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Title: Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories

Editor: Julian Hawthorne

Contributor: Pedro Antonio de Alarcón
Apuleius
Honoré de Balzac
Luigi Capuana
Erckmann-Chatrian
Guy de Maupassant
Pierre Mille
the Younger Pliny
comte de Auguste Villiers de L'Isle-Adam
Voltaire

Release date: June 28, 2004 [eBook #12758]
Most recently updated: December 15, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12758

Credits: Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIBRARY OF
THE WORLD'S BEST MYSTERY AND DETECTIVE STORIES ***

LIBRARY OF
THE WORLD'S BEST
MYSTERY AND DETECTIVE
STORIES

Edited By Julian Hawthorne

One Hundred and One Tales of Mystery
By Famous Authors of East and West

In Six Volumes

New York
The Review of Reviews Company

1907

AMERICAN • FRENCH, ITALIAN, ETC.
ENGLISH: SCOTCH • GERMAN, RUSSIAN, ETC.
ENGLISH: IRISH • ORIENTAL: MODERN MAGIC

MAUPASSANT • VOLTAIRE
MILLE • ALARÇON
ADAM • CAPUANA
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN • APULEIUS
BALZAC • PLINY, THE YOUNGER

"Through a Mist in the Depths of the Looking-Glass."

Table of Contents

HENRI RENÉ ALBERT GUY DE MAUPASSANT (1850-93).

The Necklace
The Man with the Pale Eyes
An Uncomfortable Bed
Ghosts
Fear
The Confession
The Horla

PIERRE MILLE.

The Miracle of Zobéide

VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM.

The Torture by Hope

ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN (1822-99)—(1826-90).

The Owl's Ear
The Invisible Eye
The Waters of Death

HONORE DE BALZAC (1799-1850).

Melmoth Reconciled
The Conscript

JEAN FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET DE VOLTAIRE (1694-1778).

Zadig the Babylonian

PEDRO DE ALARÇON.

The Nail

LUIGI CAPUANA (1839-00).

The Deposition

LUCIUS APULEIUS (Second Century).

The Adventure of the Three Robbers

PLINY, THE YOUNGER (First Century).

Letter to Sura

French—Italian—Spanish—Latin Mystery Stories

HENRI RENÉ ALBERT GUY DE MAUPASSANT

The Necklace

She was one of those pretty and charming girls who are sometimes, as if
by a mistake of destiny, born in a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no
expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, wedded, by any
rich and distinguished man; and she let herself be married to a little clerk at
the Ministry of Public Instruction.

She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, but she was as
unhappy as though she had really fallen from her proper station; since with
women there is neither caste nor rank; and beauty, grace, and charm act
instead of family and birth. Natural fineness, instinct for what is elegant,
suppleness of wit, are the sole hierarchy, and make from women of the
people the equals of the very greatest ladies.

She suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born for all the delicacies and all
the luxuries. She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the
wretched look of the walls, from the worn-out chairs, from the ugliness of
the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her rank would
never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry. The sight
of the little Breton peasant who did her humble housework aroused in her
regrets which were despairing, and distracted dreams. She thought of the
silent antechambers hung with Oriental tapestry, lit by tall bronze
candelabra, and of the two great footmen in knee breeches who sleep in the
big armchairs, made drowsy by the heavy warmth of the hot-air stove. She
thought of the long salons fatted up with ancient silk, of the delicate
furniture carrying priceless curiosities, and of the coquettish perfumed
boudoirs made for talks at five o'clock with intimate friends, with men
famous and sought after, whom all women envy and whose attention they
all desire.

When she sat down to dinner, before the round table covered with a
tablecloth three days old, opposite her husband, who uncovered the soup
tureen and declared with an enchanted air, "Ah, the good pot-au-feu! I don't
know anything better than that," she thought of dainty dinners, of shining
silverware, of tapestry which peopled the walls with ancient personages and

with strange birds flying in the midst of a fairy forest; and she thought of
delicious dishes served on marvelous plates, and of the whispered
gallantries which you listen to with a sphinx-like smile, while you are
eating the pink flesh of a trout or the wings of a quail.

She had no dresses, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but that;
she felt made for that. She would so have liked to please, to be envied, to be
charming, to be sought after.

She had a friend, a former schoolmate at the convent, who was rich, and
whom she did not like to go and see any more, because she suffered so
much when she came back.

But, one evening, her husband returned home with a triumphant air, and
holding a large envelope in his hand.

"There," said he, "here is something for you."

She tore the paper sharply, and drew out a printed card which bore these
words:

"The Minister of Public Instruction and Mme. Georges Ramponneau
request the honor of M. and Mme. Loisel's company at the palace of the
Ministry on Monday evening, January 18th."

Instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped, she threw the invitation
on the table with disdain, murmuring:

"What do you want me to do with that?"

"But, my dear, I thought you would be glad. You never go out, and this is
such a fine opportunity. I had awful trouble to get it. Everyone wants to go;
it is very select, and they are not giving many invitations to clerks. The
whole official world will be there."

She looked at him with an irritated eye, and she said, impatiently:

"And what do you want me to put on my back?"

He had not thought of that; he stammered:

"Why, the dress you go to the theater in. It looks very well, to me."

He stopped, distracted, seeing that his wife was crying. Two great tears
descended slowly from the corners of her eyes toward the corners of her
mouth. He stuttered:

"What's the matter? What's the matter?"

But, by a violent effort, she had conquered her grief, and she replied,
with a calm voice, while she wiped her wet cheeks:

"Nothing. Only I have no dress, and therefore I can't go to this ball. Give
your card to some colleague whose wife is better equipped than I."

He was in despair. He resumed:

"Come, let us see, Mathilde. How much would it cost, a suitable dress,
which you could use on other occasions, something very simple?"

She reflected several seconds, making her calculations and wondering
also what sum she could ask without drawing on herself an immediate
refusal and a frightened exclamation from the economical clerk.

Finally, she replied, hesitatingly:

"I don't know exactly, but I think I could manage it with four hundred
francs."

He had grown a little pale, because he was laying aside just that amount
to buy a gun and treat himself to a little shooting next summer on the plain
of Nanterre, with several friends who went to shoot larks down there of a
Sunday.

But he said:

"All right. I will give you four hundred francs. And try to have a pretty
dress."

The day of the ball drew near, and Mme. Loisel seemed sad, uneasy,
anxious. Her dress was ready, however. Her husband said to her one
evening:

"What is the matter? Come, you've been so queer these last three days."

And she answered:

"It annoys me not to have a single jewel, not a single stone, nothing to
put on. I shall look like distress. I should almost rather not go at all."

He resumed:

"You might wear natural flowers. It's very stylish at this time of the year.
For ten francs you can get two or three magnificent roses."

She was not convinced.

"No; there's nothing more humiliating than to look poor among other
women who are rich."

But her husband cried:

"How stupid you are! Go look up your friend Mme. Forestier, and ask her
to lend you some jewels. You're quite thick enough with her to do that."

She uttered a cry of joy:

"It's true. I never thought of it."

The next day she went to her friend and told of her distress.

Mme. Forestier went to a wardrobe with a glass door, took out a large
jewel box, brought it back, opened it, and said to Mme. Loisel:

"Choose, my dear."

She saw first of all some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Venetian
cross, gold and precious stones of admirable workmanship. She tried on the

ornaments before the glass, hesitated, could not make up her mind to part
with them, to give them back. She kept asking:

"Haven't you any more?"

"Why, yes. Look. I don't know what you like."

All of a sudden she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb necklace of
diamonds, and her heart began to beat with an immoderate desire. Her
hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it around her throat, outside her
high-necked dress, and remained lost in ecstasy at the sight of herself.

Then she asked, hesitating, filled with anguish:

"Can you lend me that, only that?"

"Why, yes, certainly."

She sprang upon the neck of her friend, kissed her passionately, then fled
with her treasure.

The day of the ball arrived. Mme. Loisel made a great success. She was
prettier than them all, elegant, gracious, smiling, and crazy with joy. All the
men looked at her, asked her name, endeavored to be introduced. All the
attachés of the Cabinet wanted to waltz with her. She was remarked by the
minister himself.

She danced with intoxication, with passion, made drunk by pleasure,
forgetting all, in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a
sort of cloud of happiness composed of all this homage, of all this
admiration, of all these awakened desires, and of that sense of complete
victory which is so sweet to woman's heart.

She went away about four o'clock in the morning. Her husband had been
sleeping since midnight, in a little deserted anteroom, with three other
gentlemen whose wives were having a very good time.

He threw over her shoulders the wraps which he had brought, modest
wraps of common life, whose poverty contrasted with the elegance of the
ball dress. She felt this and wanted to escape so as not to be remarked by
the other women, who were enveloping themselves in costly furs.

Loisel held her back.

"Wait a bit. You will catch cold outside. I will go and call a cab."

But she did not listen to him, and rapidly descended the stairs. When they
were in the street they did not find a carriage; and they began to look for
one, shouting after the cabmen whom they saw passing by at a distance.

They went down toward the Seine, in despair, shivering with cold. At last
they found on the quay one of those ancient noctambulent coupés which,
exactly as if they were ashamed to show their misery during the day, are
never seen round Paris until after nightfall.

It took them to their door in the Rue des Martyrs, and once more, sadly,
they climbed up homeward. All was ended for her. And as to him, he
reflected that he must be at the Ministry at ten o'clock.

She removed the wraps, which covered her shoulders, before the glass, so
as once more to see herself in all her glory. But suddenly she uttered a cry.
She had no longer the necklace around her neck!

Her husband, already half undressed, demanded:

"What is the matter with you?"

She turned madly toward him:

"I have—I have—I've lost Mme. Forestier's necklace."

He stood up, distracted.

"What!—how?—Impossible!"

And they looked in the folds of her dress, in the folds of her cloak, in her
pockets, everywhere. They did not find it.

He asked:

"You're sure you had it on when you left the ball?"

"Yes, I felt it in the vestibule of the palace."

"But if you had lost it in the street we should have heard it fall. It must be
in the cab."

"Yes. Probably. Did you take his number?"

"No. And you, didn't you notice it?"

"No."

They looked, thunderstruck, at one another. At last Loisel put on his
clothes.

"I shall go back on foot," said he, "over the whole route which we have
taken, to see if I can't find it."

And he went out. She sat waiting on a chair in her ball dress, without
strength to go to bed, overwhelmed, without fire, without a thought.

Her husband came back about seven o'clock. He had found nothing.

He went to Police Headquarters, to the newspaper offices, to offer a
reward; he went to the cab companies—everywhere, in fact, whither he was
urged by the least suspicion of hope.

She waited all day, in the same condition of mad fear before this terrible
calamity.

Loisel returned at night with a hollow, pale face; he had discovered
nothing.

"You must write to your friend," said he, "that you have broken the clasp
of her necklace and that you are having it mended. That will give us time to
turn round."

She wrote at his dictation.

At the end of a week they had lost all hope.

And Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:

"We must consider how to replace that ornament."

The next day they took the box which had contained it, and they went to
the jeweler whose name was found within. He consulted his books.

"It was not I, madame, who sold that necklace; I must simply have
furnished the case."

Then they went from jeweler to jeweler, searching for a necklace like the
other, consulting their memories, sick both of them with chagrin and with
anguish.

They found, in a shop at the Palais Royal, a string of diamonds which
seemed to them exactly like the one they looked for. It was worth forty
thousand francs. They could have it for thirty-six.

So they begged the jeweler not to sell it for three days yet. And they
made a bargain that he should buy it back for thirty-four thousand francs in
case they found the other one before the end of February.

Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him.
He would borrow the rest.

He did borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, five hundred of another,
five louis here, three louis there. He gave notes, took up ruinous
obligations, dealt with usurers, and all the race of lenders. He compromised
all the rest of his life, risked his signature without even knowing if he could
meet it; and, frightened by the pains yet to come, by the black misery which
was about to fall upon him, by the prospect of all the physical privations

and of all the moral tortures which he was to suffer, he went to get the new
necklace, putting down upon the merchant's counter thirty-six thousand
francs.

When Mme. Loisel took back the necklace, Mme. Forestier said to her,
with a chilly manner:

"You should have returned it sooner, I might have needed it."

She did not open the case, as her friend had so much feared. If she had
detected the substitution, what would she have thought, what would she
have said? Would she not have taken Mme. Loisel for a thief?

Mme. Loisel now knew the horrible existence of the needy. She took her
part, moreover, all on a sudden, with heroism. That dreadful debt must be
paid. She would pay it. They dismissed their servant; they changed their
lodgings; they rented a garret under the roof.

She came to know what heavy housework meant and the odious cares of
the kitchen. She washed the dishes, using her rosy nails on the greasy pots
and pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts, and the dish-cloths, which
she dried upon a line; she carried the slops down to the street every
morning, and carried up the water, stopping for breath at every landing.
And, dressed like a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer, the
grocer, the butcher, her basket on her arm, bargaining, insulted, defending
her miserable money sou by sou.

Each month they had to meet some notes, renew others, obtain more
time.

Her husband worked in the evening making a fair copy of some
tradesman's accounts, and late at night he often copied manuscript for five
sous a page.

And this life lasted ten years.

At the end of ten years they had paid everything, everything, with the
rates of usury, and the accumulations of the compound interest.

Mme. Loisel looked old now. She had become the woman of
impoverished households—strong and hard and rough. With frowsy hair,
skirts askew, and red hands, she talked loud while washing the floor with
great swishes of water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office,
she sat down near the window, and she thought of that gay evening of long
ago, of that ball where she had been so beautiful and so feted.

What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who
knows? who knows? How life is strange and changeful! How little a thing
is needed for us to be lost or to be saved!

But, one Sunday, having gone to take a walk in the Champs Élysées to
refresh herself from the labors of the week, she suddenly perceived a
woman who was leading a child. It was Mme. Forestier, still young, still
beautiful, still charming.

Mme. Loisel felt moved. Was she going to speak to her? Yes, certainly.
And now that she had paid, she was going to tell her all about it. Why not?

She went up.

"Good day, Jeanne."

The other, astonished to be familiarly addressed by this plain good-wife,
did not recognize her at all, and stammered:

"But—madame!—I do not know—You must have mistaken."

"No. I am Mathilde Loisel."

Her friend uttered a cry.

"Oh, my poor Mathilde! How you are changed!"

"Yes, I have had days hard enough, since I have seen you, days wretched
enough—and that because of you!"

"Of me! How so?"

"Do you remember that diamond necklace which you lent me to wear at
the ministerial ball?"

"Yes. Well?"

"Well, I lost it."

"What do you mean? You brought it back."

"I brought you back another just like it. And for this we have been ten
years paying. You can understand that it was not easy for us, us who had
nothing. At last it is ended, and I am very glad."

Mme. Forestier had stopped.

"You say that you bought a necklace of diamonds to replace mine?"

"Yes. You never noticed it, then! They were very like."

And she smiled with a joy which was proud and naïve at once.

Mme. Forestier, strongly moved, took her two hands.

"Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste. It was worth at
most five hundred francs!"

The Man with the Pale Eyes

Monsieur Pierre Agénor De Vargnes, the Examining Magistrate, was the
exact opposite of a practical joker. He was dignity, staidness, correctness
personified. As a sedate man, he was quite incapable of being guilty, even
in his dreams, of anything resembling a practical joke, however remotely. I
know nobody to whom he could be compared, unless it be the present
president of the French Republic. I think it is useless to carry the analogy
any further, and having said thus much, it will be easily understood that a
cold shiver passed through me when Monsieur Pierre Agénor de Vargnes
did me the honor of sending a lady to await on me.

At about eight o'clock, one morning last winter, as he was leaving the
house to go to the Palais de Justice, his footman handed him a card, on
which was printed:

DOCTOR JAMES FERDINAND,
Member of the Academy of Medicine,
Port-au-Prince,
Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

At the bottom of the card there was written in pencil:

From Lady Frogère.

Monsieur de Vargnes knew the lady very well, who was a very agreeable
Creole from Hayti, and whom he had met in many drawing-rooms, and, on
the other hand, though the doctor's name did not awaken any recollections
in him, his quality and titles alone required that he should grant him an
interview, however short it might be. Therefore, although he was in a hurry
to get out, Monsieur de Vargnes told the footman to show in his early
visitor, but to tell him beforehand that his master was much pressed for
time, as he had to go to the Law Courts.

When the doctor came in, in spite of his usual imperturbability, he could
not restrain a movement of surprise, for the doctor presented that strange

anomaly of being a negro of the purest, blackest type, with the eyes of a
white man, of a man from the North, pale, cold, clear, blue eyes, and his
surprise increased, when, after a few words of excuse for his untimely visit,
he added, with an enigmatical smile:

"My eyes surprise you, do they not? I was sure that they would, and, to
tell you the truth, I came here in order that you might look at them well, and
never forget them."

His smile, and his words, even more than his smile, seemed to be those of
a madman. He spoke very softly, with that childish, lisping voice, which is
peculiar to negroes, and his mysterious, almost menacing words,
consequently, sounded all the more as if they were uttered at random by a
man bereft of his reason. But his looks, the looks of those pale, cold, clear,
blue eyes, were certainly not those of a madman. They clearly expressed
menace, yes, menace, as well as irony, and, above all, implacable ferocity,
and their glance was like a flash of lightning, which one could never forget.

"I have seen," Monsieur de Vargnes used to say, when speaking about it,
"the looks of many murderers, but in none of them have I ever observed
such a depth of crime, and of impudent security in crime."

And this impression was so strong, that Monsieur de Vargnes thought that
he was the sport of some hallucination, especially as when he spoke about
his eyes, the doctor continued with a smile, and in his most childish accents:
"Of course, Monsieur, you cannot understand what I am saying to you, and
I must beg your pardon for it. To-morrow you will receive a letter which
will explain it all to you, but, first of all, it was necessary that I should let
you have a good, a careful look at my eyes, my eyes, which are myself, my
only and true self, as you will see."

With these words, and with a polite bow, the doctor went out, leaving
Monsieur de Vargnes extremely surprised, and a prey to this doubt, as he
said to himself:

"Is he merely a madman? The fierce expression, and the criminal depths
of his looks are perhaps caused merely by the extraordinary contrast
between his fierce looks and his pale eyes."

And absorbed in these thoughts, Monsieur de Vargnes unfortunately
allowed several minutes to elapse, and then he thought to himself suddenly:

"No, I am not the sport of any hallucination, and this is no case of an
optical phenomenon. This man is evidently some terrible criminal, and I
have altogether failed in my duty in not arresting him myself at once,
illegally, even at the risk of my life."

The judge ran downstairs in pursuit of the doctor, but it was too late; he
had disappeared. In the afternoon, he called on Madame Frogère, to ask her
whether she could tell him anything about the matter. She, however, did not
know the negro doctor in the least, and was even able to assure him that he
was a fictitious personage, for, as she was well acquainted with the upper
classes in Hayti, she knew that the Academy of Medicine at Port-au-Prince
had no doctor of that name among its members. As Monsieur de Vargnes
persisted, and gave descriptions of the doctor, especially mentioning his
extraordinary eyes, Madame Frogère began to laugh, and said:

"You have certainly had to do with a hoaxer, my dear monsieur. The eyes
which you have described are certainly those of a white man, and the
individual must have been painted."

On thinking it over, Monsieur de Vargnes remembered that the doctor had
nothing of the negro about him, but his black skin, his woolly hair and
beard, and his way of speaking, which was easily imitated, but nothing of
the negro, not even the characteristic, undulating walk. Perhaps, after all, he
was only a practical joker, and during the whole day, Monsieur de Vargnes
took refuge in that view, which rather wounded his dignity as a man of
consequence, but which appeased his scruples as a magistrate.

The next day, he received the promised letter, which was written, as well
as addressed, in letters cut out of the newspapers. It was as follows:

"MONSIEUR: Doctor James Ferdinand does not exist, but the man
whose eyes you saw does, and you will certainly recognize his eyes. This
man has committed two crimes, for which he does not feel any remorse,
but, as he is a psychologist, he is afraid of some day yielding to the
irresistible temptation of confessing his crimes. You know better than

anyone (and that is your most powerful aid), with what imperious force
criminals, especially intellectual ones, feel this temptation. That great Poet,
Edgar Poe, has written masterpieces on this subject, which express the truth
exactly, but he has omitted to mention the last phenomenon, which I will
tell you. Yes, I, a criminal, feel a terrible wish for somebody to know of my
crimes, and when this requirement is satisfied, my secret has been revealed
to a confidant, I shall be tranquil for the future, and be freed from this
demon of perversity, which only tempts us once. Well! Now that is
accomplished. You shall have my secret; from the day that you recognize
me by my eyes, you will try and find out what I am guilty of, and how I was
guilty, and you will discover it, being a master of your profession, which,
by the by, has procured you the honor of having been chosen by me to bear
the weight of this secret, which now is shared by us, and by us two alone. I
say, advisedly, by us two alone. You could not, as a matter of fact, prove the
reality of this secret to anyone, unless I were to confess it, and I defy you to
obtain my public confession, as I have confessed it to you, and without
danger to myself."

Three months later, Monsieur de Vargnes met Monsieur X—— at an
evening party, and at first sight, and without the slightest hesitation, he
recognized in him those very pale, very cold, and very clear blue eyes, eyes
which it was impossible to forget.

The man himself remained perfectly impassive, so that Monsieur de
Vargnes was forced to say to himself:

"Probably I am the sport of an hallucination at this moment, or else there
are two pairs of eyes that are perfectly similar in the world. And what eyes!
Can it be possible?"

The magistrate instituted inquiries into his life, and he discovered this,
which removed all his doubts.

Five years previously, Monsieur X—— had been a very poor, but very
brilliant medical student, who, although he never took his doctor's degree,
had already made himself remarkable by his microbiological researches.

A young and very rich widow had fallen in love with him and married
him. She had one child by her first marriage, and in the space of six months,
first the child and then the mother died of typhoid fever, and thus Monsieur
X—— had inherited a large fortune, in due form, and without any possible
dispute. Everybody said that he had attended to the two patients with the
utmost devotion. Now, were these two deaths the two crimes mentioned in
his letter?

But then, Monsieur X—— must have poisoned his two victims with the
microbes of typhoid fever, which he had skillfully cultivated in them, so as
to make the disease incurable, even by the most devoted care and attention.
Why not?

"Do you believe it?" I asked Monsieur de Vargnes.

"Absolutely," he replied. "And the most terrible thing about it is, that the
villain is right when he defies me to force him to confess his crime publicly,
for I see no means of obtaining a confession, none whatever. For a moment,
I thought of magnetism, but who could magnetize that man with those pale,
cold, bright eyes? With such eyes, he would force the magnetizer to
denounce himself as the culprit."

And then he said, with a deep sigh:

"Ah! Formerly there was something good about justice!"

And when he saw my inquiring looks, he added in a firm and perfectly
convinced voice:

"Formerly, justice had torture at its command."

"Upon my word," I replied, with all an author's unconscious and simple
egotism, "it is quite certain that without the torture, this strange tale will
have no conclusion, and that is very unfortunate, as far as regards the story I
intended to make out of it."

An Uncomfortable Bed

One autumn I went to stay for the hunting season with some friends in a
chateau in Picardy.

My friends were fond of practical joking, as all my friends are. I do not
care to know any other sort of people.

When I arrived, they gave me a princely reception, which at once aroused
distrust in my breast. We had some capital shooting. They embraced me,
they cajoled me, as if they expected to have great fun at my expense.

I said to myself:

"Look out, old ferret! They have something in preparation for you."

During the dinner, the mirth was excessive, far too great, in fact. I
thought: "Here are people who take a double share of amusement, and
apparently without reason. They must be looking out in their own minds for
some good bit of fun. Assuredly I am to be the victim of the joke.
Attention!"

During the entire evening, everyone laughed in an exaggerated fashion. I
smelled a practical joke in the air, as a dog smells game. But what was it? I
was watchful, restless. I did not let a word or a meaning or a gesture escape
me. Everyone seemed to me an object of suspicion, and I even looked
distrustfully at the faces of the servants.

The hour rang for going to bed, and the whole household came to escort
me to my room. Why? They called to me: "Good night." I entered the
apartment, shut the door, and remained standing, without moving a single
step, holding the wax candle in my hand.

I heard laughter and whispering in the corridor. Without doubt they were
spying on me. I cast a glance around the walls, the furniture, the ceiling, the
hangings, the floor. I saw nothing to justify suspicion. I heard persons

moving about outside my door. I had no doubt they were looking through
the keyhole.

An idea came into my head: "My candle may suddenly go out, and leave
me in darkness."

Then I went across to the mantelpiece, and lighted all the wax candles
that were on it. After that, I cast another glance around me without
discovering anything. I advanced with short steps, carefully examining the
apartment. Nothing. I inspected every article one after the other. Still
nothing. I went over to the window. The shutters, large wooden shutters,
were open. I shut them with great care, and then drew the curtains,
enormous velvet curtains, and I placed a chair in front of them, so as to
have nothing to fear from without.

Then I cautiously sat down. The armchair was solid. I did not venture to
get into the bed. However, time was flying; and I ended by coming to the
conclusion that I was ridiculous. If they were spying on me, as I supposed,
they must, while waiting for the success of the joke they had been preparing
for me, have been laughing enormously at my terror. So I made up my mind
to go to bed. But the bed was particularly suspicious-looking. I pulled at the
curtains. They seemed to be secure. All the same, there was danger. I was
going perhaps to receive a cold shower-bath from overhead, or perhaps, the
moment I stretched myself out, to find myself sinking under the floor with
my mattress. I searched in my memory for all the practical jokes of which I
ever had experience. And I did not want to be caught. Ah! certainly not!
certainly not! Then I suddenly bethought myself of a precaution which I
consider one of extreme efficacy: I caught hold of the side of the mattress
gingerly, and very slowly drew it toward me. It came away, followed by the
sheet and the rest of the bedclothes. I dragged all these objects into the very
middle of the room, facing the entrance door. I made my bed over again as
best I could at some distance from the suspected bedstead and the corner
which had filled me with such anxiety. Then, I extinguished all the candles,
and, groping my way, I slipped under the bedclothes.

For at least another hour, I remained awake, starting at the slightest
sound. Everything seemed quiet in the chateau. I fell asleep.

I must have been in a deep sleep for a long time, but all of a sudden, I
was awakened with a start by the fall of a heavy body tumbling right on top
of my own body, and, at the same time, I received on my face, on my neck,
and on my chest a burning liquid which made me utter a howl of pain. And
a dreadful noise, as if a sideboard laden with plates and dishes had fallen
down, penetrated my ears.

I felt myself suffocating under the weight that was crushing me and
preventing me from moving. I stretched out my hand to find out what was
the nature of this object. I felt a face, a nose, and whiskers. Then with all
my strength I launched out a blow over this face. But I immediately
received a hail of cuffings which made me jump straight out of the soaked
sheets, and rush in my nightshirt into the corridor, the door of which I found
open.

O stupor! it was broad daylight. The noise brought my friends hurrying
into the apartment, and we found, sprawling over my improvised bed, the
dismayed valet, who, while bringing me my morning cup of tea, had tripped
over this obstacle in the middle of the floor, and fallen on his stomach,
spilling, in spite of himself, my breakfast over my face.

The precautions I had taken in closing the shutters and going to sleep in
the middle of the room had only brought about the interlude I had been
striving to avoid.

Ah! how they all laughed that day!

Ghosts

Just at the time when the Concordat was in its most flourishing
condition, a young man belonging to a wealthy and highly respected
middle-class family went to the office of the head of the police at P——,
and begged for his help and advice, which was immediately promised him.

"My father threatens to disinherit me," the young man then began,
"although I have never offended against the laws of the State, of morality or
of his paternal authority, merely because I do not share his blind reverence
for the Catholic Church and her Ministers. On that account he looks upon
me, not merely as Latitudinarian, but as a perfect Atheist, and a faithful old
manservant of ours, who is much attached to me, and who accidentally saw
my father's will, told me in confidence that he had left all his property to the
Jesuits. I think this is highly suspicious, and I fear that the priests have been
maligning me to my father. Until less than a year ago, we used to live very
quietly and happily together, but ever since he has had so much to do with
the clergy, our domestic peace and happiness are at an end."

"What you have told me," the official replied, "is as likely as it is
regrettable, but I fail to see how I can interfere in the matter. Your father is
in full possession of all his mental faculties, and can dispose of all his
property exactly as he pleases. I also think that your protest is premature;
you must wait until his will can legally take effect, and then you can invoke
the aid of justice; I am sorry to say that I can do nothing for you."

"I think you will be able to," the young man replied; "for I believe that a
very clever piece of deceit is being carried on here."

"How? Please explain yourself more clearly."

"When I remonstrated with him, yesterday evening, he referred to my
dead mother, and at last assured me, in a voice of the deepest conviction,
that she had frequently appeared to him, and had threatened him with all the
torments of the damned if he did not disinherit his son, who had fallen away

from God, and leave all his property to the Church. Now I do not believe in
ghosts."

"Neither do I," the police director replied; "but I cannot well do anything
on this dangerous ground if I had nothing but superstitions to go upon. You
know how the Church rules all our affairs since the Concordat with Rome,
and if I investigate this matter, and obtain no results, I am risking my post.
It would be very different if you could adduce any proofs for your
suspicions. I do not deny that I should like to see the clerical party, which
will, I fear, be the ruin of Austria, receive a staggering blow; try, therefore,
to get to the bottom of this business, and then we will talk it over again."

About a month passed without the young Latitudinarian being heard of;
but then he suddenly came one evening, evidently in a great state of
excitement, and told him that he was in a position to expose the priestly
deceit which he had mentioned, if the authorities would assist him. The
police director asked for further information.

"I have obtained a number of important clews," the young man said. "In
the first place, my father confessed to me that my mother did not appear to
him in our house, but in the churchyard where she is buried. My mother
was consumptive for many years, and a few weeks before her death she
went to the village of S——, where she died and was buried. In addition to
this, I found out from our footman that my father has already left the house
twice, late at night, in company of X——, the Jesuit priest, and that on both
occasions he did not return till morning. Each time he was remarkably
uneasy and low-spirited after his return, and had three masses said for my
dead mother. He also told me just now that he has to leave home this
evening on business, but immediately he told me that, our footman saw the
Jesuit go out of the house. We may, therefore, assume that he intends this
evening to consult the spirit of my dead mother again, and this would be an
excellent opportunity for getting on the track of the matter, if you do not
object to opposing the most powerful force in the Empire, for the sake of
such an insignificant individual as myself."

"Every citizen has an equal right to the protection of the State," the police
director replied; "and I think that I have shown often enough that I am not
wanting in courage to perform my duty, no matter how serious the

consequences may be; but only very young men act without any prospects
of success, as they are carried away by their feelings. When you came to me
the first time, I was obliged to refuse your request for assistance, but to-day
your shares have risen in value. It is now eight o'clock, and I shall expect
you in two hours' time here in my office. At present, all you have to do is to
hold your tongue; everything else is my affair."

As soon as it was dark, four men got into a closed carriage in the yard of
the police office, and were driven in the direction of the village of S——;
their carriage, however, did not enter the village, but stopped at the edge of
a small wood in the immediate neighborhood. Here they all four alighted;
they were the police director, accompanied by the young Latitudinarian, a
police sergeant and an ordinary policeman, who was, however, dressed in
plain clothes.

"The first thing for us to do is to examine the locality carefully," the
police director said: "it is eleven o'clock and the exercisers of ghosts will
not arrive before midnight, so we have time to look round us, and to take
our measure."

The four men went to the churchyard, which lay at the end of the village,
near the little wood. Everything was as still as death, and not a soul was to
be seen. The sexton was evidently sitting in the public house, for they found
the door of his cottage locked, as well as the door of the little chapel that
stood in the middle of the churchyard.

"Where is your mother's grave?" the police director asked; but as there
were only a few stars visible, it was not easy to find it, but at last they
managed it, and the police director looked about in the neighborhood of it.

"The position is not a very favorable one for us," he said at last; "there is
nothing here, not even a shrub, behind which we could hide."

But just then, the policeman said that he had tried to get into the sexton's
hut through the door or the window, and that at last he had succeeded in
doing so by breaking open a square in a window, which had been mended
with paper, and that he had opened it and obtained posesssion of the key
which he brought to the police director.

His plans were very quickly settled. He had the chapel opened and went
in with the young Latitudinarian; then he told the police sergeant to lock the
door behind him and to put the key back where he had found it, and to shut
the window of the sexton's cottage carefully. Lastly, he made arrangements
as to what they were to do in case anything unforeseen should occur,
whereupon the sergeant and the constable left the churchyard, and lay down
in a ditch at some distance from the gate, but opposite to it.

Almost as soon as the clock struck half-past eleven, they heard steps near
the chapel, whereupon the police director and the young Latitudinarian
went to the window, in order to watch the beginning of the exorcism, and as
the chapel was in total darkness, they thought that they should be able to
see, without being seen; but matters turned out differently from what they
expected.

Suddenly, the key turned in the lock, and they barely had time to conceal
themselves behind the altar before two men came in, one of whom was
carrying a dark lantern. One was the young man's father, an elderly man of
the middle class, who seemed very unhappy and depressed, the other the
Jesuit father K——, a tall, thin, big-boned man, with a thin, bilious face, in
which two large gray eyes shone restlessly under their bushy black
eyebrows. He lit the tapers, which were standing on the altar, and then
began to say a Requiem Mass; while the old man knelt on the altar steps and
served him.

When it was over, the Jesuit took the book of the Gospels and the holy-
water sprinkler, and went slowly out of the chapel, while the old man
followed him, with a holy-water basin in one hand and a taper in the other.
Then the police director left his hiding place, and stooping down, so as not
to be seen, he crept to the chapel window, where he cowered down
carefully, and the young man followed his example. They were now looking
straight on his mother's grave.

The Jesuit, followed by the superstitious old man, walked three times
round the grave, then he remained standing before it, and by the light of the
taper he read a few passages from the Gospel; then he dipped the holy-
water sprinkler three times into the holy-water basin, and sprinkled the
grave three times; then both returned to the chapel, knelt down outside it

with their faces toward the grave, and began to pray aloud, until at last the
Jesuit sprang up, in a species of wild ecstasy, and cried out three times in a
shrill voice:

"Exsurge! Exsurge! Exsurge!"[1]

Scarcely had the last word of the exorcism died away when thick, blue
smoke rose out of the grave, which rapidly grew into a cloud, and began to
assume the outlines of a human body, until at last a tall, white figure stood
behind the grave, and beckoned with its hand.

"Who art thou?" the Jesuit asked solemnly, while the old man began to
cry.

"When I was alive, I was called Anna Maria B——," the ghost replied in
a hollow voice.

"Will you answer all my questions?" the priest continued.

"As far as I can."

"Have you not yet been delivered from purgatory by our prayers, and all
the Masses for your soul, which we have said for you?"

"Not yet, but soon, soon I shall be."

"When?"

"As soon as that blasphemer, my son, has been punished."

"Has that not already happened? Has not your husband disinherited his
lost son, and made the Church his heir, in his place?"

"That is not enough."

"What must he do besides?"

"He must deposit his will with the Judicial Authorities as his last will and
testament, and drive the reprobate out of his house."

"Consider well what you are saying; must this really be?"

"It must, or otherwise I shall have to languish in purgatory much longer,"
the sepulchral voice replied with a deep sigh; but the next moment it yelled
out in terror:—

"Oh! Good Lord!" and the ghost began to run away as fast as it could. A
shrill whistle was heard, and then another, and the police director laid his
hand on the shoulder of the exorciser accompanied with the remark:—

"You are in custody."

Meanwhile, the police sergeant and the policeman, who had come into
the churchyard, had caught the ghost, and dragged it forward. It was the
sexton, who had put on a flowing, white dress, and who wore a wax mask,
which bore striking resemblance to his mother, as the son declared.

When the case was heard, it was proved that the mask had been very
skillfully made from a portrait of the deceased woman. The Government
gave orders that the matter should be investigated as secretly as possible,
and left the punishment of Father K—— to the spiritual authorities, which
was a matter of course, at a time when priests were outside the jurisdiction
of the Civil Authorities; and it is needless to say that he was very
comfortable during his imprisonment, in a monastery in a part of the
country which abounded with game and trout.

The only valuable result of the amusing ghost story was that it brought
about a reconciliation between father and son, and the former, as a matter of
fact, felt such deep respect for priests and their ghosts in consequence of the
apparition that a short time after his wife had left purgatory for the last time
in order to talk with him—he turned Protestant.

Fear

We went up on deck after dinner. Before us the Mediterranean lay
without a ripple and shimmering in the moonlight. The great ship glided on,
casting upward to the star-studded sky a long serpent of black smoke.
Behind us the dazzling white water, stirred by the rapid progress of the
heavy bark and beaten by the propeller, foamed, seemed to writhe, gave off
so much brilliancy that one could have called it boiling moonlight.

There were six or eight of us silent with admiration and gazing toward
far-away Africa whither we were going. The commandant, who was
smoking a cigar with us, brusquely resumed the conversation begun at
dinner.

"Yes, I was afraid then. My ship remained for six hours on that rock,
beaten by the wind and with a great hole in the side. Luckily we were
picked up toward evening by an English coaler which sighted us."

Then a tall man of sunburned face and grave demeanor, one of those men
who have evidently traveled unknown and far-away lands, whose calm eye
seems to preserve in its depths something of the foreign scenes it has
observed, a man that you are sure is impregnated with courage, spoke for
the first time.

"You say, commandant, that you were afraid. I beg to disagree with you.
You are in error as to the meaning of the word and the nature of the
sensation that you experienced. An energetic man is never afraid in the
presence of urgent danger. He is excited, aroused, full of anxiety, but fear is
something quite different."

The commandant laughed and answered: "Bah! I assure you that I was
afraid."

Then the man of the tanned countenance addressed us deliberately as
follows:

"Permit me to explain. Fear—and the boldest men may feel fear—is
something horrible, an atrocious sensation, a sort of decomposition of the
soul, a terrible spasm of brain and heart, the very memory of which brings a
shudder of anguish, but when one is brave he feels it neither under fire nor
in the presence of sure death nor in the face of any well-known danger. It
springs up under certain abnormal conditions, under certain mysterious
influences in the presence of vague peril. Real fear is a sort of reminiscence
of fantastic terror of the past. A man who believes in ghosts and imagines he
sees a specter in the darkness must feel fear in all its horror.

"As for me I was overwhelmed with fear in broad daylight about ten
years ago and again one December night last winter.

"Nevertheless, I have gone through many dangers, many adventures
which seemed to promise death. I have often been in battle. I have been left
for dead by thieves. In America I was condemned as an insurgent to be
hanged, and off the coast of China have been thrown into the sea from the
deck of a ship. Each time I thought I was lost I at once decided upon my
course of action without regret or weakness.

"That is not fear.

"I have felt it in Africa, and yet it is a child of the north. The sunlight
banishes it like the mist. Consider this fact, gentlemen. Among the Orientals
life has no value; resignation is natural. The nights are clear and empty of
the somber spirit of unrest which haunts the brain in cooler lands. In the
Orient panic is known, but not fear.

"Well, then! Here is the incident that befell me in Africa.

"I was crossing the great sands to the south of Onargla. It is one of the
most curious districts in the world. You have seen the solid continuous sand
of the endless ocean strands. Well, imagine the ocean itself turned to sand in
the midst of a storm. Imagine a silent tempest with motionless billows of
yellow dust. They are high as mountains, these uneven, varied surges, rising
exactly like unchained billows, but still larger, and stratified like watered
silk. On this wild, silent, and motionless sea, the consuming rays of the
tropical sun are poured pitilessly and directly. You have to climb these

streaks of red-hot ash, descend again on the other side, climb again, climb,
climb without halt, without repose, without shade. The horses cough, sink
to their knees and slide down the sides of these remarkable hills.

"We were a couple of friends followed by eight spahis and four camels
with their drivers. We were no longer talking, overcome by heat, fatigue,
and a thirst such as had produced this burning desert. Suddenly one of our
men uttered a cry. We all halted, surprised by an unsolved phenomenon
known only to travelers in these trackless wastes.

"Somewhere, near us, in an indeterminable direction, a drum was rolling,
the mysterious drum of the sands. It was beating distinctly, now with
greater resonance and again feebler, ceasing, then resuming its uncanny roll.

"The Arabs, terrified, stared at one another, and one said in his language:
'Death is upon us.' As he spoke, my companion, my friend, almost a brother,
dropped from his horse, falling face downward on the sand, overcome by a
sunstroke.

"And for two hours, while I tried in vain to save him, this weird drum
filled my ears with its monotonous, intermittent and incomprehensible tone,
and I felt lay hold of my bones fear, real fear, hideous fear, in the presence
of this beloved corpse, in this hole scorched by the sun, surrounded by four
mountains of sand, and two hundred leagues from any French settlement,
while echo assailed our ears with this furious drum beat.

"On that day I realized what fear was, but since then I have had another,
and still more vivid experience—"

The commandant interrupted the speaker:

"I beg your pardon, but what was the drum?"

