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A Selection from the Writings of Guy De Maupassant, Vol. I

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Title: A Selection from the Writings of Guy De Maupassant, Vol. I

Author: Guy de Maupassant

Author of introduction, etc.: Robert Arnot
        Paul Bourget


        
Release date: July 1, 1996 [eBook #593]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/593

Credits: Produced by Charles Keller.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SELECTION FROM THE WRITINGS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT, VOL. I ***




Produced by Charles Keller.  HTML version by Al Haines.










A SELECTION from the WRITINGS of GUY DE MAUPASSANT




SHORT STORIES of the TRAGEDY AND COMEDY OF LIFE

WITH A CRITICAL PREFACE BY PAUL BOURGET of the French Academy

AND AN INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT ARNOT, M.A.

VOL. I {of III ??}


TABLE OF CONTENTS.[*]

VOLUME I.

   1.  MADEMOISELLE FIFI
   2.  AN AFFAIR OF STATE
   3.  THE ARTIST
   4.  THE HORLA
   5.  MISS HARRIET
   6.  THE HOLE
   7.  LOVE
   8.  THE INN
   9.  A FAMILY
  10.  BELLFLOWER
  11.  WHO KNOWS?
  12.  THE DEVIL
  13.  EPIPHANY
  14.  SIMON'S PAPA
  15.  WAITER, A "BOCK"
  16.  THE SEQUEL TO A DIVORCE
  17.  THE MAD WOMAN
  18.  IN VARIOUS ROLES
  19.  THE FALSE GEMS
  20.  COUNTESS SATAN
  21.  THE COLONEL'S IDEAS
  22.  TWO LITTLE SOLDIERS
  23.  GHOSTS
  24.  WAS IT A DREAM?
  25.  THE DIARY OF A MADMAN
  26.  AN UNFORTUNATE LIKENESS
  27.  A COUNTRY EXCURSION


[*] At the close of the last volume will be found a complete list of
the French Titles of De Maupassant's writings, with their English
equivalents.




GUY DE MAUPASSANT

Of the French writers of romance of the latter part of the nineteenth
century no one made a reputation as quickly as did Guy de Maupassant.
Not one has preserved that reputation with more ease, not only during
life, but in death. None so completely hides his personality in his
glory. In an epoch of the utmost publicity, in which the most
insignificant deeds of a celebrated man are spied, recorded, and
commented on, the author of "Boule de Suif," of "Pierre et Jean," of
"Notre Coeur," found a way of effacing his personality in his work.

Of De Maupassant we know that he was born in Normandy about 1850; that
he was the favorite pupil, if one may so express it, the literary
protege, of Gustave Flaubert; that he made his debut late in 1880, with
a novel inserted in a small collection, published by Emile Zola and his
young friends, under the title: "The Soirees of Medan"; that
subsequently he did not fail to publish stories and romances every year
up to 1891, when a disease of the brain struck him down in the fullness
of production; and that he died, finally, in 1893, without having
recovered his reason.

We know, too, that he passionately loved a strenuous physical life and
long journeys, particularly long journeys upon the sea. He owned a
little sailing yacht, named after one of his books, "Bel-Ami," in which
he used to sojourn for weeks and months. These meager details are
almost the only ones that have been gathered as food for the curiosity
of the public.

I leave the legendary side, which is always in evidence in the case of
a celebrated man,--that gossip, for example, which avers that
Maupassant was a high liver and a worldling. The very number of his
volumes is a protest to the contrary. One could not write so large a
number of pages in so small a number of years without the virtue of
industry, a virtue incompatible with habits of dissipation. This does
not mean that the writer of these great romances had no love for
pleasure and had not tasted the world, but that for him these were
secondary things. The psychology of his work ought, then, to find an
interpretation other than that afforded by wholly false or exaggerated
anecdotes. I wish to indicate here how this work, illumined by the
three or four positive data which I have given, appears to me to demand
it.

And first, what does that anxiety to conceal his personality prove,
carried as it was to such an extreme degree? The answer rises
spontaneously in the minds of those who have studied closely the
history of literature. The absolute silence about himself, preserved by
one whose position among us was that of a Tourgenief, or of a Merimee,
and of a Moliere or a Shakespeare among the classic great, reveals, to
a person of instinct, a nervous sensibility of extreme depth. There are
many chances for an artist of his kind, however timid, or for one who
has some grief, to show the depth of his emotion. To take up again only
two of the names just cited, this was the case with the author of
"Terres Vierges," and with the writer of "Colomba."

A somewhat minute analysis of the novels and romances of Maupassant
would suffice to demonstrate, even if we did not know the nature of the
incidents which prompted them, that he also suffered from an excess of
nervous emotionalism. Nine times out of ten, what is the subject of
these stories to which freedom of style gives the appearance of health?
A tragic episode. I cite, at random, "Mademoiselle Fifi," "La Petite
Roque," "Inutile Beaute," "Le Masque," "Le Horla," "L'Epreuve," "Le
Champ d'Oliviers," among the novels, and among the romances, "Une Vie,"
"Pierre et Jean," "Fort comme la Mort," "Notre Coeur." His imagination
aims to represent the human being as imprisoned in a situation at once
insupportable and inevitable. The spell of this grief and trouble
exerts such a power upon the writer that he ends stories commenced in
pleasantry with some sinister drama. Let me instance "Saint-Antonin,"
"A Midnight Revel," "The Little Cask," and "Old Amable." You close the
book at the end of these vigorous sketches, and feel how surely they
point to constant suffering on the part of him who executed them.

This is the leading trait in the literary physiognomy of Maupassant, as
it is the leading and most profound trait in the psychology of his
work, viz, that human life is a snare laid by nature, where joy is
always changed to misery, where noble words and the highest professions
of faith serve the lowest plans and the most cruel egoism, where
chagrin, crime, and folly are forever on hand to pursue implacably our
hopes, nullify our virtues, and annihilate our wisdom. But this is not
the whole.

Maupassant has been called a literary nihilist--but (and this is the
second trait of his singular genius) in him nihilism finds itself
coexistent with an animal energy so fresh and so intense that for a
long time it deceives the closest observer. In an eloquent discourse,
pronounced over his premature grave, Emile Zola well defined this
illusion: "We congratulated him," said he, "upon that health which
seemed unbreakable, and justly credited him with the soundest
constitution of our band, as well as with the clearest mind and the
sanest reason. It was then that this frightful thunderbolt destroyed
him."

It is not exact to say that the lofty genius of De Maupassant was that
of an absolutely sane man. We comprehend it to-day, and, on re-reading
him, we find traces everywhere of his final malady. But it is exact to
say that this wounded genius was, by a singular circumstance, the
genius of a robust man. A physiologist would without doubt explain this
anomaly by the coexistence of a nervous lesion, light at first, with a
muscular, athletic temperament. Whatever the cause, the effect is
undeniable. The skilled and dainty pessimism of De Maupassant was
accompanied by a vigor and physique very unusual. His sensations are in
turn those of a hunter and of a sailor, who have, as the old French
saying expressively puts it, "swift foot, eagle eye," and who are
attuned to all the whisperings of nature.

The only confidences that he has ever permitted his pen to tell of the
intoxication of a free, animal existence are in the opening pages of
the story entitled "Mouche," where he recalls, among the sweetest
memories of his youth, his rollicking canoe parties upon the Seine, and
in the description in "La Vie Errante" of a night spent on the
sea,--"to be alone upon the water under the sky, through a warm
night,"--in which he speaks of the happiness of those "who receive
sensations through the whole surface of their flesh, as they do through
their eyes, their mouth, their ears, and sense of smell."

