAST VISIT

O CORDÉLIA, you died by my hand! If I still live, be assured that it is by
way of atonement. How often have I conjured up your image before the
mortal remains of your heart! How often have I called to you! But you have
never come to me!
For many days I was unable to add a word to these lines, and I remained,
as it were, paralyzed by the inscrutable mystery of life and death, when one
day the door of my cell was opened, and a man came in. It was Patrick. He
was but the shadow of his former self.
I thrust myself before the urn which contained my beloved’s heart. He
understood me and gave a bitter smile.
“Have no fear,” he said, “I leave it to you. What is her earthly heart to
me? I possess her heart which is in Heaven.”
I rose to my feet staggering like a drunken man under his words which
filled me with an agony of jealousy.
“What do you mean?” I asked hoarsely. “Do you still see Cordélia?”
He shook his head.
“Calm yourself, I do not see her,” he made answer. “She is too remote
from us, and I have never believed in spirits of the dead revisiting this
world. When I say that I possess her heart which is in Heaven, I mean that I
did possess it. Death has deprived me of it,” he went on in somber, intense
tones, “but death will restore it to me.”
“No more of that,” I exclaimed. “What has all this to do with me?”
“Well, if you look upon it in that light I don’t know why I am here.”
“Nor I.”

“I came to you, monsieur,” he said in a voice of wonderful dignity, “to
ask you if you have any message for her, for she loved you sincerely—you
too!”
“She loved me only,” I asserted, yet strangely perturbed by his manner
and words.
He sighed and shook his head once more.
“You thought so, but that was impossible,” he objected gently, “otherwise
she would still be of this world.”
“So it was you who killed her, or at least were responsible for her death?
I always thought so!”
“It was you and I. It was both of us,” he declared in a tone of great
dejection. “Yes, I, on my side, was to blame. I was too eager in my frenzy,
in my longing for her spirit, in the love which consumed me for her ego, to
separate her mind from her body, but you—you were too eager to separate
her body from her mind. We were marching toward an inevitable
catastrophe.”
His words struck me like a sword, and I did not interrupt him.
“It shows,” he went on, turning toward the door, “that we can only give
happiness to a being of this world if we bring to her a well-balanced mind
which we were unable to do. Had Cordélia met a little of you and a little of
me, in one and the same man, she would have been happy; at least I like to
think so. But where she is now her spirit needs only her mind. I am going to
her!... Farewell, monsieur!”

I read this morning in the newspapers the announcement of Patrick’s
death. It shall not be said that I allowed him to pursue Cordélia at his will. I
hear her calling me: “Save me, Hector! Save me!”
I, too, intend to become a pure spirit, and the sooner to achieve my
purpose, I shall make the same journey as Cordélia, and by the same route.
Though Patrick set out first he will arrive too late. He will be deceived. The
heart of Cordélia points the way that lies before me. The bullet will enter
my heart at the same spot at which it pierced Cordélia’s heart. I shall

breathe the same sigh which will lead me to the same point in space where
she awaits me.... I am persuaded of it!...
Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!

A TERRIBLE TALE
CAPTAIN MICHEL had but one arm, which he found useful when he lit
his pipe. He was an old sea dog whose acquaintance, with that of four other
old salts, I made one evening on the open front of a café in the Vieille
Darse, Toulon, where I was taking an appetizer. And in this way we fell into
the habit of foregathering over a glass within a stone’s throw of the rippling
waves and the swinging dingeys, about the hour when the sun sinks behind
Tamaris.
The four old marines were known as Zinzin, Dorat—Captain Dorat—
Bagatelle, and Chanlieu—that old fellow Chanlieu. They had, of course,
sailed every sea and met with a thousand adventures; and now that they
were retired on their pensions, they spent their time telling each other
terrible tales.
Captain Michel alone never indulged in any reminiscences. And as he
seemed in no way surprised by anything he heard, his old comrades in the
end grew exasperated with him.
“Look here, Captain Michel, hasn’t anything out of the way ever
happened to you?”
“Oh, yes,” the captain made answer, taking his pipe from his mouth.
“Yes, something happened to me once—just once.”
“Well, let’s have it.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s too awful. You might not be able to stand it. I’ve often tried
to tell the story but people have slipped away before I finished it.”
The four sea dogs vied with each other in the loudness of their guffaws,
declaring that Captain Michel was trying to find some excuse, because in
reality, nothing extraordinary had ever happened to him.

The old fellow stared at them a moment, and then suddenly accepting the
situation, laid his pipe on the table. This unusual gesture was in itself
startling!
“Messieurs, I’ll tell you how I lost my arm,” he began.
“In those days—some twenty years ago—I owned a small villa, in the
suburb of Le Mourillon, which had been left to me, for my family were
long settled in these parts and I myself was born here.
“It suited me to take a little rest after a long voyage and before setting
sail again. For that matter, I rather liked the place, and lived quite peaceably
among sea-faring men and colonials who troubled me very little, and whom
I rarely saw, occupied as they were as a rule in opium-smoking with their
lady friends, or with other business which did not concern me. Of course
there is no accounting for tastes, but as long as they didn’t interfere with
me, I was satisfied....
“It so happened that one night they did interfere with my habit of going
to sleep. I was awakened with a start by an extraordinary uproar, the
meaning of which I couldn’t possibly make out. I had left my window open
as usual. I listened in a state of bewilderment to a tremendous din, which
was a cross between the rumbling of thunder and the roll of a drum, but
such a drum! It was as though a couple of hundred drumsticks were being
madly beaten, not on ordinary drum-skin, but on a wooden drum.
“The disturbance came from the villa opposite, which had been empty for
some five years, and on which I had noticed, the previous evening, a board
bearing the announcement: ‘To be sold.’
“I let my gaze stray from the window of my bedroom, on the first floor,
beyond the small garden in which the house stood, and my eye took in
every door and window, even the doors and windows on the ground floor.
They were still closed as I had seen them during the day; but I caught sight
of gleams of light through the chinks in the shutters on the ground floor.
Who and what were these people? How had they found their way into this
solitary house at the far end of Le Mourillon? What sort of company was it
that had obtained admission into this deserted dwelling, and why were they
kicking up such a shindy?

“The extraordinary din, like the thunderous beating of a wooden drum,
continued. It went on for another hour, and then as dawn was breaking, the
front door opened, and there appeared in the doorway the most radiant
creature that I have ever beheld. She was clad in a low-necked dress, and
held with perfect grace a lamp whose beams fell over the shoulders of a
goddess. I distinctly heard her say in the echoing night, while a kind and
quiet smile flickered across her face:
“‘Good-bye, dear friend, till next year.’
“To whom was she speaking? It was impossible for me to tell for I could
see no one standing beside her. She remained at the entrance holding the
lamp for some minutes, until the garden gate opened by itself and closed by
itself. Then the front door of the house was shut in its turn, and I saw
nothing more.
“It seemed to me that I was either losing my head or was the sport of a
dream, for I knew that it was out of the question for any one to pass through
the garden without my perceiving him.
“I was still planted at the window, incapable of the least movement or
thought, when the door of the house opened a second time, and the same
vision of beauty appeared still carrying a lamp and still alone.
“‘Hush,’ she said, ‘don’t make a noise, any of you. We mustn’t disturb
our neighbor opposite. I’ll come with you.’
“And silently and alone she crossed the garden and stopped at the gate on
which the full rays of the lamp shone; so much so, indeed, that I clearly saw
the knob of the gate turn of its own accord without any hand being placed
upon it. And the gate opened once again by itself in the presence of this
woman who, moreover, did not evince any surprise. Need I explain that
from where I was posted, I could see both in front and behind the gate; in
other words, that I saw it sideways?
“This ‘splendid apparition’ made a charming movement of her head
toward the empty darkness which the glare of the lamp made visible; then
she smiled and said:
“‘Well, good-bye until next year. My husband is very pleased. Not a
single one of you failed to answer the call. Good-bye, messieurs.’