The traveler replied:

"I cannot say. No one knows. Our officers are often surprised by this
singular noise and attribute it generally to the echo produced by a hail of
grains of sand blown by the wind against the dry and brittle leaves of

weeds, for it has always been noticed that the phenomenon occurs in
proximity to little plants burned by the sun and hard as parchment. This
sound seems to have been magnified, multiplied, and swelled beyond
measure in its progress through the valleys of sand, and the drum therefore
might be considered a sort of sound mirage. Nothing more. But I did not
know that until later.

"I shall proceed to my second instance.

"It was last winter, in a forest of the Northeast of France. The sky was so
overcast that night came two hours earlier than usual. My guide was a
peasant who walked beside me along the narrow road, under the vault of fir
trees, through which the wind in its fury howled. Between the tree tops, I
saw the fleeting clouds, which seemed to hasten as if to escape some object
of terror. Sometimes in a fierce gust of wind the whole forest bowed in the
same direction with a groan of pain, and a chill laid hold of me, despite my
rapid pace and heavy clothing.

"We were to sup and sleep at an old gamekeeper's house not much farther
on. I had come out for hunting.

"My guide sometimes raised his eyes and murmured: 'Ugly weather!'
Then he told me about the people among whom we were to spend the night.
The father had killed a poacher, two years before, and since then had been
gloomy and behaved as though haunted by a memory. His two sons were
married and lived with him.

"The darkness was profound. I could see nothing before me nor around
me and the mass of overhanging interlacing trees rubbed together, filling
the night with an incessant whispering. Finally I saw a light and soon my
companion was knocking upon a door. Sharp women's voices answered us,
then a man's voice, a choking voice, asked, 'Who goes there?' My guide
gave his name. We entered and beheld a memorable picture.

"An old man with white hair, wild eyes, and a loaded gun in his hands,
stood waiting for us in the middle of the kitchen, while two stalwart youths,
armed with axes, guarded the door. In the somber corners I distinguished
two women kneeling with faces to the wall.

"Matters were explained, and the old man stood his gun against the wall,
at the same time ordering that a room be prepared for me. Then, as the
women did not stir: 'Look you, monsieur,' said he, 'two years ago this night
I killed a man, and last year he came back to haunt me. I expect him again
to-night.'

"Then he added in a tone that made me smile:

"'And so we are somewhat excited.'

"I reassured him as best I could, happy to have arrived on that particular
evening and to witness this superstitious terror. I told stories and almost
succeeded in calming the whole household.

"Near the fireplace slept an old dog, mustached and almost blind, with
his head between his paws, such a dog as reminds you of people you have
known.

"Outside, the raging storm was beating against the little house, and
suddenly through a small pane of glass, a sort of peep-window placed near
the door, I saw in a brilliant flash of lightning a whole mass of trees
thrashed by the wind.

"In spite of my efforts, I realized that terror was laying hold of these
people, and each time that I ceased to speak, all ears listened for distant
sounds. Annoyed at these foolish fears, I was about to retire to my bed,
when the old gamekeeper suddenly leaped from his chair, seized his gun
and stammered wildly: 'There he is, there he is! I hear him!' The two
women again sank upon their knees in the corner and hid their faces, while
the sons took up the axes. I was going to try to pacify them once more,
when the sleeping dog awakened suddenly and, raising his head and
stretching his neck, looked at the fire with his dim eyes and uttered one of
those mournful howls which make travelers shudder in the darkness and
solitude of the country. All eyes were focused upon him now as he rose on
his front feet, as though haunted by a vision, and began to howl at
something invisible, unknown, and doubtless horrible, for he was bristling
all over. The gamekeeper with livid face cried: 'He scents him! He scents

him! He was there when I killed him.' The two women, terrified, began to
wail in concert with the dog.

"In spite of myself, cold chills ran down my spine. This vision of the
animal at such a time and place, in the midst of these startled people, was
something frightful to witness.

"Then for an hour the dog howled without stirring; he howled as though
in the anguish of a nightmare; and fear, horrible fear came over me. Fear of
what? How can I say? It was fear, and that is all I know.

"We remained motionless and pale, expecting something awful to
happen. Our ears were strained and our hearts beat loudly while the
slightest noise startled us. Then the beast began to walk around the room,
sniffing at the walls and growling constantly. His maneuvers were driving
us mad! Then the countryman, who had brought me thither, in a paroxysm
of rage, seized the dog, and carrying him to a door, which opened into a
small court, thrust him forth.

"The noise was suppressed and we were left plunged in a silence still
more terrible. Then suddenly we all started. Some one was gliding along the
outside wall toward the forest; then he seemed to be feeling of the door with
a trembling hand; then for two minutes nothing was heard and we almost
lost our minds. Then he returned, still feeling along the wall, and scratched
lightly upon the door as a child might do with his finger nails. Suddenly a
face appeared behind the glass of the peep-window, a white face with eyes
shining like those of the cat tribe. A sound was heard, an indistinct plaintive
murmur.

"Then there was a formidable burst of noise in the kitchen. The old
gamekeeper had fired and the two sons at once rushed forward and
barricaded the window with the great table, reinforcing it with the buffet.

"I swear to you that at the shock of the gun's discharge, which I did not
expect, such an anguish laid hold of my heart, my soul, and my very body
that I felt myself about to fall, about to die from fear.

"We remained there until dawn, unable to move, in short, seized by an
indescribable numbness of the brain.

"No one dared to remove the barricade until a thin ray of sunlight
appeared through a crack in the back room.

"At the base of the wall and under the window, we found the old dog
lying dead, his skull shattered by a ball.

"He had escaped from the little court by digging a hole under a fence."

The dark-visaged man became silent, then he added:

"And yet on that night I incurred no danger, but I should rather again pass
through all the hours in which I have confronted the most terrible perils
than the one minute when that gun was discharged at the bearded head in
the window."

The Confession

Marguerite de Thérelles was dying. Although but fifty-six, she seemed
like seventy-five at least. She panted, paler than the sheets, shaken by
dreadful shiverings, her face convulsed, her eyes haggard, as if she had seen
some horrible thing.

Her eldest sister, Suzanne, six years older, sobbed on her knees beside the
bed. A little table drawn close to the couch of the dying woman, and
covered with a napkin, bore two lighted candles, the priest being
momentarily expected to give extreme unction and the communion, which
should be the last.

The apartment had that sinister aspect, that air of hopeless farewells,
which belongs to the chambers of the dying. Medicine bottles stood about
on the furniture, linen lay in the corners, pushed aside by foot or broom.
The disordered chairs themselves seemed affrighted, as if they had run, in
all the senses of the word. Death, the formidable, was there, hidden,
waiting.

The story of the two sisters was very touching. It was quoted far and
wide; it had made many eyes to weep.

Suzanne, the elder, had once been madly in love with a young man, who
had also been in love with her. They were engaged, and were only waiting
the day fixed for the contract, when Henry de Lampierre suddenly died.

The despair of the young girl was dreadful, and she vowed that she
would never marry. She kept her word. She put on widow's weeds, which
she never took off.

Then her sister, her little sister Marguérite, who was only twelve years
old, came one morning to throw herself into the arms of the elder, and said:
"Big Sister, I do not want thee to be unhappy. I do not want thee to cry all
thy life. I will never leave thee, never, never! I—I, too, shall never marry. I
shall stay with thee always, always, always!"

Suzanne, touched by the devotion of the child, kissed her, but did not
believe.

Yet the little one, also, kept her word, and despite the entreaties of her
parents, despite the supplications of the elder, she never married. She was
pretty, very pretty; she refused many a young man who seemed to love her
truly; and she never left her sister more.

They lived together all the days of their life, without ever being separated
a single time. They went side by side, inseparably united. But Marguérite
seemed always sad, oppressed, more melancholy than the elder, as though
perhaps her sublime sacrifice had broken her spirit. She aged more quickly,
had white hair from the age of thirty, and often suffering, seemed afflicted
by some secret, gnawing trouble.

Now she was to be the first to die.

Since yesterday she was no longer able to speak. She had only said, at the
first glimmers of day-dawn:

"Go fetch Monsieur le Curé, the moment has come."

And she had remained since then upon her back, shaken with spasms, her
lips agitated as though dreadful words were mounting from her heart
without power of issue, her look mad with fear, terrible to see.

Her sister, torn by sorrow, wept wildly, her forehead resting on the edge
of the bed, and kept repeating:

"Margot, my poor Margot, my little one!"

She had always called her, "Little One," just as the younger had always
called her "Big Sister."

Steps were heard on the stairs. The door opened. A choir boy appeared,
followed by an old priest in a surplice. As soon as she perceived him, the

dying woman, with one shudder, sat up, opened her lips, stammered two or
three words, and began to scratch the sheets with her nails as if she had
wished to make a hole.

The Abbé Simon approached, took her hand, kissed her brow, and with a
soft voice:

"God pardon thee, my child; have courage, the moment is now come,
speak."

Then Marguérite, shivering from head to foot, shaking her whole couch
with nervous movements, stammered:

"Sit down, Big Sister ... listen."

The priest bent down toward Suzanne, who was still flung upon the bed's
foot. He raised her, placed her in an armchair, and taking a hand of each of
the sisters in one of his own, he pronounced:

"Lord, my God! Endue them with strength, cast Thy mercy upon them."

And Marguérite began to speak. The words issued from her throat one by
one, raucous, with sharp pauses, as though very feeble.

"Pardon, pardon, Big Sister; oh, forgive! If thou knewest how I have had
fear of this moment all my life...."

Suzanne stammered through her tears:

"Forgive thee what, Little One? Thou hast given all to me, sacrificed
everything; thou art an angel...."

But Marguérite interrupted her:

"Hush, hush! Let me speak ... do not stop me. It is dreadful ... let me tell
all ... to the very end, without flinching. Listen. Thou rememberest ... thou
rememberest ... Henry...."

Suzanne trembled and looked at her sister. The younger continued:

"Thou must hear all, to understand. I was twelve years old, only twelve
years old; thou rememberest well, is it not so? And I was spoiled, I did
everything that I liked! Thou rememberest, surely, how they spoiled me?
Listen. The first time that he came he had varnished boots. He got down
from his horse at the great steps, and he begged pardon for his costume, but
he came to bring some news to papa. Thou rememberest, is it not so? Don't
speak—listen. When I saw him I was completely carried away, I found him
so very beautiful; and I remained standing in a corner of the salon all the
time that he was talking. Children are strange ... and terrible. Oh yes ... I
have dreamed of all that.

"He came back again ... several times ... I looked at him with all my eyes,
with all my soul ... I was large of my age ... and very much more knowing
than anyone thought. He came back often ... I thought only of him. I said,
very low:

"'Henry ... Henry de Lampierre!'

"Then they said that he was going to marry thee. It was a sorrow; oh, Big
Sister, a sorrow ... a sorrow! I cried for three nights without sleeping. He
came back every day, in the afternoon, after his lunch ... thou rememberest,
is it not so? Say nothing ... listen. Thou madest him cakes which he liked ...
with meal, with butter and milk. Oh, I know well how. I could make them
yet if it were needed. He ate them at one mouthful, and ... and then he drank
a glass of wine, and then he said, 'It is delicious.' Thou rememberest how he
would say that?

"I was jealous, jealous! The moment of thy marriage approached. There
were only two weeks more. I became crazy. I said to myself: 'He shall not
marry Suzanne, no, I will not have it! It is I whom he will marry when I am
grown up. I shall never find anyone whom I love so much.' But one night,
ten days before the contract, thou tookest a walk with him in front of the
chateau by moonlight ... and there ... under the fir, under the great fir ... he
kissed thee ... kissed ... holding thee in his two arms ... so long. Thou
rememberest, is it not so? It was probably the first time ... yes ... Thou wast
so pale when thou earnest back to the salon.

"I had seen you two; I was there, in the shrubbery. I was angry! If I could
I should have killed you both!

"I said to myself: 'He shall not marry Suzanne, never! He shall marry no
one. I should be too unhappy.' And all of a sudden I began to hate him
dreadfully.

"Then, dost thou know what I did? Listen. I had seen the gardener
making little balls to kill strange dogs. He pounded up a bottle with a stone
and put the powdered glass in a little ball of meat.

"I took a little medicine bottle that mamma had; I broke it small with a
hammer, and I hid the glass in my pocket. It was a shining powder ... The
next day, as soon as you had made the little cakes ... I split them with a
knife and I put in the glass ... He ate three of them ... I too, I ate one ... I
threw the other six into the pond. The two swans died three days after ...
Dost thou remember? Oh, say nothing ... listen, listen. I, I alone did not die
... but I have always been sick. Listen ... He died—thou knowest well ...
listen ... that, that is nothing. It is afterwards, later ... always ... the worst ...
listen.

"My life, all my life ... what torture! I said to myself: 'I will never leave
my sister. And at the hour of death I will tell her all ...' There! And ever
since, I have always thought of that moment when I should tell thee all.
Now it is come. It is terrible. Oh ... Big Sister!

"I have always thought, morning and evening, by night and by day,
'Some time I must tell her that ...' I waited ... What agony! ... It is done. Say
nothing. Now I am afraid ... am afraid ... oh, I am afraid. If I am going to
see him again, soon, when I am dead. See him again ... think of it! The first!
Before thou! I shall not dare. I must ... I am going to die ... I want you to
forgive me. I want it ... I cannot go off to meet him without that. Oh, tell her
to forgive me, Monsieur le Curé, tell her ... I implore you to do it. I cannot
die without that...."

She was silent, and remained panting, always scratching the sheet with
her withered nails.

Suzanne had hidden her face in her hands, and did not move. She was
thinking of him whom she might have loved so long! What a good life they
should have lived together! She saw him once again in that vanished
bygone time, in that old past which was put out forever. The beloved dead
—how they tear your hearts! Oh, that kiss, his only kiss! She had hidden it
in her soul. And after it nothing, nothing more her whole life long!

All of a sudden the priest stood straight, and, with a strong vibrant voice,
he cried:

"Mademoiselle Suzanne, your sister is dying!"

Then Suzanne, opening her hands, showed her face soaked with tears,
and throwing herself upon her sister, she kissed her with all her might,
stammering:

"I forgive thee, I forgive thee, Little One."

The Horla, or Modern Ghosts

May 8th. What a lovely day! I have spent all the morning lying in the
grass in front of my house, under the enormous plantain tree which covers
it, and shades and shelters the whole of it. I like this part of the country and
I am fond of living here because I am attached to it by deep roots, profound
and delicate roots which attach a man to the soil on which his ancestors
were born and died, which attach him to what people think and what they
eat, to the usages as well as to the food, local expressions, the peculiar
language of the peasants, to the smell of the soil, of the villages and of the
atmosphere itself.

I love my house in which I grew up. From my windows I can see the
Seine which flows by the side of my garden, on the other side of the road,
almost through my grounds, the great and wide Seine, which goes to Rouen
and Havre, and which is covered with boats passing to and fro.

On the left, down yonder, lies Rouen, that large town with its blue roofs,
under its pointed Gothic towers. They are innumerable, delicate or broad,
dominated by the spire of the cathedral, and full of bells which sound
through the blue air on fine mornings, sending their sweet and distant iron
clang to me; their metallic sound which the breeze wafts in my direction,
now stronger and now weaker, according as the wind is stronger or lighter.

What a delicious morning it was!

About eleven o'clock, a long line of boats drawn by a steam tug, as big as
a fly, and which scarcely puffed while emitting its thick smoke, passed my
gate.

After two English schooners, whose red flag fluttered toward the sky,
there came a magnificent Brazilian three-master; it was perfectly white and
wonderfully clean and shining. I saluted it, I hardly know why, except that
the sight of the vessel gave me great pleasure.

May 12th. I have had a slight feverish attack for the last few days, and I
feel ill, or rather I feel low-spirited.

Whence do these mysterious influences come, which change our
happiness into discouragement, and our self-confidence into diffidence?
One might almost say that the air, the invisible air is full of unknowable
Forces, whose mysterious presence we have to endure. I wake up in the best
spirits, with an inclination to sing in my throat. Why? I go down by the side
of the water, and suddenly, after walking a short distance, I return home
wretched, as if some misfortune were awaiting me there. Why? Is it a cold
shiver which, passing over my skin, has upset my nerves and given me low
spirits? Is it the form of the clouds, or the color of the sky, or the color of
the surrounding objects which is so changeable, which have troubled my
thoughts as they passed before my eyes? Who can tell? Everything that
surrounds us, everything that we see without looking at it, everything that
we touch without knowing it, everything that we handle without feeling it,
all that we meet without clearly distinguishing it, has a rapid, surprising and
inexplicable effect upon us and upon our organs, and through them on our
ideas and on our heart itself.

How profound that mystery of the Invisible is! We cannot fathom it with
our miserable senses, with our eyes which are unable to perceive what is
either too small or too great, too near to, or too far from us; neither the
inhabitants of a star nor of a drop of water ... with our ears that deceive us,
for they transmit to us the vibrations of the air in sonorous notes. They are
fairies who work the miracle of changing that movement into noise, and by
that metamorphosis give birth to music, which makes the mute agitation of
nature musical ... with our sense of smell which is smaller than that of a dog
... with our sense of taste which can scarcely distinguish the age of a wine!

Oh! If we only had other organs which would work other miracles in our
favor, what a number of fresh things we might discover around us!

May 16th. I am ill, decidedly! I was so well last month! I am feverish,
horribly feverish, or rather I am in a state of feverish enervation, which
makes my mind suffer as much as my body. I have without ceasing that
horrible sensation of some danger threatening me, that apprehension of
some coming misfortune or of approaching death, that presentiment which

is, no doubt, an attack of some illness which is still unknown, which
germinates in the flesh and in the blood.

May 18th. I have just come from consulting my medical man, for I could
no longer get any sleep. He found that my pulse was high, my eyes dilated,
my nerves highly strung, but no alarming symptoms. I must have a course
of shower-baths and of bromide of potassium.

May 25th. No change! My state is really very peculiar. As the evening
comes on, an incomprehensible feeling of disquietude seizes me, just as if
night concealed some terrible menace toward me. I dine quickly, and then
try to read, but I do not understand the words, and can scarcely distinguish
the letters. Then I walk up and down my drawing-room, oppressed by a
feeling of confused and irresistible fear, the fear of sleep and fear of my
bed.

About ten o'clock I go up to my room. As soon as I have got in I double
lock, and bolt it: I am frightened—of what? Up till the present time I have
been frightened of nothing—I open my cupboards, and look under my bed;
I listen—I listen—to what? How strange it is that a simple feeling of
discomfort, impeded or heightened circulation, perhaps the irritation of a
nervous thread, a slight congestion, a small disturbance in the imperfect and
delicate functions of our living machinery, can turn the most lighthearted of
men into a melancholy one, and make a coward of the bravest! Then, I go to
bed, and I wait for sleep as a man might wait for the executioner. I wait for
its coming with dread, and my heart beats and my legs tremble, while my
whole body shivers beneath the warmth of the bedclothes, until the moment
when I suddenly fall asleep, as one would throw oneself into a pool of
stagnant water in order to drown oneself. I do not feel coming over me, as I
used to do formerly, this perfidious sleep which is close to me and watching
me, which is going to seize me by the head, to close my eyes and annihilate
me.

I sleep—a long time—two or three hours perhaps—then a dream—no—a
nightmare lays hold on me. I feel that I am in bed and asleep—I feel it and I
know it—and I feel also that somebody is coming close to me, is looking at
me, touching me, is getting on to my bed, is kneeling on my chest, is taking

my neck between his hands and squeezing it—squeezing it with all his
might in order to strangle me.

I struggle, bound by that terrible powerlessness which paralyzes us in our
dreams; I try to cry out—but I cannot; I want to move—I cannot; I try, with
the most violent efforts and out of breath, to turn over and throw off this
being which is crushing and suffocating me—I cannot!

And then, suddenly, I wake up, shaken and bathed in perspiration; I light
a candle and find that I am alone, and after that crisis, which occurs every
night, I at length fall asleep and slumber tranquilly till morning.

June 2d. My state has grown worse. What is the matter with me? The
bromide does me no good, and the shower-baths have no effect whatever.
Sometimes, in order to tire myself out, though I am fatigued enough
already, I go for a walk in the forest of Roumare. I used to think at first that
the fresh light and soft air, impregnated with the odor of herbs and leaves,
would instill new blood into my veins and impart fresh energy to my heart.
I turned into a broad ride in the wood, and then I turned toward La Bouille,
through a narrow path, between two rows of exceedingly tall trees, which
placed a thick, green, almost black roof between the sky and me.

A sudden shiver ran through me, not a cold shiver, but a shiver of agony,
and so I hastened my steps, uneasy at being alone in the wood, frightened
stupidly and without reason, at the profound solitude. Suddenly it seemed to
me as if I were being followed, that somebody was walking at my heels,
close, quite close to me, near enough to touch me.

I turned round suddenly, but I was alone. I saw nothing behind me except
the straight, broad ride, empty and bordered by high trees, horribly empty;
on the other side it also extended until it was lost in the distance, and looked
just the same, terrible.

I closed my eyes. Why? And then I began to turn round on one heel very
quickly, just like a top. I nearly fell down, and opened my eyes; the trees
were dancing round me and the earth heaved; I was obliged to sit down.
Then, ah! I no longer remembered how I had come! What a strange idea!
What a strange, strange idea! I did not the least know. I started off to the

right, and got back into the avenue which had led me into the middle of the
forest.

June 3d. I have had a terrible night. I shall go away for a few weeks, for
no doubt a journey will set me up again.

July 2d. I have come back, quite cured, and have had a most delightful
trip into the bargain. I have been to Mont Saint-Michel, which I had not
seen before.

What a sight, when one arrives as I did, at Avranches toward the end of
the day! The town stands on a hill, and I was taken into the public garden at
the extremity of the town. I uttered a cry of astonishment. An
extraordinarily large bay lay extended before me, as far as my eyes could
reach, between two hills which were lost to sight in the mist; and in the
middle of this immense yellow bay, under a clear, golden sky, a peculiar hill
rose up, somber and pointed in the midst of the sand. The sun had just
disappeared, and under the still flaming sky the outline of that fantastic rock
stood out, which bears on its summit a fantastic monument.

At daybreak I went to it. The tide was low as it had been the night before,
and I saw that wonderful abbey rise up before me as I approached it. After
several hours' walking, I reached the enormous mass of rocks which
supports the little town, dominated by the great church. Having climbed the
steep and narrow street, I entered the most wonderful Gothic building that
has ever been built to God on earth, as large as a town, full of low rooms
which seem buried beneath vaulted roofs, and lofty galleries supported by
delicate columns.

I entered this gigantic granite jewel which is as light as a bit of lace,
covered with towers, with slender belfries to which spiral staircases ascend,
and which raise their strange heads that bristle with chimeras, with devils,
with fantastic animals, with monstrous flowers, and which are joined
together by finely carved arches, to the blue sky by day, and to the black
sky by night.

When I had reached the summit, I said to the monk who accompanied
me: "Father, how happy you must be here!" And he replied: "It is very

windy, Monsieur;" and so we began to talk while watching the rising tide,
which ran over the sand and covered it with a steel cuirass.

And then the monk told me stories, all the old stories belonging to the
place, legends, nothing but legends.

One of them struck me forcibly. The country people, those belonging to
the Mornet, declare that at night one can hear talking going on in the sand,
and then that one hears two goats bleat, one with a strong, the other with a
weak voice. Incredulous people declare that it is nothing but the cry of the
sea birds, which occasionally resembles bleatings, and occasionally human
lamentations; but belated fishermen swear that they have met an old
shepherd, whose head, which is covered by his cloak, they can never see,
wandering on the downs, between two tides, round the little town placed so
far out of the world, and who is guiding and walking before them, a he-goat
with a man's face, and a she-goat with a woman's face, and both of them
with white hair; and talking incessantly, quarreling in a strange language,
and then suddenly ceasing to talk in order to bleat with all their might.

"Do you believe it?" I asked the monk. "I scarcely know," he replied, and
I continued: "If there are other beings besides ourselves on this earth, how
comes it that we have not known it for so long a time, or why have you not
seen them? How is it that I have not seen them?" He replied: "Do we see the
hundred thousandth part of what exists? Look here; there is the wind, which
is the strongest force in nature, which knocks down men, and blows down
buildings, uproots trees, raises the sea into mountains of water, destroys
cliffs and casts great ships onto the breakers; the wind which kills, which
whistles, which sighs, which roars—have you ever seen it, and can you see
it? It exists for all that, however."

I was silent before this simple reasoning. That man was a philosopher, or
perhaps a fool; I could not say which exactly, so I held my tongue. What he
had said, had often been in my own thoughts.

July 3d. I have slept badly; certainly there is some feverish influence
here, for my coachman is suffering in the same way as I am. When I went
back home yesterday, I noticed his singular paleness, and I asked him:
"What is the matter with you, Jean?" "The matter is that I never get any rest,

and my nights devour my days. Since your departure, monsieur, there has
been a spell over me."

However, the other servants are all well, but I am very frightened of
having another attack, myself.

July 4th. I am decidedly taken again; for my old nightmares have
returned. Last night I felt somebody leaning on me who was sucking my
life from between my lips with his mouth. Yes, he was sucking it out of my
neck, like a leech would have done. Then he got up, satiated, and I woke up,
so beaten, crushed and annihilated that I could not move. If this continues
for a few days, I shall certainly go away again.

July 5th. Have I lost my reason? What has happened, what I saw last
night, is so strange, that my head wanders when I think of it!

As I do now every evening, I had locked my door, and then, being thirsty,
I drank half a glass of water, and I accidentally noticed that the water bottle
was full up to the cut-glass stopper.

Then I went to bed and fell into one of my terrible sleeps, from which I
was aroused in about two hours by a still more terrible shock.

Picture to yourself a sleeping man who is being murdered and who wakes
up with a knife in his chest, and who is rattling in his throat, covered with
blood, and who can no longer breathe, and is going to die, and does not
understand anything at all about it—there it is.

Having recovered my senses, I was thirsty again, so I lit a candle and
went to the table on which my water bottle was. I lifted it up and tilted it
over my glass, but nothing came out. It was empty! It was completely
empty! At first I could not understand it at all, and then suddenly I was
seized by such a terrible feeling that I had to sit down, or rather I fell into a
chair! Then I sprang up with a bound to look about me, and then I sat down
again, overcome by astonishment and fear, in front of the transparent crystal
bottle! I looked at it with fixed eyes, trying to conjecture, and my hands
trembled! Somebody had drunk the water, but who? I? I without any doubt.
It could surely only be I? In that case I was a somnambulist. I lived, without

knowing it, that double mysterious life which makes us doubt whether there
are not two beings in us, or whether a strange, unknowable and invisible
being does not at such moments, when our soul is in a state of torpor,
animate our captive body which obeys this other being, as it does us
ourselves, and more than it does ourselves.

Oh! Who will understand my horrible agony? Who will understand the
emotion of a man who is sound in mind, wide awake, full of sound sense,
and who looks in horror at the remains of a little water that has disappeared
while he was asleep, through the glass of a water bottle? And I remained
there until it was daylight, without venturing to go to bed again.

July 6th. I am going mad. Again all the contents of my water bottle have
been drunk during the night—or rather, I have drunk it!

But is it I? Is it I? Who could it be? Who? Oh! God! Am I going mad?
Who will save me?

July 10th. I have just been through some surprising ordeals. Decidedly I
am mad! And yet!—

On July 6th, before going to bed, I put some wine, milk, water, bread and
strawberries on my table. Somebody drank—I drank—all the water and a
little of the milk, but neither the wine, bread nor the strawberries were
touched.

On the seventh of July I renewed the same experiment, with the same
results, and on July 8th, I left out the water and the milk and nothing was
touched.

Lastly, on July 9th I put only water and milk on my table, taking care to
wrap up the bottles in white muslin and to tie down the stoppers. Then I
rubbed my lips, my beard and my hands with pencil lead, and went to bed.

Irresistible sleep seized me, which was soon followed by a terrible
awakening. I had not moved, and my sheets were not marked. I rushed to
the table. The muslin round the bottles remained intact; I undid the string,

trembling with fear. All the water had been drunk, and so had the milk! Ah!
Great God!—

I must start for Paris immediately.

July 12th. Paris. I must have lost my head during the last few days! I
must be the plaything of my enervated imagination, unless I am really a
somnambulist, or that I have been brought under the power of one of those
influences which have been proved to exist, but which have hitherto been
inexplicable, which are called suggestions. In any case, my mental state
bordered on madness, and twenty-four hours of Paris sufficed to restore me
to my equilibrium.

Yesterday after doing some business and paying some visits which
instilled fresh and invigorating mental air into me, I wound up my evening
at the Théâtre Français. A play by Alexandre Dumas the Younger was being
acted, and his active and powerful mind completed my cure. Certainly
solitude is dangerous for active minds. We require men who can think and
can talk, around us. When we are alone for a long time we people space
with phantoms.

I returned along the boulevards to my hotel in excellent spirits. Amid the
jostling of the crowd I thought, not without irony, of my terrors and
surmises of the previous week, because I believed, yes, I believed, that an
invisible being lived beneath my roof. How weak our head is, and how
quickly it is terrified and goes astray, as soon, as we are struck by a small,
incomprehensible fact.

Instead of concluding with these simple words: "I do not understand
because the cause escapes me," we immediately imagine terrible mysteries
and supernatural powers.

July 14th. Fête of the Republic. I walked through the streets, and the
crackers and flags amused me like a child. Still it is very foolish to be merry
on a fixed date, by a Government decree. The populace is an imbecile flock
of sheep, now steadily patient, and now in ferocious revolt. Say to it:
"Amuse yourself," and it amuses itself. Say to it: "Go and fight with your
neighbor," and it goes and fights. Say to it: "Vote for the Emperor," and it

votes for the Emperor, and then say to it: "Vote for the Republic," and it
votes for the Republic.

Those who direct it are also stupid; but instead of obeying men they obey
principles, which can only be stupid, sterile, and false, for the very reason
that they are principles, that is to say, ideas which are considered as certain
and unchangeable, in this world where one is certain of nothing, since light
is an illusion and noise is an illusion.

July 16th. I saw some things yesterday that troubled me very much.

I was dining at my cousin's Madame Sablé, whose husband is colonel of
the 76th Chasseurs at Limoges. There were two young women there, one of
whom had married a medical man, Dr. Parent, who devotes himself a great
deal to nervous diseases and the extraordinary manifestations to which at
this moment experiments in hypnotism and suggestion give rise.

He related to us at some length, the enormous results obtained by English
scientists and the doctors of the medical school at Nancy, and the facts
which he adduced appeared to me so strange, that I declared that I was
altogether incredulous.

"We are," he declared, "on the point of discovering one of the most
important secrets of nature, I mean to say, one of its most important secrets
on this earth, for there are certainly some which are of a different kind of
importance up in the stars, yonder. Ever since man has thought, since he has
been able to express and write down his thoughts, he has felt himself close
to a mystery which is impenetrable to his coarse and imperfect senses, and
he endeavors to supplement the want of power of his organs by the efforts
of his intellect. As long as that intellect still remained in its elementary
stage, this intercourse with invisible spirits assumed forms which were
commonplace though terrifying. Thence sprang the popular belief in the
supernatural, the legends of wandering spirits, of fairies, of gnomes, ghosts,
I might even say the legend of God, for our conceptions of the workman-
creator, from whatever religion they may have come down to us, are
certainly the most mediocre, the stupidest and the most unacceptable
inventions that ever sprang from the frightened brain of any human

creatures. Nothing is truer than what Voltaire says: 'God made man in His
own image, but man has certainly paid Him back again.'

"But for rather more than a century, men seem to have had a presentiment
of something new. Mesmer and some others have put us on an unexpected
track, and especially within the last two or three years, we have arrived at
really surprising results."

My cousin, who is also very incredulous, smiled, and Dr. Parent said to
her: "Would you like me to try and send you to sleep, Madame?" "Yes,
certainly."

She sat down in an easy-chair, and he began to look at her fixedly, so as
to fascinate her. I suddenly felt myself somewhat uncomfortable, with a
beating heart and a choking feeling in my throat. I saw that Madame Sablé's
eyes were growing heavy, her mouth twitched and her bosom heaved, and
at the end of ten minutes she was asleep.

"Stand behind her," the doctor said to me, and so I took a seat behind her.
He put a visiting card into her hands, and said to her: "This is a looking-
glass; what do you see in it?" And she replied: "I see my cousin." "What is
he doing?" "He is twisting his mustache." "And now?" "He is taking a
photograph out of his pocket." "Whose photograph is it?" "His own."

That was true, and that photograph had been given me that same evening
at the hotel.

"What is his attitude in this portrait?" "He is standing up with his hat in
his hand."

So she saw on that card, on that piece of white pasteboard, as if she had
seen it in a looking glass.

The young women were frightened, and exclaimed: "That is quite
enough! Quite, quite enough!"

But the doctor said to her authoritatively: "You will get up at eight
o'clock to-morrow morning; then you will go and call on your cousin at his

hotel and ask him to lend you five thousand francs which your husband
demands of you, and which he will ask for when he sets out on his coming
journey."

Then he woke her up.

On returning to my hotel, I thought over this curious séance and I was
assailed by doubts, not as to my cousin's absolute and undoubted good faith,
for I had known her as well as if she had been my own sister ever since she
was a child, but as to a possible trick on the doctor's part. Had not he,
perhaps, kept a glass hidden in his hand, which he showed to the young
woman in her sleep, at the same time as he did the card? Professional
conjurers do things which are just as singular.

So I went home and to bed, and this morning, at about half-past eight, I
was awakened by my footman, who said to me: "Madame Sablé has asked
to see you immediately, Monsieur," so I dressed hastily and went to her.

She sat down in some agitation, with her eyes on the floor, and without
raising her veil she said to me: "My dear cousin, I am going to ask a great
favor of you." "What is it, cousin?" "I do not like to tell you, and yet I must.
I am in absolute want of five thousand francs." "What, you?" "Yes, I, or
rather my husband, who has asked me to procure them for him."

I was so stupefied that I stammered out my answers. I asked myself
whether she had not really been making fun of me with Doctor Parent, if it
were not merely a very well-acted farce which had been got up beforehand.
On looking at her attentively, however, my doubts disappeared. She was
trembling with grief, so painful was this step to her, and I was sure that her
throat was full of sobs.

I knew that she was very rich and so I continued: "What! Has not your
husband five thousand francs at his disposal! Come, think. Are you sure that
he commissioned you to ask me for them?"

She hesitated for a few seconds, as if she were making a great effort to
search her memory, and then she replied: "Yes ... yes, I am quite sure of it."
"He has written to you?"

She hesitated again and reflected, and I guessed the torture of her
thoughts. She did not know. She only knew that she was to borrow five
thousand francs of me for her husband. So she told a lie. "Yes, he has
written to me." "When, pray? You did not mention it to me yesterday." "I
received his letter this morning." "Can you show it me?" "No; no ... no ... it
contained private matters ... things too personal to ourselves.... I burnt it."
"So your husband runs into debt?"

She hesitated again, and then murmured: "I do not know." Thereupon I
said bluntly: "I have not five thousand francs at my disposal at this moment,
my dear cousin."

She uttered a kind of cry as if she were in pain and said: "Oh! oh! I
beseech you, I beseech you to get them for me...."

She got excited and clasped her hands as if she were praying to me! I
heard her voice change its tone; she wept and stammered, harassed and
dominated by the irresistible order that she had received.

"Oh! oh! I beg you to ... if you knew what I am suffering.... I want them
to-day."

I had pity on her: "You shall have them by and by, I swear to you." "Oh!
thank you! thank you! How kind you are!"

I continued: "Do you remember what took place at your house last
night?" "Yes." "Do you remember that Doctor Parent sent you to sleep?"
"Yes." "Oh! Very well then; he ordered you to come to me this morning to
borrow five thousand francs, and at this moment you are obeying that
suggestion."

She considered for a few moments, and then replied:

"But as it is my husband who wants them...."

For a whole hour I tried to convince her, but could not succeed, and when
she had gone I went to the doctor. He was just going out, and he listened to

me with a smile, and said: "Do you believe now?" "Yes, I cannot help it."
"Let us go to your cousin's."

She was already dozing on a couch, overcome with fatigue. The doctor
felt her pulse, looked at her for some time with one hand raised toward her
eyes which she closed by degrees under the irresistible power of this
magnetic influence, and when she was asleep, he said:

"Your husband does not require the five thousand francs any longer! You
must, therefore, forget that you asked your cousin to lend them to you, and,
if he speaks to you about it, you will not understand him."

Then he woke her up, and I took out a pocketbook and said: "Here is
what you asked me for this morning, my dear cousin." But she was so
surprised that I did not venture to persist; nevertheless, I tried to recall the
circumstance to her, but she denied it vigorously, thought that I was making
fun of her, and in the end very nearly lost her temper.

There! I have just come back, and I have not been able to eat any lunch,
for this experiment has altogether upset me.

July 19th. Many people to whom I have told the adventure have laughed
at me. I no longer know what to think. The wise man says: Perhaps?

July 21st. I dined at Bougival, and then I spent the evening at a boatmen's
ball. Decidedly everything depends on place and surroundings. It would be
the height of folly to believe in the supernatural on the île de la
Grenouillière[2] ... but on the top of Mont Saint-Michel? ... and in India? We
are terribly under the influence of our surroundings. I shall return home
next week.

July 30th. I came back to my own house yesterday. Everything is going
on well.

August 2d. Nothing fresh; it is splendid weather, and I spend my days in
watching the Seine flow past.

August 4th. Quarrels among my servants. They declare that the glasses
are broken in the cupboards at night. The footman accuses the cook, who
accuses the needlewoman, who accuses the other two. Who is the culprit? A
clever person, to be able to tell.

August 6th. This time I am not mad. I have seen ... I have seen ... I have
seen!... I can doubt no longer ... I have seen it!...

I was walking at two o'clock among my rose trees, in the full sunlight ...
in the walk bordered by autumn roses which are beginning to fall. As I
stopped to look at a Géant de Bataille, which had three splendid blooms, I
distinctly saw the stalk of one of the roses bend, close to me, as if an
invisible hand had bent it, and then break, as if that hand had picked it!
Then the flower raised itself, following the curve which a hand would have
described in carrying it toward a mouth, and it remained suspended in the
transparent air, all alone and motionless, a terrible red spot, three yards from
my eyes. In desperation I rushed at it to take it! I found nothing; it had
disappeared. Then I was seized with furious rage against myself, for it is not
allowable for a reasonable and serious man to have such hallucinations.

But was it a hallucination? I turned round to look for the stalk, and I
found it immediately under the bush, freshly broken, between two other
roses which remained on the branch, and I returned home then, with a much
disturbed mind; for I am certain now, as certain as I am of the alternation of
day and night, that there exists close to me an invisible being that lives on
milk and on water, which can touch objects, take them and change their
places; which is, consequently, endowed with a material nature, although it
is imperceptible to our senses, and which lives as I do, under my roof....

August 7th. I slept tranquilly. He drank the water out of my decanter, but
did not disturb my sleep.

I ask myself whether I am mad. As I was walking just now in the sun by
the riverside, doubts as to my own sanity arose in me; not vague doubts
such as I have had hitherto, but precise and absolute doubts. I have seen
mad people, and I have known some who have been quite intelligent, lucid,
even clear-sighted in every concern of life, except on one point. They spoke
clearly, readily, profoundly on everything, when suddenly their thoughts

struck upon the breakers of their madness and broke to pieces there, and
were dispersed and foundered in that furious and terrible sea, full of
bounding waves, fogs and squalls, which is called madness.

I certainly should think that I was mad, absolutely mad, if I were not
conscious, did not perfectly know my state, if I did fathom it by analyzing it
with the most complete lucidity. I should, in fact, be a reasonable man who
was laboring under a hallucination. Some unknown disturbance must have
been excited in my brain, one of those disturbances which physiologists of
the present day try to note and to fix precisely, and that disturbance must
have caused a profound gulf in my mind and in the order and logic of my
ideas. Similar phenomena occur in the dreams which lead us through the
most unlikely phantasmagoria, without causing us any surprise, because our
verifying apparatus and our sense of control has gone to sleep, while our
imaginative faculty wakes and works. Is it not possible that one of the
imperceptible keys of the cerebral finger-board has been paralyzed in me?
Some men lose the recollection of proper names, or of verbs or of numbers
or merely of dates, in consequence of an accident. The localization of all the
particles of thought has been proved nowadays; what then would there be
surprising in the fact that my faculty of controlling the unreality of certain
hallucinations should be destroyed for the time being!

I thought of all this as I walked by the side of the water. The sun was
shining brightly on the river and made earth delightful, while it filled my
looks with love for life, for the swallows, whose agility is always delightful
in my eyes, for the plants by the riverside, whose rustling is a pleasure to
my ears.

By degrees, however, an inexplicable feeling of discomfort seized me. It
seemed to me as if some unknown force were numbing and stopping me,
were preventing me from going farther and were calling me back. I felt that
painful wish to return which oppresses you when you have left a beloved
invalid at home, and when you are seized by a presentiment that he is
worse.