His unique and too scanty collection of verses, written in early youth,
contains the two most fearless, I was going to say the most ingenuous,
paeans, perhaps, that have been written since the Renaissance: "At the
Water's Edge" (Au Bord de l'Eau) and the "Rustic Venus" (La Venus
Rustique). But here is a paganism whose ardor, by a contrast which
brings up the ever present duality of his nature, ends in an
inexpressible shiver of scorn:

     "We look at each other, astonished, immovable,
        And both are so pale that it makes us fear."
      *      *      *      *      *
     "Alas! through all our senses slips life itself away."


This ending of the "Water's Edge" is less sinister than the murder and
the vision of horror which terminate the pantheistic hymn of the
"Rustic Venus." Considered as documents revealing the cast of mind of
him who composed them, these two lyrical essays are especially
significant, since they were spontaneous. They explain why De
Maupassant, in the early years of production, voluntarily chose, as the
heroes of his stories, creatures very near to primitive existence,
peasants, sailors, poachers, girls of the farm, and the source of the
vigor with which he describes these rude figures. The robustness of his
animalism permits him fully to imagine all the simple sensations of
these beings, while his pessimism, which tinges these sketches of
brutal customs with an element of delicate scorn, preserves him from
coarseness. It is this constant and involuntary antithesis which gives
unique value to those Norman scenes which have contributed so much to
his glory. It corresponds to, those two contradictory tendencies in
literary art, which seek always to render life in motion with the most
intense coloring, and still to make more and more subtle the impression
of this life. How is one ambition to be satisfied at the same time as
the other, since all gain in color and movement brings about a
diminution of sensibility, and conversely? The paradox of his
constitution permitted to Maupassant this seemingly impossible accord,
aided as he was by an intellect whose influence was all powerful upon
his development--the writer I mention above, Gustave Flaubert.

These meetings of a pupil and a master, both great, are indeed rare.
They present, in fact, some troublesome conditions, the first of which
is a profound analogy between two types of thought. There must have
been, besides, a reciprocity of affection, which does not often obtain
between a renowned senior who is growing old and an obscure junior,
whose renown is increasing. From generation to generation, envy
reascends no less than she redescends. For the honor of French men of
letters, let us add that this exceptional phenomenon has manifested
itself twice in the nineteenth century. Merimee, whom I have also
named, received from Stendhal, at twenty, the same benefits that
Maupassant received from Flaubert.

The author of "Une Vie" and the writer of "Clara Jozul" resemble each
other, besides, in a singular and analogous circumstance. Both achieved
renown at the first blow, and by a masterpiece which they were able to
equal but never surpass. Both were misanthropes early in life, and
practised to the end the ancient advice that the disciple of Beyle
carried upon his seal: [Greek: memneso apistein]--"Remember to
distrust." And, at the same time, both had delicate, tender hearts
under this affectation of cynicism, both were excellent sons,
irreproachable friends, indulgent masters, and both were idolized by
their inferiors. Both were worldly, yet still loved a wanderer's life;
both joined to a constant taste for luxury an irresistible desire for
solitude. Both belonged to the extreme left of the literature of their
epoch, but kept themselves from excess and used with a judgment
marvelously sure the sounder principles of their school. They knew how
to remain lucid and classic, in taste as much as in form--Merimee
through all the audacity of a fancy most exotic, and Maupassant in the
realism of the most varied and exact observation. At a little distance
they appear to be two patterns, identical in certain traits, of the
same family of minds, and Tourgenief, who knew and loved the one and
the other, never failed to class them as brethren.

They are separated, however, by profound differences, which perhaps
belong less to their nature than to that of the masters from whom they
received their impulses: Stendhal, so alert, so mobile, after a youth
passed in war and a ripe age spent in vagabond journeys, rich in
experiences, immediate and personal; Flaubert so poor in direct
impressions, so paralyzed by his health, by his family, by his theories
even, and so rich in reflections, for the most part solitary.

Among the theories of the anatomist of "Madame Bovary," there are two
which appear without ceasing in his Correspondence, under one form or
another, and these are the ones which are most strongly evident in the
art of De Maupassant. We now see the consequences which were inevitable
by reason of them, endowed as Maupassant was with a double power of
feeling life bitterly, and at the same time with so much of animal
force. The first theory bears upon the choice of personages and the
story of the romance, the second upon the character of the style. The
son of a physician, and brought up in the rigors of scientific method,
Flaubert believed this method to be efficacious in art as in science.
For instance, in the writing of a romance, he seemed to be as
scientific as in the development of a history of customs, in which the
essential is absolute exactness and local color. He therefore naturally
wished to make the most scrupulous and detailed observation of the
environment.

Thus is explained the immense labor in preparation which his stories
cost him--the story of "Madame Bovary," of "The Sentimental Education,"
and "Bouvard and Pecuchet," documents containing as much minutiae as
his historical stories. Beyond everything he tried to select details
that were eminently significant. Consequently he was of the opinion
that the romance writer should discard all that lessened this
significance, that is, extraordinary events and singular heroes. The
exceptional personage, it seemed to him, should be suppressed, as
should also high dramatic incident, since, produced by causes less
general, these have a range more restricted. The truly scientific
romance writer, proposing to paint a certain class, will attain his end
more effectively if he incarnate personages of the middle order, and,
consequently, paint traits common to that class. And not only
middle-class traits, but middle-class adventures.

From this point of view, examine the three great romances of the Master
from Rouen, and you will see that he has not lost sight of this first
and greatest principle of his art, any more than he has of the second,
which was that these documents should be drawn up in prose of
absolutely perfect technique. We know with what passionate care he
worked at his phrases, and how indefatigably he changed them over and
over again. Thus he satisfied that instinct of beauty which was born of
his romantic soul, while he gratified the demand of truth which inhered
from his scientific training by his minute and scrupulous exactness.

The theory of the mean of truth on one side, as the foundation of the
subject,--"the humble truth," as he termed it at the beginning of "Une
Vie,"--and of the agonizing of beauty on the other side, in
composition, determines the whole use that Maupassant made of his
literary gifts. It helped to make more intense and more systematic that
dainty yet dangerous pessimism which in him was innate. The
middle-class personage, in wearisome society like ours, is always a
caricature, and the happenings are nearly always vulgar. When one
studies a great number of them, one finishes by looking at humanity
from the angle of disgust and despair. The philosophy of the romances
and novels of De Maupassant is so continuously and profoundly
surprising that one becomes overwhelmed by it. It reaches limitation;
it seems to deny that man is susceptible to grandeur, or that motives
of a superior order can uplift and ennoble the soul, but it does so
with a sorrow that is profound. All that portion of the sentimental and
moral world which in itself is the highest remains closed to it.

In revenge, this philosophy finds itself in a relation cruelly exact
with the half-civilization of our day. By that I mean the poorly
educated individual who has rubbed against knowledge enough to justify
a certain egoism, but who is too poor in faculty to conceive an ideal,
and whose native grossness is corrupted beyond redemption. Under his
blouse, or under his coat--whether he calls himself Renardet, as does
the foul assassin in "Petite Roque," or Duroy, as does the sly hero of
"Bel-Ami," or Bretigny, as does the vile seducer of "Mont Oriol," or
Cesaire, the son of Old Amable in the novel of that name,--this
degraded type abounds in Maupassant's stories, evoked with a ferocity
almost jovial where it meets the robustness of temperament which I have
pointed out, a ferocity which gives them a reality more exact still
because the half-civilized person is often impulsive and, in
consequence, the physical easily predominates. There, as elsewhere, the
degenerate is everywhere a degenerate who gives the impression of being
an ordinary man.