“And I heard several voices in unison:
“‘Good-bye, madame, good-bye, dear madame, until next year.’
“And as the mysterious hostess was preparing to close the door herself, I
heard a voice:
“‘Oh, please, don’t trouble.’
“And the door was once more closed.
“The next moment the air was filled with a curious sound; it was like the
chirping of a flock of birds, and it seemed as if this beautiful woman had
opened the cage of a whole brood of house sparrows.
“She quietly walked back to the house. The lights on the ground floor
were then out, but I noticed a glimmer in the windows of the first floor.
“When she reached the house she said:
“‘Are you upstairs, Gérard?’
“I could not hear the answer, but the front door was again closed, and a
few minutes later the light on the first floor went out.
“I was still standing at my window at eight o’clock in the morning,
staring in blank amazement at the house and garden which had revealed
such strange happenings in darkness, and which now in the full light of day
assumed their familiar aspect. The garden was a waste, and the house itself
seemed as desolate as it was the day before.
“So much so, indeed, that when I told my old charwoman who had just
come, of the queer events which I had witnessed, she tapped my forehead
with her dirty forefinger and muttered that I had smoked one pipe too many.
Now I have never been a smoker of opium, and her answer gave me a good
opportunity of sacking the old sloven whom I had for some time wanted to
get rid of, and who came for a couple of hours each day to ‘clean up’ the
place for me. For that matter I did not need any one, as I was setting sail
again next day.
“I barely had time to put my things together, make a few purchases, say
farewell to my friends, and catch the train for Havre. I had fixed up an
appointment with the Transatlantic company which would keep me away
from Toulon for some eleven or twelve months.

“In due course I returned to Toulon, but though I had refrained from
mentioning my adventure to a soul, I still continued to think of it. The
vision of the lady of the lamp obsessed me wherever I went, and the last
words which she uttered to her unseen friends still rang in my ears:
“‘Well, good-bye until next year.’
“And I never ceased to think of the meeting. I, too, was determined to be
there and to discover, at whatever cost, the solution of a mystery which was
intensely perplexing to a sensible man like myself, who did not believe in
ghosts or phantom vessels.
“Unfortunately I was soon to learn that neither heaven nor hell was
concerned in the terrible story.
“It was six o’clock in the evening when I set foot again in my house at
Toulon; and it was two days before the anniversary of the wonderful night.
“The first thing that I did on going inside was to run up to my room and
open the window. It was summer and broad daylight, and my eyes at once
fell upon a lady of great beauty who was placidly walking about gathering
flowers in the garden of the house opposite. At the noise made by the
opening window she looked up.
“It was the lady of the lamp. I recognized her, and she seemed not less
beautiful by day than by night. Her skin was as white as the teeth of an
African nigger, her eyes bluer than the waters at Tamaris, her hair as soft
and fair as the finest flax.
“Why should I not make the confession? When I beheld this woman of
whom I had been dreaming for a year, a strange feeling came over me. She
was no illusion of a diseased imagination. She stood before me in the flesh;
and every window of the house was open and flower-bedecked by her
hands. There was nothing fantastic in all this.
“She caught sight of me and at once displayed some degree of
annoyance. She walked a few steps farther in the center path of the garden,
and then shrugging her shoulders as though she were disconcerted said:
“‘Let’s go in, Gérard. I’m beginning to feel the coolness of the night.’
“I let my gaze stray round the garden. I could perceive no one. To whom
was she speaking?... Nobody there!

“Then was she mad? It scarcely seemed so.
“I watched her return to the house. She passed into it, the door was
closed, and she at once shut the windows.
“I did not see or hear anything worth noticing that night. Next morning at
ten o’clock I observed my neighbor leaving the garden attired as if for a
walk. She locked the gate after her and set out in the direction of Toulon.
“I started off in my turn. Pointing to the fashionably dressed figure in
front of me I asked the first tradesman whom I met if he knew the lady’s
name.
“‘Why, of course. She’s your neighbor. She is living with her husband at
the Villa Makoko. They moved in about a year ago, just as you went away.
They are regular boors. They never speak to anybody, unless it’s absolutely
necessary, but every one in Le Mourillon, as you know, goes his own way,
and is never surprised at anything. The captain for one....’
“‘What captain?’
“‘Captain Gérard. It seems he is an ex-captain of marines. Well, no one
ever sees him.... Sometimes when food has to be delivered at the house, and
the lady is not in, some person shouts out an order from behind the door to
leave the stuff on the step, and waits until you are a good distance away
before taking it in.’
“You can imagine that I was growing more and more puzzled. I went to
Toulon in order to ask the agent who let the villa a few questions about
these people. He, likewise, had never seen the husband, but he told me that
his name was Gérard Beauvisage.
“When I heard the name I uttered a cry: ‘Gérard Beauvisage! Why I
know him!’
“I had an old friend of that name whom I had not seen for twenty-five
years. He was an officer in the marines and had left Toulon for Tonkin
about that period. How could I doubt that it was he? At all events, I had a
straightforward reason for calling on him, that very evening, though he was
expecting a visit from his friends, for it was the anniversary of the famous
night. I made up my mind to renew my old friendship with him.

“When I got back to Le Mourillon I espied in front of me, in the sunk
road leading to the Villa Makoko, the figure of my neighbor. I did not
hesitate, but hastened to overtake her.
“‘Have I the honor of speaking to Madame Beauvisage, the wife of
Captain Gérard Beauvisage?’ I asked with a bow.
“She colored and tried to pass on without answering me.
“‘Madame, I am your neighbor, Captain Michel Alban,’ I persisted.
“‘Oh, please forgive me, monsieur,’ she returned, ‘my husband has often
spoken of you ... Captain Michel Alban....’
“She seemed terribly ill at ease, and yet in her confusion she was more
beautiful than ever, if that were possible. In spite of her obvious desire to
elude me I went on:
“‘How comes it that Captain Beauvisage has returned to France without
letting his old friend know? I shall be particularly obliged if you will tell
Gérard that I’m coming to shake hands with him this very evening.’
“And observing that she was hastening her steps, I bowed, but as I was
speaking she turned round, betraying an agitation which was more and
more difficult to comprehend.
“‘Impossible to-night.... I promise to tell Gérard of our meeting. That’s
the most I can do. Gérard doesn’t wish to see any one—any one. He lives
alone.... We live alone.... And we took the house because we were told that
the next house was occupied only for a few days once or twice a year by
some one who is never seen!...’
“And she added in a voice tinged with sadness:
“‘You must forgive Gérard, monsieur. We do not receive any one—any
one. Good day, monsieur.’
“‘Madame, the Captain and you receive friends occasionally,’ I returned
with some impatience. ‘For instance, to-night you are expecting friends
with whom you made an appointment a year ago.’
“She flushed scarlet.