I, therefore, returned in spite of myself, feeling certain that I should find
some bad news awaiting me, a letter or a telegram. There was nothing,

however, and I was more surprised and uneasy than if I had had another
fantastic vision.

August 8th. I spent a terrible evening yesterday. He does not show
himself any more, but I feel that he is near me, watching me, looking at me,
penetrating me, dominating me and more redoubtable when he hides
himself thus, than if he were to manifest his constant and invisible presence
by supernatural phenomena. However, I slept.

August 9th. Nothing, but I am afraid.

August 10th. Nothing; what will happen to-morrow?

August 11th. Still nothing; I cannot stop at home with this fear hanging
over me and these thoughts in my mind; I shall go away.

August 12th. Ten o'clock at night. All day long I have been trying to get
away, and have not been able. I wished to accomplish this simple and easy
act of liberty—go out—get into my carriage in order to go to Rouen—and I
have not been able to do it. What is the reason?

August 13th. When one is attacked by certain maladies, all the springs of
our physical being appear to be broken, all our energies destroyed, all our
muscles relaxed, our bones to have become as soft as our flesh, and our
blood as liquid as water. I am experiencing that in my moral being in a
strange and distressing manner. I have no longer any strength, any courage,
any self-control, nor even any power to set my own will in motion. I have
no power left to will anything, but some one does it for me and I obey.

August 14th. I am lost! Somebody possesses my soul and governs it!
Somebody orders all my acts, all my movements, all my thoughts. I am no
longer anything in myself, nothing except an enslaved and terrified
spectator of all the things which I do. I wish to go out; I cannot. He does not
wish to, and so I remain, trembling and distracted in the armchair in which
he keeps me sitting. I merely wish to get up and to rouse myself, so as to
think that I am still master of myself: I cannot! I am riveted to my chair, and
my chair adheres to the ground in such a manner that no force could move
us.

Then suddenly, I must, I must go to the bottom of my garden to pick
some strawberries and eat them, and I go there. I pick the strawberries and I
eat them! Oh! my God! my God! Is there a God? If there be one, deliver
me! save me! succor me! Pardon! Pity! Mercy! Save me! Oh! what
sufferings! what torture! what horror!

August 15th. Certainly this is the way in which my poor cousin was
possessed and swayed, when she came to borrow five thousand francs of
me. She was under the power of a strange will which had entered into her,
like another soul, like another parasitic and ruling soul. Is the world coming
to an end?

But who is he, this invisible being that rules me? This unknowable being,
this rover of a supernatural race?

Invisible beings exist, then! How is it then that since the beginning of the
world they have never manifested themselves in such a manner precisely as
they do to me? I have never read anything which resembles what goes on in
my house. Oh! If I could only leave it, if I could only go away and flee, so
as never to return, I should be saved; but I cannot.

August 16th. I managed to escape to-day for two hours, like a prisoner
who finds the door of his dungeon accidentally open. I suddenly felt that I
was free and that he was far away, and so I gave orders to put the horses in
as quickly as possible, and I drove to Rouen. Oh! How delightful to be able
to say to a man who obeyed you: "Go to Rouen!"

I made him pull up before the library, and I begged them to lend me Dr.
Herrmann Herestauss's treatise on the unknown inhabitants of the ancient
and modern world.

Then, as I was getting into my carriage, I intended to say: "To the railway
station!" but instead of this I shouted—I did not say, but I shouted—in such
a loud voice that all the passers-by turned round: "Home!" and I fell back
onto the cushion of my carriage, overcome by mental agony. He had found
me out and regained possession of me.

August 17th. Oh! What a night! what a night! And yet it seems to me that
I ought to rejoice. I read until one o'clock in the morning! Herestauss,
Doctor of Philosophy and Theogony, wrote the history and the
manifestation of all those invisible beings which hover around man, or of
whom he dreams. He describes their origin, their domains, their power; but
none of them resembles the one which haunts me. One might say that man,
ever since he has thought, has had a foreboding of, and feared a new being,
stronger than himself, his successor in this world, and that, feeling him near,
and not being able to foretell the nature of that master, he has, in his terror,
created the whole race of hidden beings, of vague phantoms born of fear.

Having, therefore, read until one o'clock in the morning, I went and sat
down at the open window, in order to cool my forehead and my thoughts, in
the calm night air. It was very pleasant and warm! How I should have
enjoyed such a night formerly!

There was no moon, but the stars darted out their rays in the dark
heavens. Who inhabits those worlds? What forms, what living beings, what
animals are there yonder? What do those who are thinkers in those distant
worlds know more than we do? What can they do more than we can? What
do they see which we do not know? Will not one of them, some day or
other, traversing space, appear on our earth to conquer it, just as the
Norsemen formerly crossed the sea in order to subjugate nations more
feeble than themselves?

We are so weak, so unarmed, so ignorant, so small, we who live on this
particle of mud which turns round in a drop of water.

I fell asleep, dreaming thus in the cool night air, and then, having slept
for about three quarters of an hour, I opened my eyes without moving,
awakened by I know not what confused and strange sensation. At first I saw
nothing, and then suddenly it appeared to me as if a page of a book which
had remained open on my table, turned over of its own accord. Not a breath
of air had come in at my window, and I was surprised and waited. In about
four minutes, I saw, I saw, yes I saw with my own eyes another page lift
itself up and fall down on the others, as if a finger had turned it over. My
armchair was empty, appeared empty, but I knew that he was there, he, and
sitting in my place, and that he was reading. With a furious bound, the

bound of an enraged wild beast that wishes to disembowel its tamer, I
crossed my room to seize him, to strangle him, to kill him!... But before I
could reach it, my chair fell over as if somebody had run away from me ...
my table rocked, my lamp fell and went out, and my window closed as if
some thief had been surprised and had fled out into the night, shutting it
behind him.

So he had run away: he had been afraid; he, afraid of me!

So ... so ... to-morrow ... or later ... some day or other ... I should be able
to hold him in my clutches and crush him against the ground! Do not dogs
occasionally bite and strangle their masters?

August 18th. I have been thinking the whole day long. Oh! yes, I will
obey him, follow his impulses, fulfill all his wishes, show myself humble,
submissive, a coward. He is the stronger; but an hour will come....

August 19th. I know, ... I know ... I know all! I have just read the
following in the Revue du Monde Scientifique: "A curious piece of news
comes to us from Rio de Janeiro. Madness, an epidemic of madness, which
may be compared to that contagious madness which attacked the people of
Europe in the Middle Ages, is at this moment raging in the Province of San-
Paulo. The frightened inhabitants are leaving their houses, deserting their
villages, abandoning their land, saying that they are pursued, possessed,
governed like human cattle by invisible, though tangible beings, a species
of vampire, which feed on their life while they are asleep, and who, besides,
drink water and milk without appearing to touch any other nourishment.

"Professor Dom Pedro Henriques, accompanied by several medical
savants, has gone to the Province of San-Paulo, in order to study the origin
and the manifestations of this surprising madness on the spot, and to
propose such measures to the Emperor as may appear to him to be most
fitted to restore the mad population to reason."

Ah! Ah! I remember now that fine Brazilian three-master which passed in
front of my windows as it was going up the Seine, on the 8th of last May! I
thought it looked so pretty, so white and bright! That Being was on board of
her, coming from there, where its race sprang from. And it saw me! It saw

my house which was also white, and it sprang from the ship onto the land.
Oh! Good heavens!

Now I know, I can divine. The reign of man is over, and he has come. He
whom disquieted priests exorcised, whom sorcerers evoked on dark nights,
without yet seeing him appear, to whom the presentiments of the transient
masters of the world lent all the monstrous or graceful forms of gnomes,
spirits, genii, fairies, and familiar spirits. After the coarse conceptions of
primitive fear, more clear-sighted men foresaw it more clearly. Mesmer
divined him, and ten years ago physicians accurately discovered the nature
of his power, even before he exercised it himself. They played with that
weapon of their new Lord, the sway of a mysterious will over the human
soul, which had become enslaved. They called it magnetism, hypnotism,
suggestion ... what do I know? I have seen them amusing themselves like
impudent children with this horrible power! Woe to us! Woe to man! He has
come, the ... the ... what does he call himself ... the ... I fancy that he is
shouting out his name to me and I do not hear him ... the ... yes ... he is
shouting it out ... I am listening ... I cannot ... repeat ... it ... Horla ... I have
heard ... the Horla ... it is he ... the Horla ... he has come!...

Ah! the vulture has eaten the pigeon, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the lion
has devoured the buffalo with sharp horns; man has killed the lion with an
arrow, with a sword, with gunpowder; but the Horla will make of man what
we have made of the horse and of the ox: his chattel, his slave and his food,
by the mere power of his will. Woe to us!

But, nevertheless, the animal sometimes revolts and kills the man who
has subjugated it.... I should also like ... I shall be able to ... but I must know
him, touch him, see him! Learned men say that beasts' eyes, as they differ
from ours, do not distinguish like ours do ... And my eye cannot distinguish
this newcomer who is oppressing me.

Why? Oh! Now I remember the words of the monk at Mont Saint-
Michel: "Can we see the hundred-thousandth part of what exists? Look
here; there is the wind which is the strongest force in nature, which knocks
men, and blows down buildings, uproots trees, raises the sea into mountains
of water, destroys cliffs and casts great ships onto the breakers; the wind

which kills, which whistles, which sighs, which roars—have you ever seen
it, and can you see it? It exists for all that, however!"

And I went on thinking: my eyes are so weak, so imperfect, that they do
not even distinguish hard bodies, if they are as transparent as glass!... If a
glass without tinfoil behind it were to bar my way, I should run into it, just
as a bird which has flown into a room breaks its head against the window
panes. A thousand things, moreover, deceive him and lead him astray. How
should it then be surprising that he cannot perceive a fresh body which is
traversed by the light?

A new being! Why not? It was assuredly bound to come! Why should we
be the last? We do not distinguish it, like all the others created before us.
The reason is, that its nature is more perfect, its body finer and more
finished than ours, that ours is so weak, so awkwardly conceived,
encumbered with organs that are always tired, always on the strain like
locks that are too complicated, which lives like a plant and like a beast,
nourishing itself with difficulty on air, herbs and flesh, an animal machine
which is a prey to maladies, to malformations, to decay; broken-winded,
badly regulated, simple and eccentric, ingeniously badly made, a coarse and
a delicate work, the outline of a being which might become intelligent and
grand.

We are only a few, so few in this world, from the oyster up to man. Why
should there not be one more, when once that period is accomplished which
separates the successive apparitions from all the different species?

Why not one more? Why not, also, other trees with immense, splendid
flowers, perfuming whole regions? Why not other elements besides fire, air,
earth and water? There are four, only four, those nursing fathers of various
beings! What a pity! Why are they not forty, four hundred, four thousand!
How poor everything is, how mean and wretched! grudgingly given, dryly
invented, clumsily made! Ah! the elephant and the hippopotamus, what
grace! And the camel, what elegance!

But, the butterfly you will say, a flying flower! I dream of one that should
be as large as a hundred worlds, with wings whose shape, beauty, colors,
and motion I cannot even express. But I see it ... it flutters from star to star,

refreshing them and perfuming them with the light and harmonious breath
of its flight!... And the people up there look at it as it passes in an ecstasy of
delight!...

What is the matter with me? It is he, the Horla who haunts me, and who
makes me think of these foolish things! He is within me, he is becoming my
soul; I shall kill him!

August 19th. I shall kill him. I have seen him! Yesterday I sat down at my
table and pretended to write very assiduously. I knew quite well that he
would come prowling round me, quite close to me, so close that I might
perhaps be able to touch him, to seize him. And then!... then I should have
the strength of desperation; I should have my hands, my knees, my chest,
my forehead, my teeth to strangle him, to crush him, to bite him, to tear him
to pieces. And I watched for him with all my overexcited organs.

I had lighted my two lamps and the eight wax candles on my
mantelpiece, as if by this light I could have discovered him.

My bed, my old oak bed with its columns, was opposite to me; on my
right was the fireplace; on my left the door which was carefully closed,
after I had left it open for some time, in order to attract him; behind me was
a very high wardrobe with a looking-glass in it, which served me to make
my toilet every day, and in which I was in the habit of looking at myself
from head to foot every time I passed it.

So I pretended to be writing in order to deceive him, for he also was
watching me, and suddenly I felt, I was certain that he was reading over my
shoulder, that he was there, almost touching my ear.

I got up so quickly, with my hands extended, that I almost fell. Eh!
well?... It was as bright as at midday, but I did not see myself in the glass!...
It was empty, clear, profound, full of light! But my figure was not reflected
in it ... and I, I was opposite to it! I saw the large, clear glass from top to
bottom, and I looked at it with unsteady eyes; and I did not dare to advance;
I did not venture to make a movement, nevertheless, feeling perfectly that

he was there, but that he would escape me again, he whose imperceptible
body had absorbed my reflection.

How frightened I was! And then suddenly I began to see myself through
a mist in the depths of the looking-glass, in a mist as it were through a sheet
of water; and it seemed to me as if this water were flowing slowly from left
to right, and making my figure clearer every moment. It was like the end of
an eclipse. Whatever it was that hid me, did not appear to possess any
clearly defined outlines, but a sort of opaque transparency, which gradually
grew clearer.

At last I was able to distinguish myself completely, as I do every day
when I look at myself.

I had seen it! And the horror of it remained with me and makes me
shudder even now.

August 20th. How could I kill it, as I could not get hold of it? Poison?
But it would see me mix it with the water; and then, would our poisons
have any effect on its impalpable body? No ... no ... no doubt about the
matter.... Then?... then?...

August 21st. I sent for a blacksmith from Rouen, and ordered iron
shutters of him for my room, such as some private hotels in Paris have on
the ground floor, for fear of thieves, and he is going to make me a similar
door as well. I have made myself out as a coward, but I do not care about
that!...

September 10th. Rouen, Hotel Continental. It is done; ... it is done ... but
is he dead? My mind is thoroughly upset by what I have seen.

Well, then, yesterday the locksmith having put on the iron shutters and
door, I left everything open until midnight, although it was getting cold.

Suddenly I felt that he was there, and joy, mad joy, took possession of
me. I got up softly, and I walked to the right and left for some time, so that
he might not guess anything; then I took off my boots and put on my
slippers carelessly; then I fastened the iron shutters and going back to the

door quickly I double-locked it with a padlock, putting the key into my
pocket.

Suddenly I noticed that he was moving restlessly round me, that in his
turn he was frightened and was ordering me to let him out. I nearly yielded,
though I did not yet, but putting my back to the door I half opened it, just
enough to allow me to go out backward, and as I am very tall, my head
touched the lintel. I was sure that he had not been able to escape, and I shut
him up quite alone, quite alone. What happiness! I had him fast. Then I ran
downstairs; in the drawing-room, which was under my bedroom, I took the
two lamps and I poured all the oil onto the carpet, the furniture,
everywhere; then I set fire to it and made my escape, after having carefully
double-locked the door.

I went and hid myself at the bottom of the garden in a clump of laurel
bushes. How long it was! how long it was! Everything was dark, silent,
motionless, not a breath of air and not a star, but heavy banks of clouds
which one could not see, but which weighed, oh! so heavily on my soul.

I looked at my house and waited. How long it was! I already began to
think that the fire had gone out of its own accord, or that he had
extinguished it, when one of the lower windows gave way under the
violence of the flames, and a long, soft, caressing sheet of red flame
mounted up the white wall and kissed it as high as the roof. The light fell
onto the trees, the branches, and the leaves, and a shiver of fear pervaded
them also! The birds awoke; a dog began to howl, and it seemed to me as if
the day were breaking! Almost immediately two other windows flew into
fragments, and I saw that the whole of the lower part of my house was
nothing but a terrible furnace. But a cry, a horrible, shrill, heartrending cry,
a woman's cry, sounded through the night, and two garret windows were
opened! I had forgotten the servants! I saw the terrorstruck faces, and their
frantically waving arms!...

Then, overwhelmed with horror, I set off to run to the village, shouting:
"Help! help! fire! fire!" I met some people who were already coming onto
the scene, and I went back with them to see!

By this time the house was nothing but a horrible and magnificent funeral
pile, a monstrous funeral pile which lit up the whole country, a funeral pile
where men were burning, and where he was burning also, He, He, my
prisoner, that new Being, the new master, the Horla!

Suddenly the whole roof fell in between the walls, and a volcano of
flames darted up to the sky. Through all the windows which opened onto
that furnace I saw the flames darting, and I thought that he was there, in that
kiln, dead.

Dead? perhaps?... His body? Was not his body, which was transparent,
indestructible by such means as would kill ours?

If he was not dead?... Perhaps time alone has power over that Invisible
and Redoubtable Being. Why this transparent, unrecognizable body, this
body belonging to a spirit, if it also had to fear ills, infirmities and
premature destruction?

Premature destruction? All human terror springs from that! After man the
Horla. After him who can die every day, at any hour, at any moment, by any
accident, he came who was only to die at his own proper hour and minute,
because he had touched the limits of his existence!

No ... no ... without any doubt ... he is not dead. Then ... then ... I suppose
I must kill myself!

FOOTNOTE.—This story is a tragic experience and prophecy.
It was insanity that robbed the world of its most finished
short story writer, the author of this tale; and even before his
madness became overpowering, de Maupassant complained
that he was haunted by his double—by a vision of another
Self confronting and threatening him. He had run life at its
top speed; this hallucination was the result.

Medical science defines in such cases "an image of memory
which differs in intensity from the normal"—that is to say, a

fixed idea so persistent and growing that to the thinker it
seems utterly real.

—EDITOR.

PIERRE MILLE

The Miracle of Zobéide

Always wise and prudent, Zobéide cautiously put aside the myrtle
branches and peeped through to see who were the persons talking by the
fountain in the cool shadow of the pink sandstone wall. And when she saw
that it was only the Rev. John Feathercock, her lord and master, discoursing
as usual with Mohammed-si-Koualdia, she went toward them frankly but
slowly.

When she was quite near she stopped, and from the light that played in
her deep black eyes you would have thought that surely she was listening
with the deepest attention. But the truth is that with all her little brain, with
all her mouth, and with all her stomach, she was craving the yellow and
odorous pulp of a melon which had been cut open and put on the table near
two tall glasses half filled with snowy sherbet. For Zobéide was a turtle of
the ordinary kind found in the grass of all the meadows around the city of
Damascus.

As she waited, Mohammed continued his story:

"And, as I tell you, O reverend one abounding in virtues, this lion which
still lives near Tabariat, was formerly a strong lion, a wonderful lion, a lion
among lions! To-day, even, he can strike a camel dead with one blow of his
paw, and then, plunging his fangs into the spine of the dead animal, toss it
upon his shoulders with a single movement of his neck. But unfortunately,
having one day brought down a goat in the chase by simply blowing upon it
the breath of his nostrils, the lion was inflated with pride and cried: 'There is
no god but God, but I am as strong as God. Let him acknowledge it!' Allah,
who heard him, Allah, the All-powerful, said in a loud voice, 'O lion of
Tabariat, try now to carry off thy prey!' Then the lion planted his great teeth
firmly in the spine of the animal, right under the ears, and attempted to
throw it on his back. Onallahi! It was as though he had tried to lift Mount
Libanus, and his right leg fell lamed to the ground. And the voice of Allah
still held him, declaring: 'Lion, nevermore shalt thou kill a goat!' And it has
remained thus to this day: the lion of Tabariat has still all his old-time
power to carry off camels, but he can never do the slightest harm to even a

new-born kid. The goats of the flocks dance in front of him at night,
deriding him to his face, and always from that moment his right leg has
been stiff and lame."

"Mohammed," said the Rev. Mr. Feathercock contemptuously, "these are
stories fit only for babies."

"How, then!" replied Mohammed-si-Koualdia. "Do you refuse to believe
that God is able to do whatever he may wish, that the world itself is but a
perpetual dream of God's and that, in consequence, God may change this
dream at will? Are you a Christian if you deny the power of the All-
powerful?"

"I am a Christian," replied the clergyman with a trace of embarrassment;
"but for a long time we have been obliged to admit, we pastors of the
civilized Church of the Occident, that God would not be able, without
belying himself, to change the order of things which he established when he
created the universe. We consider that faith in miracles is a superstition
which we must leave to the monks of the Churches of Rome and of Russia,
and also to your Mussulmans who live in ignorance of the truth. And it is in
order to teach you this truth that I have come here to your country, and at
the same time to fight against the pernicious political influence exerted by
these same Romish and Greek monks of whom I have just been speaking."

"By invoking the name of Allah," responded Mohammed with intense
solemnity, "and by virtue of the collar-bone of the mighty Solomon, I can
perform great miracles. You see this turtle before us? I shall cause it to grow
each day the breadth of a finger!"

In saying these words he made a sudden movement of his foot toward
Zobéide, and Zobéide promptly drew her head into her shell.

"You claim to be able to work a miracle like that!" said the clergyman
scornfully. "You, Mohammed, a man immersed in sin, a Mussulman whom
I have seen drunk!"

"I was drunk," replied Mohammed calmly, "but not as drunk as others."

"So you think yourself able to force the power of Allah!" pursued Mr.
Feathercock, disdaining the interruption.

"I could do it without a moment's difficulty," said Mohammed.

Taking Zobéide in his hand he lifted her to the table. The frightened turtle
had again drawn in her head. Nothing could be seen but the black-encircled
golden squares of her shell against a background of juicy melon pulp.
Mohammed chanted:

"Thou thyself art a miracle, O turtle! For thy head is the head of a
serpent, thy tail the tail of a water rat, thy bones are bird's bones and thy
covering is of stone; and yet thou knowest love as it is known by men. And
from thy eggs, O turtle of stone, other turtles come forth.

"Thou thyself art a miracle, O turtle! For one would say that thou wert a
shell, naught but a shell, and behold! thou art a beast that eats. Eat of this
melon, O turtle, and grow this night the length of my nail, if Allah permit!

"And when thou hast grown by the breadth of a finger, O turtle, eat
further of this melon, or of its sister, another melon, and grow further by the
breadth of a finger until thou hast reached the size of a mosque. Thou
thyself art a miracle, O shell endowed with life! Perform still another
miracle, if Allah permit, if Allah permit!"

Zobéide, reassured by the monotony of his voice, decided at last to come
out of her shell. First she showed the point of her little horny nose, then her
black eyes, her flat-pointed tail, and finally her strong little claw-tipped
feet. Seeing the melon, she made a gesture of assent, and began to eat.

"Nothing in the world will happen!" remarked the Rev. John Feathercock
rather doubtfully.

"Wait and see," answered Mohammed gravely. "I shall come back to-
morrow!"

The next morning he returned, measured Zobéide with his fingers and
declared:

"She has grown!"

"Do you imagine you can make me believe such a thing?" cried Mr.
Feathercock anxiously.

"It is written in the Koran," answered Mohammed: "'I swear by the rosy
glow which fills the air when the sun is setting, by the shades of the night,
and by the light of the moon, that ye shall all change, in substance and in
size!' Allah has manifested himself; the size of this turtle has changed. It
will continue to change. Measure it yourself and you will see."

Mr. Feathercock did measure Zobéide, and was forced to admit that she
had indeed grown the breadth of a finger. He became thoughtful.

Thus day by day Zobéide grew in size, in vigor and in appetite. At first
she had only been as big as a saucer, and took each day but a few ounces of
nourishment. Then she reached the size of a dessert plate, then of a soup
plate. With her strong beak she could split the rind of a melon at a blow;
distinctly could be heard the sound of her heavy jaws as she crunched the
sweet pulp of the fruits which she loved, and which she devoured in great
quantities. In one week she had grown so tremendously that she was as big
as a meat platter. The Rev. Mr. Feathercock no longer dared to go near this
monster, from whose eyes seemed to glisten a look of deviltry. And, always
and forever, apparently devoured by a perpetual hunger, the monster ate.

The members of Mr. Feathercock's flock came to hear that he was
keeping in his house a turtle that had been enchanted in the name of Allah
and not by the power of the Occidental Divinity: this proved to be anything
but helpful to the evangelical labors of the clergyman. But he himself
refused steadily and obstinately to believe in the miracle, although
Mohammed-si-Koualdia had never set foot in the house since the day when
he had invoked the charm. He remained outside the grounds, seated at the
door of a little café, plunged in meditation or in dreams, and consuming
hashish in large quantities. At the end of some time Mr. Feathercock
succeeded in persuading himself that what he was witnessing was nothing
more nor less than a perfectly simple and natural phenomenon, perhaps not
well understood hitherto, and due entirely to the extraordinarily favorable

action of melon pulp on the physical development of turtles. He decided to
cut off Zobéide's supply of melons.

Finally there came a day when Mohammed, drunk with hashish, saw
Hakem, Mr. Feathercock's valet, returning from market with a large bunch
of fresh greens. He rose majestically, though with features distorted by the
drug, and followed the boy with hasty steps.

"Miserable one!" cried he to Mr. Feathercock. "Wretched worm, you
have tried to break the charm! Rejoice then, for you have succeeded and it
is broken. But let despair follow upon the heels of your rapture, for it is
broken in a way that you do not dream. Henceforth your turtle shall dwindle
away day by day!"

The Rev. Mr. Feathercock tried to laugh, but he did not feel entirely
happy. On Sundays, at the services, the few faithful souls who remained in
his flock looked upon him with suspicion. At the English consulate they
spoke very plainly, telling him unsympathetically that anyone who would
make a friend of such a man as Mohammed-si-Koualdia and who would
mingle "promiscuously" with such rabble, need look for nothing but harm
from it.

Zobéide, when she was first confronted with the fresh, damp greens,
showed the most profound contempt for them. Unquestionably she
preferred melons. Mr. Feathercock applauded his own acumen. "She was
eating too much; that was the whole trouble," he said to himself. "And that
was what made her grow so remarkably. If she eats less she will probably
not grow so much. And if she should happen to die, I shall be rid of her.
Whatever comes, it will be for the best."

But the next day Zobéide gave up pouting and began very docilely to eat
the greens, and when the boy Hakem carried her next bunch to her he said
slyly:

"Effendi, she is growing smaller!"

The clergyman attempted to shrug his shoulders, but it was impossible to
disguise the fact from himself—Zobéide had certainly shrunk! And within

an hour all Damascus knew that Zobéide had shrunk. When Mr.
Feathercock went to the barber shop the Greek barber said to him, "Sir,
your turtle is no ordinary turtle!" When he went to call on Mrs.
Hollingshead, a lady who was always intensely interested in all subjects
that she failed to understand and who discussed them with a beautiful
freedom, she said to him: "Dear sir, your turtle. How exciting it must be to
watch it shrink! I am certainly coming to see it myself." When he went to
the Anglican Orphanage, all the little Syrians, all the little Arabs, all the
little Armenians, all the little Jews, drew turtles in their copy-books, turtles
of every size and every description, the big ones walking behind the little
ones, the tail of each in the mouth of another, making an interminable line.
And in the street the donkey drivers, the water-carriers, the fishmongers, the
venders of broiled meats, of baked breads, of beans, of cream, all cried:
"Mister Turtle, Mister Turtle! Try our wares. Buy something for your poor
stubborn beast that is pining away!"

And, in truth, the turtle continued to shrink. She became again the size of
a soup plate, then of a dessert plate, then of a saucer, till finally one
morning there was nothing there but a little round thing, tiny, frail,
translucent, a spot about as big as a lady's watch, almost invisible at the
base of the fountain. And the next day—ah! the next day there was nothing
there, nothing whatever, neither turtle nor the shadow of turtle, or more
trace of a turtle than of an elephant in all the grounds!

Mohammed-si-Koualdia had stopped taking hashish, because he was
saturated with it. But he remained all day long, huddled in a heap at the
door of the little café immediately opposite the clergyman's house, his eyes
enlarged out of all proportion, set in a face the color of death, gave him the
look of a veritable sorcerer. At this moment the Rev. Mr. Feathercock was
returning from a visit to the English consul who had said to him coldly:

"All that I can tell you is that you have made an ass of yourself or, as a
Frenchman would say, played the donkey to hear yourself bray. The best
thing you can do is to go and hunt up a congregation somewhere else."

The Rev. John Feathercock accepted the advice with deference, and took
the train for Bayreuth. That same evening Mohammed-si-Koualdia betook
himself to the house of one Antonio, interpreter and public scribe, and

ordered him to translate into French the following letter, which he dictated
in Arabic. Afterwards he carried this letter to Father Stephen, prior to the
monastery of the Greek Hicrosolymites:

"May heaven paint your cheeks with the colors of health, most venerable
father, and may happiness reign in your heart! I have the honor to inform
you that the Rev. John Feathercock has just left for Bayreuth, but that he
has had put upon his trunks the address of a city called Liverpool, which, I
am informed, is in the kingdom of England; and also, everything points to
the belief that he will never return. Therefore, I dare to hope that you will
send me the second part of the reward you agreed upon as well as a
generous present for Hakem, Mr. Feathercock's valet, who carried every day
a new turtle to the house of the clergyman, and carried away the old one
under his cloak.

"I also pray you to tell your friends that I have for sale, at prices
exceptionally low, fifty-five turtles, all of different sizes, the last and
smallest of which is no larger than the watch of a European houri. I have
been at infinite pains to find them, and they have served to prove to me with
what exquisite care Allah fashions the members of the least of His creatures
and ornaments their bodies with the most delicate designs."

VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM

The Torture by Hope

Many years ago, as evening was closing in, the venerable Pedro Arbuez
d'Espila, sixth prior of the Dominicans of Segovia, and third Grand
Inquisitor of Spain, followed by a fra redemptor, and preceded by two
familiars of the Holy Office, the latter carrying lanterns, made their way to
a subterranean dungeon. The bolt of a massive door creaked, and they
entered a mephitic in-pace, where the dim light revealed between rings
fastened to the wall a bloodstained rack, a brazier, and a jug. On a pile of
straw, loaded with fetters and his neck encircled by an iron carcan, sat a
haggard man, of uncertain age, clothed in rags.

This prisoner was no other than Rabbi Aser Abarbanel, a Jew of Arragon,
who—accused of usury and pitiless scorn for the poor—had been daily
subjected to torture for more than a year. Yet "his blindness was as dense as
his hide," and he had refused to abjure his faith.

Proud of a filiation dating back thousands of years, proud of his ancestors
—for all Jews worthy of the name are vain of their blood—he descended
Talmudically from Othoniel and consequently from Ipsiboa, the wife of the
last judge of Israel, a circumstance which had sustained his courage amid
incessant torture. With tears in his eyes at the thought of this resolute soul
rejecting salvation, the venerable Pedro Arbuez d'Espila, approaching the
shuddering rabbi, addressed him as follows:

"My son, rejoice: your trials here below are about to end. If in the
presence of such obstinacy I was forced to permit, with deep regret, the use
of great severity, my task of fraternal correction has its limits. You are the
fig tree which, having failed so many times to bear fruit, at last withered,
but God alone can judge your soul. Perhaps Infinite Mercy will shine upon
you at the last moment! We must hope so. There are examples. So sleep in
peace to-night. Tomorrow you will be included in the auto da fé: that is, you
will be exposed to the quémadero, the symbolical flames of the Everlasting
Fire: it burns, as you know, only at a distance, my son; and Death is at least
two hours (often three) in coming, on account of the wet, iced bandages,
with which we protect the heads and hearts of the condemned. There will be

forty-three of you. Placed in the last row, you will have time to invoke God
and offer to Him this baptism of fire, which is of the Holy Spirit. Hope in
the Light, and rest."

With these words, having signed to his companions to unchain the
prisoner, the prior tenderly embraced him. Then came the turn of the fra
redemptor, who, in a low tone, entreated the Jew's forgiveness for what he
had made him suffer for the purpose of redeeming him; then the two
familiars silently kissed him. This ceremony over, the captive was left,
solitary and bewildered, in the darkness.

Rabbi Aser Abarbanel, with parched lips and visage worn by suffering, at
first gazed at the closed door with vacant eyes. Closed? The word
unconsciously roused a vague fancy in his mind, the fancy that he had seen
for an instant the light of the lanterns through a chink between the door and
the wall. A morbid idea of hope, due to the weakness of his brain, stirred his
whole being. He dragged himself toward the strange appearance. Then,
very gently and cautiously, slipping one finger into the crevice, he drew the
door toward him. Marvelous! By an extraordinary accident the familiar who
closed it had turned the huge key an instant before it struck the stone casing,
so that the rusty bolt not having entered the hole, the door again rolled on
its hinges.

The rabbi ventured to glance outside. By the aid of a sort of luminous
dusk he distinguished at first a semicircle of walls indented by winding
stairs; and opposite to him, at the top of five or six stone steps, a sort of
black portal, opening into an immense corridor, whose first arches only
were visible from below.

Stretching himself flat he crept to the threshold. Yes, it was really a
corridor, but endless in length. A wan light illumined it: lamps suspended
from the vaulted ceiling lightened at intervals the dull hue of the
atmosphere—the distance was veiled in shadow. Not a single door appeared
in the whole extent! Only on one side, the left, heavily grated loopholes,
sunk in the walls, admitted a light which must be that of evening, for
crimson bars at intervals rested on the flags of the pavement. What a terrible

silence! Yet, yonder, at the far end of that passage there might be a doorway
of escape! The Jew's vacillating hope was tenacious, for it was the last.

Without hesitating, he ventured on the flags, keeping close under the
loopholes, trying to make himself part of the blackness of the long walls.
He advanced slowly, dragging himself along on his breast, forcing back the
cry of pain when some raw wound sent a keen pang through his whole
body.

Suddenly the sound of a sandaled foot approaching reached his ears. He
trembled violently, fear stifled him, his sight grew dim. Well, it was over, no
doubt. He pressed himself into a niche and, half lifeless with terror, waited.

It was a familiar hurrying along. He passed swiftly by, holding in his
clenched hand an instrument of torture—a frightful figure—and vanished.
The suspense which the rabbi had endured seemed to have suspended the
functions of life, and he lay nearly an hour unable to move. Fearing an
increase of tortures if he were captured, he thought of returning to his
dungeon. But the old hope whispered in his soul that divine perhaps, which
comforts us in our sorest trials. A miracle had happened. He could doubt no
longer. He began to crawl toward the chance of escape. Exhausted by
suffering and hunger, trembling with pain, he pressed onward. The
sepulchral corridor seemed to lengthen mysteriously, while he, still
advancing, gazed into the gloom where there must be some avenue of
escape.

Oh! oh! He again heard footsteps, but this time they were slower, more
heavy. The white and black forms of two inquisitors appeared, emerging
from the obscurity beyond. They were conversing in low tones, and seemed
to be discussing some important subject, for they were gesticulating
vehemently.

At this spectacle Rabbi Aser Abarbanel closed his eyes: his heart beat so
violently that it almost suffocated him; his rags were damp with the cold
sweat of agony; he lay motionless by the wall, his mouth wide open, under
the rays of a lamp, praying to the God of David.

Just opposite to him the two inquisitors paused under the light of the
lamp—doubtless owing to some accident due to the course of their
argument. One, while listening to his companion, gazed at the rabbi! And,
beneath the look—whose absence of expression the hapless man did not at
first notice—he fancied he again felt the burning pincers scorch his flesh, he
was to be once more a living wound. Fainting, breathless, with fluttering
eyelids, he shivered at the touch of the monk's floating robe. But—strange
yet natural fact—the inquisitor's gaze was evidently that of a man deeply
absorbed in his intended reply, engrossed by what he was hearing; his eyes
were fixed—and seemed to look at the Jew without seeing him.

In fact, after the lapse of a few minutes, the two gloomy figures slowly
pursued their way, still conversing in low tones, toward the place whence
the prisoner had come; HE HAD NOT BEEN SEEN! Amid the horrible
confusion of the rabbi's thoughts, the idea darted through his brain: "Can I
be already dead that they did not see me?" A hideous impression roused him
from his lethargy: in looking at the wall against which his face was pressed,
he imagined he beheld two fierce eyes watching him! He flung his head
back in a sudden frenzy of fright, his hair fairly bristling! Yet, no! No. His
hand groped over the stones: it was the reflection of the inquisitor's eyes,
still retained in his own, which had been refracted from two spots on the
wall.

Forward! He must hasten toward that goal which he fancied (absurdly, no
doubt) to be deliverance, toward the darkness from which he was now
barely thirty paces distant. He pressed forward faster on his knees, his
hands, at full length, dragging himself painfully along, and soon entered the
dark portion of this terrible corridor.

Suddenly the poor wretch felt a gust of cold air on the hands resting upon
the flags; it came from under the little door to which the two walls led.

Oh, Heaven, if that door should open outward. Every nerve in the
miserable fugitive's body thrilled with hope. He examined it from top to
bottom, though scarcely able to distinguish its outlines in the surrounding
darkness. He passed his hand over it: no bolt, no lock! A latch! He started
up, the latch yielded to the pressure of his thumb: the door silently swung
open before him.

"HALLELUIA!" murmured the rabbi in a transport of gratitude as,
standing on the threshold, he beheld the scene before him.

The door had opened into the gardens, above which arched a starlit sky,
into spring, liberty, life! It revealed the neighboring fields, stretching toward
the sierras, whose sinuous blue lines were relieved against the horizon.
Yonder lay freedom! Oh, to escape! He would journey all night through the
lemon groves, whose fragrance reached him. Once in the mountains and he
was safe! He inhaled the delicious air; the breeze revived him, his lungs
expanded! He felt in his swelling heart the Veni foràs of Lazarus! And to
thank once more the God who had bestowed this mercy upon him, he
extended his arms, raising his eyes toward Heaven. It was an ecstasy of joy!

Then he fancied he saw the shadow of his arms approach him—fancied
that he felt these shadowy arms inclose, embrace him—and that he was
pressed tenderly to some one's breast. A tall figure actually did stand
directly before him. He lowered his eyes—and remained motionless,
gasping for breath, dazed, with fixed eyes, fairly driveling with terror.

Horror! He was in the clasp of the Grand Inquisitor himself, the
venerable Pedro Arbuez d'Espila, who gazed at him with tearful eyes, like a
good shepherd who had found his stray lamb.

The dark-robed priest pressed the hapless Jew to his heart with so fervent
an outburst of love, that the edges of the monochal haircloth rubbed the
Dominican's breast. And while Aser Abarbanel with protruding eyes gasped
in agony in the ascetic's embrace, vaguely comprehending that all the
phases of this fatal evening were only a prearranged torture, that of HOPE,
the Grand Inquisitor, with an accent of touching reproach and a look of
consternation, murmured in his ear, his breath parched and burning from
long fasting:

"What, my son! On the eve, perchance, of salvation—you wished to
leave us?"

ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN

The Owl's Ear

On the 29th of July, 1835, Kasper Boeck, a shepherd of the little village
of Hirschwiller, with his large felt hat tipped back, his wallet of stringy
sackcloth hanging at his hip, and his great tawny dog at his heels, presented
himself at about nine o'clock in the evening at the house of the burgomaster,
Petrus Mauerer, who had just finished supper and was taking a little glass of
kirchwasser to facilitate digestion.

This burgomaster was a tall, thin man, and wore a bushy gray mustache.
He had seen service in the armies of the Archduke Charles. He had a jovial
disposition, and ruled the village, it is said, with his finger and with the rod.

"Mr. Burgomaster," cried the shepherd in evident excitement.

But Petrus Mauerer, without awaiting the end of his speech, frowned and
said:

"Kasper Boeck, begin by taking off your hat, put your dog out of the
room, and then speak distinctly, intelligibly, without stammering, so that I
may understand you."

Hereupon the burgomaster, standing near the table, tranquilly emptied his
little glass and wiped his great gray mustachios indifferently.

Kasper put his dog out, and came back with his hat off.

"Well!" said Petrus, seeing that he was silent, "what has happened?"

"It happens that the spirit has appeared again in the ruins of Geierstein!"

"Ha! I doubt it. You've seen it yourself?"

"Very clearly, Mr. Burgomaster."

"Without closing your eyes?"

"Yes, Mr. Burgomaster—my eyes were wide open. There was plenty of
moonlight."

"What form did it have?"

"The form of a small man."

"Good!"

And turning toward a glass door at the left:

"Katel!" cried the burgomaster.

An old serving woman opened the door.

"Sir?"

"I am going out for a walk—on the hillside—sit up for me until ten
o'clock. Here's the key."

"Yes, sir."

Then the old soldier took down his gun from the hook over the door,
examined the priming, and slung it over his shoulder; then he addressed
Kasper Boeck:

"Go and tell the rural guard to meet me in the holly path, and tell him
behind the mill. Your spirit must be some marauder. But if it's a fox, I'll
make a fine hood of it, with long earlaps."

Master Petrus Mauerer and humble Kasper then went out. The weather
was superb, the stars innumerable. While the shepherd went to knock at the
rural guard's door, the burgomaster plunged among the elder bushes, in a
little lane that wound around behind the old church.

Two minutes later Kasper and Hans Goerner, whinger at his side, by
running overtook Master Petrus in the holly path.

All three made their way together toward the ruins of Geierstein.