There are quantities of men of this stamp in large cities. No writer
has felt and expressed this complex temperament with more justice than
De Maupassant, and, as he was an infinitely careful observer of milieu
and landscape and all that constitutes a precise middle distance, his
novels can be considered an irrefutable record of the social classes
which he studied at a certain time and along certain lines. The Norman
peasant and the Provencal peasant, for example; also the small
officeholder, the gentleman of the provinces, the country squire, the
clubman of Paris, the journalist of the boulevard, the doctor at the
spa, the commercial artist, and, on the feminine side, the servant
girl, the working girl, the demigrisette, the street girl, rich or
poor, the gallant lady of the city and of the provinces, and the
society woman--these are some of the figures that he has painted at
many sittings, and whom he used to such effect that the novels and
romances in which they are painted have come to be history. Just as it
is impossible to comprehend the Rome of the Caesars without the work of
Petronius, so is it impossible to fully comprehend the France of
1850-90 without these stories of Maupassant. They are no more the whole
image of the country than the "Satyricon" was the whole image of Rome,
but what their author has wished to paint, he has painted to the life
and with a brush that is graphic in the extreme.

If Maupassant had only painted, in general fashion, the characters and
the phase of literature mentioned he would not be distinguished from
other writers of the group called "naturalists." His true glory is in
the extraordinary superiority of his art. He did not invent it, and his
method is not alien to that of "Madame Bovary," but he knew how to give
it a suppleness, a variety, and a freedom which were always wanting in
Flaubert. The latter, in his best pages, is always strained. To use the
expressive metaphor of the Greek athletes, he "smells of the oil." When
one recalls that when attacked by hysteric epilepsy, Flaubert postponed
the crisis of the terrible malady by means of sedatives, this strained
atmosphere of labor--I was going to say of stupor--which pervades his
work is explained. He is an athlete, a runner, but one who drags at his
feet a terrible weight. He is in the race only for the prize of effort,
an effort of which every motion reveals the intensity.

Maupassant, on the other hand, if he suffered from a nervous lesion,
gave no sign of it, except in his heart. His intelligence was bright
and lively, and above all, his imagination, served by senses always on
the alert, preserved for some years an astonishing freshness of direct
vision. If his art was due to Flaubert, it is no more belittling to him
than if one call Raphael an imitator of Perugini.

Like Flaubert, he excelled in composing a story, in distributing the
facts with subtle gradation, in bringing in at the end of a familiar
dialogue something startlingly dramatic; but such composition, with
him, seems easy, and while the descriptions are marvelously well
established in his stories, the reverse is true of Flaubert's, which
always appear a little veneered. Maupassant's phrasing, however
dramatic it may be, remains easy and flowing.

Maupassant always sought for large and harmonious rhythm in his
deliberate choice of terms, always chose sound, wholesome language,
with a constant care for technical beauty. Inheriting from his master
an instrument already forged, he wielded it with a surer skill. In the
quality of his style, at once so firm and clear, so gorgeous yet so
sober, so supple and so firm, he equals the writers of the seventeenth
century. His method, so deeply and simply French, succeeds in giving an
indescribable "tang" to his descriptions. If observation from nature
imprints upon his tales the strong accent of reality, the prose in
which they are shrined so conforms to the genius of the race as to
smack of the soil.

It is enough that the critics of to-day place Guy de Maupassant among
our classic writers. He has his place in the ranks of pure French
genius, with the Regniers, the La Fontaines, the Molieres. And those
signs of secret ill divined everywhere under this wholesome prose
surround it for those who knew and loved him with a pathos that is
inexpressible.      {signature}



INTRODUCTION

BORN in the middle year of the nineteenth century, and fated
unfortunately never to see its close, Guy de Maupassant was probably
the most versatile and brilliant among the galaxy of novelists who
enriched French literature between the years 1800 and 1900. Poetry,
drama, prose of short and sustained effort, and volumes of travel and
description, each sparkling with the same minuteness of detail and
brilliancy of style, flowed from his pen during the twelve years of his
literary life.

Although his genius asserted itself in youth, he had the patience of
the true artist, spending his early manhood in cutting and polishing
the facets of his genius under the stern though paternal mentorship of
Gustave Flaubert. Not until he had attained the age of thirty did he
venture on publication, challenging criticism for the first time with a
volume of poems.

Many and various have been the judgments passed upon Maupassant's work.
But now that the perspective of time is lengthening, enabling us to
form a more deliberate, and therefore a juster, view of his complete
achievement, we are driven irresistibly to the conclusion that the
force that shaped and swayed Maupassant's prose writings was the
conviction that in life there could be no phase so noble or so mean, so
honorable or so contemptible, so lofty or so low as to be unworthy of
chronicling,--no groove of human virtue or fault, success or failure,
wisdom or folly that did not possess its own peculiar psychological
aspect and therefore demanded analysis.

To this analysis Maupassant brought a facile and dramatic pen, a
penetration as searching as a probe, and a power of psychological
vision that in its minute detail, now pathetic, now ironical, in its
merciless revelation of the hidden springs of the human heart, whether
of aristocrat, bourgeois, peasant, or priest, allow one to call him a
Meissonier in words.

The school of romantic realism which was founded by Merimee and Balzac
found its culmination in De Maupassant. He surpassed his mentor,
Flaubert, in the breadth and vividness of his work, and one of the
greatest of modern French critics has recorded the deliberate opinion,
that of all Taine's pupils Maupassant had the greatest command of
language and the most finished and incisive style. Robust in
imagination and fired with natural passion, his psychological curiosity
kept him true to human nature, while at the same time his mental eye,
when fixed upon the most ordinary phases of human conduct, could see
some new motive or aspect of things hitherto unnoticed by the careless
crowd.

It has been said by casual critics that Maupassant lacked one quality
indispensable to the production of truly artistic work, viz: an
absolutely normal, that is, moral, point of view. The answer to this
criticism is obvious. No dissector of the gamut of human passion and
folly in all its tones could present aught that could be called new, if
ungifted with a viewpoint totally out of the ordinary plane. Cold and
merciless in the use of this point de vue De Maupassant undoubtedly is,
especially in such vivid depictions of love, both physical and
maternal, as we find in "L'histoire d'une fille de ferme" and "La femme
de Paul." But then the surgeon's scalpel never hesitates at giving
pain, and pain is often the road to health and ease. Some of
Maupassant's short stories are sermons more forcible than any moral
dissertation could ever be.

Of De Maupassant's sustained efforts "Une Vie" may bear the palm. This
romance has the distinction of having changed Tolstoi from an adverse
critic into a warm admirer of the author. To quote the Russian moralist
upon the book:

"'Une Vie' is a romance of the best type, and in my judgment the
greatest that has been produced by any French writer since Victor Hugo
penned 'Les Miserables.' Passing over the force and directness of the
narrative, I am struck by the intensity, the grace, and the insight
with which the writer treats the new aspects of human nature which he
finds in the life he describes."

And as if gracefully to recall a former adverse criticism, Tolstoi adds:

"I find in the book, in almost equal strength, the three cardinal
qualities essential to great work, viz: moral purpose, perfect style,
and absolute sincerity.... Maupassant is a man whose vision has
penetrated the silent depths of human life, and from that
vantage-ground interprets the struggle of humanity."