“‘Oh, but that’s an exceptional case ... that’s an absolutely exceptional
case.... They are our very particular friends.’
“Having said which she made her escape, but at once stopped her retreat
and turned back.
“‘Whatever you do, don’t call to-night,’ she entreated, and disappeared
into the garden.
“I returned to my house and began to keep watch on my neighbors. They
did not show themselves, and long before it was dark I saw the shutters
being closed and lights gleaming through the openings, such as I had seen
on that amazing night a year ago. But I did not hear the same extraordinary
din like the thunderous beating of a wooden drum.
“At seven o’clock I began to dress for I called to mind the low-necked
robe worn by the lady of the lamp. Madame Beauvisage’s last words had
but strengthened my determination. The captain was seeing some of his
friends that evening; he dared not refuse me admission. After dressing it
crossed my mind, before I went downstairs, to put my revolver in my
pocket, but in the end I left it in its place, considering that to take it would
be an act of stupidity.
“The stupidity lay in not taking it with me.
“On reaching the entrance to the Villa Makoko I turned the handle of the
gate on the off chance—the handle which last year I had seen turn by itself.
And to my intense surprise the door opened. Therefore my neighbors were
expecting visitors. I walked up to the house and knocked at the door.
“‘Come in!’ a voice cried.
“I recognized Gérard’s voice. I walked gaily into the house. I passed first
through the hall, and then as the door of a small drawing-room stood open,
and the room was lit up, I entered it.
“‘Gérard it’s me,’ I exclaimed, ‘your old pal Michel Alban.’
“‘Oh, really, so you made up your mind to come, my dear old Michel! I
told my wife only just now that you would come and I should be glad to see
you.... But you are the only one, apart from our particular friends.... Do you
know, my dear Michel, you haven’t altered much....’

“It would be impossible for me to describe my stupefaction. I heard
Gérard, but I could not see him. His voice rang in my ears, but no one was
near me, no one was in the drawing-room. The Voice went on:
“‘Sit down, won’t you? My wife will soon be here, for she will remember
that she left me on the mantelpiece!’
“I looked up, and then discovered above me ... above me resting on a
high mantelpiece—a bust.
“It was this bust which had been speaking. It resembled Gérard. It was
Gérard’s body. It had been placed there as people are wont to place busts on
mantelpieces. It was a bust like those carved by sculptors, that is to say, it
was without arms.
“‘I can’t shake hands with you, my dear Michel,’ the voice went on, ‘for
as you see I have no hands, but if you raise yourself on tiptoe you will be
able to take me in your arms and place me on the table. My wife put me up
here in a moment of temper, because she said I was in the way when she
swept the room. She’s a funny thing is my wife.’
“And the bust burst out laughing.
“It seemed to me that I was the victim of an optical illusion as happens in
those entertainments where you behold living heads and shoulders
suspended in mid-air, the result of tricks with mirrors; but after setting
down my friend on the table, as he requested, I had to admit that this head
and body without arms or legs was indeed all that remained of the excellent
officer whom I had known in days gone by. His body was resting on a small
wheeled platform, such as are used by cripples without legs, but Gérard did
not possess even the stumps of legs which can be seen in the case of most
cripples. To think that my old friend was nothing but a bust!
“Small hooks took the place of arms, and language fails me to describe
how, leaning for support on a hook here, or on another there, he set to work
to hop, skip and jump and perform a hundred swift movements which shot
him from the table to a chair, from a chair to the floor, and then suddenly
made him appear on the table once more, where he indulged in the gayest
chatter.
“Myself, I was in a state of consternation. I was rendered speechless. I
watched this freak perform his antics and say with a chuckle which alarmed

me:
“‘I have greatly changed I daresay. You must admit, my dear Michel, that
you hardly recognize me. You did quite right to call this evening. We shall
see some sport. We have a few very special friends, and, you know, apart
from them I don’t care to meet any one—merely as a matter of pride. We
don’t even keep a servant. Wait for me here. I must get into my smoking
jacket.’
“He went off, and almost at once the lady of the lamp appeared. She wore
the same low-necked dress of the year before. As soon as her eyes fell upon
me, she seemed strangely perturbed, and said in a strained voice:
“‘Oh, so you are here! You’ve made a mistake, Captain Michel. I gave
your message to my husband, but I forbade you to call this evening. I may
tell you that when he learnt that you were in this place, he asked me to
invite you this evening, but I did no such thing because,’ she went on, ill at
ease, ‘I had good reasons. We have certain very particular friends who are
rather a worry—they are very fond of noise—uproar. You must have heard
them last year,’ she added, giving me a look out of the corner of her eye.
‘Well, promise me to leave early.’
“‘I promise to leave early, madame,’ I returned, and yet a vague
misgiving took possession of me at this conversation, the meaning of which
I was far from understanding. ‘I promise you faithfully, but can you tell me
how it is that I find my old friend in such a state? What terrible accident
happened to him?’
“‘None at all, monsieur, none.’
“‘What do you mean, “none at all”? Don’t you know anything about the
accident which deprived him of arms and legs? Yet he must have met with it
since your marriage.’
“‘No, monsieur, no. I married the captain as he is now.... But excuse me,
our guests will be here presently, and I must help my husband to put on his
smoking jacket.’
“She left me to myself, dazed by the one stupefying thought: ‘She
married the captain as he is now!’ and almost at once I heard sounds in the
hall, the curious sounds which had accompanied the lady of the lamp to the
garden gate and baffled me last year. This noise was followed by the

appearance, on their wheeled platforms, of four cripples without arms or
legs who stared at me in wonder. They were all attired in perfectly-fitting
evening dress with snow-white shirt fronts.
“One wore gold-rimmed pince-nez, another, an old man, spectacles, the
third a single eyeglass, and the fourth was content to gaze at me out of his
own proud, shrewd eyes with an expression of boredom. All four, however,
saluted me with their little hooks, and asked after Captain Beauvisage. I
told them that he was dressing, and Madame Beauvisage was quite well.
When I took the liberty of speaking of Madame Beauvisage, I caught an
exchange of glances between them which seemed to embody a certain
raillery.
“‘Haw, haw, I presume you are a great friend of our good old captain,’
drawled the cripple with the monocle.
“The others smiled with a look which was by no means pleasant, and
then they all started to talk in the same breath:
“‘Sorry, sorry, monsieur.... We are quite naturally surprised to meet you at
the house of the good old captain, who swore on his wedding day to shut
himself up in the country with his wife, and not to receive any one—any
one but his very special friends, you understand. When one is so thoroughly
a cripple as the captain consented to be, and is married to such a beautiful
woman, it is quite natural—quite natural. But, after all, if in the course of
his life he met a man of honor who does not happen to be a cripple, we’re
glad of it.... We congratulate you.’
“And they repeated: ‘We’re glad of it.... We congratulate you.’
“Lord how odd they were, these dwarfs! I watched them and held my
peace. Others arrived in twos and threes and so on. And they all
contemplated me with a look of surprise or uneasiness or irony. For my part
I was rendered speechless by the spectacle of so many cripples without
arms or legs; for after all I was beginning to see through most of the
extraordinary happenings which had so greatly stirred my mind; and though
the cripples, by their presence, explained many things, the presence of the
cripples still required explanation, as also did the monstrous union of that
splendid woman with that awful shred of humanity.