These ruins, which are twenty minutes' walk from the village, seem to be
insignificant enough; they consist of the ridges of a few decrepit walls, from
four to six feet high, which extend among the brier bushes. Archaeologists
call them the aqueducts of Seranus, the Roman camp of Holderlock, or
vestiges of Theodoric, according to their fantasy. The only thing about these
ruins which could be considered remarkable is a stairway to a cistern cut in
the rock. Inside of this spiral staircase, instead of concentric circles which
twist around with each complete turn, the involutions become wider as they
proceed, in such a way that the bottom of the pit is three times as large as
the opening. Is it an architectural freak, or did some reasonable cause
determine such an odd construction? It matters little to us. The result was to
cause in the cistern that vague reverberation which anyone may hear upon
placing a shell at his ear, and to make you aware of steps on the gravel path,
murmurs of the air, rustling of the leaves, and even distant words spoken by
people passing the foot of the hill.

Our three personages then followed the pathway between the vineyards
and gardens of Hirschwiller.

"I see nothing," the burgomaster would say, turning up his nose
derisively.

"Nor I either," the rural guard would repeat, imitating the other's tone.

"It's down in the hole," muttered the shepherd.

"We shall see, we shall see," returned the burgomaster.

It was in this fashion, after a quarter of an hour, that they came upon the
opening of the cistern. As I have said, the night was clear, limpid, and
perfectly still.

The moon portrayed, as far as the eye could reach, one of those nocturnal
landscapes in bluish lines, studded with slim trees, the shadows of which
seemed to have been drawn with a black crayon. The blooming brier and
broom perfumed the air with a rather sharp odor, and the frogs of a
neighboring swamp sang their oily anthem, interspersed with silences. But

all these details escaped the notice of our good rustics; they thought of
nothing but laying hands on the spirit.

When they had reached the stairway, all three stopped and listened, then
gazed into the dark shadows. Nothing appeared—nothing stirred.

"The devil!" said the burgomaster, "we forgot to bring a bit of candle.
Descend, Kasper, you know the way better than I—I'll follow you."

At this proposition the shepherd recoiled promptly. If he had consulted
his inclinations the poor man would have taken to flight; his pitiful
expression made the burgomaster burst out laughing.

"Well, Hans, since he doesn't want to go down, show me the way," he
said to the game warden.

"But, Mr. Burgomaster," said the latter, "you know very well that steps
are missing; we should risk breaking our necks."

"Then what's to be done?"

"Yes, what's to be done?"

"Send your dog," replied Petrus.

The shepherd whistled to his dog, showed him the stairway, urged him—
but he did not wish to take the chances any more than the others.

At this moment, a bright idea struck the rural guardsman.

"Ha! Mr. Burgomaster," said he, "if you should fire your gun inside."

"Faith," cried the other, "you're right, we shall catch a glimpse at least."

And without hesitating the worthy man approached the stairway and
leveled his gun.

But, by the acoustic effect which I have already pointed out, the spirit,
the marauder, the individual who chanced to be actually in the cistern, had

heard everything. The idea of stopping a gunshot did not strike him as
amusing, for in a shrill, piercing voice he cried:

"Stop! Don't fire—I'm coming."

Then the three functionaries looked at each other and laughed softly, and
the burgomaster, leaning over the opening again, cried rudely:

"Be quick about it, you varlet, or I'll shoot! Be quick about it!"

He cocked his gun, and the click seemed to hasten the ascent of the
mysterious person; they heard him rolling down some stones. Nevertheless
it still took him another minute before he appeared, the cistern being at a
depth of sixty feet.

What was this man doing in such deep darkness? He must be some great
criminal! So at least thought Petrus Mauerer and his acolytes.

At last a vague form could be discerned in the dark, then slowly, by
degrees, a little man, four and a half feet high at the most, frail, ragged, his
face withered and yellow, his eye gleaming like a magpie's, and his hair
tangled, came out shouting:

"By what right do you come to disturb my studies, wretched creatures?"

This grandiose apostrophe was scarcely in accord with his costume and
physiognomy. Accordingly the burgomaster indignantly replied:

"Try to show that you're honest, you knave, or I'll begin by administering
a correction."

"A correction!" said the little man, leaping with anger, and drawing
himself up under the nose of the burgomaster.

"Yes," replied the other, who, nevertheless, did not fail to admire the
pygmy's courage; "if you do not answer the questions satisfactorily I am
going to put to you. I am the burgomaster of Hirschwiller; here are the rural
guard, the shepherd and his dog. We are stronger than you—be wise and tell
me peaceably who you are, what you are doing here, and why you do not

dare to appear in broad daylight. Then we shall see what's to be done with
you."

"All that's none of your business," replied the little man in his cracked
voice. "I shall not answer."

"In that case, forward, march," ordered the burgomaster, who grasped
him firmly by the nape of the neck; "you are going to sleep in prison."

The little man writhed like a weasel; he even tried to bite, and the dog
was sniffing at the calves of his legs, when, quite exhausted, he said, not
without a certain dignity:

"Let go, sir, I surrender to superior force—I'm yours!"

The burgomaster, who was not entirely lacking in good breeding, became
calmer.

"Do you promise?" said he.

"I promise!"

"Very well—walk in front."

And that is how, on the night of the 29th of July, 1835, the burgomaster
took captive a little red-haired man, issuing from the cavern of Geierstein.

Upon arriving at Hirschwiller the rural guard ran to find the key of the
prison and the vagabond was locked in and double-locked, not to forget the
outside bolt and padlock.

Everyone then could repose after his fatigues, and Petrus Mauerer went
to bed and dreamed till midnight of this singular adventure.

On the morrow, toward nine o'clock, Hans Goerner, the rural guard,
having been ordered to bring the prisoner to the town house for another
examination, repaired to the cooler with four husky daredevils. They
opened the door, all of them curious to look upon the Will-o'-the-wisp. But
imagine their astonishment upon seeing him hanging from the bars of the

window by his necktie! Some said that he was still writhing; others that he
was already stiff. However that may be, they ran to Petrus Mauerer's house
to inform him of the fact, and what is certain is that upon the latter's arrival
the little man had breathed his last.

The justice of the peace and the doctor of Hirschwiller drew up a formal
statement of the catastrophe; then they buried the unknown in a field of
meadow grass and it was all over!

Now about three weeks after these occurrences, I went to see my cousin,
Petrus Mauerer, whose nearest relative I was, and consequently his heir.
This circumstance sustained an intimate acquaintance between us. We were
at dinner, talking on indifferent matters, when the burgomaster recounted
the foregoing little story, as I have just reported it.

"'Tis strange, cousin," said I, "truly strange. And you have no other
information concerning the unknown?"

"None."

"And you have found nothing which could give you a clew as to his
purpose?"

"Absolutely nothing, Christian."

"But, as a matter of fact, what could he have been doing in the cistern?
On what did he live?"

The burgomaster shrugged his shoulders, refilled our glasses, and replied
with:

"To your health, cousin."

"To yours."

We remained silent a few minutes. It was impossible for me to accept the
abrupt conclusion of the adventure, and, in spite of myself, I mused with
some melancholy on the sad fate of certain men who appear and disappear

in this world like the grass of the field, without leaving the least memory or
the least regret.

"Cousin," I resumed, "how far may it be from here to the ruins of
Geierstein?"

"Twenty minutes' walk at the most. Why?"

"Because I should like to see them."

"You know that we have a meeting of the municipal council, and that I
can't accompany you."

"Oh! I can find them by myself."

"No, the rural guard will show you the way; he has nothing better to do."

And my worthy cousin, having rapped on his glass, called his servant:

"Katel, go and find Hans Goerner—let him hurry, and get here by two
o'clock. I must be going."

The servant went out and the rural guard was not tardy in coming.

He was directed to take me to the ruins.

While the burgomaster proceeded gravely toward the hall of the
municipal council, we were already climbing the hill. Hans Goerner, with a
wave of the hand, indicated the remains of the aqueduct. At the same
moment the rocky ribs of the plateau, the blue distances of Hundsrück, the
sad crumbling walls covered with somber ivy, the tolling of the
Hirschwiller bell summoning the notables to the council, the rural
guardsman panting and catching at the brambles—assumed in my eyes a
sad and severe tinge, for which I could not account: it was the story of the
hanged man which took the color out of the prospect.

The cistern staircase struck me as being exceedingly curious, with its
elegant spiral. The bushes bristling in the fissures at every step, the deserted
aspect of its surroundings, all harmonized with my sadness. We descended,

and soon the luminous point of the opening, which seemed to contract more
and more, and to take the shape of a star with curved rays, alone sent us its
pale light. When we attained the very bottom of the cistern, we found a
superb sight was to be had of all those steps, lighted from above and cutting
off their shadows with marvelous precision. I then heard the hum of which I
have already spoken: the immense granite conch had as many echoes as
stones!

"Has nobody been down here since the little man?" I asked the rural
guardsman.

"No, sir. The peasants are afraid. They imagine that the hanged man will
return."

"And you?"

"I—oh, I'm not curious."

"But the justice of the peace? His duty was to—"

"Ha! What could he have come to the Owl's Ear for?"

"They call this the Owl's Ear?"

"Yes."

"That's pretty near it," said I, raising my eyes. "This reversed vault forms
the pavilion well enough; the under side of the steps makes the covering of
the tympanum, and the winding of the staircase the cochlea, the labyrinth,
and vestibule of the ear. That is the cause of the murmur which we hear: we
are at the back of a colossal ear."

"It's very likely," said Hans Goerner, who did not seem to have
understood my observations.

We started up again, and I had ascended the first steps when I felt
something crush under my foot; I stopped to see what it could be, and at
that moment perceived a white object before me. It was a torn sheet of

paper. As for the hard object, which I had felt grinding up, I recognized it as
a sort of glazed earthenware jug.

"Aha!" I said to myself; "this may clear up the burgomaster's story."

I rejoined Hans Goerner, who was now waiting for me at the edge of the
pit.

"Now, sir," cried he, "where would you like to go?"

"First, let's sit down for a while. We shall see presently."

I sat down on a large stone, while the rural guard cast his falcon eyes
over the village to see if there chanced to be any trespassers in the gardens.
I carefully examined the glazed vase, of which nothing but splinters
remained. These fragments presented the appearance of a funnel, lined with
wool. It was impossible for me to perceive its purpose. I then read the piece
of a letter, written in an easy running and firm hand. I transcribe it here
below, word for word. It seems to follow the other half of the sheet, for
which I looked vainly all about the ruins:

"My micracoustic ear trumpet thus has the double advantage of infinitely
multiplying the intensity of sounds, and of introducing them into the ear
without causing the observer the least discomfort. You would never have
imagined, dear master, the charm which one feels in perceiving these
thousands of imperceptible sounds which are confounded, on a fine summer
day, in an immense murmuring. The bumble-bee has his song as well as the
nightingale, the honey-bee is the warbler of the mosses, the cricket is the
lark of the tall grass, the maggot is the wren—it has only a sigh, but the sigh
is melodious!

"This discovery, from the point of view of sentiment, which makes us
live in the universal life, surpasses in its importance all that I could say on
the matter.

"After so much suffering, privations, and weariness, how happy it makes
one to reap the rewards of all his labors! How the soul soars toward the
divine Author of all these microscopic worlds, the magnificence of which is

revealed to us! Where now are the long hours of anguish, hunger, contempt,
which overwhelmed us before? Gone, sir, gone! Tears of gratitude moisten
our eyes. One is proud to have achieved, through suffering, new joys for
humanity and to have contributed to its mental development. But
howsoever vast, howsoever admirable may be the first fruits of my
micracoustic ear trumpet, these do not delimit its advantages. There are
more positive ones, more material, and ones which may be expressed in
figures.

"Just as the telescope brought the discovery of myriads of worlds
performing their harmonious revolutions in infinite space—so also will my
micracoustic ear trumpet extend the sense of the unhearable beyond all
possible bounds. Thus, sir, the circulation of the blood and the fluids of the
body will not give me pause; you shall hear them flow with the impetuosity
of cataracts; you shall perceive them so distinctly as to startle you; the
slightest irregularity of the pulse, the least obstacle, is striking, and
produces the same effect as a rock against which the waves of a torrent are
dashing!

"It is doubtless an immense conquest in the development of our
knowledge of physiology and pathology, but this is not the point on which I
would emphasize. Upon applying your ear to the ground, sir, you may hear
the mineral waters springing up at immeasurable depths; you may judge of
their volume, their currents, and the obstacles which they meet!

"Do you wish to go further? Enter a subterranean vault which is so
constructed as to gather a quantity of loud sounds; then at night when the
world sleeps, when nothing will be confused with the interior noises of our
globe—listen!

"Sir, all that it is possible for me to tell you at the present moment—for in
the midst of my profound misery, of my privations, and often of my despair,
I am left only a few lucid instants to pursue my geological observations—
all that I can affirm is that the seething of glow worms, the explosions of
boiling fluids, is something terrifying and sublime, which can only be
compared to the impression of the astronomer whose glass fathoms depths
of limitless extent.

"Nevertheless, I must avow that these impressions should be studied
further and classified in a methodical manner, in order that definite
conclusions may be derived therefrom. Likewise, as soon as you shall have
deigned, dear and noble master, to transmit the little sum for use at Neustadt
as I asked, to supply my first needs, we shall see our way to an
understanding in regard to the establishment of three great subterranean
observatories, one in the valley of Catania, another in Iceland, then a third
in Capac-Uren, Songay, or Cayembé-Uren, the deepest of the Cordilleras,
and consequently—"

Here the letter stopped.

I let my hands fall in stupefaction. Had I read the conceptions of an idiot
—or the inspirations of a genius which had been realized? What am I to
say? to think? So this man, this miserable creature, living at the bottom of a
burrow like a fox, dying of hunger, had had perhaps one of those
inspirations which the Supreme Being sends on earth to enlighten future
generations!

And this man had hanged himself in disgust, despair! No one had
answered his prayer, though he asked only for a crust of bread in exchange
for his discovery. It was horrible. Long, long I sat there dreaming, thanking
Heaven for having limited my intelligence to the needs of ordinary life—for
not having desired to make me a superior man in the community of martyrs.
At length the rural guardsman, seeing me with fixed gaze and mouth agape,
made so bold as to touch me on the shoulder.

"Mr. Christian," said he, "see—it's getting late—the burgomaster must
have come back from the council."

"Ha! That's a fact," cried I, crumpling up the paper, "come on."

We descended the hill.

My worthy cousin met me, with a smiling face, at the threshold of his
house.

"Well! well! Christian, so you've found no trace of the imbecile who
hanged himself?"

"No."

"I thought as much. He was some lunatic who escaped from Stefansfeld
or somewhere—Faith, he did well to hang himself. When one is good for
nothing, that's the simplest way for it."

The following day I left Hirschwiller. I shall never return.

The Invisible Eye

About this time (said Christian), poor as a church mouse, I took refuge in
the roof of an old house in Minnesänger Street, Nuremberg, and made my
nest in the corner of the garret.

I was compelled to work over my straw bed to reach the window, but this
window was in the gable end, and the view from it was magnificent, both
town and country being spread out before me.

I could see the cats walking gravely in the gutters; the storks, their beaks
filled with frogs, carrying nourishment to their ravenous brood; the pigeons,
springing from their cotes, their tails spread like fans, hovering over the
streets.

In the evening, when the bells called the world to the Angelus, with my
elbows upon the edge of the roof, I listened to their melancholy chimes; I
watched the windows as, one by one, they were lighted up; the good
burghers smoking their pipes on the sidewalks; the young girls in their red
skirts, with their pitchers under their arms, laughing and chatting around the
fountain "Saint Sebalt." Insensibly all this faded away, the bats commenced
their rapid course, and I retired to my mattress in sweet peace and
tranquillity.

The old curiosity seller, Toubac, knew the way to my little lodging as
well as I did, and was not afraid to climb the ladder. Every week his ugly
head, adorned with a reddish cap, raised the trapdoor, his fingers grasped
the ledge, and he cried out in a nasal tone:

"Well, well, Master Christian, have you anything?"

To which I replied:

"Come in. Why in the devil don't you come in? I am just finishing a little
landscape, and you must tell me what you think of it."

Then his great back, seeming to elongate, grew up, even to the roof, and
the good man laughed silently.

I must do justice to Toubac: he never haggled with me about prices; he
bought all my paintings at fifteen florins, one with the other, and sold them
again for forty each. "This was an honest Jew!"

I began to grow fond of this mode of existence, and to find new charms
in it day by day.

Just at this time the city of Nuremberg was agitated by a strange and
mysterious event. Not far from my dormer window, a little to the left, stood
the Inn Boeuf-Gras, an old auberge much patronized throughout the
country. Three or four wagons, filled with sacks or casks, were always
drawn up before the door, where the rustic drivers were in the habit of
stopping, on their way to the market, to take their morning draught of wine.

The gable end of the inn was distinguished by its peculiar form. It was
very narrow, pointed, and, on two sides, cut-in teeth, like a saw. The
carvings were strangely grotesque, interwoven and ornamenting the
cornices and surrounding the windows; but the most remarkable fact was
that the house opposite reproduced exactly the same sculptures, the same
ornaments; even the signboard, with its post and spiral of iron, was exactly
copied.

One might have thought that these two ancient houses reflected each
other. Behind the inn, however, was a grand old oak, whose somber leaves
darkened the stones of the roof, while the other house stood out in bold
relief against the sky. To complete the description, this old building was as
silent and dreary as the Inn Boeuf-Gras was noisy and animated.

On one side, a crowd of merry drinkers were continually entering in and
going out, singing, tripping, cracking their whips; on the other, profound
silence reigned.

Perhaps, once or twice during the day, the heavy door seemed to open of
itself, to allow a little old woman to go out, with her back almost in a

semicircle, her dress fitting tight about her hips, an enormous basket on her
arm, and her hand contracted against her breast.

It seemed to me that I saw at a glance, as I looked upon her, a whole
existence of good works and pious meditations.

The physiognomy of this old woman had struck me more than once: her
little green eyes, long, thin nose, the immense bouquets of flowers on her
shawl, which must have been at least a hundred years old, the withered
smile which puckered her cheeks into a cockade, the lace of her bonnet
falling down to her eyebrows—all this was fantastic, and interested me
much. Why did this old woman live in this great deserted house? I wished
to explore the mystery.

One day as I paused in the street and followed her with my eyes, she
turned suddenly and gave me a look, the horrible expression of which I
know not how to paint; made three or four hideous grimaces, and then,
letting her palsied head fall upon her breast, drew her great shawl closely
around her, and advanced slowly to the heavy door, behind which I saw her
disappear.

"She's an old fool!" I said to myself, in a sort of stupor. My faith, it was
the height of folly in me to be interested in her!

However, I would like to see her grimace again; old Toubac would
willingly give me fifteen florins if I could paint it for him.

I must confess that these pleasantries of mine did not entirely reassure
me.

The hideous glance which the old shrew had given me pursued me
everywhere. More than once, while climbing the almost perpendicular
ladder to my loft, feeling my clothing caught on some point, I trembled
from head to foot, imagining that the old wretch was hanging to the tails of
my coat in order to destroy me.

Toubac, to whom I related this adventure, was far from laughing at it;
indeed, he assumed a grave and solemn air.

"Master Christian," said he, "if the old woman wants you, take care! Her
teeth are small, pointed, and of marvelous whiteness, and that is not natural
at her age. She has an 'evil eye.' Children flee from her, and the people of
Nuremberg call her 'Fledermausse.'"

I admired the clear, sagacious intellect of the Jew, and his words gave me
cause for reflection.

Several weeks passed away, during which I often encountered
Fledermausse without any alarming consequences. My fears were
dissipated, and I thought of her no more.

But an evening came, during which, while sleeping very soundly, I was
awakened by a strange harmony. It was a kind of vibration, so sweet, so
melodious, that the whispering of the breeze among the leaves can give but
a faint idea of its charm.

For a long time I listened intently, with my eyes wide open, and holding
my breath, so as not to lose a note. At last I looked toward the window, and
saw two wings fluttering against the glass. I thought, at first, that it was a
bat, caught in my room; but, the moon rising at that instant, I saw the wings
of a magnificent butterfly of the night delineated upon her shining disk.
Their vibrations were often so rapid that they could not be distinguished;
then they reposed, extended upon the glass, and their frail fibers were again
brought to view.

This misty apparition, coming in the midst of the universal silence,
opened my heart to all sweet emotions. It seemed to me that an airy sylph,
touched with a sense of my solitude, had come to visit me, and this idea
melted me almost to tears.

"Be tranquil, sweet captive, be tranquil," said I; "your confidence shall
not be abused. I will not keep you against your will. Return to heaven and
to liberty." I then opened my little window. The night was calm, and
millions of stars were glittering in the sky. For a moment I contemplated
this sublime spectacle, and words of prayer and praise came naturally to my
lips; but, judge of my amazement, when, lowering my eyes, I saw a man
hanging from the crossbeam of the sign of the Boeuf-Gras, the hair

disheveled, the arms stiff, the legs elongated to a point, and casting their
gigantic shadows down to the street!

The immobility of this figure under the moon's rays was terrible. I felt
my tongue freezing, my teeth clinched. I was about to cry out in terror
when, by some incomprehensible mysterious attraction, my glance fell
below, and I distinguished, confusedly, the old woman crouched at her
window in the midst of dark shadows, and contemplating the dead man with
an air of diabolic satisfaction.

Then I had a vertigo of terror. All my strength abandoned me, and,
retreating to the wall of my loft, I sank down and became insensible.

I do not know how long this sleep of death continued. When restored to
consciousness, I saw that it was broad day. The mists of the night had
penetrated to my garret, and deposited their fresh dew upon my hair, and the
confused murmurs of the street ascended to my little lodging. I looked
without. The burgomaster and his secretary were stationed at the door of the
inn, and remained there a long time; crowds of people came and went, and
paused to look in; then recommenced their course. The good women of the
neighborhood, who were sweeping before their doors, looked on from afar,
and talked gravely with each other.

At last a litter, and upon this litter a body, covered with a linen cloth,
issued from the inn, carried by two men. They descended to the street, and
the children, on their way to school, ran behind them.

All the people drew back as they advanced.

The window opposite was still open; the end of a rope floated from the
crossbeam.

I had not dreamed. I had, indeed, seen the butterfly of the night; I had
seen the man hanging, and I had seen Fledermausse.

That day Toubac made me a visit, and, as his great nose appeared on a
level with the floor, he exclaimed:

"Master Christian, have you nothing to sell?"

I did not hear him. I was seated upon my one chair, my hands clasped
upon my knees, and my eyes fixed before me.

Toubac, surprised at my inattention, repeated in a louder voice:

"Master Christian, Master Christian!" Then, striding over the sill, he
advanced and struck me on the shoulder.

"Well, well, what is the matter now?"

"Ah, is that you, Toubac?"

"Eh, parbleu! I rather think so; are you ill?"

"No, I am only thinking."

"What in the devil are you thinking about?"

"Of the man who was hanged."

"Oh, oh!" cried the curiosity vender. "You have seen him, then? The poor
boy! What a singular history! The third in the same place."

"How—the third?"

"Ah, yes! I ought to have warned you; but it is not too late. There will
certainly be a fourth, who will follow the example of the others. Il n'y à que
le premier pas qui coûte."

Saying this, Toubac took a seat on the corner of my trunk, struck his
match-box, lighted his pipe, and blew three or four powerful whiffs of
smoke with a meditative air.

"My faith," said he, "I am not fearful; but, if I had full permission to pass
the night in that chamber, I should much prefer to sleep elsewhere.

"Listen, Master Christian. Nine or ten months ago a good man of
Tübingen, wholesale dealer in furs, dismounted at the Inn Boeuf-Gras. He
called for supper; he ate well; he drank well; and was finally conducted to
that room in the third story—it is called the Green Room. Well, the next
morning he was found hanging to the crossbeam of the signboard.

"Well, that might do for once; nothing could be said.

"Every proper investigation was made, and the stranger was buried at the
bottom of the garden. But, look you, about six months afterwards a brave
soldier from Neustadt arrived; he had received his final discharge, and was
rejoicing in the thought of returning to his native village. During the whole
evening, while emptying his wine cups, he spoke fondly of his little cousin
who was waiting to marry him. At last this big monsieur was conducted to
his room—the Green Room—and, the same night, the watchman, passing
down the street Minnesänger, perceived something hanging to the
crossbeam; he raised his lantern, and lo! it was the soldier, with his final
discharge in a bow on his left hip, and his hands gathered up to the seam of
his pantaloons, as if on parade.

"'Truth to say, this is extraordinary!' cried the burgomaster; 'the devil's to
pay.' Well, the chamber was much visited; the walls were replastered, and
the dead man was sent to Neustadt.

"The registrar wrote this marginal note:

"'Died of apoplexy.'

"All Nuremberg was enraged against the innkeeper. There were many,
indeed, who wished to force him to take down his iron crossbeam, under the
pretext that it inspired people with dangerous ideas; but you may well
believe that old Michael Schmidt would not lend his ear to this proposition.

"'This crossbeam,' said he, 'was placed here by my grandfather; it has
borne the sign of Boeuf-Gras for one hundred and fifty years, from father to
son; it harms no one, not even the hay wagons which pass beneath, for it is
thirty feet above them. Those who don't like it can turn their heads aside,
and not see it.'

"Well, gradually the town calmed down, and, during several months, no
new event agitated it. Unhappily, a student of Heidelberg, returning to the
university, stopped, day before yesterday, at the Inn Boeuf-Gras, and asked
for lodging. He was the son of a minister of the gospel.

"How could anyone suppose that the son of a pastor could conceive the
idea of hanging himself on the crossbeam of a signboard, because a big
monsieur and an old soldier had done so? We must admit, Master Christian,
that the thing was not probable; these reasons would not have seemed
sufficient to myself or to you."

"Enough, enough!" I exclaimed; "this is too horrible! I see a frightful
mystery involved in all this. It is not the crossbeam; it is not the room—"

"What! Do you suspect the innkeeper, the most honest man in the world,
and belonging to one of the oldest families in Nuremberg?"

"No, no; may God preserve me from indulging in unjust suspicions! but
there is an abyss before me, into which I scarcely dare glance."

"You are right," said Toubac, astonished at the violence of my
excitement. "We will speak of other things. Apropos, Master Christian,
where is our landscape of 'Saint Odille'?"

This question brought me back to the world of realities. I showed the old
man the painting I had just completed. The affair was soon concluded, and
Toubac, well satisfied, descended the ladder, entreating me to think no more
of the student of Heidelberg.

I would gladly have followed my good friend's counsel; but, when the
devil once mixes himself up in our concerns, it is not easy to disembarrass
ourselves of him.

In my solitary hours all these events were reproduced with frightful
distinctness in my mind.

"This old wretch," I said to myself, "is the cause of it all; she alone has
conceived these crimes, and has consummated them. But by what means?

Has she had recourse to cunning alone, or has she obtained the intervention
of invisible powers?" I walked to and fro in my retreat. An inward voice
cried out: "It is not in vain that Providence permitted you to see
Fledermausse contemplating the agonies of her victim. It is not in vain that
the soul of the poor young man came in the form of a butterfly of the night
to awake you. No, no; all this was not accidental, Christian. The heavens
impose upon you a terrible mission. If you do not accomplish it, tremble
lest you fall yourself into the hands of the old murderess! Perhaps, at this
moment, she is preparing her snares in the darkness."

During several days these hideous images followed me without
intermission. I lost my sleep; it was impossible for me to do anything; my
brush fell from my hand; and, horrible to confess, I found myself
sometimes gazing at the crossbeam with a sort of complacency. At last I
could endure it no longer, and one evening I descended the ladder and hid
myself behind the door of Fledermausse, hoping to surprise her fatal secret.

From that time no day passed in which I was not en route, following the
old wretch, watching, spying, never losing sight of her; but she was so
cunning, had a scent so subtile that, without even turning her head, she
knew I was behind her.

However, she feigned not to perceive this; she went to the market, to the
butcher's, like any good, simple woman, only hastening her steps and
murmuring confused words.

At the close of the month I saw that it was impossible for me to attain my
object in this way, and this conviction made me inexpressibly sad.

"What can I do?" I said to myself. "The old woman divines my plans; she
is on her guard; every hope abandons me. Ah! old hag, you think you
already see me at the end of your rope." I was continually asking myself
this question: "What can I do? what can I do?" At last a luminous idea
struck me. My chamber overlooked the house of Fledermausse; but there
was no window on this side. I adroitly raised a slate, and no pen could paint
my joy when the whole ancient building was thus exposed to me. "At last, I
have you!" I exclaimed; "you cannot escape me now; from here I can see all
that passes—your goings, your comings, your arts and snares. You will not

suspect this invisible eye—this watchful eye, which will surprise crime at
the moment it blooms. Oh, Justice, Justice! She marches slowly; but she
arrives."

Nothing could be more sinister than the den now spread out before me—
a great courtyard, the large slabs of which were covered with moss; in one
corner, a well, whose stagnant waters you shuddered to look upon; a
stairway covered with old shells; at the farther end a gallery, with wooden
balustrade, and hanging upon it some old linen and the tick of an old straw
mattress; on the first floor, to the left, the stone covering of a common
sewer indicated the kitchen; to the right the lofty windows of the building
looked out upon the street; then a few pots of dried, withered flowers—all
was cracked, somber, moist. Only one or two hours during the day could the
sun penetrate this loathsome spot; after that, the shadows took possession;
then the sunshine fell upon the crazy walls, the worm-eaten balcony, the
dull and tarnished glass, and upon the whirlwind of atoms floating in its
golden rays, disturbed by no breath of air.

I had scarcely finished these observations and reflections, when the old
woman entered, having just returned from market. I heard the grating of her
heavy door. Then she appeared with her basket. She seemed fatigued—
almost out of breath. The lace of her bonnet fell to her nose. With one hand
she grasped the banister and ascended the stairs.

The heat was intolerable, suffocating; it was precisely one of those days
in which all insects—crickets, spiders, mosquitoes, etc.—make old ruins
resound with their strange sounds.

Fledermausse crossed the gallery slowly, like an old ferret who feels at
home. She remained more than a quarter of an hour in the kitchen, then
returned, spread out her linen, took the broom, and brushed away some
blades of straw on the floor. At last she raised her head, and turned her little
green eyes in every direction, searching, investigating carefully.

Could she, by some strange intuition, suspect anything? I do not know;
but I gently lowered the slate, and gave up my watch for the day.

In the morning Fledermausse appeared reassured. One angle of light fell
upon the gallery. In passing, she caught a fly on the wing, and presented it
delicately to a spider established in a corner of the roof. This spider was so
bloated that, notwithstanding the distance, I saw it descend from round to
round, then glide along a fine web, like a drop of venom, seize its prey from
the hands of the old shrew, and remount rapidly. Fledermausse looked at it
very attentively, with her eyes half closed; then sneezed, and said to herself,
in a jeering tone, "God bless you, beautiful one; God bless you!"

I watched during six weeks, and could discover nothing concerning the
power of Fledermausse. Sometimes, seated upon a stool, she peeled her
potatoes, then hung out her linen upon the balustrade.

Sometimes I saw her spinning; but she never sang, as good, kind old
women are accustomed to do, their trembling voices mingling well with the
humming of the wheel.

Profound silence always reigned around her; she had no cat—that
cherished society of old women—not even a sparrow came to rest under her
roof. It seemed as if all animated nature shrank from her glance. The
bloated spider alone took delight in her society.

I cannot now conceive how my patience could endure those long hours of
observation: nothing escaped me; nothing was matter of indifference. At the
slightest sound I raised my slate; my curiosity was without limit, insatiable.

Toubac complained greatly.

"Master Christian," said he, "how in the devil do you pass your time?
Formerly you painted something for me every week; now you do not finish
a piece once a month. Oh, you painters! 'Lazy as a painter' is a good, wise
proverb. As soon as you have a few kreutzers in possession, you put your
hands in your pockets and go to sleep!"

I confess that I began to lose courage—I had watched, spied, and
discovered nothing. I said to myself that the old woman could not be so
dangerous as I had supposed; that I had perhaps done her injustice by my
suspicions; in short, I began to make excuses for her. One lovely afternoon,

with my eye fixed at my post of observation, I abandoned myself to these
benevolent reflections, when suddenly the scene changed: Fledermausse
passed through the gallery with the rapidity of lightning. She was no longer
the same person; she was erect, her jaws were clinched, her glance fixed,
her neck extended; she walked with grand strides, her gray locks floating
behind her.

"Oh, at last," I said to myself, "something is coming, attention!" But,
alas! the shadows of evening descended upon the old building, the noises of
the city expired, and silence prevailed.

Fatigued and disappointed, I lay down upon my bed, when, casting my
eyes toward my dormer window, I saw the room opposite illuminated. So! a
traveler occupied the Green Room—fatal to strangers.

Now, all my fears were reawakened; the agitation of Fledermausse was
explained—she scented a new victim.

No sleep for me that night; the rustling of the straw, the nibbling of the
mice under the floor, gave me nervous chills.

I rose and leaned out of my window; I listened. The light in the room
opposite was extinguished. In one of those moments of poignant anxiety, I
cannot say if it was illusion or reality, I thought I saw the old wretch also
watching and listening.

The night passed, and the gray dawn came to my windows; by degrees
the noise and movements in the street ascended to my loft. Harassed by
fatigue and emotion I fell asleep, but my slumber was short, and by eight
o'clock I had resumed my post of observation.

It seemed as if the night had been as disturbed and tempestuous to
Fledermausse as to myself. When she opened the door of the gallery, I saw
that a livid pallor covered her cheeks and thin throat; she had on only her
chemise and a woolen skirt; a few locks of reddish gray hair fell on her
shoulders. She looked toward my hiding place with a dreamy, abstracted air,
but she saw nothing; she was thinking of other things.

Suddenly she descended, leaving her old shoes at the bottom of the steps.
"Without doubt," thought I, "she is going to see if the door below is well
fastened."

I saw her remount hastily, springing up three or four steps at a time—it
was terrible.

She rushed into the neighboring chamber, and I heard something like the
falling of the top of a great chest; then Fledermausse appeared in the
gallery, dragging a manikin after her, and this manikin was clothed like the
Heidelberg student.

With surprising dexterity the old woman suspended this hideous object to
a beam of the shed, then descended rapidly to the courtyard to contemplate
it. A burst of sardonic laughter escaped from her lips; she remounted, then
descended again like a maniac, and each time uttered new cries and new
bursts of laughter.

A noise was heard near the door, and the old woman bounded forward,
unhooked the manikin and carried it off; then, leaning over the balustrade
with her throat elongated, her eyes flashing, she listened earnestly. The
noise was lost in the distance, the muscles of her face relaxed, and she drew
long breaths. It was only a carriage which had passed.

The old wretch had been frightened.

She now returned to the room, and I heard the chest close. This strange
scene confounded all my ideas. What did this manikin signify? I became
more than ever attentive.

Fledermausse now left the house with her basket on her arm. I followed
her with my eyes till she turned the corner of the street. She had reassumed
the air of a trembling old woman, took short steps, and from time to time
turned her head partly around, to peer behind from the corner of her eye.

Fledermausse was absent fully five hours. For myself, I went, I came, I
meditated. The time seemed insupportable. The sun heated the slate of the
roof, and scorched my brain.

Now I saw, at the window, the good man who occupied the fatal Green
Chamber; he was a brave peasant of Nassau, with a large three-cornered
hat, a scarlet vest, and a laughing face; he smoked his pipe of Ulm
tranquillity, and seemed to fear no evil.

I felt a strong desire to cry out to him: "Good man, be on your guard! Do
not allow yourself to be entrapped by the old wretch; distrust yourself!" but
he would not have comprehended me. Toward two o'clock Fledermausse
returned. The noise of her door resounded through the vestibule. Then
alone, all alone, she entered the yard, and seated herself on the interior step
of the stairway; she put down her basket before her, and drew out first some
packets of herbs, then vegetables, then a red vest, then a three-cornered hat,
a coat of brown velvet, pants of plush, and coarse woolen hose—the
complete costume of the peasant from Nassau.

For a moment I felt stunned; then flames passed before my eyes.

I recollected those precipices which entice with an irresistible power;
those wells or pits, which the police have been compelled to close, because
men threw themselves into them; those trees which had been cut down
because they inspired men with the idea of hanging themselves; that
contagion of suicides, of robberies, of murders, at certain epochs, by
desperate means; that strange and subtile enticement of example, which
makes you yawn because another yawns, suffer because you see another
suffer, kill yourself because you see others kill themselves—and my hair
stood up with horror.

How could this Fledermausse, this base, sordid creature, have derived so
profound a law of human nature? how had she found the means to use this
law to the profit or indulgence of her sanguinary instincts? This I could not
comprehend; it surpassed my wildest imaginations.

But reflecting longer upon this inexplicable mystery, I resolved to turn
the fatal law against her, and to draw the old murderess into her own net.

So many innocent victims called out for vengeance!

I felt myself to be on the right path.

I went to all the old-clothes sellers in Nuremberg, and returned in the
afternoon to the Inn Boeuf-Gras, with an enormous packet under my arm.

Nichel Schmidt had known me for a long time; his wife was fat and
good-looking; I had painted her portrait.

"Ah, Master Christian," said he, squeezing my hand, "what happy
circumstance brings you here? What procures me the pleasure of seeing
you?"

"My dear Monsieur Schmidt, I feel a vehement, insatiable desire to sleep
in the Green Room."

We were standing on the threshold of the inn, and I pointed to the room.
The good man looked at me distrustfully.

"Fear nothing," I said; "I have no desire to hang myself.".

"À la bonne heure! à la bonne heure! For frankly that would give me
pain; an artist of such merit! When do you wish the room, Master
Christian?"

"This evening."

"Impossible! it is occupied!"

"Monsieur can enter immediately," said a voice just behind me, "I will
not be in the way."

We turned around in great surprise; the peasant of Nassau stood before
us, with his three-cornered hat, and his packet at the end of his walking
stick. He had just learned the history of his three predecessors in the Green
Room, and was trembling with rage.

"Rooms like yours!" cried he, stuttering; "but it is murderous to put
people there—it is assassination! You deserve to be sent to the galleys
immediately!"

"Go—go—calm yourself," said the innkeeper; "that did not prevent you
from sleeping well."

"Happily, I said my prayers at night," said the peasant; "without that,
where would I be?" and he withdrew, with his hands raised to heaven.

"Well," said Nichel Schmidt, stupefied, "the room is vacant, but I entreat
you, do not serve me a bad trick."

"It would be a worse trick for myself than for you, monsieur."

I gave my packet to the servants, and installed myself for the time with
the drinkers. For a long time I had not felt so calm and happy. After so
many doubts and disquietudes, I touched the goal. The horizon seemed to
clear up, and it appeared that some invisible power gave me the hand. I
lighted my pipe, placed my elbow on the table, my wine before me, and
listened to the chorus in "Freischütz," played by a troupe of gypsies from
the Black Forest. The trumpets, the hue and cry of the chase, the hautboys,
plunged me into a vague reverie, and, at times rousing up to look at the
hour, I asked myself gravely, if all which had happened to me was not a
dream. But the watchman came to ask us to leave the salle, and soon other
and more solemn thoughts were surging in my soul, and in deep meditation
I followed little Charlotte, who preceded me with a candle to my room.

We mounted the stairs to the third story. Charlotte gave me the candle
and pointed to the door.

"There," said she, and descended rapidly.

I opened the door. The Green Room was like any other inn room. The
ceiling was very low, the bed very high. With one glance I explored the
interior, and then glided to the window.

Nothing was to be seen in the house of Fledermausse; only, in some
distant room, an obscure light was burning. Some one was on the watch.
"That is well," said I, closing the curtain. "I have all necessary time."

I opened my packet, I put on a woman's bonnet with hanging lace; then,
placing myself before a mirror, I took a brush and painted wrinkles in my
face. This took me nearly an hour. Then I put on the dress and a large shawl,
and I was actually afraid of myself. Fledermausse seemed to me to look at
me from the mirror.

At this moment the watchman cried out, "Eleven o'clock!" I seized the
manikin which I had brought in my packet, and muffled it in a costume
precisely similar to that worn by the old wretch. I then opened the curtain.

Certainly, after all that I had seen of the Fledermausse, of her infernal
cunning, her prudence, her adroitness, she could not in any way surprise
me; and yet I was afraid. The light which I had remarked in the chamber
was still immovable, and now cast its yellow rays on the manikin of the
peasant of Nassau, which was crouched on the corner of the bed, with the
head hanging on the breast, the three-cornered hat pulled down over the
face, the arms suspended, and the whole aspect that of absolute despair.

The shadows, managed with diabolical art, allowed nothing to be seen
but the general effect of the face. The red vest, and six round buttons alone,
seemed to shine out in the darkness. But the silence of the night, the
complete immobility of the figure, the exhausted, mournful air, were well
calculated to take possession of a spectator with a strange power. For
myself, although forewarned, I was chilled even to my bones.

How would it, then, have fared with the poor, simple peasant, if he had
been surprised unawares? He would have been utterly cast down.
Despairing, he would have lost all power of self-control, and the spirit of
imitation would have done the rest.