"Bel-Ami" appeared almost two years after "Une Vie," that is to say,
about 1885. Discussed and criticised as it has been, it is in reality a
satire, an indignant outburst against the corruption of society which
in the story enables an ex-soldier, devoid of conscience, honor, even
of the commonest regard for others, to gain wealth and rank. The
purport of the story is clear to those who recognize the ideas that
governed Maupassant's work, and even the hasty reader or critic, on
reading "Mont Oriol," which was published two years later and is based
on a combination of the motifs which inspired "Une Vie" and "Bel-Ami,"
will reconsider former hasty judgments, and feel, too, that beneath the
triumph of evil which calls forth Maupassant's satiric anger there lies
the substratum on which all his work is founded, viz: the persistent,
ceaseless questioning of a soul unable to reconcile or explain the
contradiction between love in life and inevitable death. Who can read
in "Bel-Ami" the terribly graphic description of the consumptive
journalist's demise, his frantic clinging to life, and his refusal to
credit the slow and merciless approach of death, without feeling that
the question asked at Naishapur many centuries ago is still waiting for
the solution that is always promised but never comes?

In the romances which followed, dating from 1888 to 1890, a sort of
calm despair seems to have settled down upon De Maupassant's attitude
toward life. Psychologically acute as ever, and as perfect in style and
sincerity as before, we miss the note of anger. Fatality is the
keynote, and yet, sounding low, we detect a genuine subtone of sorrow.
Was it a prescience of 1893? So much work to be done, so much work
demanded of him, the world of Paris, in all its brilliant and
attractive phases, at his feet, and yet--inevitable, ever advancing
death, with the question of life still unanswered.

This may account for some of the strained situations we find in his
later romances. Vigorous in frame and hearty as he was, the atmosphere
of his mental processes must have been vitiated to produce the dainty
but dangerous pessimism that pervades some of his later work. This was
partly a consequence of his honesty and partly of mental despair. He
never accepted other people's views on the questions of life. He looked
into such problems for himself, arriving at the truth, as it appeared
to him, by the logic of events, often finding evil where he wished to
find good, but never hoodwinking himself or his readers by adapting or
distorting the reality of things to suit a preconceived idea.

Maupassant was essentially a worshiper of the eternal feminine. He was
persuaded that without the continual presence of the gentler sex man's
existence would be an emotionally silent wilderness. No other French
writer has described and analyzed so minutely and comprehensively the
many and various motives and moods that shape the conduct of a woman in
life. Take for instance the wonderfully subtle analysis of a woman's
heart as wife and mother that we find in "Une Vie." Could aught be more
delicately incisive? Sometimes in describing the apparently
inexplicable conduct of a certain woman he leads his readers to a point
where a false step would destroy the spell and bring the reproach of
banality and ridicule upon the tale. But the catastrophe never occurs.
It was necessary to stand poised upon the brink of the precipice to
realize the depth of the abyss and feel the terror of the fall.

Closely allied to this phase of Maupassant's nature was the peculiar
feeling of loneliness that every now and then breaks irresistibly forth
in the course of some short story. Of kindly soul and genial heart, he
suffered not only from the oppression of spirit caused by the lack of
humanity, kindliness, sanity, and harmony which he encountered daily in
the world at large, but he had an ever abiding sense of the invincible,
unbanishable solitariness of his own inmost self. I know of no more
poignant expression of such a feeling than the cry of despair which
rings out in the short story called "Solitude," in which he describes
the insurmountable barrier which exists between man and man, or man and
woman, however intimate the friendship between them. He could picture
but one way of destroying this terrible loneliness, the attainment of a
spiritual--a divine--state of love, a condition to which he would give
no name utterable by human lips, lest it be profaned, but for which his
whole being yearned. How acutely he felt his failure to attain his
deliverance may be drawn from his wail that mankind has no UNIVERSAL
measure of happiness.

"Each one of us," writes De Maupassant, "forms for himself an illusion
through which he views the world, be it poetic, sentimental, joyous,
melancholy, or dismal; an illusion of beauty, which is a human
convention; of ugliness, which is a matter of opinion; of truth, which,
alas, is never immutable." And he concludes by asserting that the
happiest artist is he who approaches most closely to the truth of
things as he sees them through his own particular illusion.

Salient points in De Maupassant's genius were that he possessed the
rare faculty of holding direct communion with his gifts, and of writing
from their dictation as it was interpreted by his senses. He had no
patience with writers who in striving to present life as a whole
purposely omit episodes that reveal the influence of the senses. "As
well," he says, "refrain from describing the effect of intoxicating
perfumes upon man as omit the influence of beauty on the temperament of
man."

De Maupassant's dramatic instinct was supremely powerful. He seems to
select unerringly the one thing in which the soul of the scene is
prisoned, and, making that his keynote, gives a picture in words which
haunt the memory like a strain of music. The description of the ride of
Madame Tellier and her companions in a country cart through a Norman
landscape is an admirable example. You smell the masses of the colza in
blossom, you see the yellow carpets of ripe corn spotted here and there
by the blue coronets of the cornflower, and rapt by the red blaze of
the poppy beds and bathed in the fresh greenery of the landscape, you
share in the emotions felt by the happy party in the country cart. And
yet with all his vividness of description, De Maupassant is always
sober and brief. He had the genius of condensation and the reserve
which is innate in power, and to his reader could convey as much in a
paragraph as could be expressed in a page by many of his predecessors
and contemporaries, Flaubert not excepted.

Apart from his novels, De Maupassant's tales may be arranged under
three heads: Those that concern themselves with Norman peasant life;
those that deal with Government employees (Maupassant himself had long
been one) and the Paris middle classes, and those that represent the
life of the fashionable world, as well as the weird and fantastic ideas
of the later years of his career. Of these three groups the tales of
the Norman peasantry perhaps rank highest. He depicts the Norman farmer
in surprisingly free and bold strokes, revealing him in all his
caution, astuteness, rough gaiety, and homely virtue.

The tragic stage of De Maupassant's life may, I think, be set down as
beginning just before the drama of "Musotte" was issued, in conjunction
with Jacques Normand, in 1891. He had almost given up the hope of
interpreting his puzzles, and the struggle between the falsity of the
life which surrounded him and the nobler visions which possessed him
was wearing him out. Doubtless he resorted to unwise methods for the
dispelling of physical lassitude or for surcease from troubling mental
problems. To this period belong such weird and horrible fancies as are
contained in the short stories known as "He" and "The Diary of a
Madman." Here and there, we know, were rising in him inklings of a
finer and less sordid attitude 'twixt man and woman throughout the
world and of a purer constitution of existing things which no exterior
force should blemish or destroy. But with these yearningly prophetic
gleams came a period of mental death. Then the physical veil was torn
aside and for Guy de Maupassant the riddle of existence was answered.
{signature}



MADEMOISELLE FIFI

The Major Graf[1] von Farlsberg, the Prussian commandant, was reading
his newspaper, lying back in a great armchair, with his booted feet on
the beautiful marble fireplace, where his spurs had made two holes,
which grew deeper every day, during the three months that he had been
in the chateau of Urville.

A cup of coffee was smoking on a small inlaid table, which was stained
with liquors burnt by cigars, notched by the penknife of the victorious
officer, who occasionally would stop while sharpening a pencil, to jot
down figures, or to make a drawing on it, just as it took his fancy.

When he had read his letters and the German newspapers, which his
baggage-master had brought him, he got up, and after throwing three or
four enormous pieces of green wood on to the fire--for these gentlemen
were gradually cutting down the park in order to keep themselves
warm--he went to the window. The rain was descending in torrents, a
regular Normandy rain, which looked as if it were being poured out by
some furious hand, a slanting rain, which was as thick as a curtain,
and which formed a kind of wall with oblique stripes, and which deluged
everything, a regular rain, such as one frequently experiences in the
neighborhood of Rouen, which is the watering-pot of France.

For a long time the officer looked at the sodden turf, and at the
swollen Andelle beyond it, which was overflowing its banks, and he was
drumming a waltz from the Rhine on the window-panes, with his fingers,
when a noise made him turn round; it was his second in command, Captain
Baron von Kelweinstein.