“True, I realized now that these little ambulating trunks were bound to
pass unperceived by me in the narrow garden path lined with verbena, and
the road running between two low hedges; and, truth to tell, when at the
time I said to myself that it was impossible to avoid seeing any person
going down those paths, I had in mind persons who would be standing
upright on their two legs.
“The handle of the garden gate itself no longer puzzled me, and in my
mind’s eye I saw the invisible hook which had turned it.
“The peculiar noise which I heard was but the creaking made by the
small badly oiled wheels of these cars for freaks. Finally, the extraordinary
sound like the thunderous beating of a wooden drum, was obviously caused
by the many cars and hooks striking the floor when, after an excellent
dinner, our friends the cripples indulged in a dance.
“Yes, all this was capable of explanation, but I was conscious as I caught
a curious eager gleam in their eyes, and heard the peculiar sound of their
nippers, that something terrible still remained to be cleared up, and that all
else which had surprised me was of no account.
“Meanwhile Madame Beauvisage promptly appeared, accompanied by
her husband. They were greeted with shouts of delight. The little hooks
‘applauded’ them with an infernal din. I was deafened by it. Then I was
introduced. Cripples were all over the place: on the tables, chairs, stools, on
stands usually occupied by vases, on the sideboard. One of them sat on the
shelf of a dresser like a Buddha in his recess. And each one politely held out
his hook to me. They seemed for the most part people of good position,
with titles and names indicating their relationship to aristocratic families,
but I learned afterwards that these were false names given to me for reasons
which will be obvious. Lord Wilmer certainly maintained the best front of
them all, with his fine golden beard and no less fine mustache which he
continually stroked with his hook. He did not leap from chair to table like
the others, nor did he have the air of a huge bat taking wing from wall to
wall.

“‘We are only waiting for the doctor,’ said the mistress of the house, who
every now and then gave me a look of obvious gloom, but quickly resumed
her smile for her guests.

“The doctor arrived. He was a cripple but he possessed both arms.
“He offered one of them to Madame Beauvisage and led her to the
dining-room. I mean that she touched his arm with the tips of her fingers.
“Covers were laid in the room with the closed shutters. The table, which
was laden with flowers and hors d’œuvre, was illuminated by a large
candelabrum. There was no fruit. The dozen cripples at once leapt upon
their chairs and began to pick greedily from the dishes with their hooks. It
was not a pleasant sight, and I marveled at the voracity with which these
trunks of men, who seemed just before so well-mannered, devoured their
food.
“And then suddenly they quietened down; their hooks kept still, and it
seemed to me that they lapsed into what is usually described as a ‘painful
silence.’
“Every eye was turned on Madame Beauvisage, whose husband sat by
her side, and I noticed that she buried her face in her napkin, looking very
uncomfortable. Then my friend Gérard, clapping one hook against the other
with a flourish, said:
“‘Well, my dear old friends, it can’t be helped. One doesn’t meet the luck
of last year every day. But don’t distress yourselves. With the exercise of a
little imagination we shall succeed in being as merry as we were then....’
“And turning to me as he lifted the small handle of the glass which stood
on the table before him:
“‘Your health my dear Michel. To us all!’
“And each man raised his glass by its handle with the end of his hook.
The glasses swung over the table in the quaintest fashion.
“My host went on:
“‘You don’t seem to be equal to the occasion, my dear Michel. I have
known you in merrier mood, more up to the mark. Is it because we are “like
this” that you are so gloomy? What do you expect? We are what we are. But
let us have some amusement. We are met together here, all of us very
special friends, to celebrate the time when we became “like this.” Is that not
true my friends of the Daphné?...’

“Then my old comrade,” Captain Michel went on to explain, heaving a
deep sigh, “told us how the Daphné, which sailed between France and the
Far East, was wrecked; how the crew escaped in the boats, and how these
miserable people took refuge on a chance raft.
“Miss Madge, a beautiful young girl who lost her parents in the
catastrophe, was also picked up by the raft. Some thirteen persons in all
were on it, and at the end of three days the victuals were consumed, and at
the end of a week the survivors were dying of hunger. It was then that, as
the old song says, they agreed to draw lots as to ‘which should be eaten.’
“Messieurs,” added Captain Michel, in a serious voice, “such things have
happened more often perhaps than they have been talked about, for the
great blue waters close over these peculiar feats of digestion.
“They were on the point, therefore, of drawing lots on the raft when the
doctor’s voice was heard: ‘Mesdames and Messieurs,’ said the doctor, ‘you
have lost all your belongings in the wreck of the ship, but I have saved my
case of instruments and my forceps for arresting hemorrhage. This is my
suggestion: There is no object in any one of us running the risk of being
eaten as a whole. Let us, to begin with, draw lots for an arm or leg at will,
and we will then see to-morrow what the day brings forth, and perhaps a
sail may appear on the horizon.’”
At this point in Captain Michel’s story the four old salts, who up to this
had not interrupted, cried:
“Well done!”
“What do you mean ‘well done’?” asked Captain Michel with a frown.
“Yes, ‘well done!’ Your story is a good joke. These people were ready to
lose an arm or leg in turn.... That’s a good joke, but there’s nothing frightful
about it.”
“So you really find it a good joke!” growled the Captain, bristling with
annoyance. “Well, I swear that if you had been seated among all those
cripples whose eyes were bulging like live coal, and heard the story, you
wouldn’t have found it such a good joke.... And if you had noticed how
restless they were in their chairs! And how vigorously they clasped hooks
across the table with an obvious delight which I couldn’t make out, but
which was none the less frightful for all that.”