Scarcely had I moved the curtain, when I saw Fledermausse on the watch
behind her window. She could not see me. I opened my window softly; the
window opposite was opened! Then her manikin appeared to rise slowly
and advance before me. I, also, advanced my manikin, and seizing my torch
with one hand, with the other I quickly opened the shutters. And now the
old woman and myself were face to face. Struck with sudden terror, she had
let her manikin fall!

We gazed at each other with almost equal horror. She extended her finger
—I advanced mine. She moved her lips—I agitated mine. She breathed a
profound sigh, and leaned upon her elbow. I imitated her.

To describe all the terrors of this scene would be impossible. It bordered
upon confusion, madness, delirium. It was a death struggle between two
wills; between two intelligences; between two souls—each one wishing to
destroy the other; and, in this struggle, I had the advantage—her victims
struggled with me.

After having imitated for some seconds every movement of
Fledermausse, I pulled a rope from under my skirt, and attached it to the
crossbeam.

The old woman gazed at me with gaping mouth. I passed the rope around
my neck; her pupils expanded, lightened; her face was convulsed.

"No, no!" said she, in a whistling voice.

I pursued her with the impassability of an executioner.

Then rage seemed to take possession of her.

"Old fool!" she exclaimed, straightening herself up, and her hands
contracted on the crossbeam. "Old fool!" I gave her no time to go on
blowing out my lamp. I stooped, like a man going to make a vigorous
spring, and, seizing my manikin, I passed the rope around its neck, and
precipitated it below.

A terrible cry resounded through the street, and then silence, which I
seemed to feel. Perspiration bathed my forehead. I listened a long time. At
the end of a quarter of an hour I heard, far away, very far away, the voice of
the watchman, crying, "Inhabitants of Nuremberg, midnight, midnight
sounds!"

"Now justice is satisfied!" I cried, "and three victims are avenged. Pardon
me, O Lord!"

About five minutes after the cry of the watchman, I saw Fledermausse
attracted, allured by my manikin (her exact image), spring from the
window, with a rope around her neck, and rest suspended from the
crossbeam.

I saw the shadow of death undulating through her body, while the moon,
calm, silent, majestic, inundated the summit of the roof, and her cold, pale
rays reposed upon the old, disheveled, hideous head.

Just as I had seen the poor young student of Heidelberg, just so did I now
see Fledermausse.

In the morning, all Nuremberg learned that the old wretch had hanged
herself, and this was the last event of that kind in the Street Minnesänger.

The Waters of Death

The warm mineral waters of Spinbronn, situated in the Hundsrück,
several leagues from Pirmesens, formerly enjoyed a magnificent reputation.
All who were afflicted with gout or gravel in Germany repaired thither; the
savage aspect of the country did not deter them. They lodged in pretty
cottages at the head of the defile; they bathed in the cascade, which fell in
large sheets of foam from the summit of the rocks; they drank one or two
decanters of mineral water daily, and the doctor of the place, Daniel
Hâselnoss, who distributed his prescriptions clad in a great wig and
chestnut coat, had an excellent practice.

To-day the waters of Spinbronn figure no longer in the "Codex";[3] in this
poor village one no longer sees anyone but a few miserable woodcutters,
and, sad to say, Dr. Hâselnoss has left!

All this resulted from a series of very strange catastrophes which lawyer
Brêmer of Pirmesens told me about the other day.

You should know, Master Frantz (said he), that the spring of Spinbronn
issues from a sort of cavern, about five feet high and twelve or fifteen feet
wide; the water has a warmth of sixty-seven degrees Centigrade; it is salt.
As for the cavern, entirely covered without with moss, ivy, and brushwood,
its depth is unknown because the hot exhalations prevent all entrance.

Nevertheless, strangely enough, it was noticed early in the last century
that birds of the neighborhood—thrushes, doves, hawks—were engulfed in
it in full flight, and it was never known to what mysterious influence to
attribute this particular.

In 1801, at the height of the season, owing to some circumstance which is
still unexplained, the spring became more abundant, and the bathers,
walking below on the greensward, saw a human skeleton as white as snow
fall from the cascade.

You may judge, Master Frantz, of the general fright; it was thought
naturally that a murder had been committed at Spinbronn in a recent year,
and that the body of the victim had been thrown in the spring. But the
skeleton weighed no more than a dozen francs, and Hâselnoss concluded
that it must have sojourned more than three centuries in the sand to have
become reduced to such a state of desiccation.

This very plausible reasoning did not prevent a crowd of patrons, wild at
the idea of having drunk the saline water, from leaving before the end of the
day; those worst afflicted with gout and gravel consoled themselves. But the
overflow continuing, all the rubbish, slime, and detritus which the cavern
contained was disgorged on the following days; a veritable bone-yard came
down from the mountain: skeletons of animals of every kind—of
quadrupeds, birds, and reptiles—in short, all that one could conceive as
most horrible.

Hâselnoss issued a pamphlet demonstrating that all these bones were
derived from an antediluvian world: that they were fossil bones,
accumulated there in a sort of funnel during the universal flood—that is to
say, four thousand years before Christ, and that, consequently, one might
consider them as nothing but stones, and that it was needless to be
disgusted. But his work had scarcely reassured the gouty when, one fine
morning, the corpse of a fox, then that of a hawk with all its feathers, fell
from the cascade.

It was impossible to establish that these remains antedated the Flood.
Anyway, the disgust was so great that everybody tied up his bundle and
went to take the waters elsewhere.

"How infamous!" cried the beautiful ladies—"how horrible! So that's
what the virtue of these mineral waters came from! Oh, 'twere better to die
of gravel than continue such a remedy!"

At the end of a week there remained at Spinbronn only a big Englishman
who had gout in his hands as well as in his feet, who had himself addressed
as Sir Thomas Hawerburch, Commodore; and he brought a large retinue,
according to the usage of a British subject in a foreign land.

This personage, big and fat, with a florid complexion, but with hands
simply knotted with gout, would have drunk skeleton soup if it would have
cured his infirmity. He laughed heartily over the desertion of the other
sufferers, and installed himself in the prettiest châlet at half price,
announcing his design to pass the winter at Spinbronn.

(Here lawyer Brêmer slowly absorbed an ample pinch of snuff as if to
quicken his reminiscences; he shook his laced ruff with his finger tips and
continued:)

Five or six years before the Revolution of 1789, a young doctor of
Pirmesens, named Christian Weber, had gone out to San Domingo in the
hope of making his fortune. He had actually amassed some hundred
thousand francs in the exercise of his profession when the negro revolt
broke out.

I need not recall to you the barbarous treatment to which our unfortunate
fellow countrymen were subjected at Haiti. Dr. Weber had the good luck to
escape the massacre and to save part of his fortune. Then he traveled in
South America, and especially in French Guiana. In 1801 he returned to
Pirmesens, and established himself at Spinbronn, where Dr. Hâselnoss
made over his house and defunct practice.

Christian Weber brought with him an old negress called Agatha: a
frightful creature, with a flat nose and lips as large as your fist, and her head
tied up in three bandanas of razor-edged colors. This poor old woman
adored red; she had earrings which hung down to her shoulders, and the
mountaineers of Hundsrück came from six leagues around to stare at her.

As for Dr. Weber, he was a tall, lean man, invariably dressed in a sky-
blue coat with codfish tails and deerskin breeches. He wore a hat of flexible
straw and boots with bright yellow tops, on the front of which hung two
silver tassels. He talked little; his laugh was like a nervous attack, and his
gray eyes, usually calm and meditative, shone with singular brilliance at the

least sign of contradiction. Every morning he fetched a turn round about the
mountain, letting his horse ramble at a venture, whistling forever the same
tune, some negro melody or other. Lastly, this rum chap had brought from
Haiti a lot of bandboxes filled with queer insects—some black and reddish
brown, big as eggs; others little and shimmering like sparks. He seemed to
set greater store by them than by his patients, and, from time to time, on
coming back from his rides, he brought a quantity of butterflies pinned to
his hat brim.

Scarcely was he settled in Hâselnoss's vast house when he peopled the
back yard with outlandish birds—Barbary geese with scarlet cheeks,
Guinea hens, and a white peacock, which perched habitually on the garden
wall, and which divided with the negress the admiration of the
mountaineers.

If I enter into these details, Master Frantz, it's because they recall my
early youth; Dr. Christian found himself to be at the same time my cousin
and my tutor, and as early as on his return to Germany he had come to take
me and install me in his house at Spinbronn. The black Agatha at first sight
inspired me with some fright, and I only got seasoned to that fantastic
visage with considerable difficulty; but she was such a good woman—she
knew so well how to make spiced patties, she hummed such strange songs
in a guttural voice, snapping her fingers and keeping time with a heavy
shuffle, that I ended by taking her in fast friendship.

Dr. Weber was naturally thick with Sir Thomas Hawerburch, as
representing the only one of his clientele then in evidence, and I was not
slow in perceiving that these two eccentrics held long conventicles together.
They conversed on mysterious matters, on the transmission of fluids, and
indulged in certain odd signs which one or the other had picked up in his
voyages—Sir Thomas in the Orient, and my tutor in America. This puzzled
me greatly. As children will, I was always lying in wait for what they
seemed to want to conceal from me; but despairing in the end of
discovering anything, I took the course of questioning Agatha, and the poor
old woman, after making me promise to say nothing about it, admitted that
my tutor was a sorcerer.

For the rest, Dr. Weber exercised a singular influence over the mind of
this negress, and this woman, habitually so gay and forever ready to be
amused by nothing, trembled like a leaf when her master's gray eyes
chanced to alight on her.

All this, Master Frantz, seems to have no bearing on the springs of
Spinbronn. But wait, wait—you shall see by what a singular concourse of
circumstances my story is connected with it.

I told you that birds darted into the cavern, and even other and larger
creatures. After the final departure of the patrons, some of the old
inhabitants of the village recalled that a young girl named Louise Müller,
who lived with her infirm old grandmother in a cottage on the pitch of the
slope, had suddenly disappeared half a hundred years before. She had gone
out to look for herbs in the forest, and there had never been any more news
of her afterwards, except that, three or four days later, some woodcutters
who were descending the mountain had found her sickle and her apron a
few steps from the cavern.

From that moment it was evident to everyone that the skeleton which had
fallen from the cascade, on the subject of which Hâselnoss had turned such
fine phrases, was no other than that of Louise Müller. The poor girl had
doubtless been drawn into the gulf by the mysterious influence which
almost daily overcame weaker beings!

What could this influence be? None knew. But the inhabitants of
Spinbronn, superstitious like all mountaineers, maintained that the devil
lived in the cavern, and terror spread in the whole region.

Now one afternoon in the middle of the month of July, 1802, my cousin
undertook a new classification of the insects in his bandboxes. He had
secured several rather curious ones the preceding afternoon. I was with him,
holding the lighted candle with one hand and with the other a needle which
I heated red-hot.

Sir Thomas, seated, his chair tipped back against the sill of a window, his
feet on a stool, watched us work, and smoked his cigar with a dreamy air.

I stood in with Sir Thomas Hawerburch, and I accompanied him every
day to the woods in his carriage. He enjoyed hearing me chatter in English,
and wished to make of me, as he said, a thorough gentleman.

The butterflies labeled, Dr. Weber at last opened the box of the largest
insects, and said:

"Yesterday I secured a magnificent horn beetle, the great Lucanus cervus
of the oaks of the Hartz. It has this peculiarity—the right claw divides in
five branches. It's a rare specimen."

At the same time I offered him the needle, and as he pierced the insect
before fixing it on the cork, Sir Thomas, until then impassive, got up, and,
drawing near a bandbox, he began to examine the spider crab of Guiana
with a feeling of horror which was strikingly portrayed on his fat vermilion
face.

"That is certainly," he cried, "the most frightful work of the creation. The
mere sight of it—it makes me shudder!"

In truth, a sudden pallor overspread his face.

"Bah!" said my tutor, "all that is only a prejudice from childhood—one
hears his nurse cry out—one is afraid—and the impression sticks. But if
you should consider the spider with a strong microscope, you would be
astonished at the finish of his members, at their admirable arrangement, and
even at their elegance."

"It disgusts me," interrupted the commodore brusquely. "Pouah!"

It had turned over in his fingers.

"Oh! I don't know why," he declared, "spiders have always frozen my
blood!"

Dr. Weber began to laugh, and I, who shared the feelings of Sir Thomas,
exclaimed:

"Yes, cousin, you ought to take this villainous beast out of the box—it is
disgusting—it spoils all the rest."

"Little chump," he said, his eyes sparkling, "what makes you look at it? If
you don't like it, go take yourself off somewhere."

Evidently he had taken offense; and Sir Thomas, who was then before the
window contemplating the mountain, turned suddenly, took me by the hand,
and said to me in a manner full of good will:

"Your tutor, Frantz, sets great store by his spider; we like the trees better
—the verdure. Come, let's go for a walk."

"Yes, go," cried the doctor, "and come back for supper at six o'clock."

Then raising his voice:

"No hard feelings, Sir Hawerburch."

The commodore replied laughingly, and we got into the carriage, which
was always waiting in front of the door of the house.

Sir Thomas wanted to drive himself and dismissed his servant. He made
me sit beside him on the same seat and we started off for Rothalps.

While the carriage was slowly ascending the sandy path, an invincible
sadness possessed itself of my spirit. Sir Thomas, on his part, was grave. He
perceived my sadness and said:

"You don't like spiders, Frantz, nor do I either. But thank Heaven, there
aren't any dangerous ones in this country. The spider crab which your tutor
has in his box comes from French Guiana. It inhabits the great, swampy
forests filled with warm vapors, with scalding exhalations; this temperature
is necessary to its life. Its web, or rather its vast snare, envelops an entire
thicket. In it it takes birds as our spiders take flies. But drive these

disgusting images from your mind, and drink a swallow of my old
Burgundy."

Then turning, he raised the cover of the rear seat, and drew from the
straw a sort of gourd from which he poured me a full bumper in a leather
goblet.

When I had drunk all my good humor returned and I began to laugh at
my fright.

The carriage was drawn by a little Ardennes horse, thin and nervous as a
goat, which clambered up the nearly perpendicular path. Thousands of
insects hummed in the bushes. At our right, at a hundred paces or more, the
somber outskirts of the Rothalp forests extended below us, the profound
shades of which, choked with briers and foul brush, showed here and there
an opening filled with light. On our left tumbled the stream of Spinbronn,
and the more we climbed the more did its silvered sheets, floating in the
abyss, grow tinged with azure and redouble their sound of cymbals.

I was captivated by this spectacle. Sir Thomas, leaning back in the seat,
his knees as high as his chin, abandoned himself to his habitual reveries,
while the horse, laboring with his feet and hanging his head on his chest as
a counter-weight to the carriage, held on as if suspended on the flank of the
rock. Soon, however, we reached a pitch less steep: the haunt of the
roebuck, surrounded by tremulous shadows. I always lost my head, and my
eyes too, in an immense perspective. At the apparition of the shadows I
turned my head and saw the cavern of Spinbronn close at hand. The
encompassing mists were a magnificent green, and the stream which, before
falling, extends over a bed of black sand and pebbles, was so clear that one
would have thought it frozen if pale vapors did not follow its surface.

The horse had just stopped of his own accord to breathe; Sir Thomas,
rising, cast his eye over the countryside.

"How calm everything is!" said he.

Then, after an instant of silence:

"If you weren't here, Frantz, I should certainly bathe in the basin."

"But, Commodore," said I, "why not bathe? I would do well to stroll
around in the neighborhood. On the next hill is a great glade filled with wild
strawberries. I'll go and pick some. I'll be back in an hour."

"Ha! I should like to, Frantz; it's a good idea. Dr. Weber contends that I
drink too much Burgundy. It's necessary to offset wine with mineral water.
This little bed of sand pleases me."

Then, having set both feet on the ground, he hitched the horse to the
trunk of a little birch and waved his hand as if to say:

"You may go."

I saw him sit down on the moss and draw off his boots. As I moved away
he turned and called out:

"In an hour, Frantz."

They were his last words.

An hour later I returned to the spring. The horse, the carriage, and the
clothes of Sir Thomas alone met my eyes. The sun was setting. The
shadows were getting long. Not a bird's song under the foliage, not the hum
of an insect in the tall grass. A silence like death looked down on this
solitude! The silence frightened me. I climbed up on the rock which
overlooks the cavern; I looked to the right and to the left. Nobody! I called.
No answer! The sound of my voice, repeated by the echoes, filled me with
fear. Night settled down slowly. A vague sense of horror oppressed me.
Suddenly the story of the young girl who had disappeared occurred to me;
and I began to descend on the run; but, arriving before the cavern, I
stopped, seized with unaccountable terror: in casting a glance in the deep
shadows of the spring I had caught sight of two motionless red points. Then
I saw long lines wavering in a strange manner in the midst of the darkness,
and that at a depth where no human eye had ever penetrated. Fear lent my
sight, and all my senses, an unheard-of subtlety of perception. For several
seconds I heard very distinctly the evening plaint of a cricket down at the

edge of the wood, a dog barking far away, very far in the valley. Then my
heart, compressed for an instant by emotion, began to beat furiously and I
no longer heard anything!

Then uttering a horrible cry, I fled, abandoning the horse, the carriage. In
less than twenty minutes, bounding over the rocks and brush, I reached the
threshold of our house, and cried in a stifled voice:

"Run! Run! Sir Hawerburch is dead! Sir Hawerburch is in the cavern—!"

After these words, spoken in the presence of my tutor, of the old woman
Agatha, and of two or three people invited in that evening by the doctor, I
fainted. I have learned since that during a whole hour I raved deliriously.

The whole village had gone in search of the commodore. Christian Weber
hurried them off. At ten o'clock in the evening all the crowd came back,
bringing the carriage, and in the carriage the clothes of Sir Hawerburch.
They had discovered nothing. It was impossible to take ten steps in the
cavern without being suffocated.

During their absence Agatha and I waited, sitting in the chimney corner.
I, howling incoherent words of terror; she, with hands crossed on her knees,
eyes wide open, going from time to time to the window to see what was
taking place, for from the foot of the mountain one could see torches flitting
in the woods. One could hear hoarse voices, in the distance, calling to each
other in the night.

At the approach of her master, Agatha began to tremble. The doctor
entered brusquely, pale, his lips compressed, despair written on his face. A
score of woodcutters followed him tumultuously, in great felt hats with
wide brims—swarthy visaged—shaking the ash from their torches. Scarcely
was he in the hall when my tutor's glittering eyes seemed to look for
something. He caught sight of the negress, and without a word having
passed between them, the poor woman began to cry:

"No! no! I don't want to!"

"And I wish it," replied the doctor in a hard tone.

One would have said that the negress had been seized by an invincible
power. She shuddered from head to foot, and Christian Weber showing her
a bench, she sat down with a corpse-like stiffness.

All the bystanders, witnesses of this shocking spectacle, good folk with
primitive and crude manners, but full of pious sentiments, made the sign of
the cross, and I who knew not then, even by name, of the terrible magnetic
power of the will, began to tremble, believing that Agatha was dead.

Christian Weber approached the negress, and making a rapid pass over
her forehead:

"Are you there?" said he.

"Yes, master."

"Sir Thomas Hawerburch?"

At these words she shuddered again.

"Do you see him?"

"Yes—yes," she gasped in a strangling voice, "I see him."

"Where is he?"

"Up there—in the back of the cavern—dead!"

"Dead!" said the doctor, "how?"

"The spider—Oh! the spider crab—Oh!—"

"Control your agitation," said the doctor, who was quite pale, "tell us
plainly—"

"The spider crab holds him by the throat—he is there—at the back—
under the rock—wound round by webs—Ah!"

Christian Weber cast a cold glance toward his assistants, who, crowding
around, with their eyes sticking out of their heads, were listening intently,
and I heard him murmur:

"It's horrible! horrible!"

Then he resumed:

"You see him?"

"I see him—"

"And the spider—is it big?"

"Oh, master, never—never have I seen such a large one—not even on the
banks of the Mocaris—nor in the lowlands of Konanama. It is as large as
my head—!"

There was a long silence. All the assistants looked at each other, their
faces livid, their hair standing up. Christian Weber alone seemed calm;
having passed his hand several times over the negress's forehead, he
continued:

"Agatha, tell us how death befell Sir Hawerburch."

"He was bathing in the basin of the spring—the spider saw him from
behind, with his bare back. It was hungry, it had fasted for a long time; it
saw him with his arms on the water. Suddenly it came out like a flash and
placed its fangs around the commodore's neck, and he cried out: 'Oh! oh!
my God!' It stung and fled. Sir Hawerburch sank down in the water and
died. Then the spider returned and surrounded him with its web, and he
floated gently, gently, to the back of the cavern. It drew in on the web. Now
he is all black."

The doctor, turning to me, who no longer felt the shock, asked:

"Is it true, Frantz, that the commodore went in bathing?"

"Yes, Cousin Christian."

"At what time?"

"At four o'clock."

"At four o'clock—it was very warm, wasn't it?"

"Oh, yes!"

"It's certainly so," said he, striking his forehead. "The monster could
come out without fear—"

He pronounced a few unintelligible words, and then, looking toward the
mountaineers:

"My friends," he cried, "that is where this mass of débris came from—of
skeletons—which spread terror among the bathers. That is what has ruined
you all—it is the spider crab! It is there—hidden in its web—awaiting its
prey in the back of the cavern! Who can tell the number of its victims?"

And full of fury, he led the way, shouting:

"Fagots! Fagots!"

The woodcutters followed him, vociferating.

Ten minutes later two large wagons laden with fagots were slowly
mounting the slope. A long file of woodcutters, their backs bent double,
followed, enveloped in the somber night. My tutor and I walked ahead,
leading the horses by their bridles, and the melancholy moon vaguely
lighted this funereal march. From time to time the wheels grated. Then the
carts, raised by the irregularities of the rocky road, fell again in the track
with a heavy jolt.

As we drew near the cavern, on the playground of the roebucks, our
cortége halted. The torches were lit, and the crowd advanced toward the
gulf. The limpid water, running over the sand, reflected the bluish flame of
the resinous torches, the rays of which revealed the tops of the black firs
leaning over the rock.

"This is the place to unload," the doctor then said. "It's necessary to block
up the mouth of the cavern."

And it was not without a feeling of terror that each undertook the duty of
executing his orders. The fagots fell from the top of the loads. A few stakes
driven down before the opening of the spring prevented the water from
carrying them away.

Toward midnight the mouth of the cavern was completely closed. The
water running over spread to both sides on the moss. The top fagots were
perfectly dry; then Dr. Weber, supplying himself with a torch, himself lit the
fire. The flames ran from twig to twig with an angry crackling, and soon
leaped toward the sky, chasing clouds of smoke before them.

It was a strange and savage spectacle, the great pile with trembling
shadows lit up in this way.

This cavern poured forth black smoke, unceasingly renewed and
disgorged. All around stood the woodcutters, somber, motionless, expectant,
their eyes fixed on the opening; and I, although trembling from head to foot
in fear, could not tear away my gaze.

It was a good quarter of an hour that we waited, and Dr. Weber was
beginning to grow impatient, when a black object, with long hooked claws,
appeared suddenly in the shadow and precipitated itself toward the opening.

A cry resounded about the pyre.

The spider, driven back by the live coals, reëntered its cave. Then,
smothered doubtless by the smoke, it returned to the charge and leaped out
into the midst of the flames. Its long legs curled up. It was as large as my
head, and of a violet red.

One of the woodcutters, fearing lest it leap clear of the fire, threw his
hatchet at it, and with such good aim that on the instant the fire around it
was covered with blood. But soon the flames burst out more vigorously
over it and consumed the horrible destroyer.

Such, Master Frantz, was the strange event which destroyed the fine
reputation which the waters of Spinbronn formerly enjoyed. I can certify
the scrupulous precision of my account. But as for giving you an
explanation, that would be impossible for me to do. At the same time, allow
me to tell you that it does not seem to me absurd to admit that a spider,
under the influence of a temperature raised by thermal waters, which
affords the same conditions of life and development as the scorching
climates of Africa and South America, should attain a fabulous size. It was
this same extreme heat which explains the prodigious exuberance of the
antediluvian creation!

However that may be, my tutor, judging that it would be impossible after
this event to reestablish the waters of Spinbronn, sold the house back to
Hâselnoss, in order to return to America with his negress and collections. I
was sent to board in Strasbourg, where I remained until 1809.

The great political events of the epoch then absorbing the attention of
Germany and France explain why the affair I have just told you about
passed completely unobserved.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Melmoth Reconciled[4]

To Monsieur le Général Baron de Pommereul, a
token of the friendship between our fathers, which
survives in their sons.

DE BALZAC.

There is a special variety of human nature obtained in the Social
Kingdom by a process analogous to that of the gardener's craft in the
Vegetable Kingdom, to wit, by the forcing-house—a species of hybrid
which can be raised neither from seed nor from slips. This product is known
as the Cashier, an anthropomorphous growth, watered by religious doctrine,
trained up in fear of the guillotine, pruned by vice, to flourish on a third
floor with an estimable wife by his side and an uninteresting family. The
number of cashiers in Paris must always be a problem for the physiologist.
Has anyone as yet been able to state correctly the terms of the proportion
sum wherein the cashier figures as the unknown x? Where will you find the
man who shall live with wealth, like a cat with a caged mouse? This man,
for further qualification, shall be capable of sitting boxed in behind an iron
grating for seven or eight hours a day during seven-eighths of the year,
perched upon a cane-seated chair in a space as narrow as a lieutenant's
cabin on board a man-of-war. Such a man must be able to defy anchylosis
of the knee and thigh joints; he must have a soul above meanness, in order
to live meanly; must lose all relish for money by dint of handling it.
Demand this peculiar specimen of any creed, educational system, school, or
institution you please, and select Paris, that city of fiery ordeals and branch
establishment of hell, as the soil in which to plant the said cashier. So be it.
Creeds, schools, institutions, and moral systems, all human rules and
regulations, great and small, will, one after another, present much the same
face that an intimate friend turns upon you when you ask him to lend you a
thousand francs. With a dolorous dropping of the jaw, they indicate the
guillotine, much as your friend aforesaid will furnish you with the address
of the money lender, pointing you to one of the hundred gates by which a
man comes to the last refuge of the destitute.

Yet Nature has her freaks in the making of a man's mind; she indulges
herself and makes a few honest folk now and again, and now and then a
cashier.

Wherefore, that race of corsairs whom we dignify with the title of
bankers, the gentry who take out a license for which they pay a thousand
crowns, as the privateer takes out his letters of marque, hold these rare
products of the incubations of virtue in such esteem that they confine them
in cages in their counting-houses, much as governments procure and
maintain specimens of strange beasts at their own charges.

If the cashier is possessed of an imagination or of a fervid temperament;
if, as will sometimes happen to the most complete cashier, he loves his
wife, and that wife grows tired of her lot, has ambitions, or merely some
vanity in her composition, the cashier is undone. Search the chronicles of
the counting-house. You will not find a single instance of a cashier attaining
a position, as it is called. They are sent to the hulks; they go to foreign
parts; they vegetate on a second floor in the Rue Saint-Louis among the
market gardens of the Marais. Some day, when the cashiers of Paris come to
a sense of their real value, a cashier will be hardly obtainable for money.
Still, certain it is that there are people who are fit for nothing but to be
cashiers, just as the bent of a certain order of mind inevitably makes for
rascality. But, oh marvel of our civilization! Society rewards virtue with an
income of a hundred louis in old age, a dwelling on a second floor, bread
sufficient, occasional new bandana handkerchiefs, an elderly wife and her
offspring.

So much for virtue. But for the opposite course, a little boldness, a
faculty for keeping on the windward side of the law, as Turenne outflanked
Montecuculli, and Society will sanction the theft of millions, shower
ribbons upon the thief, cram him with honors, and smother him with
consideration.

Government, moreover, works harmoniously with this profoundly
illogical reasoner—Society. Government levies a conscription on the young
intelligence of the kingdom at the age of seventeen or eighteen, a
conscription of precocious power. Great ability is prematurely exhausted by
excessive brain work before it is sent up to be submitted to a process of

selection. Nurserymen sort and select seeds in much the same way. To this
process the Government brings professional appraisers of talent, men who
can assay brains as experts assay gold at the Mint. Five hundred such heads,
set afire with hope, are sent up annually by the most progressive portion of
the population; and of these the Government takes one third, puts them in
sacks called the Écoles, and shakes them up together for three years.
Though every one of these young plants represents vast productive power,
they are made, as one may say, into cashiers. They receive appointments;
the rank and file of engineers is made up of them; they are employed as
captains of artillery; there is no (subaltern) grade to which they may not
aspire. Finally, when these men, the pick of the youth of the nation, fattened
on mathematics and stuffed with knowledge, have attained the age of fifty
years, they have their reward, and receive as the price of their services the
third-floor lodging, the wife and family, and all the comforts that sweeten
life for mediocrity. If from among this race of dupes there should escape
some five or six men of genius who climb the highest heights, is it not
miraculous?

This is an exact statement of the relations between Talent and Probity on
the one hand, and Government and Society on the other, in an age that
considers itself to be progressive. Without this prefatory explanation a
recent occurrence in Paris would seem improbable; but preceded by this
summing up of the situation, it will perhaps receive some thoughtful
attention from minds capable o£ recognizing the real plague spots of our
civilization, a civilization which since 1815 has been moved by the spirit of
gain rather than by principles of honor.

About five o'clock, on a dull autumn afternoon, the cashier of one of the
largest banks in Paris was still at his desk, working by the light of a lamp
that had been lit for some time. In accordance with the use and wont of
commerce, the counting-house was in the darkest corner of the low-ceiled
and far from spacious mezzanine floor, and at the very end of a passage
lighted only by borrowed lights. The office doors along this corridor, each
with its label, gave the place the look of a bath-house. At four o'clock the
stolid porter had proclaimed, according to his orders, "The bank is closed."

And by this time the departments were deserted, the letters dispatched, the
clerks had taken their leave. The wives of the partners in the firm were
expecting their lovers; the two bankers dining with their mistresses.
Everything was in order.

The place where the strong boxes had been bedded in sheet iron was just
behind the little sanctum, where the cashier was busy. Doubtless he was
balancing his books. The open front gave a glimpse of a safe of hammered
iron, so enormously heavy (thanks to the science of the modern inventor)
that burglars could not carry it away. The door only opened at the pleasure
of those who knew its password. The letter-lock was a warden who kept its
own secret and could not be bribed; the mysterious word was an ingenious
realization of the "Open sesame!" in the Arabian Nights. But even this was
as nothing. A man might discover the password; but unless he knew the
lock's final secret, the ultima ratio of this gold-guarding dragon of
mechanical science, it discharged a blunderbuss at his head.

The door of the room, the walls of the room, the shutters of the windows
in the room, the whole place, in fact, was lined with sheet iron a third of an
inch in thickness, concealed behind the thin wooden paneling. The shutters
had been closed, the door had been shut. If ever man could feel confident
that he was absolutely alone, and that there was no remote possibility of
being watched by prying eyes, that man was the cashier of the house of
Nucingen and Company in the Rue Saint-Lazare.

Accordingly the deepest silence prevailed in that iron cave. The fire had
died out in the stove, but the room was full of that tepid warmth which
produces the dull heavy-headedness and nauseous queasiness of a morning
after an orgy. The stove is a mesmerist that plays no small part in the
reduction of bank clerks and porters to a state of idiocy.

A room with a stove in it is a retort in which the power of strong men is
evaporated, where their vitality is exhausted, and their wills enfeebled.
Government offices are part of a great scheme for the manufacture of the
mediocrity necessary for the maintenance of a Feudal System on a
pecuniary basis—and money is the foundation of the Social Contract. (See
Les Employés.) The mephitic vapors in the atmosphere of a crowded room
contribute in no small degree to bring about a gradual deterioration of

intelligences, the brain that gives off the largest quantity of nitrogen
asphyxiates the others, in the long run.

The cashier was a man of five and forty or thereabouts. As he sat at the
table, the light from a moderator lamp shining full on his bald head and
glistening fringe of iron-gray hair that surrounded it—this baldness and the
round outlines of his face made his head look very like a ball. His
complexion was brick-red, a few wrinkles had gathered about his eyes, but
he had the smooth, plump hands of a stout man. His blue cloth coat, a little
rubbed and worn, and the creases and shininess of his trousers, traces of
hard wear that the clothes-brush fails to remove, would impress a
superficial observer with the idea that here was a thrifty and upright human
being, sufficient of the philosopher or of the aristocrat to wear shabby
clothes. But, unluckily, it is easy to find penny-wise people who will prove
weak, wasteful, or incompetent in the capital things of life.

The cashier wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his buttonhole, for
he had been a major of dragoons in the time of the Emperor. M. de
Nucingen, who had been a contractor before he became a banker, had had
reason in those days to know the honorable disposition of his cashier, who
then occupied a high position. Reverses of fortune had befallen the major,
and the banker out of regard for him paid him five hundred francs a month.
The soldier had become a cashier in the year 1813, after his recovery from a
wound received at Studzianka during the Retreat from Moscow, followed
by six months of enforced idleness at Strasbourg, whither several officers
had been transported by order of the Emperor, that they might receive
skilled attention. This particular officer, Castanier by name, retired with the
honorary grade of colonel, and a pension of two thousand four hundred
francs.

In ten years' time the cashier had completely effaced the soldier, and
Castanier inspired the banker with such trust in him, that he was associated
in the transactions that went on in the private office behind his little
counting-house. The baron himself had access to it by means of a secret
staircase. There, matters of business were decided. It was the bolting room
where proposals were sifted; the privy council chamber where the reports of
the money market were analyzed; circular notes issued thence; and finally,

the private ledger and the journal which summarized the work of all the
departments were kept there.

Castanier had gone himself to shut the door which opened on to a
staircase that led to the parlor occupied by the two bankers on the first floor
of their hotel. This done, he had sat down at his desk again, and for a
moment he gazed at a little collection of letters of credit drawn on the firm
of Watschildine of London. Then he had taken up the pen and imitated the
banker's signature upon each. Nucingen he wrote, and eyed the forged
signatures critically to see which seemed the most perfect copy.

Suddenly he looked up as if a needle had pricked him. "You are not
alone!" a boding voice seemed to cry in his heart; and indeed the forger saw
a man standing at the little grated window of the counting-house, a man
whose breathing was so noiseless that he did not seem to breathe at all.
Castanier looked, and saw that the door at the end of the passage was wide
open; the stranger must have entered by that way.

For the first time in his life the old soldier felt a sensation of dread that
made him stare open-mouthed and wide-eyed at the man before him; and
for that matter, the appearance of the apparition was sufficiently alarming
even if unaccompanied by the mysterious circumstances of so sudden an
entry. The rounded forehead, the harsh coloring of the long oval face,
indicated quite as plainly as the cut of his clothes that the man was an
Englishman, reeking of his native isles. You had only to look at the collar of
his overcoat, at the voluminous cravat which smothered the crushed frills of
a shirt front so white that it brought out the changeless leaden hue of an
impassive face, and the thin red line of the lips that seemed made to suck
the blood of corpses; and you could guess at once at the black gaiters
buttoned up to the knee, and the half-puritanical costume of a wealthy
Englishman dressed for a walking excursion. The intolerable glitter of the
stranger's eyes produced a vivid and unpleasant impression, which was only
deepened by the rigid outlines of his features. The dried-up, emaciated
creature seemed to carry within him some gnawing thought that consumed
him and could not be appeased.

He must have digested his food so rapidly that he could doubtless eat
continually without bringing any trace of color into his face or features. A

tun of Tokay vin de succession would not have caused any faltering in that
piercing glance that read men's inmost thoughts, nor dethroned the
merciless reasoning faculty that always seemed to go to the bottom of
things. There was something of the fell and tranquil majesty of a tiger about
him.

"I have come to cash this bill of exchange, sir," he said. Castanier felt the
tones of his voice thrill through every nerve with a violent shock similar to
that given by a discharge of electricity.

"The safe is closed," said Castanier.

"It is open," said the Englishman, looking round the counting-house. "To-
morrow is Sunday, and I cannot wait. The amount is for five hundred
thousand francs. You have the money there, and I must have it."

"But how did you come in, sir?"

The Englishman smiled. That smile frightened Castanier. No words could
have replied more fully nor more peremptorily than that scornful and
imperial curl of the stranger's lips. Castanier turned away, took up fifty
packets, each containing ten thousand francs in bank notes, and held them
out to the stranger, receiving in exchange for them a bill accepted by the
Baron de Nucingen. A sort of convulsive tremor ran through him as he saw
a red gleam in the stranger's eyes when they fell on the forged signature on
the letter of credit.

"It ... it wants your signature ..." stammered Castanier, handing back the
bill.

"Hand me your pen," answered the Englishman.

Castanier handed him the pen with which he had just committed forgery.
The stranger wrote John Melmoth, then he returned the slip of paper and the
pen to the cashier. Castanier looked at the handwriting, noticing that it
sloped from right to left in the Eastern fashion, and Melmoth disappeared so
noiselessly that when Castanier looked up again an exclamation broke from
him, partly because the man was no longer there, partly because he felt a

strange painful sensation such as our imagination might take for an effect of
poison.

The pen that Melmoth had handled sent the same sickening heat through
him that an emetic produces. But it seemed impossible to Castanier that the
Englishman should have guessed his crime. His inward qualms he attributed
to the palpitation of the heart that, according to received ideas, was sure to
follow at once on such a "turn" as the stranger had given him.

"The devil take it; I am very stupid. Providence is watching over me; for
if that brute had come round to see my gentlemen to-morrow, my goose
would have been cooked!" said Castanier, and he burned the unsuccessful
attempts at forgery in the stove.

He put the bill that he meant to take with him in an envelope, and helped
himself to five hundred thousand francs in French and English bank notes
from the safe, which he locked. Then he put everything in order, lit a
candle, blew out the lamp, took up his hat and umbrella, and went out
sedately, as usual, to leave one of the two keys of the strong room with
Madame de Nucingen, in the absence of her husband the baron.

"You are in luck, M. Castanier," said the banker's wife as he entered her
room; "we have a holiday on Monday; you can go into the country, or to
Soizy."

"Madame, will you be so good as to tell your husband that the bill of
exchange on Watschildine, which was behind time, has just been presented?
The five hundred thousand francs have been paid; so I shall not come back
till noon on Tuesday."

"Good-by, monsieur; I hope you will have a pleasant time."

"The same to you, madame," replied the old dragoon as he went out. He
glanced as he spoke at a young man well known in fashionable society at
that time, a M. de Rastignac, who was regarded as Madame de Nucingen's
lover.

"Madame," remarked this latter, "the old boy looks to me as if he meant
to play you some ill turn."

"Pshaw! impossible; he is too stupid."

"Piquoizeau," said the cashier, walking into the porter's room, "what
made you let anybody come up after four o'clock?"

"I have been smoking a pipe here in the doorway ever since four
o'clock," said the man, "and nobody has gone into the bank. Nobody has
come out either except the gentlemen—"

"Are you quite sure?"

"Yes, upon my word and honor. Stay, though, at four o'clock M.
Werbrust's friend came, a young fellow from Messrs. du Tillet & Co., in the
Rue Joubert."

"All right," said Castanier, and he hurried away.

The sickening sensation of heat that he had felt when he took back the
pen returned in greater intensity. "Mille diables!" thought he, as he threaded
his way along the Boulevard de Gand, "haven't I taken proper precautions?
Let me think! Two clear days, Sunday and Monday, then a day of
uncertainty before they begin to look for me; altogether, three days and four
nights' respite. I have a couple of passports and two different disguises; is
not that enough to throw the cleverest detective off the scent? On Tuesday
morning I shall draw a million francs in London before the slightest
suspicion has been aroused. My debts I am leaving behind for the benefit of
my creditors, who will put a 'P'[5] on the bills, and I shall live comfortably
in Italy for the rest of my days as the Conte Ferraro. I was alone with him
when he died, poor fellow, in the marsh of Zembin, and I shall slip into his
skin.... Mille diables! the woman who is to follow after me might give them
a clew! Think of an old campaigner like me infatuated enough to tie myself
to a petticoat tail!... Why take her? I must leave her behind. Yes, I could
make up my mind to it; but—I know myself—I should be ass enough to go
back for her. Still, nobody knows Aquilina. Shall I take her or leave her?"

"You will not take her!" cried a voice that filled Castanier with sickening
dread. He turned sharply, and saw the Englishman.

"The devil is in it!" cried the cashier aloud.

Melmoth had passed his victim by this time; and if Castanier's first
impulse had been to fasten a quarrel on a man who read his own thoughts,
he was so much torn by opposing feelings that the immediate result was a
temporary paralysis. When he resumed his walk he fell once more into that
fever of irresolution which besets those who are so carried away by passion
that they are ready to commit a crime, but have not sufficient strength of
character to keep it to themselves without suffering terribly in the process.
So, although Castanier had made up his mind to reap the fruits of a crime
which was already half executed, he hesitated to carry out his designs. For
him, as for many men of mixed character in whom weakness and strength
are equally blended, the least trifling consideration determines whether they
shall continue to lead blameless lives or become actively criminal. In the
vast masses of men enrolled in Napoleon's armies there were many who,
like Castanier, possessed the purely physical courage demanded on the
battlefield, yet lacked the moral courage which makes a man as great in
crime as he could have been in virtue.