The major was a giant, with broad shoulders, and a long, fair beard,
which hung like a cloth on to his chest. His whole, solemn person
suggested the idea of a military peacock, a peacock who was carrying
his tail spread out on to his breast. He had cold, gentle, blue eyes,
and the scar from a sword-cut, which he had received in the war with
Austria; he was said to be an honorable man, as well as a brave officer.

The captain, a short, red-faced man, who was tightly girthed in at the
waist, had his red hair cropped quite close to his head, and in certain
lights almost looked as if he had been rubbed over with phosphorus. He
had lost two front teeth one night, though he could not quite remember
how. This defect made him speak so that he could not always be
understood, and he had a bald patch on the top of his head, which made
him look rather like a monk, with a fringe of curly, bright, golden
hair round the circle of bare skin.

The commandant shook hands with him, and drank his cup of coffee (the
sixth that morning) at a draught, while he listened to his
subordinate's report of what had occurred; and then they both went to
the window, and declared that it was a very unpleasant outlook. The
major, who was a quiet man, with a wife at home, could accommodate
himself to everything; but the captain, who was rather fast, being in
the habit of frequenting low resorts, and much given to women, was mad
at having been shut up for three months in the compulsory chastity of
that wretched hole.

There was a knock at the door, and when the commandant said, "Come in,"
one of their automatic soldiers appeared, and by his mere presence
announced that breakfast was ready. In the dining-room, they met three
other officers of lower rank: a lieutenant, Otto von Grossling, and two
sub-lieutenants, Fritz Scheunebarg, and Count von Eyrick a very short,
fair-haired man, who was proud and brutal toward men, harsh toward
prisoners, and very violent.

Since he had been in France, his comrades had called him nothing but
"Mademoiselle Fifi." They had given him that nickname on account of his
dandified style and small waist, which looked as if he wore stays, from
his pale face, on which his budding mustache scarcely showed, and on
account of the habit he had acquired of employing the French
expression, fi, fi donc, which he pronounced with a slight whistle,
when he wished to express his sovereign contempt for persons or things.

The dining-room of the chateau was a magnificent long room, whose fine
old mirrors, now cracked by pistol bullets, and Flemish tapestry, now
cut to ribbons and hanging in rags in places, from sword-cuts, told too
well what Mademoiselle Fifi's occupation was during his spare time.

There were three family portraits on the walls; a steel-clad knight, a
cardinal, and a judge, who were all smoking long porcelain pipes, which
had been inserted into holes in the canvas, while a lady in a long,
pointed waist proudly exhibited an enormous pair of mustaches, drawn
with a piece of charcoal.

The officers ate their breakfast almost in silence in that mutilated
room, which looked dull in the rain, and melancholy under its
vanquished appearance, although its old, oak floor had become as solid
as the stone floor of a public-house.

When they had finished eating, and were smoking and drinking, they
began, as usual, to talk about the dull life they were leading. The
bottles of brandy and of liquors passed from hand to hand, and all sat
back in their chairs, taking repeated sips from their glasses, and
scarcely removing the long, bent stems, which terminated in china bowls
painted in a manner to delight a Hottentot, from their mouths.

As soon as their glasses were empty, they filled them again, with a
gesture of resigned weariness, but Mademoiselle Fifi emptied his every
minute, and a soldier immediately gave him another. They were enveloped
in a cloud of strong tobacco smoke; they seemed to be sunk in a state
of drowsy, stupid intoxication, in that dull state of drunkenness of
men who have nothing to do, when suddenly, the baron sat up, and said:
"By heavens! This cannot go on; we must think of something to do." And
on hearing this, Lieutenant Otto and Sub-lieutenant Fritz, who
pre-eminently possessed the grave, heavy German countenance, said:
"What, Captain?"

He thought for a few moments, and then replied "What? Well, we must get
up some entertainment; if the commandant will allow us."

"What sort of an entertainment, captain?" the major asked, taking his
pipe out of his mouth.

"I will arrange all that, commandant," the baron said. "I will send Le
Devoir to Rouen, who will bring us some ladies. I know where they can
be found. We will have supper here, as all the materials are at hand,
and, at least, we shall have a jolly evening."

Graf von Farlsberg shrugged his shoulders with a smile: "You must
surely be mad, my friend."

But all the other officers got up, surrounded their chief, and said:
"Let the captain have his own way, commandant; it is terribly dull
here."

And the major ended by yielding. "Very well," he replied, and the baron
immediately sent for Le Devoir.

The latter was an old corporal who had never been seen to smile, but
who carried out all the orders of his superiors to the letter, no
matter what they might be. He stood there, with an impassive face while
he received the baron's instructions, and then went out; five minutes
later a large wagon belonging to the military train, covered with a
miller's tilt, galloped off as fast as four horses could take it, under
the pouring rain, and the officers all seemed to awaken from their
lethargy, their looks brightened, and they began to talk.

Although it was raining as hard as ever, the major declared that it was
not so dull, and Lieutenant von Grossling said with conviction, that
the sky was clearing up, while Mademoiselle Fifi did not seem to be
able to keep in his place. He got up, and sat down again, and his
bright eyes seemed to be looking for something to destroy. Suddenly,
looking at the lady with the mustaches, the young fellow pulled out his
revolver, and said: "You shall not see it." And without leaving his
seat he aimed, and with two successive bullets cut out both the eyes of
the portrait.

"Let us make a mine!" he then exclaimed, and the conversation was
suddenly interrupted, as if they had found some fresh and powerful
subject of interest. The mine was his invention, his method of
destruction, and his favorite amusement.

When he left the chateau, the lawful owner, Count Fernand d'Amoys
d'Urville, had not had time to carry away or to hide anything, except
the plate, which had been stowed away in a hole made in one of the
walls, so that, as he was very rich and had good taste, the large
drawing-room, which opened into the dining-room, had looked like the
gallery in a museum, before his precipitate flight.

Expensive oil-paintings, water-colors, and drawings hung upon the
walls, while on the tables, on the hanging shelves, and in elegant
glass cupboards, there were a thousand knickknacks: small vases,
statuettes, groups in Dresden china, grotesque Chinese figures, old
ivory, and Venetian glass, which filled the large room with their
precious and fantastical array.

Scarcely anything was left now; not that the things had been stolen,
for the major would not have allowed that, but Mademoiselle Fifi WOULD
HAVE A MINE, and on that occasion all the officers thoroughly enjoyed
themselves for five minutes. The little marquis went into the
drawing-room to get what he wanted, and he brought back a small,
delicate china teapot, which he filled with gunpowder, and carefully
introduced a piece of German tinder into it, through the spout. Then he
lighted it, and took this infernal machine into the next room; but he
came back immediately and shut the door. The Germans all stood
expectantly, their faces full of childish, smiling curiosity, and as
soon as the explosion had shaken the chateau, they all rushed in at
once.

Mademoiselle Fifi, who got in first, clapped his hands in delight at
the sight of a terra-cotta Venus, whose head had been blown off, and
each picked up pieces of porcelain, and wondered at the strange shape
of the fragments, while the major was looking with a paternal eye at
the large drawing-room which had been wrecked in such a Neronic
fashion, and which was strewn with the fragments of works of art. He
went out first, and said, with a smile: "He managed that very well!"

But there was such a cloud of smoke in the dining-room, mingled with
the tobacco smoke, that they could not breathe, so the commandant
opened the window, and all the officers, who had gone into the room for
a glass of cognac, went up to it.

The moist air blew into the room, and brought a sort of spray with it,
which powdered their beards. They looked at the tall trees which were
dripping with the rain, at the broad valley which was covered with
mist, and at the church spire in the distance, which rose up like a
gray point in the beating rain.