“No, no,” broke in Chanlieu once more—that old fellow Chanlieu
—“your story is not in the least frightful. It is funny simply because it is
logical. Would you like me to tell you the end of the story? You shall say
whether I am right or not. The people on the raft drew lots. The lot fell to
Miss Madge who was to lose one of her beautiful limbs. Your friend the
captain, who is a gentleman, offered his own instead, and he had his four
limbs amputated so that Miss Madge should remain unscathed.”
“Yes, old man, you’ve got it. That is so,” exclaimed Captain Michel, who
felt a longing to break the heads of these imbeciles who treated his story as
a good joke. “Yes, and what’s more, when it was a question of cutting off
Miss Madge’s limbs after the survivors, except the young lady and the
doctor—who had been left with both arms because they were wanted—had
lost all their limbs, Captain Beauvisage had the pluck to have the poor
stumps left from the first operation, cut off on a level with his body.”
“And the young lady could do no other than offer the Captain her hand
which he had so heroically saved,” interposed Zinzin.
“Why, of course,” growled the Captain in his beard. “And you consider it
a good joke!”
“Did they eat all those limbs quite raw?” inquired that ass of a Bagatelle.
Captain Michel struck the table such a resounding blow that the glasses
danced like rubber balls.
“That’ll do, shut up,” he exclaimed. “All that I’ve told you is nothing.
Now comes the frightful part of it.”
The four friends looked at each other smiling, and Captain Michel grew
pale, whereupon seeing that they had carried matters too far they hung their
heads.
“Yes, the frightful part of it,” went on Michel with his gloomiest air, “was
that these people who were only rescued a month later by a Chinese sailing
vessel which landed them somewhere on the Yang-Tse-Kiang where they
separated—the frightful part of it was that these people retained a taste for
human flesh, and when they returned to Europe arranged to meet together
once a year to renew as far as possible the abominable banquet. Well,
messieurs, it did not take me long to find that out! First of all there was the
scarcely enthusiastic reception accorded to certain dishes, which Madame

Beauvisage herself brought to the table. Though she ventured to claim, but
with no great assurance, that they were pretty nearly the same thing, the
guests were of one mind in abstaining from congratulating her. Only certain
slices of tunny-fish were received with any sort of favor, because they were,
to use the doctor’s terrible expression, ‘well cut,’ and, ‘if the flavor was not
entirely satisfactory at all events the eye was deceived.’ But the cripple with
the spectacles met with general approval when he declared that ‘it was not
equal to the plumber.’
“When I heard those words I felt my blood run cold,” growled Captain
Michel huskily, “for I remembered that about this time the year before a
plumber had fallen from a roof near the Arsenal and was killed, and his
body was picked up minus an arm.
“Then ... O then ... I could not help thinking of the part which my
beautiful neighbor must, of necessity, have played in this horrible, culinary
drama, I turned my eyes to her and I noticed that she had put on her gloves
again, gloves which covered her arms to the shoulder, and also hastily
thrown a wrap over her shoulders which wholly concealed them. The guest
on my right, who was the doctor, and, as I have said, was the only man
among the cripples with both arms intact, had also put on his gloves.
“Instead of bothering my head in vain to discover the reason of this fresh
eccentricity, I should have done better to follow the advice which Madame
Beauvisage gave me at the beginning of this infernal party, namely, to leave
the place early—advice which she did not repeat.
“After showing an interest in me during the first part of this amazing
feast in which I seemed to discern—I don’t know why—a sort of pity,
Madame Beauvisage now avoided looking at me and took a part which
greatly grieved me in the most frightful conversation which I have ever
heard. These little people with a vigorous clatter of nippers and clinking of
glasses indulged in bitter recriminations or warm congratulations with
regard to their peculiar appetite.
“To my horror Lord Wilmer, who until then had been most correct, nearly
‘came to hooks’ with the cripple with the monocle, because the latter had
once on the raft complained of the former being tough, and the mistress of
the house had the greatest difficulty in putting things in their true light by
retorting to the monocled bust, who was obviously at the time of the

shipwreck a good-looking stripling, that neither was it particularly
agreeable to have to put up with ‘an animal that was too young.’”
“That’s also funny,” the old salt Dorat could not help interjecting.
It looked as if Captain Michel would fly at his throat, particularly as the
three other mariners seemed to be shaking with inward joy and gave vent to
queer little clucks. It was as much as the Captain could do to control
himself. After puffing like a seal he turned to the foolhardy Dorat:
“Monsieur you have two arms still, and I have no wish for you to lose
one of them, as I did on that particular night, to make you see the frightful
part of the story. The cripples had drunk a great deal. Some of them jumped
on the table round me, and were gazing at my arms in a very embarrassing
manner and I ended by hiding them from sight as far as possible by
thrusting my hands deep into my pockets.
“I realized then, and it was a startling thought, why Madame Beauvisage
and the doctor, the two persons who still had arms and hands, did not show
them. I grasped the meaning of the sudden ferocity which blazed in the eyes
of some of them. And at that very moment, as luck would have it, I wanted
to use my pocket handkerchief, and instinctively I made a movement which
revealed the whiteness of my skin under my sleeve, and three terrible hooks
swooped down at once on my wrist and entered my flesh. I uttered a fearful
shriek.”
“That’ll do, Captain, that’ll do,” I exclaimed, interrupting Captain
Michel’s story. “You were quite right. I’m off. I can’t stand any more.”
“Stay, monsieur,” said the Captain in a peremptory tone. “Stay, monsieur,
for I shall soon finish this frightful story which has made four imbeciles
laugh. When a man has Phocean blood in his veins,” he added with an
accent of unspeakable contempt turning to the four ancient mariners who
were obviously choking in their efforts to keep back their laughter, “when a
man has Phocean blood in his veins, he can’t get over it.
“And when a man lives in Marseilles he is doomed never to believe in
anything. So it is for you, for you alone, monsieur, that I am telling this
story, and, be assured, I will pass over the most loathsome details, knowing
as I do how much the mind of a gentleman can bear. The tragedy of my
martyrdom proceeded so quickly that I can call to mind only their inhuman

cries, the protests of some and the rush of others while Madame Beauvisage
stood up and murmured:
“‘Be careful not to hurt him!’
“I tried to leap to my feet, but by this time a posse of mad cripples was
round me who tripped me up and I crashed to the floor. And I felt their
awful hooks hold my flesh captive just as the meat in a butcher’s shop is
held captive on its hooks.
“Yes, monsieur, I will spare you the details. I pledged you my word; all
the more so as I couldn’t give them to you, for I did not see the operation.
The doctor clapped a plug of cotton wool steeped in chloroform on my
mouth by way of a gag.
“When I came to myself I was in the kitchen, and I had lost an arm. The
cripples were all around me. They had ceased their wrangling. They seemed
to be united in the most touching harmony; in reality they were in a state of
dazed intoxication which caused them to sway their heads like children who
feel the need to go and lie down after eating their fill, and I had not a doubt
but that they were beginning, alas! to digest me.... I was stretched at full
length on the floor, securely bound, and deprived of all power of movement,
but I could both see and hear them. My old comrade, Gérard Beauvisage,
had tears of joy in his eyes as he exclaimed:
“‘I should never have thought you would be so tender!’
“Madame Beauvisage was not present, but she, too, must have taken part
in the feast, for I heard some one ask Gérard how ‘she liked her share.’
“Yes, monsieur, I have finished my story. I have finished my story. Those
loathsome cripples having satisfied their weakness, must have at last
realized the full extent of their iniquity. They made themselves scarce, and
Madame Beauvisage, of course, escaped with them. They left the doors
wide open but no one came to set me free until four days afterwards, when I
was pretty well dead with hunger....
“Those miserable wretches had not even left the bone behind!”