The letter of credit was drafted in such terms that immediately on his
arrival he might draw twenty-five thousand pounds on the firm of
Watschildine, the London correspondents of the house of Nucingen. The
London house had been already advised of the draft about to be made upon
them; he had written to them himself. He had instructed an agent (chosen at
random) to take his passage in a vessel which was to leave Portsmouth with
a wealthy English family on board, who were going to Italy, and the
passage money had been paid in the name of the Conte Ferraro. The
smallest details of the scheme had been thought out. He had arranged
matters so as to divert the search that would be made for him into Belgium
and Switzerland, while he himself was at sea in the English vessel. Then, by
the time that Nucingen might flatter himself that he was on the track of his
late cashier, the said cashier, as the Conte Ferraro, hoped to be safe in
Naples. He had determined to disfigure his face in order to disguise himself
the more completely, and by means of an acid to imitate the scars of

smallpox. Yet, in spite of all these precautions, which surely seemed as if
they must secure him complete immunity, his conscience tormented him; he
was afraid. The even and peaceful life that he had led for so long had
modified the morality of the camp. His life was stainless as yet; he could
not sully it without a pang. So for the last time he abandoned himself to all
the influences of the better self that strenuously resisted.

"Pshaw!" he said at last, at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue
Montmartre, "I will take a cab after the play this evening and go out to
Versailles. A post-chaise will be ready for me at my old quartermaster's
place. He would keep my secret even if a dozen men were standing ready to
shoot him down. The chances are all in my favor, so far as I see; so I shall
take my little Naqui with me, and I will go."

"You will not go!" exclaimed the Englishman, and the strange tones of
his voice drove all the cashier's blood back to his heart.

Melmoth stepped into a tilbury which was waiting for him, and was
whirled away so quickly, that when Castanier looked up he saw his foe
some hundred paces away from him, and before it even crossed his mind to
cut off the man's retreat the tilbury was far on its way up the Boulevard
Montmartre.

"Well, upon my word, there is something supernatural about this!" said
he to himself. "If I were fool enough to believe in God, I should think that
He had set Saint Michael on my tracks. Suppose that the devil and the
police should let me go on as I please, so as to nab me in the nick of time?
Did anyone ever see the like! But there, this is folly...."

Castanier went along the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, slackening his
pace as he neared the Rue Richer. There, on the second floor of a block of
buildings which looked out upon some gardens, lived the unconscious cause
of Castanier's crime—a young woman known in the quarter as Mme. de la
Garde. A concise history of certain events in the cashier's past life must be
given in order to explain these facts, and to give a complete presentment of
the crisis when he yielded to temptation.

Mme. de la Garde said that she was a Piedmontese. No one, not even
Castanier, knew her real name. She was one of those young girls who are
driven by dire misery, by inability to earn a living, or by fear of starvation,
to have recourse to a trade which most of them loathe, many regard with
indifference, and some few follow in obedience to the laws of their
constitution. But on the brink of the gulf of prostitution in Paris, the young
girl of sixteen, beautiful and pure as the Madonna, had met with Castanier.
The old dragoon was too rough and homely to make his way in society, and
he was tired of tramping the boulevard at night and of the kind of conquests
made there by gold. For some time past he had desired to bring a certain
regularity into an irregular life. He was struck by the beauty of the poor
child who had drifted by chance into his arms, and his determination to
rescue her from the life of the streets was half benevolent, half selfish, as
some of the thoughts of the best of men are apt to be. Social conditions
mingle elements of evil with the promptings of natural goodness of heart,
and the mixture of motives underlying a man's intentions should be
leniently judged. Castanier had just cleverness enough to be very shrewd
where his own interests were concerned. So he concluded to be a
philanthropist on either count, and at first made her his mistress.

"Hey! hey!" he said to himself, in his soldierly fashion, "I am an old
wolf, and a sheep shall not make a fool of me. Castanier, old man, before
you set up housekeeping, reconnoiter the girl's character for a bit, and see if
she is a steady sort."

This irregular union gave the Piedmontese a status the most nearly
approaching respectability among those which the world declines to
recognize. During the first year she took the nom de guerre of Aquilina, one
of the characters in Venice Preserved which she had chanced to read. She
fancied that she resembled the courtesan in face and general appearance,
and in a certain precocity of heart and brain of which she was conscious.
When Castanier found that her life was as well regulated and virtuous as
was possible for a social outlaw, he manifested a desire that they should live
as husband and wife. So she took the name of Mme. de la Garde, in order to
approach, as closely as Parisian usages permit, the conditions of a real
marriage. As a matter of fact, many of these unfortunate girls have one
fixed idea, to be looked upon as respectable middle-class women, who lead

humdrum lives of faithfulness to their husbands; women who would make
excellent mothers, keepers of household accounts, and menders of
household linen. This longing springs from a sentiment so laudable that
society should take it into consideration. But society, incorrigible as ever,
will assuredly persist in regarding the married woman as a corvette duly
authorized by her flag and papers to go on her own course, while the
woman who is a wife in all but name is a pirate and an outlaw for lack of a
document. A day came when Mme. de la Garde would fain have signed
herself "Mme. Castanier." The cashier was put out by this.

"So you do not love me well enough to marry me?" she said.

Castanier did not answer; he was absorbed by his thoughts. The poor girl
resigned herself to her fate. The ex-dragoon was in despair. Naqui's heart
softened toward him at the sight of his trouble; she tried to soothe him, but
what could she do when she did not know what ailed him? When Naqui
made up her mind to know the secret, although she never asked him a
question, the cashier dolefully confessed to the existence of a Mme.
Castanier. This lawful wife, a thousand times accursed, was living in a
humble way in Strasbourg on a small property there; he wrote to her twice a
year, and kept the secret of her existence so well, that no one suspected that
he was married. The reason of this reticence? If it is familiar to many
military men who may chance to be in a like predicament, it is perhaps
worth while to give the story.

Your genuine trooper (if it is allowable here to employ the word which in
the army signifies a man who is destined to die as a captain) is a sort of serf,
a part and parcel of his regiment, an essentially simple creature, and
Castanier was marked out by nature as a victim to the wiles of mothers with
grown-up daughters left too long on their hands. It was at Nancy, during
one of those brief intervals of repose when the Imperial armies were not on
active service abroad, that Castanier was so unlucky as to pay some
attention to a young lady with whom he danced at a ridotto, the provincial
name for the entertainments often given by the military to the townsfolk, or
vice versâ, in garrison towns. A scheme for inveigling the gallant captain
into matrimony was immediately set on foot, one of those schemes by
which mothers secure accomplices in a human heart by touching all its

motive springs, while they convert all their friends into fellow-conspirators.
Like all people possessed by one idea, these ladies press everything into the
service of their great project, slowly elaborating their toils, much as the ant-
lion excavates its funnel in the sand and lies in wait at the bottom for its
victim. Suppose that no one strays, after all, into that carefully constructed
labyrinth? Suppose that the ant-lion dies of hunger and thirst in her pit?
Such things may be, but if any heedless creature once enters in, it never
comes out. All the wires which could be pulled to induce action on the
captain's part were tried; appeals were made to the secret interested motives
that always come into play in such cases; they worked on Castanier's hopes
and on the weaknesses and vanity of human nature. Unluckily, he had
praised the daughter to her mother when he brought her back after a waltz, a
little chat followed, and then an invitation in the most natural way in the
world. Once introduced into the house, the dragoon was dazzled by the
hospitality of a family who appeared to conceal their real wealth beneath a
show of careful economy. He was skillfully flattered on all sides, and
everyone extolled for his benefit the various treasures there displayed. A
neatly timed dinner, served on plate lent by an uncle, the attention shown to
him by the only daughter of the house, the gossip of the town, a well-to-do
sub-lieutenant who seemed likely to cut the ground from under his feet—all
the innumerable snares, in short, of the provincial ant-lion were set for him,
and to such good purpose, that Castanier said five years later, "To this day I
do not know how it came about!"

The dragoon received fifteen thousand francs with the lady, who, after
two years of marriage, became the ugliest and consequently the most
peevish woman on earth. Luckily they had no children. The fair complexion
(maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright color in her face, which
spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread with blotches and
pimples; her figure, which had seemed so straight, grew crooked, the angel
became a suspicious and shrewish creature who drove Castanier frantic.
Then the fortune took to itself wings. At length the dragoon, no longer
recognizing the woman whom he had wedded, left her to live on a little
property at Strasbourg, until the time when it should please God to remove
her to adorn Paradise. She was one of those virtuous women who, for want
of other occupation, would weary the life out of an angel with
complainings, who pray till (if their prayers are heard in heaven) they must

exhaust the patience of the Almighty, and say everything that is bad of their
husbands in dove-like murmurs over a game of boston with their neighbors.
When Aquilina learned all these troubles she clung still more affectionately
to Castanier, and made him so happy, varying with woman's ingenuity the
pleasures with which she filled his life, that all unwittingly she was the
cause of the cashier's downfall.

Like many women who seem by nature destined to sound all the depths
of love, Mme. de la Garde was disinterested. She asked neither for gold nor
for jewelry, gave no thought to the future, lived entirely for the present and
for the pleasures of the present. She accepted expensive ornaments and
dresses, the carriage so eagerly coveted by women of her class, as one
harmony the more in the picture of life. There was absolutely no vanity in
her desire not to appear at a better advantage but to look the fairer, and,
moreover, no woman could live without luxuries more cheerfully. When a
man of generous nature (and military men are mostly of this stamp) meets
with such a woman, he feels a sort of exasperation at finding himself her
debtor in generosity. He feels that he could stop a mail coach to obtain
money for her if he has not sufficient for her whims. He will commit a
crime if so he may be great and noble in the eyes of some woman or of his
special public; such is the nature of the man. Such a lover is like a gambler
who would be dishonored in his own eyes if he did not repay the sum he
borrowed from a waiter in a gaming house; but will shrink from no crime,
will leave his wife and children without a penny, and rob and murder, if so
he may come to the gaming table with a full purse, and his honor remain
untarnished among the frequenters of that fatal abode. So it was with
Castanier.

He had begun by installing Aquilina in a modest fourth-floor dwelling,
the furniture being of the simplest kind. But when he saw the girl's beauty
and great qualities, when he had known inexpressible and unlooked-for
happiness with her, he began to dote upon her, and longed to adorn his idol.
Then Aquilina's toilet was so comically out of keeping with her poor abode,
that for both their sakes it was clearly incumbent on him to move. The
change swallowed up almost all Castanier's savings, for he furnished his
domestic paradise with all the prodigality that is lavished on a kept mistress.
A pretty woman must have everything pretty about her; the unity of charm

in the woman and her surroundings singles her out from among her sex.
This sentiment of homogeneity indeed, though it has frequently escaped the
attention of observers, is instinctive in human nature; and the same
prompting leads elderly spinsters to surround themselves with dreary relics
of the past. But the lovely Piedmontese must have the newest and latest
fashions, and all that was daintiest and prettiest in stuffs for hangings, in
silks or jewelry, in fine china and other brittle and fragile wares. She asked
for nothing; but when she was called upon to make a choice, when
Castanier asked her, "Which do you like?" she would answer, "Why, this is
the nicest!" Love never counts the cost, and Castanier therefore always took
the "nicest."

When once the standard had been set up, there was nothing for it but
everything in the household must be in conformity, from the linen, plate,
and crystal through a thousand and one items of expenditure down to the
pots and pans in the kitchen. Castanier had meant to "do things simply," as
the saying goes, but he gradually found himself more and more in debt. One
expense entailed another. The clock called for candle sconces. Fires must be
lighted in the ornamental grates, but the curtains and hangings were too
fresh and delicate to be soiled by smuts, so they must be replaced by patent
and elaborate fireplaces, warranted to give out no smoke, recent inventions
of the people who are clever at drawing up a prospectus. Then Aquilina
found it so nice to run about barefooted on the carpet in her room that
Castanier must have soft carpets laid everywhere for the pleasure of playing
with Naqui. A bathroom, too, was built for her, everything to the end that
she might be more comfortable.

Shopkeepers, workmen, and manufacturers in Paris have a mysterious
knack of enlarging a hole in a man's purse. They cannot give the price of
anything upon inquiry; and as the paroxysm of longing cannot abide delay,
orders are given by the feeble light of an approximate estimate of cost. The
same people never send in the bills at once, but ply the purchaser with
furniture till his head spins. Everything is so pretty, so charming; and
everyone is satisfied.

A few months later the obliging furniture dealers are metamorphosed,
and reappear in the shape of alarming totals on invoices that fill the soul

with their horrid clamor; they are in urgent want of the money; they are, as
you may say, on the brink of bankruptcy, their tears flow, it is heartrending
to hear them! And then—the gulf yawns and gives up serried columns of
figures marching four deep; when as a matter of fact they should have
issued innocently three by three.

Before Castanier had any idea of how much he had spent, he had
arranged for Aquilina to have a carriage from a livery stable when she went
out, instead of a cab. Castanier was a gourmand; he engaged an excellent
cook; and Aquilina, to please him, had herself made the purchases of early
fruit and vegetables, rare delicacies, and exquisite wines. But, as Aquilina
had nothing of her own, these gifts of hers, so precious by reason of the
thought and tact and graciousness that prompted them, were no less a drain
upon Castanier's purse; he did not like his Naqui to be without money, and
Naqui could not keep money in her pocket. So the table was a heavy item of
expenditure for a man with Castanier's income. The ex-dragoon was
compelled to resort to various shifts for obtaining money, for he could not
bring himself to renounce this delightful life. He loved the woman too well
to cross the freaks of the mistress. He was one of those men who, through
self-love or through weakness of character, can refuse nothing to a woman;
false shame overpowers them, and they rather face ruin than make the
admissions: "I cannot—" "My means will not permit—" "I cannot afford—"

When, therefore, Castanier saw that if he meant to emerge from the abyss
of debt into which he had plunged, he must part with Aquilina and live upon
bread and water, he was so unable to do without her or to change his habits
of life, that daily he put off his plans of reform until the morrow. The debts
were pressing, and he began by borrowing money. His position and
previous character inspired confidence, and of this he took advantage to
devise a system of borrowing money as he required it. Then, as the total
amount of debt rapidly increased, he had recourse to those commercial
inventions known as accommodation bills. This form of bill does not
represent goods or other value received, and the first indorser pays the
amount named for the obliging person who accepts it. This species of fraud
is tolerated because it is impossible to detect it, and, moreover, it is an
imaginary fraud which only becomes real if payment is ultimately refused.

When at length it was evidently impossible to borrow any longer,
whether because the amount of the debt was now so greatly increased, or
because Castanier was unable to pay the large amount of interest on the
aforesaid sums of money, the cashier saw bankruptcy before him. On
making this discovery, he decided for a fraudulent bankruptcy rather than an
ordinary failure, and preferred a crime to a misdemeanor. He determined,
after the fashion of the celebrated cashier of the Royal Treasury, to abuse
the trust deservedly won, and to increase the number of his creditors by
making a final loan of the sum sufficient to keep him in comfort in a foreign
country for the rest of his days. All this, as has been seen, he had prepared
to do.

Aquilina knew nothing of the irksome cares of this life; she enjoyed her
existence, as many a woman does, making no inquiry as to where the
money came from, even as sundry other folk will eat their buttered rolls
untroubled by any restless spirit of curiosity as to the culture and growth of
wheat; but as the labor and miscalculations of agriculture lie on the other
side of the baker's oven, so, beneath the unappreciated luxury of many a
Parisian household lie intolerable anxieties and exorbitant toil.

While Castanier was enduring the torture of the strain, and his thoughts
were full of the deed that should change his whole life, Aquilina was lying
luxuriously back in a great armchair by the fireside, beguiling the time by
chatting with her waiting-maid. As frequently happens in such cases, the
maid had become the mistress's confidante, Jenny having first assured
herself that her mistress's ascendancy over Castanier was complete.

What are we to do this evening? Léon seems determined to come," Mme.
de la Garde was saying, as she read a passionate epistle indicted upon a
faint gray note paper.

"Here is the master!" said Jenny.

Castanier came in. Aquilina, nowise disconcerted, crumpled up the letter,
took it with the tongs, and held it in the flames.

"So that is what you do with your love letters, is it?" asked Castanier.

"Oh, goodness, yes," said Aquilina; "is it not the best way of keeping
them safe? Besides, fire should go to the fire, as water makes for the river."

"You are talking as if it were a real love letter, Naqui—"

"Well, am I not handsome enough to receive them?" she said, holding up
her forehead for a kiss. There was a carelessness in her manner that would
have told any man less blind than Castanier that it was only a piece of
conjugal duty, as it were, to give this joy to the cashier; but use and wont
had brought Castanier to the point where clear-sightedness is no longer
possible for love.

"I have taken a box at the Gymnase this evening," he said; "let us have
dinner early, and then we need not dine in a hurry."

"Go and take Jenny. I am tired of plays. I do not know what is the matter
with me this evening; I would rather stay here by the fire."

"Come, all the same though, Naqui; I shall not be here to bore you much
longer. Yes, Quiqui, I am going to start to-night, and it will be some time
before I come back again. I am leaving everything in your charge. Will you
keep your heart for me too?"

"Neither my heart nor anything else," she said; "but when you come back
again, Naqui will still be Naqui for you."

"Well, this is frankness. So you would not follow me?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Eh! why, how can I leave the lover who writes me such sweet little
notes?" she asked, pointing to the blackened scrap of paper with a mocking
smile.

"Is there any truth in it?" asked Castanier. "Have you really a lover?"

"Really!" cried Aquilina; "and have you never given it a serious thought,
dear? To begin with, you are fifty years old. Then you have just the sort of
face to put on a fruit stall; if the woman tried to sell you for a pumpkin, no
one would contradict her. You puff and blow like a seal when you come
upstairs; your paunch rises and falls like the diamond on a woman's
forehead! It is pretty plain that you served in the dragoons; you are a very
ugly-looking old man. Fiddle-de-dee. If you have any mind to keep my
respect, I recommend you not to add imbecility to these qualities by
imagining that such a girl as I am will be content with your asthmatic love,
and not look for youth and good looks and pleasure by way of variety—"

"Aquilina! you are laughing, of course?"

"Oh, very well; and are you not laughing too? Do you take me for a fool,
telling me that you are going away? 'I am going to start to-night!'" she said,
mimicking his tones. "Stuff and nonsense! Would you talk like that if you
were really going away from your Naqui? You would cry, like the booby
that you are!"

"After all, if I go, will you follow?" he asked.

"Tell me first whether this journey of yours is a bad joke or not."

"Yes, seriously, I am going."

"Well, then, seriously, I shall stay. A pleasant journey to you, my boy! I
will wait till you come back. I would sooner take leave of life than take
leave of my dear, cozy Paris—"

"Will you not come to Italy, to Naples, and lead a pleasant life there—a
delicious, luxurious life, with this stout old fogey of yours, who puffs and
blows like a seal?"

"No."

"Ungrateful girl!"

"Ungrateful?" she cried, rising to her feet. "I might leave this house this
moment and take nothing out of it but myself. I shall have given you all the
treasures a young girl can give, and something that not every drop in your
veins and mine can ever give me back. If, by any means whatever, by
selling my hopes of eternity, for instance, I could recover my past self, body
as soul (for I have, perhaps, redeemed my soul), and be pure as a lily for my
lover I would not hesitate a moment! What sort of devotion has rewarded
mine? You have housed and fed me, just as you give a dog food and a
kennel because he is a protection to the house, and he may take kicks when
we are out of humor, and lick our hands as soon as we are pleased to call to
him. And which of us two will have been the more generous?"

"Oh! dear child, do you not see that I am joking?" returned Castanier. "I
am going on a short journey; I shall not be away for very long. But come
with me to the Gymnase; I shall start just before midnight, after I have had
time to say good-by to you."

"Poor pet! so you are really going, are you?" she said. She put her arms
round his neck, and drew down his head against her bodice.

"You are smothering me!" cried Castanier, with his face buried in
Aquilina's breast. That damsel turned to say in Jenny's ear, "Go to Léon,
and tell him not to come till one o'clock. If you do not find him, and he
comes here during the leave-taking, keep him in your room.—Well," she
went on, setting free Castanier, and giving a tweak to the tip of his nose,
"never mind, handsomest of seals that you are. I will go to the theater with
you this evening. But all in good time; let us have dinner! There is a nice
little dinner for you—just what you like."

"It is very hard to part from such a woman as you!" exclaimed Castanier.

"Very well then, why do you go?" asked she.

"Ah! why? why? If I were to begin to explain the reasons why, I must tell
you things that would prove to you that I love you almost to madness. Ah!
if you have sacrificed your honor for me, I have sold mine for you; we are
quits. Is that love?"

"What is all this about?" said she. "Come, now, promise me that if I had a
lover you would still love me as a father; that would be love! Come, now,
promise it at once, and give us your fist upon it."

"I should kill you," and Castanier smiled as he spoke.

They sat down to the dinner table, and went thence to the Gymnase.
When the first part of the performance was over, it occurred to Castanier to
show himself to some of his acquaintances in the house, so as to turn away
any suspicion of his departure. He left Mme. de la Garde in the corner box
where she was seated, according to her modest wont, and went to walk up
and down in the lobby. He had not gone many paces before he saw the
Englishman, and with a sudden return of the sickening sensation of heat that
once before had vibrated through him, and of the terror that he had felt
already, he stood face to face with Melmoth.

"Forger!"

At the word, Castanier glanced round at the people who were moving
about them. He fancied that he could see astonishment and curiosity in their
eyes, and wishing to be rid of this Englishman at once, he raised his hand to
strike him—and felt his arm paralyzed by some invisible power that sapped
his strength and nailed him to the spot. He allowed the stranger to take him
by the arm, and they walked together to the greenroom like two friends.

"Who is strong enough to resist me?" said the Englishman, addressing
him. "Do you not know that everything here on earth must obey me, that it
is in my power to do everything? I read men's thoughts, I see the future, and
I know the past. I am here, and I can be elsewhere also. Time and space and
distance are nothing to me. The whole world is at my beck and call. I have
the power of continual enjoyment and of giving joy. I can see through walls,
discover hidden treasures, and fill my hands with them. Palaces arise at my
nod, and my architect makes no mistakes. I can make all lands break forth
into blossom, heap up their gold and precious stones, and surround myself
with fair women and ever new faces; everything is yielded up to my will. I
could gamble on the Stock Exchange, and my speculations would be
infallible; but a man who can find the hoards that misers have hidden in the
earth need not trouble himself about stocks. Feel the strength of the hand

that grasps you; poor wretch, doomed to shame! Try to bend the arm of
iron! try to soften the adamantine heart! Fly from me if you dare! You
would hear my voice in the depths of the caves that lie under the Seine; you
might hide in the Catacombs, but would you not see me there? My voice
could be heard through the sound of the thunder, my eyes shine as brightly
as the sun, for I am the peer of Lucifer!"

Castanier heard the terrible words, and felt no protest nor contradiction
within himself. He walked side by side with the Englishman, and had no
power to leave him.

"You are mine; you have just committed a crime. I have found at last the
mate whom I have sought. Have you a mind to learn your destiny? Aha!
you came here to see a play, and you shall see a play—nay, two. Come.
Present me to Mme. de la Garde as one of your best friends. Am I not your
last hope of escape?"

Castanier, followed by the stranger, returned to his box; and in
accordance with the order he had just received, he hastened to introduce
Melmoth to Mme. de la Garde. Aquilina seemed to be not in the least
surprised. The Englishman declined to take a seat in front, and Castanier
was once more beside his mistress; the man's slightest wish must be
obeyed. The last piece was about to begin, for, at that time, small theaters
only gave three pieces. One of the actors had made the Gymnase the
fashion, and that evening Perlet (the actor in question) was to play in a
vaudeville called Le Comédien d'Étampes, in which he filled four different
parts.

When the curtain rose, the stranger stretched out his hand over the
crowded house. Castanier's cry of terror died away, for the walls of his
throat seemed glued together as Melmoth pointed to the stage, and the
cashier knew that the play had been changed at the Englishman's desire.

He saw the strong room at the bank; he saw the Baron de Nucingen in
conference with a police officer from the prefecture, who was informing
him of Castanier's conduct, explaining that the cashier had absconded with
money taken from the safe, giving the history of the forged signature. The

information was put in writing; the document signed and duly dispatched to
the public prosecutor.

"Are we in time, do you think?" asked Nucingen.

"Yes," said the agent of police; "he is at the Gymnase, and has no
suspicion of anything."

Castanier fidgeted on his chair, and made as if he would leave the theater,
but Melmoth's hand lay on his shoulder, and he was obliged to sit and
watch; the hideous power of the man produced an effect like that of
nightmare, and he could not move a limb. Nay, the man himself was the
nightmare; his presence weighed heavily on his victim like a poisoned
atmosphere. When the wretched cashier turned to implore the Englishman's
mercy, he met those blazing eyes that discharged electric currents, which
pierced through him and transfixed him like darts of steel.

"What have I done to you?" he said, in his prostrate helplessness, and he
breathed hard like a stag at the water's edge. "What do you want of me?"

"Look!" cried Melmoth.

Castanier looked at the stage. The scene had been changed. The play
seemed to be over, and Castanier beheld himself stepping from the carriage
with Aquilina; but as he entered the courtyard of the house in the Rue
Richer, the scene again was suddenly changed, and he saw his own house.
Jenny was chatting by the fire in her mistress's room with a subaltern officer
of a line regiment then stationed at Paris.

"He is going, is he?" said the sergeant, who seemed to belong to a family
in easy circumstances; "I can be happy at my ease! I love Aquilina too well
to allow her to belong to that old toad! I, myself, am going to marry Mme.
de la Garde!" cried the sergeant.

"Old toad!" Castanier murmured piteously.

"Here come the master and mistress; hide yourself! Stay, get in here,
Monsieur Léon," said Jenny. "The master won't stay here for very long."

Castanier watched the sergeant hide himself among Aquilina's gowns in
her dressing room. Almost immediately he himself appeared upon the
scene, and took leave of his mistress, who made fun of him in "asides" to
Jenny, while she uttered the sweetest and tenderest words in his ears. She
wept with one side of her face, and laughed with the other. The audience
called for an encore.

"Accursed creature!" cried Castanier from his box.

Aquilina was laughing till the tears came into her eyes.

"Goodness!" she cried, "how funny Perlet is as the Englishwoman!...
Why don't you laugh? Everyone else in the house is laughing. Laugh, dear!"
she said to Castanier.

Melmoth burst out laughing, and the unhappy cashier shuddered. The
Englishman's laughter wrung his heart and tortured his brain; it was as if a
surgeon had bored his skull with a red-hot iron.

"Laughing! are they laughing?" stammered Castanier.

He did not see the prim English lady whom Perlet was acting with such
ludicrous effect, nor hear the English-French that had filled the house with
roars of laughter; instead of all this, he beheld himself hurrying from the
Rue Richer, hailing a cab on the Boulevard, bargaining with the man to take
him to Versailles. Then once more the scene changed. He recognized the
sorry inn at the corner of the Rue de l'Orangerie and the Rue des Récollets,
which was kept by his old quartermaster. It was two o'clock in the morning,
the most perfect stillness prevailed, no one was there to watch his
movements. The post-horses were put into the carriage (it came from a
house in the Avenue de Paris in which an Englishman lived, and had been
ordered in the foreigner's name to avoid raising suspicion). Castanier saw
that he had his bills and his passports, stepped into the carriage, and set out.
But at the barrier he saw two gendarmes lying in wait for the carriage. A cry
of horror burst from him, but Melmoth gave him a glance, and again the
sound died in his throat.

"Keep your eyes on the stage, and be quiet!" said the Englishman.

In another moment Castanier saw himself flung into prison at the
Conciergerie; and in the fifth act of the drama, entitled The Cashier, he saw
himself, in three months' time, condemned to twenty years of penal
servitude. Again a cry broke from him. He was exposed upon the Place du
Palais-de-Justice, and the executioner branded him with a red-hot iron.
Then came the last scene of all; among some sixty convicts in the prison
yard of the Bicêtre, he was awaiting his turn to have the irons riveted on his
limbs.

"Dear me! I cannot laugh any more!..." said Aquilina. "You are very
solemn, dear boy; what can be the matter? The gentleman has gone."

"A word with you, Castanier," said Melmoth when the piece was at an
end, and the attendant was fastening Mme. de la Garde's cloak.

The corridor was crowded, and escape impossible.

"Very well, what is it?"

"No human power can hinder you from taking Aquilina home, and going
next to Versailles, there to be arrested."

"How so?"

"Because you are in a hand that will never relax its grasp," returned the
Englishman.

Castanier longed for the power to utter some word that should blot him
out from among living men and hide him in the lowest depths of hell.

"Suppose that the devil were to make a bid for your soul, would you not
give it to him now in exchange for the power of God? One single word, and
those five hundred thousand francs shall be back in the Baron de
Nucingen's safe; then you can tear up your letter of credit, and all traces of
your crime will be obliterated. Moreover, you would have gold in torrents.
You hardly believe in anything perhaps? Well, if all this comes to pass, you
will believe at least in the devil."

"If it were only possible!" said Castanier joyfully.

"The man who can do it all gives you his word that it is possible,"
answered the Englishman.

Melmoth, Castanier, and Mme. de la Garde were standing out in the
Boulevard when Melmoth raised his arm. A drizzling rain was falling, the
streets were muddy, the air was close, there was thick darkness overhead;
but in a moment, as the arm was outstretched, Paris was filled with sunlight;
it was high noon on a bright July day. The trees were covered with leaves; a
double stream of joyous holiday makers strolled beneath them. Sellers of
licorice water shouted their cool drinks. Splendid carriages rolled past along
the streets. A cry of terror broke from the cashier, and at that cry rain and
darkness once more settled down upon the Boulevard.

Mme. de la Garde had stepped into the carriage. "Do be quick, dear!" she
cried; "either come in or stay out. Really, you are as dull as ditch-water this
evening—"

"What must I do?" Castanier asked of Melmoth.

"Would you like to take my place?" inquired the Englishman.

"Yes."

"Very well, then; I will be at your house in a few moments."

"By the bye, Castanier, you are rather off your balance," Aquilina
remarked. "There is some mischief brewing; you were quite melancholy
and thoughtful all through the play. Do you want anything that I can give
you, dear? Tell me."

"I am waiting till we are at home to know whether you love me."

"You need not wait till then," she said, throwing her arms round his neck.
"There!" she said, as she embraced him, passionately to all appearance, and
plied him with the coaxing caresses that are part of the business of such a
life as hers, like stage action for an actress.

"Where is the music?" asked Castanier.

"What next? Only think of your hearing music now!"

"Heavenly music!" he went on. "The sounds seem to come from above."

"What? You have always refused to give me a box at the Italiens because
you could not abide music, and are you turning music-mad at this time of
day? Mad—that you are! The music is inside your own noddle, old addle-
pate!" she went on, as she took his head in her hands and rocked it to and
fro on her shoulder. "Tell me now, old man; isn't it the creaking of the
wheels that sings in your ears?"

"Just listen, Naqui! If the angels make music for God Almighty, it must
be such music as this that I am drinking in at every pore, rather than
hearing. I do not know how to tell you about it; it is as sweet as honey
water!"

"Why, of course, they have music in heaven, for the angels in all the
pictures have harps in their hands. He is mad, upon my word!" she said to
herself, as she saw Castanier's attitude; he looked like an opium eater in a
blissful trance.

They reached the house. Castanier, absorbed by the thought of all that he
had just heard and seen, knew not whether to believe it or no; he was like a
drunken man, and utterly unable to think connectedly. He came to himself
in Aquilina's room, whither he had been supported by the united efforts of
his mistress, the porter, and Jenny; for he had fainted as he stepped from the
carriage.

"He will be here directly! Oh, my friends, my friends!" he cried, and he
flung himself despairingly into the depths of a low chair beside the fire.

Jenny heard the bell as he spoke, and admitted the Englishman. She
announced that "a gentleman had come who had made an appointment with
the master," when Melmoth suddenly appeared, and deep silence followed.
He looked at the porter—the porter went; he looked at Jenny—and Jenny
went likewise.

"Madame," said Melmoth, turning to Aquilina, "with your permission, we
will conclude a piece of urgent business."

He took Castanier's hand, and Castanier rose, and the two men went into
the drawing-room. There was no light in the room, but Melmoth's eyes lit
up the thickest darkness. The gaze of those strange eyes had left Aquilina
like one spellbound; she was helpless, unable to take any thought for her
lover; moreover, she believed him to be safe in Jenny's room, whereas their
early return had taken the waiting woman by surprise, and she had hidden
the officer in the dressing room. It had all happened exactly as in the drama
that Melmoth had displayed for his victim. Presently the house door was
slammed violently, and Castanier reappeared.

"What ails you?" cried the horror-struck Aquilina.

There was a change in the cashier's appearance. A strange pallor
overspread his once rubicund countenance; it wore the peculiarly sinister
and stony look of the mysterious visitor. The sullen glare of his eyes was
intolerable, the fierce light in them seemed to scorch. The man who had
looked so good-humored and good-natured had suddenly grown tyrannical
and proud. The courtesan thought that Castanier had grown thinner; there
was a terrible majesty in his brow; it was as if a dragon breathed forth a
malignant influence that weighed upon the others like a close, heavy
atmosphere. For a moment Aquilina knew not what to do.

"What passed between you and that diabolical-looking man in those few
minutes?" she asked at length.

"I have sold my soul to him. I feel it; I am no longer the same. He has
taken my self, and given me his soul in exchange."

"What?"

"You would not understand it at all.... Ah! he was right," Castanier went
on, "the fiend was right! I see everything and know all things.—You have
been deceiving me!"

Aquilina turned cold with terror. Castanier lighted a candle and went into
the dressing room. The unhappy girl followed him in dazed bewilderment,
and great was her astonishment when Castanier drew the dresses that hung
there aside and disclosed the sergeant.

"Come out, my boy," said the cashier; and, taking Léon by a button of his
overcoat, he drew the officer into his room.

The Piedmontese, haggard and desperate, had flung herself into her easy
chair. Castanier seated himself on a sofa by the fire, and left Aquilina's lover
in a standing position.

"You have been in the army," said Léon; "I am ready to give you
satisfaction."

"You are a fool," said Castanier dryly. "I have no occasion to fight. I
could kill you by a look if I had any mind to do it. I will tell you what it is,
youngster; why should I kill you? I can see a red line round your neck—the
guillotine is waiting for you. Yes, you will end in the Place de Grève. You
are the headsman's property! there is no escape for you. You belong to a
vendita of the Carbonari. You are plotting against the Government."

"You did not tell me that," cried the Piedmontese, turning to Léon.

"So you do not know that the Minister decided this morning to put down
your Society?" the cashier continued. "The Procureur-Général has a list of
your names. You have been betrayed. They are busy drawing up the
indictment at this moment."

"Then was it you who betrayed him?" cried Aquilina, and with a hoarse
sound in her throat like the growl of a tigress she rose to her feet; she
seemed as if she would tear Castanier in pieces.

"You know me too well to believe it," Castanier retorted. Aquilina was
benumbed by his coolness.

"Then how did you know it?" she murmured.

"I did not know it until I went into the drawing-room; now I know it—
now I see and know all things, and can do all things."

The sergeant was overcome with amazement.

"Very well then, save him, save him, dear!" cried the girl, flinging herself
at Castanier's feet. "If nothing is impossible to you, save him! I will love
you, I will adore you, I will be your slave and not your mistress. I will obey
your wildest whims; you shall do as you will with me. Yes, yes, I will give
you more than love; you shall have a daughter's devotion as well as ...
Rodolphe! why will you not understand! After all, however violent my
passions may be, I shall be yours forever! What should I say to persuade
you? I will invent pleasures ... I ... Great heavens! one moment! whatever
you shall ask of me—to fling myself from the window, for instance—you
will need to say but one word, 'Léon!' and I will plunge down into hell. I
would bear any torture, any pain of body or soul, anything you might inflict
upon me!"

Castanier heard her with indifference. For all answer, he indicated Léon
to her with a fiendish laugh.

"The guillotine is waiting for him," he repeated.

"No, no, no! He shall not leave this house. I will save him!" she cried.
"Yes; I will kill anyone who lays a finger upon him! Why will you not save
him?" she shrieked aloud; her eyes were blazing, her hair unbound. "Can
you save him?"

"I can do everything."

"Why do you not save him?"

"Why?" shouted Castanier, and his voice made the ceiling ring.—"Eh! it
is my revenge! Doing evil is my trade!"

"Die?" said Aquilina; "must he die, my lover? Is it possible?"

She sprang up and snatched a stiletto from a basket that stood on the
chest of drawers and went to Castanier, who began to laugh.

"You know very well that steel cannot hurt me now—"

Aquilina's arm suddenly dropped like a snapped harp string.

"Out with you, my good friend," said the cashier, turning to the sergeant,
"and go about your business."

He held out his hand; the other felt Castanier's superior power, and could
not choose but obey.

"This house is mine; I could send for the commissary of police if I chose,
and give you up as a man who has hidden himself on my premises, but I
would rather let you go; I am a fiend, I am not a spy."

"I shall follow him!" said Aquilina.

"Then follow him," returned Castanier.—"Here, Jenny—"

Jenny appeared.

"Tell the porter to hail a cab for them.—Here, Naqui," said Castanier,
drawing a bundle of banknotes from his pocket; "you shall not go away like
a pauper from a man who loves you still."

He held out three hundred thousand francs. Aquilina took the notes, flung
them on the floor, spat on them, and trampled upon them in a frenzy of
despair.

"We will leave this house on foot," she cried, "without a farthing of your
money.—Jenny, stay where you are."

"Good evening!" answered the cashier, as he gathered up the notes again.
"I have come back from my journey.—Jenny," he added, looking at the
bewildered waiting maid, "you seem to me to be a good sort of girl. You
have no mistress now. Come here. This evening you shall have a master."

Aquilina, who felt safe nowhere, went at once with the sergeant to the
house of one of her friends. But all Léon's movements were suspiciously
watched by the police, and after a time he and three of his friends were
arrested. The whole story may be found in the newspapers of that day.

Castanier felt that he had undergone a mental as well as a physical
transformation. The Castanier of old no longer existed—the boy, the young
Lothario, the soldier who had proved his courage, who had been tricked
into a marriage and disillusioned, the cashier, the passionate lover who had
committed a crime for Aquilina's sake. His inmost nature had suddenly
asserted itself. His brain had expanded, his senses had developed. His
thoughts comprehended the whole world; he saw all the things of earth as if
he had been raised to some high pinnacle above the world.

Until that evening at the play he had loved Aquilina to distraction. Rather
than give her up he would have shut his eyes to her infidelities; and now all
that blind passion had passed away as a cloud vanishes in the sunlight.

Jenny was delighted to succeed to her mistress's position and fortune, and
did the cashier's will in all things; but Castanier, who could read the inmost
thoughts of the soul, discovered the real motive underlying this purely
physical devotion. He amused himself with her, however, like a
mischievous child who greedily sucks the juice of the cherry and flings
away the stone. The next morning at breakfast time, when she was fully
convinced that she was a lady and the mistress of the house, Castanier
uttered one by one the thoughts that filled her mind as she drank her coffee.

"Do you know what you are thinking, child?" he said, smiling. "I will tell
you: 'So all that lovely rosewood furniture that I coveted so much, and the
pretty dresses that I used to try on, are mine now! All on easy terms that
madame refused, I do not know why. My word! if I might drive about in a
carriage, have jewels and pretty things, a box at the theater, and put
something by! with me he should lead a life of pleasure fit to kill him if he
were not as strong as a Turk! I never saw such a man!'—Was not that just
what you were thinking?" he went on, and something in his voice made
Jenny turn pale. "Well, yes, child; you could not stand it, and I am sending

you away for your own good; you would perish in the attempt. Come, let us
part good friends," and he coolly dismissed her with a very small sum of
money.

The first use that Castanier had promised himself that he would make of
the terrible power bought at the price of his eternal happiness, was the full
and complete indulgence of all his tastes.

He first put his affairs in order, readily settled his account with M. de
Nucingen, who found a worthy German to succeed him, and then
determined on a carouse worthy of the palmiest days of the Roman Empire.
He plunged into dissipation as recklessly as Belshazzar of old went to that
last feast in Babylon. Like Belshazzar, he saw clearly through his revels a
gleaming hand that traced his doom in letters of flame, not on the narrow
walls of the banqueting chamber, but over the vast spaces of heaven that the
rainbow spans. His feast was not, indeed, an orgy confined within the limits
of a banquet, for he squandered all the powers of soul and body in
exhausting all the pleasures of earth. The table was in some sort earth itself,
the earth that trembled beneath his feet. He was the last festival of the
reckless spendthrift who has thrown all prudence to the winds. The devil
had given him the key of the storehouse of human pleasures; he had filled
and refilled his hands, and he was fast nearing the bottom. In a moment he
had felt all that that enormous power could accomplish; in a moment he had
exercised it, proved it, wearied of it. What had hitherto been the sum of
human desires became as nothing. So often it happens that with possession
the vast poetry of desire must end, and the thing possessed is seldom the
thing that we dreamed of.