The bells had not rung since their arrival. That was the only
resistance which the invaders had met with in the neighborhood. The
parish priest had not refused to take in and to feed the Prussian
soldiers; he had several times even drunk a bottle of beer or claret
with the hostile commandant, who often employed him as a benevolent
intermediary; but it was no use to ask him for a single stroke of the
bells; he would sooner have allowed himself to be shot. That was his
way of protesting against the invasion, a peaceful and silent protest,
the only one, he said, which was suitable to a priest, who was a man of
mildness, and not of blood; and everyone, for twenty-five miles round,
praised Abbe Chantavoine's firmness and heroism, in venturing to
proclaim the public mourning by the obstinate silence of his church
bells.

The whole village grew enthusiastic over his resistance, and was ready
to back up their pastor and to risk anything, as they looked upon that
silent protest as the safeguard of the national honor. It seemed to the
peasants that thus they had deserved better of their country than
Belfort and Strassburg, that they had set an equally valuable example,
and that the name of their little village would become immortalized by
that; but with that exception, they refused their Prussian conquerors
nothing.

The commandant and his officers laughed among themselves at that
inoffensive courage, and as the people in the whole country round
showed themselves obliging and compliant toward them, they willingly
tolerated their silent patriotism. Only little Count Wilhelm would have
liked to have forced them to ring the bells. He was very angry at his
superior's politic compliance with the priest's scruples, and every day
he begged the commandant to allow him to sound "ding-dong, ding-dong,"
just once, only just once, just by way of a joke. And he asked it like
a wheedling woman, in the tender voice of some mistress who wishes to
obtain something, but the commandant would not yield, and to console
HERSELF, Mademoiselle Fifi made A MINE in the chateau.

The five men stood there together for some minutes, inhaling the moist
air, and at last, Lieutenant Fritz said, with a laugh: "The ladies will
certainly not have fine weather for their drive." Then they separated,
each to his own duties, while the captain had plenty to do in seeing
about the dinner.

When they met again, as it was growing dark, they began to laugh at
seeing each other as dandified and smart as on the day of a grand
review. The commandant's hair did not look as gray as it did in the
morning, and the captain had shaved--had only kept his mustache on,
which made him look as if he had a streak of fire under his nose.

In spite of the rain, they left the window open, and one of them went
to listen from time to time. At a quarter past six the baron said he
heard a rumbling in the distance. They all rushed down, and soon the
wagon drove up at a gallop with its four horses, splashed up to their
backs, steaming and panting. Five women got out at the bottom of the
steps, five handsome girls whom a comrade of the captain, to whom Le
Dervoir had taken his card, had selected with care.

They had not required much pressing, as they were sure of being well
treated, for they had got to know the Prussians in the three months
during which they had had to do with them. So they resigned themselves
to the men as they did to the state of affairs. "It is part of our
business, so it must be done," they said as they drove along; no doubt
to allay some slight, secret scruples of conscience.

They went into the dining-room immediately, which looked still more
dismal in its dilapidated state, when it was lighted up; while the
table covered with choice dishes, the beautiful china and glass, and
the plate, which had been found in the hole in the wall where its owner
had hidden it, gave to the place the look of a bandits' resort, where
they were supping after committing a robbery. The captain was radiant;
he took hold of the women as if he were familiar with them; appraising
them, kissing them, valuing them for what they were worth as LADIES OF
PLEASURE; and when the three young men wanted to appropriate one each,
he opposed them authoritatively, reserving to himself the right to
apportion them justly, according to their several ranks, so as not to
wound the hierarchy. Therefore, so as to avoid all discussion, jarring,
and suspicion of partiality, he placed them all in a line according to
height, and addressing the tallest, he said in a voice of command:

"What is your name?"

"Pamela," she replied, raising her voice.

Then he said: "Number One, called Pamela, is adjudged to the
commandant."

Then, having kissed Blondina, the second, as a sign of proprietorship,
he proffered stout Amanda to Lieutenant Otto! Eva, "the Tomato," to
Sub-lieutenant Fritz, and Rachel, the shortest of them all, a very
young, dark girl, with eyes as black as ink, a Jewess, whose snub nose
confirmed by exception the rule which allots hooked noses to all her
race, to the youngest officer, frail Count Wilhelm von Eyrick.

They were all pretty and plump, without any distinctive features, and
all were very much alike in look and person, from their daily
dissipation, and the life common to houses of public accommodation.

The three younger men wished to carry off their women immediately,
under the pretext of finding them brushes and soap; but the captain
wisely opposed this, for he said they were quite fit to sit down to
dinner, and that those who went up would wish for a change when they
came down, and so would disturb the other couples, and his experience
in such matters carried the day. There were only many kisses; expectant
kisses.

Suddenly Rachel choked, and began to cough until the tears came into
her eyes, while smoke came through her nostrils. Under pretense of
kissing her, the count had blown a whiff of tobacco into her mouth. She
did not fly into a rage, and did not say a word, but she looked at her
possessor with latent hatred in her dark eyes.

They sat down to dinner. The commandant seemed delighted; he made
Pamela sit on his right, and Blondina on his left, and said, as he
unfolded his table napkin: "That was a delightful idea of yours,
captain."

Lieutenants Otto and Fritz, who were as polite as if they had been with
fashionable ladies, rather intimidated their neighbors, but Baron von
Kelweinstein gave the reins to all his vicious propensities, beamed,
made doubtful remarks, and seemed on fire with his crown of red hair.
He paid them compliments in French from the other side of the Rhine,
and sputtered out gallant remarks, only fit for a low pot-house, from
between his two broken teeth.

They did not understand him, however, and their intelligence did not
seem to be awakened until he uttered nasty words and broad expressions,
which were mangled by his accent. Then all began to laugh at once, like
mad women, and fell against each other, repeating the words, which the
baron then began to say all wrong, in order that he might have the
pleasure of hearing them say doubtful things. They gave him as much of
that stuff as he wanted, for they were drunk after the first bottle of
wine, and, becoming themselves once more, and opening the door to their
usual habits, they kissed the mustaches on the right and left of them,
pinched their arms, uttered furious cries, drank out of every glass,
and sang French couplets, and bits of German songs, which they had
picked up in their daily intercourse with the enemy.

Soon the men themselves, intoxicated by that which was displayed to
their sight and touch, grew very amorous, shouted and broke the plates
and dishes, while the soldiers behind them waited on them stolidly. The
commandant was the only one who put any restraint upon himself.

Mademoiselle Fifi had taken Rachel on to his knees, and, getting
excited, at one moment kissed the little black curls on her neck,
inhaling the pleasant warmth of her body, and all the savor of her
person, through the slight space there was between her dress and her
skin, and at another pinched her furiously through the material, and
made her scream, for he was seized with a species of ferocity, and
tormented by his desire to hurt her. He often held her close to him, as
if to make her part of himself, and put his lips in a long kiss on the
Jewess's rosy mouth, until she lost her breath; and at last he bit her
until a stream of blood ran down her chin and on to her bodice.

For the second time, she looked him full in the face, and as she bathed
the wound, she said: "You will have to pay for that!"

But he merely laughed a hard laugh, and said: "I will pay."

At dessert, champagne was served, and the commandant rose, and in the
same voice in which he would have drunk to the health of the Empress
Augusta, he drank: "To our ladies!" Then a series of toasts began,
toasts worthy of the lowest soldiers and of drunkards, mingled with
filthy jokes, which were made still more brutal by their ignorance of
the language. They got up, one after the other, trying to say something
witty, forcing themselves to be funny, and the women, who were so drunk
that they almost fell off their chairs, with vacant looks and clammy
tongues, applauded madly each time.