THE GOLD AXE
MANY years ago I was at Gersau, a small health resort on the Lake of the
Four Forest Cantons, a few miles from Lucerne. I wanted to complete
certain work, and I had arranged to spend the autumn in the quiet of this
delightful village whose ancient pointed roofs were reflected in the
romantic waters of the lake on which William Tell sailed in days of old.
It was the end of autumn, and tourists had scattered, while the many
hideous Tartarins who had descended upon us from Germany with their
alpenstocks, their puttees and their little round hats decked with the
indispensable feather, had returned to their lager beer, their sauerkraut and
their “big concerts,” leaving the country between Pilatus, the Mythen and
the Rigi free to us at last.
Not more than half-a-dozen of us foregathered in the hotel at meal time,
and when evening came related our experiences of the day or indulged in a
little music.
An old lady, always enveloped in deep mourning, who when the little
hotel was swarming with noisy visitors had never addressed a word to any
one, and seemed the embodiment of woe, stood revealed as a pianist of the
first rank, and without waiting to be pressed, played Chopin to us and, in
particular, a certain lullaby by Schumann which she rendered with such
exquisite tenderness that she brought tears to our eyes.
We were all so grateful to her for the pleasant hours which she enabled us
to pass, that we joined together to present her, at the moment of her
departure, with a slight souvenir of our stay at Gersau.
One of us who went that day to Lucerne undertook to buy the gift. He
returned in the evening with a gold brooch in the form of a small axe.
Neither on that evening nor the following one did the old lady make her
appearance; and the visitors who were leaving entrusted the gold brooch to
my care.

Her luggage was still in the hotel, and I was prepared to see her return,
sooner or later, reassured as to her well-being by the proprietor who told me
that she was in the habit of disappearing for a day or two, and he had no
reason to feel anxious about her.
As a matter of fact the day before my departure, as I was making a final
tour of the lake and had pulled up a few steps from Tell’s Chapel, I saw the
old lady standing at the entrance of the building.
Never until then had I been impressed by the unspeakable distress
depicted on her face down which the tears were coursing, and never had I
so clearly observed the traces, which were still manifest, of her former
beauty. She caught sight of me, lowered her veil, and walked toward the
lake. Nevertheless, I did not hesitate to overtake her, and bowing, expressed
the visitors’ regret that we were about to lose her; and then, as I had the gift
on me, I presented her with the small case containing the gold axe.
She opened it with a sweet, far-away smile, but no sooner did she
perceive the jewel inside than she began to tremble with emotion, and drew
back some distance from me, as though she had something to fear from my
presence, and with an insensate gesture threw the brooch into the lake.
I displayed so much amazement at this unaccountable reception that she
begged my forgiveness and burst into a fit of sobbing. A seat stood in this
secluded spot, and we both sat down. And after a few lamentations against
the decrees of fate which left me quite at a loss, she confided to me her
strange, melancholy story which I was never to forget. For, in truth, I know
of no more terrible destiny than that which befell the old lady in the black
veil, who had played Schumann’s lullaby to us with such exquisite emotion.

“I will tell you the whole story,” she said, “for I am about to leave for
ever this country which I determined to visit for the last time. And then you
will understand why it was that I threw the little gold axe into the lake.
“I was born in Geneva, monsieur. We belonged to one of the leading
families and were rich, but some unfortunate speculations on the stock
exchange ruined my father, who died from the shock. When I was eighteen
I was a beautiful girl without a dowry. My mother gave up all hope of

marrying me. And yet she yearned to make sure of my future before she
went to join my father.
“I was twenty-four when a suitor whom every one looked upon as an
unhoped-for chance appeared.
“A young man from Briesgau who was accustomed to spend the summer
in Switzerland and whose acquaintance we made in the casino at Evian, fell
in love with me, and I liked him. Herbert Gutmann was a tall young fellow,
kindly, unobtrusive and good-natured. He seemed to unite qualities alike of
heart and mind. He possessed a certain affluence without being actually
wealthy. His father was still engaged in business, and made him an
allowance in order that he might travel until the time came for him to
succeed him in his business. We were all intending to visit the elder
Gutmann at his place in Todtnau, in the Black Forest, when the state of my
mother’s health greatly hastened the course of events.
“Conscious that she no longer possessed the physical strength to travel,
my mother hurriedly returned to Geneva, where she received from the civil
authorities of Todtnau, to whom she had written, the most satisfactory
information in respect of Herbert and his family. Herbert’s father had begun
life as an ordinary woodcutter, and then had left the district, returning to it
with a small fortune which he had ‘made in timber.’ That was all, at least,
that was known of him in Todtnau.
“This was enough to induce my mother to press forward the formalities
of my marriage, which took place a week before her death. She died with
her mind at rest for, as she said, she felt ‘reassured about my future.’
“My husband helped me to overcome the grief which this sore trial
caused me by his constant goodness and solicitude. Before we set out for
Todtnau we came here to Gersau to spend a week, and then to my great
surprise we undertook a long journey instead of making our visit to
Herbert’s father. My sorrow would have gradually been dispelled if, as the
days sped by, I had not noticed, almost with dismay, that my husband was
more and more becoming a prey to melancholy.
“I was more surprised than I can express, because Herbert had seemed to
me of a humorous disposition, open, unrestrained and extremely frank. Was
I to discover that the liveliness which he used to display was forced, and

veiled some deep mortification? Alas, his sighs when he thought himself
alone, and the agitation which sometimes disturbed his night’s rest, scarcely
left room for doubt, and I made up my mind to question him.
“At the first word that I ventured to speak on the subject he made answer
by bursting into laughter, treating me as a silly little goose and kissing me
passionately, which merely served to strengthen my conviction that I was in
the presence of some painful mystery.
“I could not hide from myself that there was something in Herbert’s
demeanor which was very like ‘remorse.’ And yet I could have sworn that
he was incapable of committing, I will not say a low or mean action, but
even one lacking in propriety.
“It was then that the fate which had dogged my footsteps, struck us
another blow in the person of my father-in-law of whose death we learnt
whilst we were in Scotland. This grievous piece of news depressed my
husband more than I can say. He remained the whole night without uttering
a word, nor did he shed tears nor appear to listen to the words of
consolation by which I, in my turn, endeavored to rouse his spirit. He
seemed to be overwhelmed. At last, when the light was beginning to dawn,
he rose from the arm-chair in which he had sat huddled, and turning toward
me a face terribly distorted by suffering, said in a harrowing voice:
“‘Come, Elizabeth, we shall have to go back. We shall have to go back.’
“These words seemed to possess a significance from the tone in which
they were spoken which I failed to understand. A return to the land of his
father’s was quite natural at a moment like that, and I could not see why he
should fight against the necessity of going home. From that day onward
Herbert changed completely; he grew extraordinarily silent, and more than
once I came upon him sobbing wildly.
“The grief which the loss of a beloved father might occasion could not
entirely explain the horror of our position, for there is nothing more terrible
than mystery, the deep mystery which steals in between two beings who are
devoted to each other, and separates them from their happiness....
“We reached Todtnau in time to breathe a prayer over the newly made
grave.