Beneath Melmoth's omnipotence lurked this tragical anticlimax of so
many a passion, and now the inanity of human nature was revealed to his
successor, to whom infinite power brought Nothingness as a dowry.

To come to a clear understanding of Castanier's strange position, it must
be borne in mind how suddenly these revolutions of thought and feeling had
been wrought; how quickly they had succeeded each other; and of these
things it is hard to give any idea to those who have never broken the prison
bonds of time, and space, and distance. His relation to the world without
had been entirely changed with the expansion of his faculties.

Like Melmoth himself, Castanier could travel in a few moments over the
fertile plains of India, could soar on the wings of demons above African
desert spaces, or skim the surface of the seas. The same insight that could
read the inmost thoughts of others, could apprehend at a glance the nature
of any material object, just as he caught as it were all flavors at once upon
his tongue. He took his pleasure like a despot; a blow of the ax felled the
tree that he might eat its fruits. The transitions, the alternations that measure
joy and pain, and diversify human happiness, no longer existed for him. He
had so completely glutted his appetites that pleasure must overpass the
limits of pleasure to tickle a palate cloyed with satiety, and suddenly grown
fastidious beyond all measure, so that ordinary pleasures became
distasteful. Conscious that at will he was the master of all the women that
he could desire, knowing that his power was irresistible, he did not care to
exercise it; they were pliant to his unexpressed wishes, to his most
extravagant caprices, until he felt a horrible thirst for love, and would have
love beyond their power to give.

The world refused him nothing save faith and prayer, the soothing and
consoling love that is not of this world. He was obeyed—it was a horrible
position.

The torrents of pain, and pleasure, and thought that shook his soul and his
bodily frame would have overwhelmed the strongest human being; but in
him there was a power of vitality proportioned to the power of the
sensations that assailed him. He felt within him a vague immensity of
longing that earth could not satisfy. He spent his days on outspread wings,
longing to traverse the luminous fields of space to other spheres that he
knew afar by intuitive perception, a clear and hopeless knowledge. His soul
dried up within him, for he hungered and thirsted after things that can
neither be drunk nor eaten, but for which he could not choose but crave. His
lips, like Melmoth's, burned with desire; he panted for the unknown, for he
knew all things.

The mechanism and the scheme of the world was apparent to him, and its
working interested him no longer; he did not long disguise the profound
scorn that makes of a man of extraordinary powers a sphinx who knows
everything and says nothing, and sees all things with an unmoved

countenance. He felt not the slightest wish to communicate his knowledge
to other men. He was rich with all the wealth of the world, with one effort
he could make the circle of the globe, and riches and power were
meaningless for him. He felt the awful melancholy of omnipotence, a
melancholy which Satan and God relieve by the exercise of infinite power
in mysterious ways known to them alone. Castanier had not, like his
Master, the inextinguishable energy of hate and malice; he felt that he was a
devil, but a devil whose time was not yet come, while Satan is a devil
through all eternity, and being damned beyond redemption, delights to stir
up the world, like a dungheap, with his triple fork and to thwart therein the
designs of God. But Castanier, for his misfortune, had one hope left.

If in a moment he could move from one pole to the other as a bird springs
restlessly from side to side in its cage, when, like the bird, he had crossed
his prison, he saw the vast immensity of space beyond it. That vision of the
Infinite left him forever unable to see humanity and its affairs as other men
saw them. The insensate fools who long for the power of the Devil gauge its
desirability from a human standpoint; they do not see that with the Devil's
power they will likewise assume his thoughts, and that they will be doomed
to remain as men among creatures who will no longer understand them. The
Nero unknown to history who dreams of setting Paris on fire for his private
entertainment, like an exhibition of a burning house on the boards of a
theater, does not suspect that if he had that power, Paris would become for
him as little interesting as an ant heap by the roadside to a hurrying passer-
by. The circle of the sciences was for Castanier something like a logogriph
for a man who does not know the key to it. Kings and Governments were
despicable in his eyes. His great debauch had been in some sort a
deplorable farewell to his life as a man. The earth had grown too narrow for
him, for the infernal gifts laid bare for him the secrets of creation—he saw
the cause and foresaw its end. He was shut out from all that men call
"heaven" in all languages under the sun; he could no longer think of heaven.

Then he came to understand the look on his predecessor's face and the
drying up of the life within; then he knew all that was meant by the baffled
hope that gleamed in Melmoth's eyes; he, too, knew the thirst that burned
those red lips, and the agony of a continual struggle between two natures
grown to giant size. Even yet he might be an angel, and he knew himself to

be a fiend. His was the fate of a sweet and gentle creature that a wizard's
malice has imprisoned in a misshapen form, entrapping it by a pact, so that
another's will must set it free from its detested envelope.

As a deception only increases the ardor with which a man of really great
nature explores the infinite of sentiment in a woman's heart, so Castanier
awoke to find that one idea lay like a weight upon his soul, an idea which
was perhaps the key to loftier spheres. The very fact that he had bartered
away his eternal happiness led him to dwell in thought upon the future of
those who pray and believe. On the morrow of his debauch, when he
entered into the sober possession of his power, this idea made him feel
himself a prisoner; he knew the burden of the woe that poets, and prophets,
and great oracles of faith have set forth for us in such mighty words; he felt
the point of the Flaming Sword plunged into his side, and hurried in search
of Melmoth. What had become of his predecessor?

The Englishman was living in a mansion in the Rue Férou, near Saint-
Sulpice—a gloomy, dark, damp, and cold abode. The Rue Férou itself is
one of the most dismal streets in Paris; it has a north aspect like all the
streets that lie at right angles to the left bank of the Seine, and the houses
are in keeping with the site. As Castanier stood on the threshold he found
that the door itself, like the vaulted roof, was hung with black; rows of
lighted tapers shone brilliantly as though some king were lying in state; and
a priest stood on either side of a catafalque that had been raised there.

"There is no need to ask why you have come, sir," the old hall porter said
to Castanier; "you are so like our poor dear master that is gone. But if you
are his brother, you have come too late to bid him good-by. The good
gentleman died the night before last."

"How did he die?" Castanier asked of one of the priests.

"Set your mind at rest," said an old priest; he partly raised as he spoke the
black pall that covered the catafalque.

Castanier, looking at him, saw one of those faces that faith has made
sublime; the soul seemed to shine forth from every line of it, bringing light

and warmth for other men, kindled by the unfailing charity within. This was
Sir John Melmoth's confessor.

"Your brother made an end that men may envy, and that must rejoice the
angels. Do you know what joy there is in heaven over a sinner that repents?
His tears of penitence, excited by grace, flowed without ceasing; death
alone checked them. The Holy Spirit dwelt in him. His burning words, full
of lively faith, were worthy of the Prophet-King. If, in the course of my life,
I have never heard a more dreadful confession than from the lips of this
Irish gentleman, I have likewise never heard such fervent and passionate
prayers. However great the measures of his sins may have been, his
repentance has filled the abyss to overflowing. The hand of God was visibly
stretched out above him, for he was completely changed, there was such
heavenly beauty in his face. The hard eyes were softened by tears; the
resonant voice that struck terror into those who heard it took the tender and
compassionate tones of those who themselves have passed through deep
humiliation. He so edified those who heard his words that some who had
felt drawn to see the spectacle of a Christian's death fell on their knees as he
spoke of heavenly things, and of the infinite glory of God, and gave thanks
and praise to Him. If he is leaving no worldly wealth to his family, no
family can possess a greater blessing than this that he surely gained for
them, a soul among the blessed, who will watch over you all and direct you
in the path to heaven."

These words made such a vivid impression upon Castanier that he
instantly hurried from the house to the Church of Saint-Sulpice, obeying
what might be called a decree of fate. Melmoth's repentance had stupefied
him.

At that time, on certain mornings in the week, a preacher, famed for his
eloquence, was wont to hold conferences, in the course of which he
demonstrated the truths of the Catholic faith for the youth of a generation
proclaimed to be indifferent in matters of belief by another voice no less
eloquent than his own. The conference had been put off to a later hour on
account of Melmoth's funeral, so Castanier arrived just as the great preacher
was epitomizing the proofs of a future existence of happiness with all the
charm of eloquence and force of expression which have made him famous.

The seeds of divine doctrine fell into a soil prepared for them in the old
dragoon, into whom the Devil had glided. Indeed, if there is a phenomenon
well attested by experience, is it not the spiritual phenomenon commonly
called "the faith of the peasant"? The strength of belief varies inversely with
the amount of use that a man has made of his reasoning faculties. Simple
people and soldiers belong to the unreasoning class. Those who have
marched through life beneath the banner of instinct are far more ready to
receive the light than minds and hearts overwearied with the world's
sophistries.

Castanier had the southern temperament; he had joined the army as a lad
of sixteen, and had followed the French flag till he was nearly forty years
old. As a common trooper, he had fought day and night, and day after day,
and, as in duty bound, had thought of his horse first, and of himself
afterwards. While he served his military apprenticeship, therefore, he had
but little leisure in which to reflect on the destiny of man, and when he
became an officer he had his men to think of. He had been swept from
battlefield to battlefield, but he had never thought of what comes after
death. A soldier's life does not demand much thinking. Those who cannot
understand the lofty political ends involved and the interests of nation and
nation; who cannot grasp political schemes as well as plans of campaign
and combine the science of the tactician with that of the administrator, are
bound to live in a state of ignorance; the most boorish peasant in the most
backward district in France is scarcely in a worse case. Such men as these
bear the brunt of war, yield passive obedience to the brain that directs them,
and strike down the men opposed to them as the woodcutter fells timber in
the forest. Violent physical exertion is succeeded by times of inertia, when
they repair the waste. They fight and drink, fight and eat, fight and sleep,
that they may the better deal hard blows; the powers of the mind are not
greatly exercised in this turbulent round of existence, and the character is as
simple as heretofore.

When the men who have shown such energy on the battlefield return to
ordinary civilization, most of those who have not risen to high rank seem to
have acquired no ideas, and to have no aptitude, no capacity, for grasping
new ideas. To the utter amazement of a younger generation, those who
made our armies so glorious and so terrible are as simple as children, and as

slow-witted as a clerk at his worst, and the captain of a thundering squadron
is scarcely fit to keep a merchant's day-book. Old soldiers of this stamp,
therefore, being innocent of any attempt to use their reasoning faculties, act
upon their strongest impulses. Castanier's crime was one of those matters
that raise so many questions, that, in order to debate about it, a moralist
might call for its "discussion by clauses," to make use of a parliamentary
expression.

Passion had counseled the crime; the cruelly irresistible power of
feminine witchery had driven him to commit it; no man can say of himself,
"I will never do that," when a siren joins in the combat and throws her
spells over him.

So the word of life fell upon a conscience newly awakened to the truths
of religion which the French Revolution and a soldier's career had forced
Castanier to neglect. The solemn words, "You will be happy or miserable
for all eternity!" made but the more terrible impression upon him, because
he had exhausted earth and shaken it like a barren tree; because his desires
could effect all things, so that it was enough that any spot in earth or heaven
should be forbidden him, and he forthwith thought of nothing else. If it
were allowable to compare such great things with social follies, Castanier's
position was not unlike that of a banker who, finding that his all-powerful
millions cannot obtain for him an entrance into the society of the noblesse,
must set his heart upon entering that circle, and all the social privileges that
he has already acquired are as nothing in his eyes from the moment when
he discovers that a single one is lacking.

Here was a man more powerful than all the kings on earth put together; a
man who, like Satan, could wrestle with God Himself; leaning against one
of the pillars in the Church of Saint-Sulpice, weighed down by the feelings
and thoughts that oppressed him, and absorbed in the thought of a Future,
the same thought that had engulfed Melmoth.

"He was very happy, was Melmoth!" cried Castanier. "He died in the
certain knowledge that he would go to heaven."

In a moment the greatest possible change had been wrought in the
cashier's ideas. For several days he had been a devil, now he was nothing

but a man; an image of the fallen Adam, of the sacred tradition embodied in
all cosmogonies. But while he had thus shrunk to manhood, he retained a
germ of greatness, he had been steeped in the Infinite. The power of hell
had revealed the divine power. He thirsted for heaven as he had never
thirsted after the pleasures of earth, that are so soon exhausted. The
enjoyments which the fiend promises are but the enjoyments of earth on a
larger scale, but to the joys of heaven there is no limit. He believed in God,
and the spell that gave him the treasures of the world was as nothing to him
now; the treasures themselves seemed to him as contemptible as pebbles to
an admirer of diamonds; they were but gewgaws compared with the eternal
glories of the other life. A curse lay, he thought, on all things that came to
him from this source. He sounded dark depths of painful thought as he
listened to the service performed for Melmoth. The Dies iræ filled him with
awe; he felt all the grandeur of that cry of a repentant soul trembling before
the Throne of God. The Holy Spirit, like a devouring flame, passed through
him as fire consumes straw.

The tears were falling from his eyes when—"Are you a relation of the
dead?" the beadle asked him.

"I am his heir," Castanier answered.

"Give something for the expenses of the services!" cried the man.

"No," said the cashier. (The Devil's money should not go to the Church.)

"For the poor!"

"No."

"For repairing the Church!"

"No."

"The Lady Chapel!"

"No."

"For the schools!"

"No."

Castanier went, not caring to expose himself to the sour looks that the
irritated functionaries gave him.

Outside, in the street, he looked up at the Church of Saint-Sulpice. "What
made people build the giant cathedrals I have seen in every country?" he
asked himself. "The feeling shared so widely throughout all time must
surely be based upon something."

"Something! Do you call God something?" cried his conscience. "God!
God! God!..."

The word was echoed and reëchoed by an inner voice, till it
overwhelmed him; but his feeling of terror subsided as he heard sweet
distant sounds of music that he had caught faintly before. They were
singing in the church, he thought, and his eyes scanned the great doorway.
But as he listened more closely, the sounds poured upon him from all sides;
he looked round the square, but there was no sign of any musicians. The
melody brought visions of a distant heaven and far-off gleams of hope; but
it also quickened the remorse that had set the lost soul in a ferment. He
went on his way through Paris, walking as men walk who are crushed
beneath the burden of their sorrow, seeing everything with unseeing eyes,
loitering like an idler, stopping without cause, muttering to himself, careless
of the traffic, making no effort to avoid a blow from a plank of timber.

Imperceptibly repentance brought him under the influence of the divine
grace that soothes while it bruises the heart so terribly. His face came to
wear a look of Melmoth, something great, with a trace of madness in the
greatness. A look of dull and hopeless distress, mingled with the excited
eagerness of hope, and, beneath it all, a gnawing sense of loathing for all
that the world can give. The humblest of prayers lurked in the eyes that saw
with such dreadful clearness. His power was the measure of his anguish.
His body was bowed down by the fearful storm that shook his soul, as the
tall pines bend before the blast. Like his predecessor, he could not refuse to
bear the burden of life; he was afraid to die while he bore the yoke of hell.
The torment grew intolerable.

At last, one morning, he bethought himself how that Melmoth (now
among the blessed) had made the proposal of an exchange, and how that he
had accepted it; others, doubtless, would follow his example; for in an age
proclaimed, by the inheritors of the eloquence of the Fathers of the Church,
to be fatally indifferent to religion, it should be easy to find a man who
would accept the conditions of the contract in order to prove its advantages.

"There is one place where you can learn what kings will fetch in the
market; where nations are weighed in the balance and systems appraised;
where the value of a government is stated in terms of the five-franc piece;
where ideas and beliefs have their price, and everything is discounted;
where God Himself, in a manner, borrows on the security of His revenue of
souls, for the Pope has a running account there. Is it not there that I should
go to traffic in souls?"

Castanier went quite joyously on 'Change, thinking that it would be as
easy to buy a soul as to invest money in the Funds. Any ordinary person
would have feared ridicule, but Castanier knew by experience that a
desperate man takes everything seriously. A prisoner lying under sentence
of death would listen to the madman who should tell him that by
pronouncing some gibberish he could escape through the keyhole; for
suffering is credulous, and clings to an idea until it fails, as the swimmer
borne along by the current clings to the branch that snaps in his hand.

Toward four o'clock that afternoon Castanier appeared among the little
knots of men who were transacting private business after 'Change. He was
personally known to some of the brokers; and while affecting to be in
search of an acquaintance, he managed to pick up the current gossip and
rumors of failure.

"Catch me negotiating bills for Claparon & Co., my boy. The bank
collector went round to return their acceptances to them this morning," said
a fat banker in his outspoken way. "If you have any of their paper, look
out."

Claparon was in the building, in deep consultation with a man well
known for the ruinous rate at which he lent money. Castanier went
forthwith in search of the said Claparon, a merchant who had a reputation

for taking heavy risks that meant wealth or utter ruin. The money lender
walked away as Castanier came up. A gesture betrayed the speculator's
despair.

"Well, Claparon, the bank wants a hundred thousand francs of you, and it
is four o'clock; the thing is known, and it is too late to arrange your little
failure comfortably," said Castanier.

"Sir!"

"Speak lower," the cashier went on. "How if I were to propose a piece of
business that would bring you in as much money as you require?"

"It would not discharge my liabilities; every business that I ever heard of
wants a little time to simmer in."

"I know of something that will set you straight in a moment," answered
Castanier; "but first you would have to—"

"Do what?"

"Sell your share of Paradise. It is a matter of business like anything else,
isn't it? We all hold shares in the great Speculation of Eternity."

"I tell you this," said Claparon angrily, "that I am just the man to lend you
a slap in the face. When a man is in trouble, it is no time to play silly jokes
on him."

"I am talking seriously," said Castanier, and he drew a bundle of notes
from his pocket.

"In the first place," said Claparon, "I am not going to sell my soul to the
Devil for a trifle. I want five hundred thousand francs before I strike—"

"Who talks of stinting you?" asked Castanier, cutting him short. "You
should have more gold than you could stow in the cellars of the Bank of
France."

He held out a handful of notes. That decided Claparon.

"Done," he cried; "but how is the bargain to be made?"

"Let us go over yonder, no one is standing there," said Castanier, pointing
to a corner of the court.

Claparon and his tempter exchanged a few words, with their faces turned
to the wall. None of the onlookers guessed the nature of this by-play,
though their curiosity was keenly excited by the strange gestures of the two
contracting parties. When Castanier returned, there was a sudden outburst
of amazed exclamation. As in the Assembly where the least event
immediately attracts attention, all faces were turned to the two men who
had caused the sensation, and a shiver passed through all beholders at the
change that had taken place in them.

The men who form the moving crowd that fills the Stock Exchange are
soon known to each other by sight. They watch each other like players
round a card table. Some shrewd observers can tell how a man will play and
the condition of his exchequer from a survey of his face; and the Stock
Exchange is simply a vast card table. Everyone, therefore, had noticed
Claparon and Castanier. The latter (like the Irishman before him[6]) had
been muscular and powerful, his eyes were full of light, his color high. The
dignity and power in his face had struck awe into them all; they wondered
how old Castanier had come by it; and now they beheld Castanier divested
of his power, shrunken, wrinkled, aged, and feeble. He had drawn Claparon
out of the crowd with the energy of a sick man in a fever fit; he had looked
like an opium eater during the brief period of excitement that the drug can
give; now, on his return, he seemed to be in the condition of utter
exhaustion in which the patient dies after the fever departs, or to be
suffering from the horrible prostration that follows on excessive indulgence
in the delights of narcotics. The infernal power that had upheld him through
his debauches had left him, and the body was left unaided and alone to
endure the agony of remorse and the heavy burden of sincere repentance.
Claparon's troubles everyone could guess; but Claparon reappeared, on the
other hand, with sparkling eyes, holding his head high with the pride of
Lucifer. The crisis had passed from the one man to the other.

"Now you can drop off with an easy mind, old man," said Claparon to
Castanier.

"For pity's sake, send for a cab and for a priest; send for the curate of
Saint-Sulpice!" answered the old dragoon, sinking down upon the
curbstone.

The words "a priest" reached the ears of several people, and produced
uproarious jeering among the stockbrokers, for faith with these gentlemen
means a belief that a scrap of paper called a mortgage represents an estate,
and the List of Fundholders is their Bible.

"Shall I have time to repent?" said Castanier to himself, in a piteous
voice, that impressed Claparon.

A cab carried away the dying man; the speculator went to the bank at
once to meet his bills; and the momentary sensation produced upon the
throng of business men by the sudden change on the two faces, vanished
like the furrow cut by a ship's keel in the sea. News of the greatest
importance kept the attention of the world of commerce on the alert; and
when commercial interests are at stake, Moses might appear with his two
luminous horns, and his coming would scarcely receive the honors of a pun;
the gentlemen whose business it is to write the Market Reports would
ignore his existence.

When Claparon had made his payments, fear seized upon him. There was
no mistake about his power. He went on 'Change again, and offered his
bargain to other men in embarrassed circumstances. The Devil's bond,
"together with the rights, easements, and privileges appertaining
thereunto,"—to use the expression of the notary who succeeded Claparon,
changed hands for the sum of seven hundred thousand francs. The notary in
his turn parted with the agreement with the Devil for five hundred thousand
francs to a building contractor in difficulties, who likewise was rid of it to
an iron merchant in consideration of a hundred thousand crowns. In fact, by
five o'clock people had ceased to believe in the strange contract, and
purchasers were lacking for want of confidence.

At half-past five the holder of the bond was a house painter, who was
lounging by the door of the building in the Rue Feydeau, where at that time
stockbrokers temporarily congregated. The house painter, simple fellow,
could not think what was the matter with him. He "felt all anyhow"; so he
told his wife when he went home.

The Rue Feydeau, as idlers about town are aware, is a place of
pilgrimage for youths who for lack of a mistress bestow their ardent
affection upon the whole sex. On the first floor of the most rigidly
respectable domicile therein dwelt one of those exquisite creatures whom it
has pleased heaven to endow with the rarest and most surpassing beauty. As
it is impossible that they should all be duchesses or queens (since there are
many more pretty women in the world than titles and thrones for them to
adorn), they are content to make a stockbroker or a banker happy at a fixed
price. To this good-natured beauty, Euphrasia by name, an unbounded
ambition had led a notary's clerk to aspire. In short, the second clerk in the
office of Maître Crottat, notary, had fallen in love with her, as youth at two
and twenty can fall in love. The scrivener would have murdered the Pope
and run amuck through the whole sacred college to procure the miserable
sum of a hundred louis to pay for a shawl which had turned Euphrasia's
head, at which price her waiting woman had promised that Euphrasia
should be his. The infatuated youth walked to and fro under Madame
Euphrasia's windows, like the polar bears in their cage at the Jardin des
Plantes, with his right hand thrust beneath his waistcoat in the region of the
heart, which he was fit to tear from his bosom, but as yet he had only
wrenched at the elastic of his braces.

"What can one do to raise ten thousand francs?" he asked himself. "Shall
I make off with the money that I must pay on the registration of that
conveyance? Good heavens! my loan would not ruin the purchaser, a man
with seven millions! And then next day I would fling myself at his feet and
say, 'I have taken ten thousand francs belonging to you, sir; I am twenty-two
years of age, and I am in love with Euphrasia—that is my story. My father
is rich, he will pay you back; do not ruin me! Have not you yourself been
twenty-two years old and madly in love?' But these beggarly landowners
have no souls! He would be quite likely to give me up to the public
prosecutor, instead of taking pity upon me. Good God! if it were only

possible to sell your soul to the Devil! But there is neither a God nor a
Devil; it is all nonsense out of nursery tales and old wives' talk. What shall I
do?"

"If you have a mind to sell your soul to the Devil, sir," said the house
painter, who had overheard something that the clerk let fall, "you can have
the ten thousand francs."

"And Euphrasia!" cried the clerk, as he struck a bargain with the devil
that inhabited the house painter.

The pact concluded, the frantic clerk went to find the shawl, and mounted
Madame Euphrasia's staircase; and as (literally) the devil was in him, he did
not come down for twelve days, drowning the thought of hell and of his
privileges in twelve days of love and riot and forgetfulness, for which he
had bartered away all his hopes of a paradise to come.

And in this way the secret of the vast power discovered and acquired by
the Irishman, the offspring of Maturin's brain, was lost to mankind; and the
various Orientalists, Mystics, and Archaeologists who take an interest in
these matters were unable to hand down to posterity the proper method of
invoking the Devil, for the following sufficient reasons:—

On the thirteenth day after these frenzied nuptials the wretched clerk lay
on a pallet bed in a garret in his master's house in the Rue Saint-Honoré.
Shame, the stupid goddess who dares not behold herself, had taken
possession of the young man. He had fallen ill; he would nurse himself;
misjudged the quantity of a remedy devised by the skill of a practitioner
well known on the walls of Paris, and succumbed to the effects of an
overdose of mercury. His corpse was as black as a mole's back. A devil had
left unmistakable traces of its passage there; could it have been Ashtaroth?

"The estimable youth to whom you refer has been carried away to the
planet Mercury," said the head clerk to a German demonologist who came
to investigate the matter at first hand.

"I am quite prepared to believe it," answered the Teuton.

"Oh!"

"Yes, sir," returned the other. "The opinion you advance coincides with
the very words of Jacob Boehme. In the forty-eighth proposition of The
Threefold Life of Man he says that 'if God hath brought all things to pass
with a LET THERE BE, the FIAT is the secret matrix which comprehends
and apprehends the nature which is formed by the spirit born of Mercury
and of God.'"

"What do you say, sir?"

The German delivered his quotation afresh.

"We do not know it," said the clerks.

"Fiat?..." said a clerk. "Fiat lux!"

"You can verify the citation for yourselves," said the German. "You will
find the passage in the Treatise of the Threefold Life of Man, page 75; the
edition was published by M. Migneret in 1809. It was translated into French
by a philosopher who had a great admiration for the famous shoemaker."

"Oh! he was a shoemaker, was he?" said the head clerk.

"In Prussia," said the German.

"Did he work for the King of Prussia?" inquired a Boeotian of a second
clerk.

"He must have vamped up his prose," said a third.

"That man is colossal!" cried the fourth, pointing to the Teuton.

That gentleman, though a demonologist of the first rank, did not know
the amount of devilry to be found in a notary's clerk. He went away without
the least idea that they were making game of him, and fully under the
impression that the young fellows regarded Boehme as a colossal genius.

"Education is making strides in France," said he to himself.

The Conscript

[The inner self] ... by a phenomenon of vision or of
locomotion has been known at times to abolish Space
in its two modes of Time and Distance—the one
intellectual, the other physical.

—HISTORY OF LOUIS LAMBERT.

On a November evening in the year 1793 the principal citizens of
Carentan were assembled in Mme. de Dey's drawing-room. Mme. de Dey
held this reception every night of the week, but an unwonted interest
attached to this evening's gathering, owing to certain circumstances which
would have passed altogether unnoticed in a great city, though in a small
country town they excited the greatest curiosity. For two days before Mme.
de Dey had not been at home to her visitors, and on the previous evening
her door had been shut, on the ground of indisposition. Two such events at
any ordinary time would have produced in Carentan the same sensation that
Paris knows on nights when there is no performance at the theaters—
existence is in some sort incomplete; but in those times when the least
indiscretion on the part of an aristocrat might be a matter of life and death,
this conduct of Mme. de Dey's was likely to bring about the most disastrous
consequences for her. Her position in Carentan ought to be made clear, if
the reader is to appreciate the expression of keen curiosity and cunning
fanaticism on the countenances of these Norman citizens, and, what is of
most importance, the part that the lady played among them. Many a one
during the days of the Revolution has doubtless passed through a crisis as
difficult as hers at that moment, and the sympathies of more than one reader
will fill in all the coloring of the picture.

Mme. de Dey was the widow of a Lieutenant-General, a Knight of the
Orders of Saint Michael and of the Holy Ghost. She had left the Court when
the Emigration began, and taken refuge in the neighborhood of Carentan,
where she had large estates, hoping that the influence of the Reign of Terror
would be but little felt there. Her calculations, based on a thorough
knowledge of the district, proved correct. The Revolution made little

disturbance in Lower Normandy. Formerly, when Mme. de Dey had spent
any time in the country, her circle of acquaintance had been confined to the
noble families of the district; but now, from politic motives, she opened her
house to the principal citizens and to the Revolutionary authorities of the
town, endeavoring to touch and gratify their social pride without arousing
either hatred or jealousy. Gracious and kindly, possessed of the
indescribable charm that wins good will without loss of dignity or effort to
pay court to any, she had succeeded in gaining universal esteem; the
discreet warnings of exquisite tact enabled her to steer a difficult course
among the exacting claims of this mixed society, without wounding the
overweening self-love of parvenus on the one hand, or the susceptibilities
of her old friends on the other.

She was about thirty-eight years of age, and still preserved, not the fresh,
high-colored beauty of the Basse-Normandes, but a fragile loveliness of
what may be called an aristocratic type. Her figure was lissome and slender,
her features delicate and clearly cut; the pale face seemed to light up and
live when she spoke; but there was a quiet and devout look in the great dark
eyes, for all their graciousness of expression—a look that seemed to say
that the springs of her life lay without her own existence.

In her early girlhood she had been married to an elderly and jealous
soldier. Her false position in the midst of a gay Court had doubtless done
something to bring a veil of sadness over a face that must once have been
bright with the charms of quick-pulsed life and love. She had been
compelled to set constant restraint upon her frank impulses and emotions at
an age when a woman feels rather than thinks, and the depths of passion in
her heart had never been stirred. In this lay the secret of her greatest charm,
a youthfulness of the inmost soul, betrayed at times by her face, and a
certain tinge of innocent wistfulness in her ideas. She was reserved in her
demeanor, but in her bearing and in the tones of her voice there was still
something that told of girlish longings directed toward a vague future.
Before very long the least susceptible fell in love with her, and yet stood
somewhat in awe of her dignity and high-bred manner. Her great soul,
strengthened by the cruel ordeals through which she had passed, seemed to
set her too far above the ordinary level, and these men weighed themselves,

and instinctively felt that they were found wanting. Such a nature demanded
an exalted passion.

Moreover, Mme. de Dey's affections were concentrated in one sentiment
—a mother's love for her son. All the happiness and joy that she had not
known as a wife, she had found later in her boundless love for him. The
coquetry of a mistress, the jealousy of a wife mingled with the pure and
deep affection of a mother. She was miserable when they were apart, and
nervous about him while he was away; she could never see enough of him,
and lived through and for him alone. Some idea of the strength of this tie
may be conveyed to the masculine understanding by adding that this was
not only Mme. de Dey's only son, but all she had of kith or kin in the world,
the one human being on earth bound to her by all the fears and hopes and
joys of her life.

The late Comte de Dey was the last of his race, and she, his wife, was the
sole heiress and descendant of her house. So worldly ambitions and family
considerations, as well as the noblest cravings of the soul, combined to
heighten in the Countess a sentiment that is strong in every woman's heart.
The child was all the dearer, because only with infinite care had she
succeeded in rearing him to man's estate; medical science had predicted his
death a score of times, but she had held fast to her presentiments and her
hopes, and had known the inexpressible joy of watching him pass safely
through the perils of infancy, of seeing his constitution strengthen in spite of
the decrees of the Faculty.

Thanks to her constant care, the boy had grown up and developed so
favorably, that at twenty years of age he was regarded as one of the most
accomplished gentlemen at the Court of Versailles. One final happiness that
does not always crown a mother's efforts was hers—her son worshiped her;
and between these two there was the deep sympathy of kindred souls. If
they had not been bound to each other already by a natural and sacred tie,
they would instinctively have felt for each other a friendship that is rarely
met with between two men.

At the age of eighteen, the young Count had received an appointment as
sub-lieutenant in a regiment of dragoons, and had made it a point of honor
to follow the emigrant Princes into exile.

Then Mme. de Dey faced the dangers of her cruel position. She was rich,
noble, and the mother of an Emigrant. With the one desire to look after her
son's great fortune, she had denied herself the happiness of being with him;
and when she read the rigorous laws in virtue of which the Republic was
daily confiscating the property of Emigrants at Carentan, she congratulated
herself on the courageous course that she had taken. Was she not keeping
watch over the wealth of her son at the risk of her life? Later, when news
came of the horrible executions ordered by the Convention, she slept, happy
in the knowledge that her own treasure was in safety, out of reach of peril,
far from the scaffolds of the Revolution. She loved to think that she had
followed the best course, that she had saved her darling and her darling's
fortunes; and to this secret thought she made such concessions as the
misfortunes of the times demanded, without compromising her dignity or
her aristocratic tenets, and enveloped her sorrows in reserve and mystery.
She had foreseen the difficulties that would beset her at Carentan. Did she
not tempt the scaffold by the very fact of going thither to take a prominent
place? Yet, sustained by a mother's courage, she succeeded in winning the
affection of the poor, ministering without distinction to everyone in trouble;
and made herself necessary to the well-to-do, by providing amusements for
them.

The procureur of the commune might be seen at her house, the mayor, the
president of the "district," and the public prosecutor, and even the judges of
the Revolutionary tribunals went there. The four first-named gentlemen
were none of them married, and each paid court to her, in the hope that
Mme. de Dey would take him for her husband, either from fear of making
an enemy or from a desire to find a protector.

The public prosecutor, once an attorney at Caen, and the Countess's man
of business, did what he could to inspire love by a system of devotion and
generosity, a dangerous game of cunning! He was the most formidable of
all her suitors. He alone knew the amount of the large fortune of his
sometime client, and his fervor was inevitably increased by the cupidity of
greed, and by the consciousness that he wielded an enormous power, the
power of life and death in the district. He was still a young man, and, owing
to the generosity of his behavior, Mme. de Dey was unable as yet to
estimate him truly. But, in despite of the danger of matching herself against

Norman cunning, she used all the craft and inventiveness that Nature has
bestowed on women to play off the rival suitors one against another. She
hoped, by gaining time, to emerge safe and sound from her difficulties at
last; for at that time Royalists in the provinces flattered themselves with a
hope, daily renewed, that the morrow would see the end of the Revolution
—a conviction that proved fatal to many of them.

In spite of difficulties, the Countess had maintained her independence
with considerable skill until the day when, by an inexplicable want of
prudence, she took occasion to close her salon. So deep and sincere was the
interest that she inspired, that those who usually filled her drawing-room
felt a lively anxiety when the news was spread; then, with the frank
curiosity characteristic of provincial manners, they went to inquire into the
misfortune, grief, or illness that had befallen Mme. de Dey.

To all these questions, Brigitte, the housekeeper, answered with the same
formula: her mistress was keeping her room, and would see no one, not
even her own servants. The almost claustral lives of dwellers in small towns
fosters a habit of analysis and conjectural explanation of the business of
everybody else; so strong is it, that when everyone had exclaimed over poor
Mme. de Dey (without knowing whether the lady was overcome by joy or
sorrow), each one began to inquire into the causes of her sudden seclusion.

"If she were ill, she would have sent for the doctor," said gossip number
one; "now the doctor has been playing chess in my house all day. He said to
me, laughing, that in these days there is only one disease, and that,
unluckily, it is incurable."

The joke was hazarded discreetly. Women and men, elderly folk and
young girls, forthwith betook themselves to the vast fields of conjecture.
Everyone imagined that there was some secret in it, and every head was
busy with the secret. Next day the suspicions became malignant. Everyone
lives in public in a small town, and the women-kind were the first to find
out that Brigitte had laid in an extra stock of provisions. The thing could not
be disputed. Brigitte had been seen in the market-place betimes that
morning, and, wonderful to relate, she had bought the one hare to be had.
The whole town knew that Mme. de Dey did not care for game. The hare
became a starting point for endless conjectures.

Elderly gentlemen, taking their constitutional, noticed a sort of
suppressed bustle in the Countess's house; the symptoms were the more
apparent because the servants were at evident pains to conceal them. The
man-servant was beating a carpet in the garden. Only yesterday no one
would have remarked the fact, but to-day everybody began to build
romances upon that harmless piece of household stuff. Everyone had a
version.

On the following day, that on which Mme. de Dey gave out that she was
not well, the magnates of Carentan went to spend the evening at the mayor's
brother's house. He was a retired merchant, a married man, a strictly
honorable soul; everyone respected him, and the Countess held him in high
regard. There all the rich widows' suitors were fain to invent more or less
probable fictions, each one thinking the while how to turn to his own
advantage the secret that compelled her to compromise herself in such a
manner.

The public prosecutor spun out a whole drama to bring Mme. de Dey's
son to her house of a night. The mayor had a belief in a priest who had
refused the oath, a refugee from La Vendée; but this left him not a little
embarrassed how to account for the purchase of a hare on a Friday. The
president of the district had strong leanings toward a Chouan chief, or a
Vendean leader hotly pursued. Others voted for a noble escaped from the
prisons of Paris. In short, one and all suspected that the Countess had been
guilty of some piece of generosity that the law of those days defined as a
crime, an offense that was like to bring her to the scaffold. The public
prosecutor, moreover, said, in a low voice, that they must hush the matter
up, and try to save the unfortunate lady from the abyss toward which she
was hastening.

"If you spread reports about," he added, "I shall be obliged to take
cognizance of the matter, and to search the house, and then!..."

He said no more, but everyone understood what was left unsaid.

The Countess's real friends were so much alarmed for her, that on the
morning of the third day the Procureur Syndic of the commune made his
wife write a few lines to persuade Mme. de Dey to hold her reception as

usual that evening. The old merchant took a bolder step. He called that
morning upon the lady. Strong in the thought of the service he meant to do
her, he insisted that he must see Mme. de Dey, and was amazed beyond
expression to find her out in the garden, busy gathering the last autumn
flowers in her borders to fill the vases.

"She has given refuge to her lover, no doubt," thought the old man, struck
with pity for the charming woman before him.

The Countess's face wore a strange look, that confirmed his suspicions.
Deeply moved by the devotion so natural to women, but that always
touches us, because all men are flattered by the sacrifices that any woman
makes for any one of them, the merchant told the Countess of the gossip
that was circulating in the town, and showed her the danger that she was
running. He wound up at last with saying that "if there are some of our
public functionaries who are sufficiently ready to pardon a piece of heroism
on your part so long as it is a priest that you wish to save, no one will show
you any mercy if it is discovered that you are sacrificing yourself to the
dictates of your heart."

At these words Mme. de Dey gazed at her visitor with a wild excitement
in her manner that made him tremble, old though he was.

"Come in," she said, taking him by the hand to bring him to her room,
and as soon as she had assured herself that they were alone, she drew a
soiled, torn letter from her bodice.—"Read it!" she cried, with a violent
effort to pronounce the words.

She dropped as if exhausted into her armchair. While the old merchant
looked for his spectacles and wiped them, she raised her eyes, and for the
first time looked at him with curiosity; then, in an uncertain voice, "I trust
in you," she said softly.

"Why did I come but to share in your crime?" the old merchant said
simply.

She trembled. For the first time since she had come to the little town her
soul found sympathy in another soul. A sudden light dawned meantime on

the old merchant; he understood the Countess's joy and her prostration.

Her son had taken part in the Granville expedition; he wrote to his
mother from his prison, and the letter brought her a sad, sweet hope.
Feeling no doubts as to his means of escape, he wrote that within three days
he was sure to reach her, disguised. The same letter that brought these
weighty tidings was full of heartrending farewells in case the writer should
not be in Carentan by the evening of the third day, and he implored his
mother to send a considerable sum of money by the bearer, who had gone
through dangers innumerable to deliver it. The paper shook in the old man's
hands.

"And to-day is the third day!" cried Mme. de Dey. She sprang to her feet,
took back the letter, and walked up and down.

"You have set to work imprudently," the merchant remarked, addressing
her. "Why did you buy provisions?"

"Why, he may come in dying of hunger, worn out with fatigue, and—"
She broke off.

"I am sure of my brother," the old merchant went on; "I will engage him
in your interests."

The merchant in this crisis recovered his old business shrewdness, and
the advice that he gave Mme. de Dey was full of prudence and wisdom.
After the two had agreed together as to what they were to do and say, the
old merchant went on various ingenious pretexts to pay visits to the
principal houses of Carentan, announcing wherever he went that he had just
been to see Mme. de Dey, and that, in spite of her indisposition, she would
receive that evening. Matching his shrewdness against Norman wits in the
cross-examination he underwent in every family as to the Countess's
complaint, he succeeded in putting almost everyone who took an interest in
the mysterious affair upon the wrong scent.

His very first call worked wonders. He told, in the hearing of a gouty old
lady, how that Mme. de Dey had all but died of an attack of gout in the
stomach; how that the illustrious Tronchin had recommended her in such a

case to put the skin from a live hare on her chest, to stop in bed, and keep
perfectly still. The Countess, he said, had lain in danger of her life for the
past two days; but after carefully following out Tronchin's singular
prescription, she was now sufficiently recovered to receive visitors that
evening.

This tale had an immense success in Carentan. The local doctor, a
Royalist in petto, added to its effect by gravely discussing the specific.
Suspicion, nevertheless, had taken too deep root in a few perverse or
philosophical minds to be entirely dissipated; so it fell out that those who
had the right of entry into Mme. de Dey's drawing-room hurried thither at
an early hour, some to watch her face, some out of friendship, but the more
part attracted by the fame of the marvelous cure.