The captain, who no doubt wished to impart an appearance of gallantry
to the orgy, raised his glass again, and said: "To our victories over
hearts!" Thereupon Lieutenant Otto, who was a species of bear from the
Black Forest, jumped up, inflamed and saturated with drink, and seized
by an access of alcoholic patriotism, cried: "To our victories over
France!"

Drunk as they were, the women were silent, and Rachel turned round with
a shudder, and said: "Look here, I know some Frenchmen, in whose
presence you would not dare to say that." But the little count, still
holding her on his knees, began to laugh, for the wine had made him
very merry, and said: "Ha! ha! ha! I have never met any of them,
myself. As soon as we show ourselves, they run away!"

The girl, who was in a terrible rage, shouted into his face: "You are
lying, you dirty scoundrel!"

For a moment, he looked at her steadily, with his bright eyes upon her,
as he had looked at the portrait before he destroyed it with revolver
bullets, and then he began to laugh: "Ah! yes, talk about them, my
dear! Should we be here now, if they were brave?" Then getting excited,
he exclaimed: "We are the masters! France belongs to us!" She jumped
off his knees with a bound, and threw herself into her chair, while he
rose, held out his glass over the table, and repeated: "France and the
French, the woods, the fields, and the houses of France belong to us!"

The others, who were quite drunk, and who were suddenly seized by
military enthusiasm, the enthusiasm of brutes, seized their glasses,
and shouting, "Long live Prussia!" emptied them at a draught.

The girls did not protest, for they were reduced to silence, and were
afraid. Even Rachel did not say a word, as she had no reply to make,
and then the little count put his champagne glass, which had just been
refilled, on to the head of the Jewess, and exclaimed: "All the women
in France belong to us, also!"

At that she got up so quickly that the glass upset, spilling the amber
colored wine on to her black hair as if to baptize her, and broke into
a hundred fragments as it fell on to the floor. With trembling lips,
she defied the looks of the officer, who was still laughing, and she
stammered out, in a voice choked with rage: "That--that--that--is not
true,--for you shall certainly not have any French women."

He sat down again, so as to laugh at his ease, and trying ineffectually
to speak in the Parisian accent, he said: "That is good, very good!
Then what did you come here for, my dear?"

She was thunderstruck, and made no reply for a moment, for in her
agitation she did not understand him at first; but as soon as she
grasped his meaning, she said to him indignantly and vehemently: "I! I!
I am not a woman; I am only a strumpet, and that is all that Prussians
want."

Almost before she had finished, he slapped her full in her face; but as
he was raising his hand again as if he would strike her, she, almost
mad with passion, took up a small dessert knife from the table, and
stabbed him right in the neck, just above the breastbone. Something
that he was going to say, was cut short in his throat, and he sat
there, with his mouth half open, and a terrible look in his eyes.

All the officers shouted in horror, and leaped up tumultuously; but
throwing her chair between Lieutenant Otto's legs, who fell down at
full length, she ran to the window, opened it before they could seize
her, and jumped out into the night and pouring rain.

In two minutes, Mademoiselle Fifi was dead. Fritz and Otto drew their
swords and wanted to kill the women, who threw themselves at their feet
and clung to their knees. With some difficulty the major stopped the
slaughter, and had the four terrified girls locked up in a room under
the care of two soldiers. Then he organized the pursuit of the
fugitive, as carefully as if he were about to engage in a skirmish,
feeling quite sure that she would be caught.

The table, which had been cleared immediately, now served as a bed on
which to lay Fifi out, and the four officers made for the window, rigid
and sobered, with the stern faces of soldiers on duty, and tried to
pierce through the darkness of the night, amid the steady torrent of
rain. Suddenly, a shot was heard, and then another, a long way off; and
for four hours they heard, from time to time, near or distant reports
and rallying cries, strange words uttered as a call, in guttural voices.

In the morning they all returned. Two soldiers had been killed and
three others wounded by their comrades in the ardor of that chase, and
in the confusion of such a nocturnal pursuit, but they had not caught
Rachel.

Then the inhabitants of the district were terrorized, the houses were
turned topsy-turvy, the country was scoured and beaten up, over and
over again, but the Jewess did not seem to have left a single trace of
her passage behind her.

When the general was told of it, he gave orders to hush up the affair,
so as not to set a bad example to the army, but he severely censured
the commandant, who in turn punished his inferiors. The general had
said: "One does not go to war in order to amuse oneself, and to caress
prostitutes." And Graf von Farlsberg, in his exasperation, made up his
mind to have his revenge on the district, but as he required a pretext
for showing severity, he sent for the priest and ordered him to have
the bell tolled at the funeral of Count von Eyrick.

Contrary to all expectation, the priest showed himself humble and most
respectful, and when Mademoiselle Fifi's body left the Chateau
d'Urville on its way to the cemetery, carried by soldiers, preceded,
surrounded, and followed by soldiers, who marched with loaded rifles,
for the first time the bell sounded its funereal knell in a lively
manner, as if a friendly hand were caressing it. At night it sounded
again, and the next day, and every day; it rang as much as anyone could
desire. Sometimes even, it would start at night, and sound gently
through the darkness, seized by strange joy, awakened, one could not
tell why. All the peasants in the neighborhood declared that it was
bewitched, and nobody, except the priest and the sacristan would now go
near the church tower, and they went because a poor girl was living
there in grief and solitude, secretly nourished by those two men.

She remained there until the German troops departed, and then one
evening the priest borrowed the baker's cart, and himself drove his
prisoner to Rouen. When they got there, he embraced her, and she
quickly went back on foot to the establishment from which she had come,
where the proprietress, who thought that she was dead, was very glad to
see her.

A short time afterward, a patriot who had no prejudices, who liked her
because of her bold deed, and who afterward loved her for herself,
married her, and made a lady of her.

[1] Count.



AN AFFAIR OF STATE.

Paris had just heard of the disaster of Sedan. The Republic was
proclaimed. All France was panting from a madness that lasted until the
time of the Commonwealth. Everybody was playing at soldier from one end
of the country to the other.

Capmakers became colonels, assuming the duties of generals; revolvers
and daggers were displayed on large rotund bodies, enveloped in red
sashes; common citizens turned warriors, commanding battalions of noisy
volunteers, and swearing like troopers to emphasize their importance.

The very fact of bearing arms and handling guns with a system excited a
people who hitherto had only handled scales and measures, and made them
formidable to the first comer, without reason. They even executed a few
innocent people to prove that they knew how to kill; and, in roaming
through virgin fields still belonging to the Prussians, they shot stray
dogs, cows chewing the cud in peace, or sick horses put out to pasture.
Each believed himself called upon to play a great role in military
affairs. The cafes of the smallest villages, full of tradesmen in
uniform, resembled barracks or field hospitals.

Now, the town of Canneville did not yet know the exciting news of the
army and the Capital. It had, however, been greatly agitated for a
month over an encounter between the rival political parties. The mayor,
Viscount de Varnetot, a small, thin man, already old, remained true to
the Empire, especially since he saw rising up against him a powerful
adversary, in the great, sanguine form of Doctor Massarel, head of the
Republican party in the district, venerable chief of the Masonic lodge,
president of the Society of Agriculture and of the Fire Department, and
organizer of the rural militia designed to save the country.

In two weeks he had induced sixty-three men to volunteer in defense of
their country--married men, fathers of families, prudent farmers and
merchants of the town. These he drilled every morning in front of the
mayor's window.

Whenever the mayor happened to appear, Commander Massarel, covered with
pistols, passing proudly up and down in front of his troops, would make
them shout, "Long live our country!" And this, they noticed, disturbed
the little viscount, who no doubt heard in it menace and defiance, and
perhaps some odious recollection of the great Revolution.