“This little town in the Black Forest, at no great distance from
Höllenthal, was a dreary spot; and there was scarcely any society in it for
me. The Gutmann’s house, in which we took up our abode, lay on the
borders of a forest.
“It was a gloomy chalet standing in its own grounds, and our one visitor
was an old clockmaker in the place, who was said to be rich and had been
the elder Gutmann’s friend. He appeared from time to time at the lunch or
dinner hour, in order to get himself invited.
“I had no liking for this manufacturer of cuckoo-clocks, this petty usurer,
for though he was rich, he was a miser and incapable of the least nicety of
feeling. Nor did Herbert care for Frantz Basckler, though he continued out
of respect for the memory of his father to keep on friendly terms with him.
“Basckler, who had no children, had told the elder Gutmann times out of
number that Herbert was his only heir. Herbert spoke to me about it one day
with the most sincere aversion, and I had once more an opportunity of
appreciating the strictness of his conscience.
“‘Would you like to be the heir of this sordid old miser who made his
fortune by ruining all the clockmakers in Höllenthal?’
“‘Certainly not,’ I returned. ‘Your father left us a certain amount of
property, and with what you can honestly earn we shall have enough to live
on even if Heaven chooses to send us a child.’
“I had no sooner uttered these words than I saw my Herbert turn as white
as a sheet. I put my arms round him, for I thought that he was about to faint,
but the blood returned to his face, and he exclaimed in forcible tones:
“‘Yes, yes, the only true thing is to have the approbation of one’s
conscience.’
“And so saying he rushed wildly from the room.
“Sometimes he was away for a day or two on business, which consisted,
he told me, of buying plantations of standing trees and selling them again to
contractors. He did not work the whole thing himself but left to others the
task of turning the trees into sleepers for railways, if the wood was of
inferior quality, and posts and ships’ masts if it was of the best quality. The

essential thing was to display expert judgment; and he had acquired his
knowledge of timber from his father.
“He never took me away with him on any of his journeys. He left me
alone in the house with an old maid-servant who had received me with ill-
disguised hostility. I kept out of her way and wept in secret, for I was not
happy. I felt convinced that Herbert was hiding something from me,
something which was obsessing his mind, and which I too who knew
nothing, was never able to dismiss from my thoughts.
“And then the great forest frightened me. And the servant frightened me.
And old Basckler frightened me. And the old house! It was very large with
staircases everywhere leading to passages into which I dared not venture. At
the end of one of them in particular, stood a small room. I had seen my
husband enter it two or three times, but I myself had never set foot in it.
“I could not pass the door of this room, which was always closed,
without a tremor. It was to this study that Herbert was wont to retire, so he
told me, to make up his accounts and balance his books, but it was also to
this room that he retired alone to bewail his secret.
“One night after he had set out on one of his journeys and I was vainly
endeavoring to sleep, my attention was attracted by a slight sound under my
window which I had left partly open on account of the extreme heat. I got
out of bed with every precaution. The sky was overcast and great clouds hid
the stars from sight. It was as much as I could do to discern the threatening
shadows of the nearest trees which faced the house.
“I could not clearly distinguish my husband and the maid-servant until
they passed under my window, walking on the lawn with infinite caution so
that I should not hear the sound of their footsteps and carrying between
them a sort of long, somewhat narrow trunk which I had never before seen.
They entered the chalet and I did not hear nor see them again for the next
ten minutes.
“My anguish exceeded anything that it is possible to conceive. Why were
they hiding themselves from me? How was it that I had not heard the
coming of the chaise which usually brought Herbert home? Just then I
seemed to catch in the distance the neighing of a horse, and the maid-
servant appeared, crossed the lawn, vanished into the darkness, and soon

returned leading our mare unharnessed over the soft ground. Never had they
taken so many precautions to prevent me from waking up!
“Growing more and more surprised that Herbert did not come to our
room as was his custom after his return at night, I hastily slipped on a
dressing-gown and wandered into the darkness of the passage. My steps
turned quite naturally toward the little study of which I stood in so much
fear. And I had only just entered the corridor which led to it when I heard
my husband say in a rough, muffled voice to the maid-servant who was
mounting the stairs:
“‘Water! Bring me some water. Hot water of course. It won’t come off.’
“I stopped short and held my breath. Besides I could not breathe. I was
stifling. I was filled with the presentiment that some dreadful misfortune
had befallen us. Suddenly I was once more startled by my husband’s voice:
“‘Ah, at last! That’s done it. It’s come off.’
“My husband and the old woman were still talking in low tones and I
heard his step. That brought me to myself and I fled to my bedroom and
locked myself in. Soon he knocked at the door and I went through the form
of pretending to be asleep and to wake up, and at last I opened the door. I
held a candle in my hand which fell to the floor when I caught sight of the
look on his face.
“‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Are you still asleep? Do go back to bed.’
“I made a movement to light the candle again, but he stopped me and I
threw myself on the bed. I spent a cruel night.
“Herbert turned and tossed and sighed beside me and could not sleep. He
did not speak a word. At daybreak he rose, pressed an icy kiss on my brow
and left the room. When I got downstairs the old woman gave me a note
from him in which he stated that he was obliged to go away again for a
couple of days.
“At eight o’clock that morning I learned from workmen on their way to
Neustadt, that old Basckler had been found murdered in a small cottage
which he possessed at Höllenthal, where he sometimes spent the night when
his business of money-lending kept him too long among his peasant-

debtors. Basckler had received a terrible blow with an axe which had split
his head in two. It was undoubtedly the work of a woodman.
“I returned to the house as best I could. And once more my feet led me
toward the little study. I could not explain exactly what was passing in my
mind, but after the words which I had overheard during the night and the
look on Herbert’s face, I felt a need to see what that room contained. Just
then the servant observed me and exclaimed maliciously:
“‘Leave that room alone. You know quite well that M. Gutmann has
forbidden you to touch it. A lot of good it would do you to know what’s
inside.’
“And she walked away with a fiendish laugh.
“I took my bed, suffering from high fever. I was ill for a fortnight.
Herbert looked after me with maternal solicitude. It seemed to me that I had
been the sport of some evil dream, and it was enough now to see his good-
natured face to confirm my impression that I was not in a normal condition
on the night when I fancied that I had seen and heard so many extraordinary
things. Moreover the murderer of Basckler had been arrested. He was a
woodman belonging to Bergen whom the old miser had ‘bled’ too freely
and who had taken his revenge by ‘bleeding’ his persecutor in his turn.
“This woodman, a man named Mathis Müller, never ceased to protest his
innocence, but though not a single trace of blood was found on his clothes
and his axe was almost like new steel, there was, it seems, sufficient
evidence of his guilt to bring him to justice.
“Our circumstances were in no way affected, as we imagined they might
be, by old Basckler’s death, and Herbert looked in vain for a will which did
not exist.
“To my surprise its absence considerably upset him, and one day when I
questioned him about it he answered irritably:
“‘Well, yes, if you want to know, I was relying a great deal on that will—
a great deal.’
“And as he spoke a black look came over his face, and the terrible face
which I had seen on the mysterious night rose up before me, and after that