They found the Countess seated in a corner of the great chimney-piece in
her room, which was almost as modestly furnished as similar apartments in
Carentan; for she had given up the enjoyment of luxuries to which she had
formerly been accustomed, for fear of offending the narrow prejudices of
her guests, and she had made no changes in her house. The floor was not
even polished. She had left the old somber hangings on the walls, had kept
the old-fashioned country furniture, burned tallow candles, had fallen in
with the ways of the place and adopted provincial life without flinching
before its cast-iron narrowness, its most disagreeable hardships; but
knowing that her guests would forgive her for any prodigality that conduced
to their comfort, she left nothing undone where their personal enjoyment
was concerned; her dinners, for instance, were excellent. She even went so
far as to affect avarice to recommend herself to these sordid natures; and
had the ingenuity to make it appear that certain concessions to luxury had
been made at the instance of others, to whom she had graciously yielded.

Toward seven o'clock that evening, therefore, the nearest approach to
polite society that Carentan could boast was assembled in Mme. de Dey's
drawing-room, in a wide circle, about the fire. The old merchant's
sympathetic glances sustained the mistress of the house through this ordeal;
with wonderful strength of mind, she underwent the curious scrutiny of her
guests, and bore with their trivial prosings. Every time there was a knock at
the door, at every sound of footsteps in the street, she hid her agitation by

raising questions of absorbing interest to the countryside. She led the
conversation on to the burning topic of the quality of various ciders, and
was so well seconded by her friend who shared her secret, that her guests
almost forgot to watch her, and her face wore its wonted look; her self-
possession was unshaken. The public prosecutor and one of the judges of
the Revolutionary Tribunal kept silence, however; noting the slightest
change that flickered over her features, listening through the noisy talk to
every sound in the house. Several times they put awkward questions, which
the Countess answered with wonderful presence of mind. So brave is a
mother's heart!

Mme. de Dey had drawn her visitors into little groups, had made parties
of whist, boston, or reversis, and sat talking with some of the young people;
she seemed to be living completely in the present moment, and played her
part like a consummate actress. She elicited a suggestion of loto, and saying
that no one else knew where to find the game, she left the room.

"My good Brigitte, I cannot breathe down there!" she cried, brushing
away the tears that sprang to her eyes that glittered with fever, sorrow, and
impatience.—She had gone up to her son's room, and was looking round it.
"He does not come," she said. "Here I can breathe and live. A few minutes
more, and he will be here, for he is alive, I am sure that he is alive! my heart
tells me so. Do you hear nothing, Brigitte? Oh! I would give the rest of my
life to know whether he is still in prison or tramping across the country. I
would rather not think."

Once more she looked to see that everything was in order. A bright fire
blazed on the hearth, the shutters were carefully closed, the furniture shone
with cleanliness, the bed had been made after a fashion that showed that
Brigitte and the Countess had given their minds to every trifling detail. It
was impossible not to read her hopes in the dainty and thoughtful
preparations about the room; love and a mother's tenderest caresses seemed
to pervade the air in the scent of flowers. None but a mother could have
foreseen the requirements of a soldier and arranged so completely for their
satisfaction. A dainty meal, the best of wine, clean linen, slippers—no
necessary, no comfort, was lacking for the weary traveler, and all the
delights of home heaped upon him should reveal his mother's love.

"Oh, Brigitte!..." cried the Countess, with a heart-rending inflection in
her voice. She drew a chair to the table as if to strengthen her illusions and
realize her longings.

"Ah! madame, he is coming. He is not far off.... I haven't a doubt that he
is living and on his way," Brigitte answered. "I put a key in the Bible and
held it on my fingers while Cottin read the Gospel of St. John, and the key
did not turn, madame."

"Is that a certain sign?" the Countess asked.

"Why, yes, madame! everybody knows that. He is still alive; I would
stake my salvation on it; God cannot be mistaken."

"If only I could see him here in the house, in spite of the danger."

"Poor Monsieur Auguste!" cried Brigitte; "I expect he is tramping along
the lanes!"

"And that is eight o'clock striking now!" cried the Countess in terror.

She was afraid that she had been too long in the room where she felt sure
that her son was alive; all those preparations made for him meant that he
was alive. She went down, but she lingered a moment in the peristyle for
any sound that might waken the sleeping echoes of the town. She smiled at
Brigitte's husband, who was standing there on guard; the man's eyes looked
stupid with the strain of listening to the faint sounds of the night. She stared
into the darkness, seeing her son in every shadow everywhere; but it was
only for a moment. Then she went back to the drawing-room with an
assumption of high spirits, and began to play at loto with the little girls. But
from time to time she complained of feeling unwell, and went to sit in her
great chair by the fireside. So things went in Mme. de Dey's house and in
the minds of those beneath her roof.

Meanwhile, on the road from Paris to Cherbourg, a young man, dressed
in the inevitable brown carmagnole of those days, was plodding his way
toward Carentan. When the first levies were made, there was little or no
discipline kept up. The exigencies of the moment scarcely admitted of

soldiers being equipped at once, and it was no uncommon thing to see the
roads thronged with conscripts in their ordinary clothes. The young fellows
went ahead of their company to the next halting place, or lagged behind it;
it depended upon their fitness to bear the fatigues of a long march. This
particular wayfarer was some considerable way in advance of a company of
conscripts on the way to Cherbourg, whom the mayor was expecting to
arrive every hour, for it was his duty to distribute their billets. The young
man's footsteps were still firm as he trudged along, and his bearing seemed
to indicate that he was no stranger to the rough life of a soldier. The moon
shone on the pasture land about Carentan, but he had noticed great masses
of white cloud that were about to scatter showers of snow over the country,
and doubtless the fear of being overtaken by a storm had quickened his pace
in spite of his weariness.

The wallet on his back was almost empty, and he carried a stick in his
hand, cut from one of the high, thick box hedges that surround most of the
farms in Lower Normandy. As the solitary wayfarer came into Carentan, the
gleaming moonlit outlines of its towers stood out for a moment with ghostly
effect against the sky. He met no one in the silent streets that rang with the
echoes of his own footsteps, and was obliged to ask the way to the mayor's
house of a weaver who was working late. The magistrate was not far to
seek, and in a few minutes the conscript was sitting on a stone bench in the
mayor's porch waiting for his billet. He was sent for, however, and
confronted with that functionary, who scrutinized him closely. The foot
soldier was a good-looking young man, who appeared to be of gentle birth.
There was something aristocratic in his bearing, and signs in his face of
intelligence developed by a good education.

"What is your name?" asked the mayor, eying him shrewdly.

"Julien Jussieu," answered the conscript.

"From—?" queried the official, and an incredulous smile stole over his
features.

"From Paris."

"Your comrades must be a good way behind?" remarked the Norman in
sarcastic tones.

"I am three leagues ahead of the battalion."

"Some sentiment attracts you to Carentan, of course, citizen-conscript,"
said the mayor astutely. "All right, all right!" he added, with a wave of the
hand, seeing that the young man was about to speak. "We know where to
send you. There, off with you, Citizen Jussieu," and he handed over the
billet.

There was a tinge of irony in the stress the magistrate laid on the two last
words while he held out a billet on Mme. de Dey. The conscript read the
direction curiously.

"He knows quite well that he has not far to go, and when he gets outside
he will very soon cross the marketplace," said the mayor to himself, as the
other went out. "He is uncommonly bold! God guide him!... He has an
answer ready for everything. Yes, but if somebody else had asked to see his
papers it would have been all up with him!"

The clocks in Carentan struck half-past nine as he spoke. Lanterns were
being lit in Mme. de Dey's antechamber, servants were helping their
masters and mistresses into sabots, greatcoats, and calashes. The card
players settled their accounts, and everybody went out together, after the
fashion of all little country towns.

"It looks as if the prosecutor meant to stop," said a lady, who noticed that
that important personage was not in the group in the market-place, where
they all took leave of one another before going their separate ways home.
And, as a matter of fact, that redoubtable functionary was alone with the
Countess, who waited trembling till he should go. There was something
appalling in their long silence.

"Citoyenne," said he at last, "I am here to see that the laws of the
Republic are carried out—"

Mme. de Dey shuddered.

"Have you nothing to tell me?"

"Nothing!" she answered, in amazement.

"Ah! madame," cried the prosecutor, sitting down beside her and
changing his tone. "At this moment, for lack of a word, one of us—you or I
—may carry our heads to the scaffold. I have watched your character, your
soul, your manner, too closely to share the error into which you have
managed to lead your visitors to-night. You are expecting your son, I could
not doubt it."

The Countess made an involuntary sign of denial, but her face had grown
white and drawn with the struggle to maintain the composure that she did
not feel, and no tremor was lost on the merciless prosecutor.

"Very well," the Revolutionary official went on, "receive him; but do not
let him stay under your roof after seven o'clock to-morrow morning; for to-
morrow, as soon as it is light, I shall come with a denunciation that I will
have made out, and—"

She looked at him, and the dull misery in her eyes would have softened a
tiger.

"I will make it clear that the denunciation was false by making a
thorough search," he went on in a gentle voice; "my report shall be such
that you will be safe from any subsequent suspicion. I shall make mention
of your patriotic gifts, your civism, and all of us will be safe."

Mme. de Dey, fearful of a trap, sat motionless, her face afire, her tongue
frozen. A knock at the door rang through the house.

"Oh!..." cried the terrified mother, falling upon her knees; "save him!
save him!"

"Yes, let us save him!" returned the public prosecutor, and his eyes grew
bright as he looked at her, "if it costs us our lives!"

"Lost!" she wailed. The prosecutor raised her politely.

"Madame," said he with a flourish of eloquence, "to your own free will
alone would I owe—"

"Madame, he is—" cried Brigitte, thinking that her mistress was alone. At
the sight of the public prosecutor, the old servant's joy-flushed countenance
became haggard and impassive.

"Who is it, Brigitte?" the prosecutor asked kindly, as if he too were in the
secret of the household.

"A conscript that the mayor has sent here for a night's lodging," the
woman replied, holding out the billet.

"So it is," said the prosecutor, when he had read the slip of paper. "A
battalion is coming here to-night."

And he went.

The Countess's need to believe in the faith of her sometime attorney was
so great, that she dared not entertain any suspicion of him. She fled upstairs;
she felt scarcely strength enough to stand; she opened the door, and sprang,
half dead with fear, into her son's arms.

"Oh! my child! my child!" she sobbed, covering him with almost frenzied
kisses.

"Madame!..." said a stranger's voice.

"Oh! it is not he!" she cried, shrinking away in terror, and she stood face
to face with the conscript, gazing at him with haggard eyes.

"O saint bon Dieu! how like he is!" cried Brigitte.

There was silence for a moment; even the stranger trembled at the sight
of Mme. de Dey's face.

"Ah! monsieur," she said, leaning on the arm of Brigitte's husband,
feeling for the first time the full extent of a sorrow that had all but killed her
at its first threatening; "ah! monsieur, I cannot stay to see you any longer ...

permit my servants to supply my place, and to see that you have all that you
want."

She went down to her own room, Brigitte and the old serving-man half
carrying her between them. The housekeeper set her mistress in a chair, and
broke out:

"What, madame! is that man to sleep in Monsieur Auguste's bed, and
wear Monsieur Auguste's slippers, and eat the pasty that I made for
Monsieur Auguste? Why, if they were to guillotine me for it, I—"

"Brigitte!" cried Mme. de Dey.

Brigitte said no more.

"Hold your tongue, chatterbox," said her husband, in a low voice; "do
you want to kill madame?"

A sound came from the conscript's room as he drew his chair to the table.

"I shall not stay here," cried Mme. de Dey; "I shall go into the
conservatory; I shall hear better there if anyone passes in the night."

She still wavered between the fear that she had lost her son and the hope
of seeing him once more. That night was hideously silent. Once, for the
Countess, there was an awful interval, when the battalion of conscripts
entered the town, and the men went by, one by one, to their lodgings. Every
footfall, every sound in the street, raised hopes to be disappointed; but it
was not for long, the dreadful quiet succeeded again. Toward morning the
Countess was forced to return to her room. Brigitte, ever keeping watch
over her mistress's movements, did not see her come out again; and when
she went, she found the Countess lying there dead.

"I expect she heard that conscript," cried Brigitte, "walking about
Monsieur Auguste's room, whistling that accursed Marseillaise of theirs
while he dressed, as if he had been in a stable! That must have killed her."

But it was a deeper and a more solemn emotion, and doubtless some
dreadful vision, that had caused Mme. de Dey's death; for at the very hour
when she died at Carentan, her son was shot in le Morbihan.

This tragical story may be added to all the instances on record of the
workings of sympathies uncontrolled by the laws of time and space. These
observations, collected with scientific curiosity by a few isolated
individuals, will one day serve as documents on which to base the
foundations of a new science which hitherto has lacked its man of genius.

Introduction to Zadig the Babylonian

A work (says the author) which performs more than it
promises.

Voltaire never heard of a "detective story"; and yet he wrote the first in
modern literature, so clever as to be a model for all the others that followed.

He describes his hero Zadig thus: "His chief talent consisted in
discovering the truth,"—in making swift, yet marvelous deductions, worthy
of Sherlock Holmes or any other of the ingenious modern "thinking
machines."

But no one would be more surprised than Voltaire to behold the part that
Zadig now "performs." The amusing Babylonian, now regarded as the
aristocratic ancestor of modern story-detectives, was created as a chief
mocker in a satire on eighteenth-century manners, morals, and metaphysics.

Voltaire breathed his dazzling brilliance into "Zadig" as he did into a
hundred other characters—for a political purpose. Their veiled and bitter
satire was to make Europe think—to sting reason into action—to ridicule

out of existence a humbugging System of special privileges. It did, via the
French Revolution and the resulting upheavals. His prose romances are the
most perfect of Voltaire's manifold expressions to this end, which mark him
the most powerful literary man of the century.

But the arch-wit of his age outdid his brilliant self in "Zadig." So
surpassingly sharp and quick was this finished sleuth that his methods far
outlived his satirical mission. His razor-mind was reincarnated a century
later as the fascinator of nations—M. Dupin. And from Poe's wizard up to
Sherlock Holmes, no one of the thousand "detectives," drawn in a myriad
scenes that thrill the world of readers, but owes his outlines, at least, to
"Zadig."

"Don't use your reason—act like your friends—respect conventionalities
—otherwise the world will absolutely refuse to let you be happy." This
sums up the theory of life that Zadig satires. His comical troubles proceed
entirely from his use of independent reason as opposed to the customs of his
times.

The satire fitted ancient Babylonia—it fitted eighteenth-century France—
and perhaps the reader of these volumes can find some points of contact
with his own surroundings.

It is still piquant, however, to remember Zadig's original raison d'être. He
happened to be cast in the part of what we now know as "a detective,"
merely because Voltaire had been reading stories in the "Arabian Nights"
whose heroes get out of scrapes by marvelous deductions from simple
signs. (See Vol. VI.)

Voltaire must have grinned at the delicious human interest, the subtle
irony to pierce complacent humbugs, that lurked behind these Oriental
situations. He made the most of his chance for a quaint parable, applicable
to the courts, the church and science of Europe. As the story runs on, midst
many and sudden adventures, the Babylonian reads causes from events in
guileless fashion, enthusiastic as Sherlock Holmes, and no less efficient—
and all the while, behind this innocent mask, Voltaire is insinuating a
comparison between the practical results of Zadig's common sense and the
futile mental cobwebs spun by the alleged thought of the time.

Especially did "Zadig" caricature orthodox science, and the
metaphysicians, whose solemn searches after final causes, after the reality
behind the appearance of things, mostly wandered into hopeless tangles,
and thus formed a great weapon of political oppression, by postponing the
age of reason and independent thought. Zadig "did not employ himself in
calculating how many inches of water flow in a second of time under the
arches of a bridge, or whether there fell a cube line of rain in the month of
the Mouse more than in the month of the Sheep. He never dreamed of
making silk of cobwebs, or porcelain of broken bottles; but he chiefly
studied the properties of plants and animals; and soon acquired a sagacity
that made him discover a thousand differences where other men see nothing
but uniformity."

FRANÇOIS MARIE AROUET DE VOLTAIRE

Zadig the Babylonian

THE BLIND OF ONE EYE

There lived at Babylon, in the reign of King Moabdar, a young man
named Zadig, of a good natural disposition, strengthened and improved by
education. Though rich and young, he had learned to moderate his passions;
he had nothing stiff or affected in his behavior, he did not pretend to
examine every action by the strict rules of reason, but was always ready to
make proper allowances for the weakness of mankind.

It was matter of surprise that, notwithstanding his sprightly wit, he never
exposed by his raillery those vague, incoherent, and noisy discourses, those
rash censures, ignorant decisions, coarse jests, and all that empty jingle of
words which at Babylon went by the name of conversation. He had learned,
in the first book of Zoroaster, that self love is a football swelled with wind,
from which, when pierced, the most terrible tempests issue forth.

Above all, Zadig never boasted of his conquests among the women, nor
affected to entertain a contemptible opinion of the fair sex. He was
generous, and was never afraid of obliging the ungrateful; remembering the
grand precept of Zoroaster, "When thou eatest, give to the dogs, should they
even bite thee." He was as wise as it is possible for man to be, for he sought
to live with the wise.

Instructed in the sciences of the ancient Chaldeans, he understood the
principles of natural philosophy, such as they were then supposed to be; and
knew as much of metaphysics as hath ever been known in any age, that is,
little or nothing at all. He was firmly persuaded, notwithstanding the new
philosophy of the times, that the year consisted of three hundred and sixty-
five days and six hours, and that the sun was in the center of the world. But
when the principal magi told him, with a haughty and contemptuous air,
that his sentiments were of a dangerous tendency, and that it was to be an
enemy to the state to believe that the sun revolved round its own axis, and
that the year had twelve months, he held his tongue with great modesty and
meekness.

Possessed as he was of great riches, and consequently of many friends,
blessed with a good constitution, a handsome figure, a mind just and
moderate, and a heart noble and sincere, he fondly imagined that he might
easily be happy. He was going to be married to Semira, who, in point of
beauty, birth, and fortune, was the first match in Babylon. He had a real and
virtuous affection for this lady, and she loved him with the most passionate
fondness.

The happy moment was almost arrived that was to unite them forever in
the bands of wedlock, when happening to take a walk together toward one
of the gates of Babylon, under the palm trees that adorn the banks of the
Euphrates, they saw some men approaching, armed with sabers and arrows.
These were the attendants of young Orcan, the minister's nephew, whom his
uncle's creatures had flattered into an opinion that he might do everything
with impunity. He had none of the graces nor virtues of Zadig; but thinking
himself a much more accomplished man, he was enraged to find that the
other was preferred before him. This jealousy, which was merely the effect
of his vanity, made him imagine that he was desperately in love with
Semira; and accordingly he resolved to carry her off. The ravishers seized
her; in the violence of the outrage they wounded her, and made the blood
flow from a person, the sight of which would have softened the tigers of
Mount Imaus. She pierced the heavens with her complaints. She cried out,
"My dear husband! they tear me from the man I adore." Regardless of her
own danger, she was only concerned for the fate of her dear Zadig, who, in
the meantime, defended himself with all the strength that courage and love
could inspire. Assisted only by two slaves, he put the ravishers to flight and
carried home Semira, insensible and bloody as she was.

On opening her eyes and beholding her deliverer, "O Zadig!" said she, "I
loved thee formerly as my intended husband; I now love thee as the
preserver of my honor and my life." Never was heart more deeply affected
than that of Semira. Never did a more charming mouth express more
moving sentiments, in those glowing words inspired by a sense of the
greatest of all favors, and by the most tender transports of a lawful passion.

Her wound was slight and was soon cured. Zadig was more dangerously
wounded; an arrow had pierced him near his eye, and penetrated to a

considerable depth. Semira wearied Heaven with her prayers for the
recovery of her lover. Her eyes were constantly bathed in tears; she
anxiously waited the happy moment when those of Zadig should be able to
meet hers; but an abscess growing on the wounded eye gave everything to
fear. A messenger was immediately dispatched to Memphis for the great
physician Hermes, who came with a numerous retinue. He visited the
patient and declared that he would lose his eye. He even foretold the day
and hour when this fatal event would happen. "Had it been the right eye,"
said he, "I could easily have cured it; but the wounds of the left eye are
incurable." All Babylon lamented the fate of Zadig, and admired the
profound knowledge of Hermes.

In two days the abscess broke of its own accord and Zadig was perfectly
cured. Hermes wrote a book to prove that it ought not to have been cured.
Zadig did not read it; but, as soon as he was able to go abroad, he went to
pay a visit to her in whom all his hopes of happiness were centered, and for
whose sake alone he wished to have eyes. Semira had been in the country
for three days past. He learned on the road that that fine lady, having openly
declared that she had an unconquerable aversion to one-eyed men, had the
night before given her hand to Orcan. At this news he fell speechless to the
ground. His sorrow brought him almost to the brink of the grave. He was
long indisposed; but reason at last got the better of his affliction, and the
severity of his fate served to console him.

"Since," said he, "I have suffered so much from the cruel caprice of a
woman educated at court, I must now think of marrying the daughter of a
citizen." He pitched upon Azora, a lady of the greatest prudence, and of the
best family in town. He married her and lived with her for three months in
all the delights of the most tender union. He only observed that she had a
little levity; and was too apt to find that those young men who had the most
handsome persons were likewise possessed of most wit and virtue.

THE NOSE

One morning Azora returned from a walk in a terrible passion, and
uttering the most violent exclamations. "What aileth thee," said he, "my
dear spouse? What is it that can thus have discomposed thee?"

"Alas," said she, "thou wouldst be as much enraged as I am hadst thou
seen what I have just beheld. I have been to comfort the young widow
Cosrou, who, within these two days, hath raised a tomb to her young
husband, near the rivulet that washes the skirts of this meadow. She vowed
to heaven, in the bitterness of her grief, to remain at this tomb while the
water of the rivulet should continue to run near it."

"Well," said Zadig, "she is an excellent woman, and loved her husband
with the most sincere affection."

"Ah," replied Azora, "didst thou but know in what she was employed
when I went to wait upon her!"

"In what, pray, beautiful Azora? Was she turning the course of the
rivulet?"

Azora broke out into such long invectives and loaded the young widow
with such bitter reproaches, that Zadig was far from being pleased with this
ostentation of virtue.

Zadig had a friend named Cador, one of those young men in whom his
wife discovered more probity and merit than in others. He made him his
confidant, and secured his fidelity as much as possible by a considerable
present. Azora, having passed two days with a friend in the country,
returned home on the third. The servants told her, with tears in their eyes,
that her husband died suddenly the night before; that they were afraid to
send her an account of this mournful event; and that they had just been
depositing his corpse in the tomb of his ancestors, at the end of the garden.
She wept, she tore her hair, and swore she would follow him to the grave.

In the evening Cador begged leave to wait upon her, and joined his tears
with hers. Next day they wept less, and dined together. Cador told her that
his friend had left him the greatest part of his estate; and that he should
think himself extremely happy in sharing his fortune with her. The lady
wept, fell into a passion, and at last became more mild and gentle. They sat
longer at supper than at dinner. They now talked with greater confidence.
Azora praised the deceased; but owned that he had many failings from
which Cador was free.

During supper Cador complained of a violent pain in his side. The lady,
greatly concerned, and eager to serve him, caused all kinds of essences to
be brought, with which she anointed him, to try if some of them might not
possibly ease him of his pain. She lamented that the great Hermes was not
still in Babylon. She even condescended to touch the side in which Cador
felt such exquisite pain.

"Art thou subject to this cruel disorder?" said she to him with a
compassionate air.

"It sometimes brings me," replied Cador, "to the brink of the grave; and
there is but one remedy that can give me relief, and that is to apply to my
side the nose of a man who is lately dead."

"A strange remedy, indeed!" said Azora.

"Not more strange," replied he, "than the sachels of Arnon against the
apoplexy." This reason, added to the great merit of the young man, at last
determined the lady.

"After all," says she, "when my husband shall cross the bridge Tchinavar,
in his journey to the other world, the angel Asrael will not refuse him a
passage because his nose is a little shorter in the second life than it was in
the first." She then took a razor, went to her husband's tomb, bedewed it
with her tears, and drew near to cut off the nose of Zadig, whom she found
extended at full length in the tomb. Zadig arose, holding his nose with one
hand, and, putting back the razor with the other, "Madam," said he, "don't
exclaim so violently against young Cosrou; the project of cutting off my
nose is equal to that of turning the course of a rivulet."

THE DOG AND THE HORSE

Zadig found by experience that the first month of marriage, as it is
written in the book of Zend, is the moon of honey, and that the second is the
moon of wormwood. He was some time after obliged to repudiate Azora,
who became too difficult to be pleased; and he then sought for happiness in
the study of nature. "No man," said he, "can be happier than a philosopher
who reads in this great book which God hath placed before our eyes. The
truths he discovers are his own, he nourishes and exalts his soul; he lives in
peace; he fears nothing from men; and his tender spouse will not come to
cut off his nose."

Possessed of these ideas he retired to a country house on the banks of the
Euphrates. There he did not employ himself in calculating how many inches
of water flow in a second of time under the arches of a bridge, or whether
there fell a cube line of rain in the month of the Mouse more than in the
month of the Sheep. He never dreamed of making silk of cobwebs, or
porcelain of broken bottles; but he chiefly studied the properties of plants
and animals; and soon acquired a sagacity that made him discover a
thousand differences where other men see nothing but uniformity.

One day, as he was walking near a little wood, he saw one of the queen's
eunuchs running toward him, followed by several officers, who appeared to
be in great perplexity, and who ran to and fro like men distracted, eagerly
searching for something they had lost of great value. "Young man," said the
first eunuch, "hast thou seen the queen's dog?" "It is a female," replied
Zadig. "Thou art in the right," returned the first eunuch. "It is a very small
she spaniel," added Zadig; "she has lately whelped; she limps on the left
forefoot, and has very long ears." "Thou hast seen her," said the first
eunuch, quite out of breath. "No," replied Zadig, "I have not seen her, nor
did I so much as know that the queen had a dog."

Exactly at the same time, by one of the common freaks of fortune, the
finest horse in the king's stable had escaped from the jockey in the plains of
Babylon. The principal huntsman and all the other officers ran after him
with as much eagerness and anxiety as the first eunuch had done after the

spaniel. The principal huntsman addressed himself to Zadig, and asked him
if he had not seen the king's horse passing by. "He is the fleetest horse in the
king's stable," replied Zadig; "he is five feet high, with very small hoofs,
and a tail three feet and a half in length; the studs on his bit are gold of
twenty-three carats, and his shoes are silver of eleven pennyweights."
"What way did he take? where is he?" demanded the chief huntsman. "I
have not seen him," replied Zadig, "and never heard talk of him before."

The principal huntsman and the first eunuch never doubted but that Zadig
had stolen the king's horse and the queen's spaniel. They therefore had him
conducted before the assembly of the grand desterham, who condemned
him to the knout, and to spend the rest of his days in Siberia. Hardly was
the sentence passed when the horse and the spaniel were both found. The
judges were reduced to the disagreeable necessity of reversing their
sentence; but they condemned Zadig to pay four hundred ounces of gold for
having said that he had not seen what he had seen. This fine he was obliged
to pay; after which he was permitted to plead his cause before the counsel
of the grand desterham, when he spoke to the following effect:

"Ye stars of justice, abyss of sciences, mirrors of truth, who have the
weight of lead, the hardness of iron, the splendor of the diamond, and many
properties of gold: Since I am permitted to speak before this august
assembly, I swear to you by Oramades that I have never seen the queen's
respectable spaniel, nor the sacred horse of the king of kings. The truth of
the matter was as follows: I was walking toward the little wood, where I
afterwards met the venerable eunuch, and the most illustrious chief
huntsman. I observed on the sand the traces of an animal, and could easily
perceive them to be those of a little dog. The light and long furrows
impressed on little eminences of sand between the marks of the paws
plainly discovered that it was a female, whose dugs were hanging down,
and that therefore she must have whelped a few days before. Other traces of
a different kind, that always appeared to have gently brushed the surface of
the sand near the marks of the forefeet, showed me that she had very long
ears; and as I remarked that there was always a slighter impression made on
the sand by one foot than the other three, I found that the spaniel of our
august queen was a little lame, if I may be allowed the expression.

"With regard to the horse of the king of kings, you will be pleased to
know that, walking in the lanes of this wood, I observed the marks of a
horse's shoes, all at equal distances. This must be a horse, said I to myself,
that gallops excellently. The dust on the trees in the road that was but seven
feet wide was a little brushed off, at the distance of three feet and a half
from the middle of the road. This horse, said I, has a tail three feet and a
half long, which being whisked to the right and left, has swept away the
dust. I observed under the trees that formed an arbor five feet in height, that
the leaves of the branches were newly fallen; from whence I inferred that
the horse had touched them, and that he must therefore be five feet high. As
to his bit, it must be gold of twenty-three carats, for he had rubbed its
bosses against a stone which I knew to be a touchstone, and which I have
tried. In a word, from the marks made by his shoes on flints of another kind,
I concluded that he was shod with silver eleven deniers fine."

All the judges admired Zadig for his acute and profound discernment.
The news of this speech was carried even to the king and queen. Nothing
was talked of but Zadig in the antechambers, the chambers, and the cabinet;
and though many of the magi were of opinion that he ought to be burned as
a sorcerer, the king ordered his officers to restore him the four hundred
ounces of gold which he had been obliged to pay. The register, the
attorneys, and bailiffs, went to his house with great formality, to carry him
back his four hundred ounces. They only retained three hundred and ninety-
eight of them to defray the expenses of justice; and their servants demanded
their fees.

Zadig saw how extremely dangerous it sometimes is to appear too
knowing, and therefore resolved that on the next occasion of the like nature
he would not tell what he had seen.

Such an opportunity soon offered. A prisoner of state made his escape,
and passed under the window of Zadig's house. Zadig was examined and
made no answer. But it was proved that he had looked at the prisoner from
this window. For this crime he was condemned to pay five hundred ounces
of gold; and, according to the polite custom of Babylon, he thanked his
judges for their indulgence.

"Great God!" said he to himself, "what a misfortune it is to walk in a
wood through which the queen's spaniel or the king's horse has passed! how
dangerous to look out at a window! and how difficult to be happy in this
life!"

THE ENVIOUS MAN

Zadig resolved to comfort himself by philosophy and friendship for the
evils he had suffered from fortune. He had in the suburbs of Babylon a
house elegantly furnished, in which he assembled all the arts and all the
pleasures worthy the pursuit of a gentleman. In the morning his library was
open to the learned. In the evening his table was surrounded by good
company. But he soon found what very dangerous guests these men of
letters are. A warm dispute arose on one of Zoroaster's laws, which forbids
the eating of a griffin. "Why," said some of them, "prohibit the eating of a
griffin, if there is no such an animal in nature?" "There must necessarily be
such an animal," said the others, "since Zoroaster forbids us to eat it." Zadig
would fain have reconciled them by saying, "If there are no griffins, we
cannot possibly eat them; and thus either way we shall obey Zoroaster."

A learned man who had composed thirteen volumes on the properties of
the griffin, and was besides the chief theurgite, hastened away to accuse
Zadig before one of the principal magi, named Yebor, the greatest
blockhead and therefore the greatest fanatic among the Chaldeans. This
man would have impaled Zadig to do honors to the sun, and would then
have recited the breviary of Zoroaster with greater satisfaction. The friend
Cador (a friend is better than a hundred priests) went to Yebor, and said to
him, "Long live the sun and the griffins; beware of punishing Zadig; he is a
saint; he has griffins in his inner court and does not eat them; and his
accuser is an heretic, who dares to maintain that rabbits have cloven feet
and are not unclean."

"Well," said Yebor, shaking his bald pate, "we must impale Zadig for
having thought contemptuously of griffins, and the other for having spoken
disrespectfully of rabbits." Cador hushed up the affair by means of a maid
of honor with whom he had a love affair, and who had great interest in the
College of the Magi. Nobody was impaled.

This levity occasioned a great murmuring among some of the doctors,
who from thence predicted the fall of Babylon. "Upon what does happiness
depend?" said Zadig. "I am persecuted by everything in the world, even on

account of beings that have no existence." He cursed those men of learning,
and resolved for the future to live with none but good company.

He assembled at his house the most worthy men and the most beautiful
ladies of Babylon. He gave them delicious suppers, often preceded by
concerts of music, and always animated by polite conversation, from which
he knew how to banish that affectation of wit which is the surest method of
preventing it entirely, and of spoiling the pleasure of the most agreeable
society. Neither the choice of his friends, nor that of the dishes was made by
vanity; for in everything he preferred the substance to the shadow; and by
these means he procured that real respect to which he did not aspire.

Opposite to his house lived one Arimazes, a man whose deformed
countenance was but a faint picture of his still more deformed mind. His
heart was a mixture of malice, pride, and envy. Having never been able to
succeed in any of his undertakings, he revenged himself on all around him
by loading them with the blackest calumnies. Rich as he was, he found it
difficult to procure a set of flatterers. The rattling of the chariots that
entered Zadig's court in the evening filled him with uneasiness; the sound of
his praises enraged him still more. He sometimes went to Zadig's house,
and sat down at table without being desired; where he spoiled all the
pleasure of the company, as the harpies are said to infect the viands they
touch. It happened that one day he took it in his head to give an
entertainment to a lady, who, instead of accepting it, went to sup with
Zadig. At another time, as he was talking with Zadig at court, a minister of
state came up to them, and invited Zadig to supper without inviting
Arimazes. The most implacable hatred has seldom a more solid foundation.
This man, who in Babylon was called the Envious, resolved to ruin Zadig
because he was called the Happy. "The opportunity of doing mischief
occurs a hundred times in a day, and that of doing good but once a year," as
sayeth the wise Zoroaster.

The envious man went to see Zadig, who was walking in his garden with
two friends and a lady, to whom he said many gallant things, without any
other intention than that of saying them. The conversation turned upon a
war which the king had just brought to a happy conclusion against the
prince of Hircania, his vassal. Zadig, who had signalized his courage in this

short war, bestowed great praises on the king, but greater still on the lady.
He took out his pocketbook, and wrote four lines extempore, which he gave
to this amiable person to read. His friends begged they might see them; but
modesty, or rather a well-regulated self love, would not allow him to grant
their request. He knew that extemporary verses are never approved of by
any but by the person in whose honor they are written. He therefore tore in
two the leaf on which he had wrote them, and threw both the pieces into a
thicket of rosebushes, where the rest of the company sought for them in
vain. A slight shower falling soon after obliged them to return to the house.
The envious man, who stayed in the garden, continued the search till at last
he found a piece of the leaf. It had been torn in such a manner that each half
of a line formed a complete sense, and even a verse of a shorter measure;
but what was still more surprising, these short verses were found to contain
the most injurious reflections on the king. They ran thus:

To flagrant crimes.
His crown he owes.
To peaceful times.
The worst of foes.

The envious man was now happy for the first time of his life. He had it in
his power to ruin a person of virtue and merit. Filled with this fiendlike joy,
he found means to convey to the king the satire written by the hand of
Zadig, who, together with the lady and his two friends, was thrown into
prison.

His trial was soon finished, without his being permitted to speak for
himself. As he was going to receive his sentence, the envious man threw
himself in his way and told him with a loud voice that his verses were good
for nothing. Zadig did not value himself on being a good poet; but it filled
him with inexpressible concern to find that he was condemned for high
treason; and that the fair lady and his two friends were confined in prison
for a crime of which they were not guilty. He was not allowed to speak
because his writing spoke for him. Such was the law of Babylon.
Accordingly he was conducted to the place of execution, through an
immense crowd of spectators, who durst not venture to express their pity for
him, but who carefully examined his countenance to see if he died with a

good grace. His relations alone were inconsolable, for they could not
succeed to his estate. Three fourths of his wealth were confiscated into the
king's treasury, and the other fourth was given to the envious man.

Just as he was preparing for death the king's parrot flew from its cage and
alighted on a rosebush in Zadig's garden. A peach had been driven thither
by the wind from a neighboring tree, and had fallen on a piece of the
written leaf of the pocketbook to which it stuck. The bird carried off the
peach and the paper and laid them on the king's knee. The king took up the
paper with great eagerness and read the words, which formed no sense, and
seemed to be the endings of verses. He loved poetry; and there is always
some mercy to be expected from a prince of that disposition. The adventure
of the parrot set him a-thinking.

The queen, who remembered what had been written on the piece of
Zadig's pocketbook, caused it to be brought. They compared the two pieces
together and found them to tally exactly; they then read the verses as Zadig
had wrote them.

TYRANTS ARE PRONE TO FLAGRANT CRIMES.
TO CLEMENCY HIS CROWN HE OWES.
TO CONCORD AND TO PEACEFUL TIMES.
LOVE ONLY IS THE WORST OF FOES.

The king gave immediate orders that Zadig should be brought before
him, and that his two friends and the lady should be set at liberty. Zadig fell
prostrate on the ground before the king and queen; humbly begged their
pardon for having made such bad verses and spoke with so much propriety,
wit, and good sense, that their majesties desired they might see him again.
He did himself that honor, and insinuated himself still farther into their
good graces. They gave him all the wealth of the envious man; but Zadig
restored him back the whole of it. And this instance of generosity gave no
other pleasure to the envious man than that of having preserved his estate.

The king's esteem for Zadig increased every day. He admitted him into
all his parties of pleasure, and consulted him in all affairs of state. From that
time the queen began to regard him with an eye of tenderness that might

one day prove dangerous to herself, to the king, her august comfort, to
Zadig, and to the kingdom in general. Zadig now began to think that
happiness was not so unattainable as he had formerly imagined.

THE GENEROUS

The time now arrived for celebrating a grand festival, which returned
every five years. It was a custom in Babylon solemnly to declare at the end
of every five years which of the citizens had performed the most generous
action. The grandees and the magi were the judges. The first satrap, who
was charged with the government of the city, published the most noble
actions that had passed under his administration. The competition was
decided by votes; and the king pronounced the sentence. People came to
this solemnity from the extremities of the earth. The conqueror received
from the monarch's hand a golden cup adorned with precious stones, his
majesty at the same time making him this compliment:

"Receive this reward of thy generosity, and may the gods grant me many
subjects like to thee."

This memorable day being come, the king appeared on his throne,
surrounded by the grandees, the magi, and the deputies of all nations that
came to these games, where glory was acquired not by the swiftness of
horses, nor by strength of body, but by virtue. The first satrap recited, with
an audible voice, such actions as might entitle the authors of them to this
invaluable prize. He did not mention the greatness of soul with which Zadig
had restored the envious man his fortune, because it was not judged to be an
action worthy of disputing the prize.

He first presented a judge who, having made a citizen lose a considerable
cause by a mistake, for which, after all, he was not accountable, had given
him the whole of his own estate, which was just equal to what the other had
lost.

He next produced a young man who, being desperately in love with a
lady whom he was going to marry, had yielded her up to his friend, whose
passion for her had almost brought him to the brink of the grave, and at the
same time had given him the lady's fortune.

He afterwards produced a soldier who, in the wars of Hircania, had given
a still more noble instance of generosity. A party of the enemy having
seized his mistress, he fought in her defense with great intrepidity. At that
very instant he was informed that another party, at the distance of a few
paces, were carrying off his mother; he therefore left his mistress with tears
in his eyes and flew to the assistance of his mother. At last he returned to
the dear object of his love and found her expiring. He was just going to
plunge his sword in his own bosom; but his mother remonstrating against
such a desperate deed, and telling him that he was the only support of her
life, he had the courage to endure to live.

The judges were inclined to give the prize to the soldier. But the king
took up the discourse and said: "The action of the soldier, and those of the
other two, are doubtless very great, but they have nothing in them
surprising. Yesterday Zadig performed an action that filled me with wonder.
I had a few days before disgraced Coreb, my minister and favorite. I
complained of him in the most violent and bitter terms; all my courtiers
assured me that I was too gentle and seemed to vie with each other in
speaking ill of Coreb. I asked Zadig what he thought of him, and he had the
courage to commend him. I have read in our histories of many people who
have atoned for an error by the surrender of their fortune; who have
resigned a mistress; or preferred a mother to the object of their affection;
but never before did I hear of a courtier who spoke favorably of a disgraced
minister that labored under the displeasure of his sovereign. I give to each
of those whose generous actions have been now recited twenty thousand
pieces of gold; but the cup I give to Zadig."

"May it please your majesty," said Zadig, "thyself alone deservest the
cup; thou hast performed an action of all others the most uncommon and
meritorious, since, notwithstanding thy being a powerful king, thou wast
not offended at thy slave when he presumed to oppose thy passion." The
king and Zadig were equally the object of admiration. The judge, who had
given his estate to his client; the lover, who had resigned his mistress to a
friend; and the soldier, who had preferred the safety of his mother to that of
his mistress, received the king's presents and saw their names enrolled in
the catalogue of generous men. Zadig had the cup, and the king acquired the
reputation of a good prince, which he did not long enjoy. The day was