never left me. It was like a mask which I was always ready to place over
Herbert’s face even when it was naturally kind and sad.
“During Mathis Müller’s trial at Freiburg I eagerly read the newspapers;
and certain words which fell from the counsel for the defense haunted me
day and night:
“‘Until you have discovered the axe with which the deed was done and
the murderer’s blood-stained clothes, you cannot convict Mathis Müller.’
“Nevertheless Mathis Müller was found guilty and sentenced to death,
and I am bound to say that the verdict strangely affected my husband. At
night he dreamt of nothing but Mathis Müller. I was terrified of him and my
thoughts also terrified me.
“Oh, I longed to know the truth! I was determined to know the truth.
What was the meaning of those words ‘It won’t come off?’
“What was the nature of the work upon which he was engaged in the
mysterious little study during the night?
“One night I rose and groping in the dark stole his keys from him. I crept
into the corridors. I went to the kitchen to fetch a lantern. With chattering
teeth I reached the forbidden room ... I opened the door and my eyes at once
fell on the trunk—the oblong trunk which had so greatly perplexed me.
“It was locked, but I had no difficulty in finding the small key on the
bunch ... I unlocked it and raised the lid. I went down on my knees in order
to see better, and the sight that met my eyes forced a cry of horror from
me....
“The trunk contained blood-stained clothes and the axe which had struck
the blow still spotted with rust....

“How I managed, after what I had seen, to live with Herbert through the
few weeks which preceded the convicted man’s execution I cannot tell....
“I was afraid that he might kill me....
“How was it that my attitude, the dread that possessed me, failed to
enlighten him? The fact is that at that time his mind was wholly a prey to

fears not less great than my own. The thought of Mathis Müller never left
him.
“To enable him to escape the obsession, apparently, he now shut himself
up in the little study, and I sometimes heard him delivering tremendous
blows, which made the floor and walls resound, as if he were fighting with
his axe against the ghosts and phantoms which beset him.
“Strange to say, and it seemed at first impossible to understand, Herbert
recovered his calmness a couple of days before Müller’s execution—the
calmness of marble, the calmness of a statue. That evening he said:
“‘I am going away to-morrow morning early. I have some important
business to do near Freiburg. I shall probably be away for a couple of days.
Don’t worry.’
“It was at Freiburg that the execution was to take place, and I had the
impression that Herbert’s composure was the result of the resolution that he
had taken.
“He was going to give himself up!
“The thought was so much of a relief to me that for the first time for
many a night I fell into a sound sleep. It was broad daylight when I awoke.
My husband had already left the house.
“I dressed in haste and without saying a word to the old servant I started
for Todtnau. Here, I took a conveyance and drove to Freiburg. I reached
Freiburg when the light had begun to wane. I went at once to the Court
House, and the first person whom I saw entering the building was my
husband. I stood rooted to the spot. And as Herbert did not come out again I
felt sure that he had surrendered and was being held there at the disposal of
the authorities.
“The prison at that time was next the Court House. I walked round it like
a mad-woman. All that night I wandered about the streets, returning every
now and then to this gloomy building, and the first gleams of day were
beginning to break when my eyes encountered two men clad in black frock-
coats mounting the front steps of the Court.
“I ran up to them and said that I wanted to see the public prosecutor as
soon as possible, as I had a communication of the utmost gravity to make to

him about the Basckler murder.
“As it happened, one of the gentlemen was the public prosecutor, and he
invited me to accompany him to his office. Here I explained who I was and
said that he must have received a visit from my husband the night before.
He told me that he had in fact seen him, and then as he took refuge in
silence I threw myself on my knees before him beseeching him to have pity
on me and tell me whether Herbert had confessed his crime. He seemed
surprised, helped me to rise to my feet, and questioned me.
“Slowly I told him the story of my life, such as I have told it to you, and
at last I described the awful discovery which I had made in the little study
in the chalet at Todtnau. I ended by declaring that I should never have
allowed an innocent man to be executed, and that had not my husband
given himself up, I should not have hesitated to inform the police. And then
I asked him as a final act of mercy, to be allowed to see Herbert.
“‘Yes, you shall see him, madame,’ he returned. ‘Please come with me.’
“He took me, more dead than alive, to the prison, through the corridors
and up a staircase. Here he stood me before a small barred window which
jutted over a large hall and left me, telling me to have patience. A number of
other persons soon took up their positions at this window, and looked into
the hall without speaking.
“I did as they did. It was as though I was fastened to the bars, and I had
the feeling that I was about to witness some monstrous spectacle.
“The hall was gradually lined with a number of persons all of whom
maintained a mournful silence. Daylight now rendered the scene more
visible. In the center of the hall we could clearly discern a heavy block of
wood, and some one behind me exclaimed:
“‘That’s the headman’s block!’
“So Müller was to be executed! An icy perspiration began to trickle down
my forehead, and I cannot say even now how it was that I did not fall into a
dead faint. A door opened, and a procession appeared headed by the
condemned man, quivering in his shirt which was cut low and showed his
bare neck. His hands were bound behind his back, and he was supported by
two warders. A minister of religion was murmuring in his ear.

“The wretched man began to speak. In a few trembling words he
confessed his crime and asked forgiveness of God and man. A civic officer
took note of the confession and read out the sentence of the Court; and then
the two warders thrust the convict on his knees and placed his head on the
block.
“Mathis Müller might have already been dead for all the sign of life he
gave, when a man with bare arms carrying an axe on his shoulder, stepped
forward from the side where he had hitherto remained in the background.
“This man placed his hand upon the prisoner’s head, waved the two
warders aside, lifted the axe and struck a terrible blow. Nevertheless he had
to strike a second time before the head fell. Then he picked it up by the hair
and stood erect.
“How was it that I was able to watch the unspeakably horrible sight until
the end? Yet I could not remove my eyes from this scene of blood, and it
seemed as though there was still something for me to see, and indeed my
eyes did see ... they saw, when holding in his shaking hand the abominable
trophy the executioner drew himself up and raised his eyes.
“I uttered a piercing shriek, ‘Herbert!’ and fell unconscious.

“Now, monsieur, you know my story. I had married the public
executioner. The axe which I had discovered in the little study was the
executioner’s axe; the blood-stained clothes were the executioner’s clothes.
“Next day I fled to the house of an old relative, and I very nearly lost my
reason; and I don’t know how it is that I am still in this world.
“As for my husband, who could not live without me, for he loved me
more than anything on earth, he was found two months later hanging in our
room. I received a last letter from him:
“‘Forgive me, Elizabeth. I have tried every sort of occupation. I was
dismissed as soon as it was discovered that I was the son of my father. I was
forced at an early age to make up my mind to take up the succession of his
work. You will understand now how it is that the office of public
executioner descends from father to son. I was born an honest man, and the

only crime that I have ever committed in my life was to conceal the truth
from you.... Farewell!’”

While I stood gazing in dumb amazement at the spot in the lake where
the lady in black had thrown the little gold axe, she disappeared in the
distance.

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Text enclosed by pluses is in small caps (+small caps+).
Blank pages have been removed.
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

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