On the morning of the fifth of September, in uniform, his revolver on
the table, the doctor gave consultation to an old peasant couple. The
husband had suffered with a varicose vein for seven years, but had
waited until his wife had one too, so that they might go and hunt up a
physician together, guided by the postman when he should come with the
newspaper.

Dr. Massarel opened the door, grew pale, straightened himself abruptly
and, raising his arms to heaven in a gesture of exaltation, cried out
with all his might, in the face of the amazed rustics:

"Long live the Republic! Long live the Republic! Long live the
Republic!"

Then he dropped into his armchair weak with emotion.

When the peasant explained that this sickness commenced with a feeling
as if ants were running up and down in his legs, the doctor exclaimed:
"Hold your peace. I have spent too much time with you stupid people.
The Republic is proclaimed! The Emperor is a prisoner! France is saved!
Long live the Republic!" And, running to the door, he bellowed:
"Celeste! Quick! Celeste!"

The frightened maid hastened in. He stuttered, so rapidly did he try to
speak: "My boots, my saber--my cartridge box--and--the Spanish dagger,
which is on my night table. Hurry now!"

The obstinate peasant, taking advantage of the moment's silence, began
again: "This seemed like some cysts that hurt me when I walked."

The exasperated physician shouted: "Hold your peace! For Heaven's sake!
If you had washed your feet oftener, it would not have happened." Then,
seizing him by the neck, he hissed in his face: "Can you not comprehend
that we are living in a Republic, stupid?"

But professional sentiment calmed him suddenly, and he let the
astonished old couple out of the house, repeating all the time:

"Return to-morrow, return to-morrow, my friends; I have no more time
to-day."

While equipping himself from head to foot, he gave another series of
urgent orders to the maid:

"Run to Lieutenant Picard's and to Sub-lieutenant Pommel's and say to
them that I want them here immediately. Send Torcheboeuf to me, too,
with his drum. Quick, now! Quick!" And when Celeste was gone, he
collected his thoughts and prepared to surmount the difficulties of the
situation.

The three men arrived together. They were in their working clothes. The
Commander, who had expected to see them in uniform, had a fit of
surprise.

"You know nothing, then? The Emperor has been taken prisoner. A
Republic is proclaimed. My position is delicate, not to say perilous."

He reflected for some minutes before the astonished faces of his
subordinates and then continued:

"It is necessary to act, not to hesitate. Minutes now are worth hours
at other times. Everything depends upon promptness of decision. You,
Picard, go and find the curate and get him to ring the bell to bring
the people together, while I get ahead of them. You, Torcheboeuf, beat
the call to assemble the militia in arms, in the square, from even as
far as the hamlets of Gerisaie and Salmare. You, Pommell put on your
uniform at once, that is, the jacket and cap. We, together, are going
to take possession of the mairie and summon M. de Varnetot to transfer
his authority to me. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Act, then, and promptly. I will accompany you to your house, Pommel,
since we are to work together."

Five minutes later, the Commander and his subaltern, armed to the
teeth, appeared in the square, just at the moment when the little
Viscount de Varnetot, with hunting gaiters on and his rifle on his
shoulder, appeared by another street, walking rapidly and followed by
three guards in green jackets, each carrying a knife at his side and a
gun over his shoulder.

While the doctor stopped, half stupefied, the four men entered the
mayor's house and the door closed behind them.

"We are forestalled," murmured the doctor; "it will be necessary now to
wait for re-enforcements; nothing can be done for a quarter of an hour."

Here Lieutenant Picard appeared: "The curate refuses to obey," said he;
"he has even shut himself up in the church with the beadle and the
porter."

On the other side of the square, opposite the white, closed front of
the mairie, the church, mute and black, showed its great oak door with
the wrought-iron trimmings.

Then, as the puzzled inhabitants put their noses out of the windows, or
came out upon the steps of their houses, the rolling of a drum was
heard, and Torcheboeuf suddenly appeared, beating with fury the three
quick strokes of the call to arms. He crossed the square with
disciplined step, and then disappeared on a road leading to the country.

The Commander drew his sword, advanced alone to the middle distance
between the two buildings where the enemy was barricaded and, waving
his weapon above his head, roared at the top of his lungs: "Long live
the Republic! Death to traitors!" Then he fell back where his officers
were. The butcher, the baker, and the apothecary, feeling a little
uncertain, put up their shutters and closed their shops. The grocery
alone remained open.

Meanwhile the men of the militia were arriving, little by little,
variously clothed, but all wearing caps, the cap constituting the whole
uniform of the corps. They were armed with their old, rusty guns, guns
that had hung on chimney-pieces in kitchens for thirty years, and
looked quite like a detachment of country soldiers.

When there were about thirty around him, the Commander explained in a
few words, the state of affairs. Then, turning toward his major, he
said: "Now, we must act."

While the inhabitants collected, talked over and discussed the matter,
the doctor quickly formed his plan of campaign:

"Lieutenant Picard, you advance to the windows of the mayor's house and
order M. de Varnetot to turn over the townhall to me, in the name of
the Republic."

But the lieutenant was a master-mason and refused.

"You are a scamp, you are. Trying to make a target of me! Those fellows
in there are good shots, you know that. No, thanks! Execute your
commissions yourself!"

The Commander turned red: "I order you to go in the name of
discipline," said he.

"I am not spoiling my features without knowing why," the lieutenant
returned.

Men of influence, in a group near by, were heard laughing. One of them
called out: "You are right, Picard, it is not the proper time." The
doctor, under his breath, muttered: "Cowards!" And, placing his sword
and his revolver in the hands of a soldier, he advanced with measured
step, his eye fixed on the windows, as if he expected to see a gun or a
cannon pointed at him.

When he was within a few steps of the building the doors at the two
extremities, affording an entrance to two schools, opened, and a flood
of little creatures, boys on one side, girls on the other, poured out
and began playing in the open space, chattering around the doctor like
a flock of birds. He scarcely knew what to make of it.

As soon as the last were out, the doors closed. The greater part of the
little monkeys finally scattered and then the Commander called out in a
loud voice,

"Monsieur de Varnetot?" A window in the first story opened and M. de
Varnetot appeared.

The Commander began: "Monsieur, you are aware of the great events which
have changed the system of Government. The party you represent no
longer exists. The side I represent now comes into power. Under these
sad, but decisive circumstances, I come to demand you, in the name of
the Republic, to put in my hand the authority vested in you by the
outgoing power."

M. de Varnetot replied: "Doctor Massarel, I am mayor of Canneville, so
placed by the proper authorities, and mayor of Canneville I shall
remain until the title is revoked and replaced by an order from my
superiors. As mayor, I am at home in the mairie, and there I shall
stay. Furthermore, just try to put me out." And he closed the window.

The Commander returned to his troops. But, before explaining anything,
measuring Lieutenant Picard from head to foot, he said:

"You are a numskull, you are,--a goose, the disgrace of the army. I
shall degrade you."

The Lieutenant replied: "I'll attend to that myself." And he went over
to a group of muttering civilians.

Then the doctor hesitated. What should he do? Make an assault? Would
his men obey him? And then, was he surely in the right? An idea burst
upon him. He ran to the telegraph office, on the other side of the
square, and hurriedly sent three dispatches: "To the Members of the
Republican Government, at Paris"; "To the New Republican Prefect of the
Lower Seine, at Rouen"; "To the New Republican Sub-Prefect of Dieppe."

He exposed the situation fully; told of the danger run by the
commonwealth from remaining in the hands of the monarchistic mayor,
offered his devout services, asked for orders and signed his name,
following it up with all his titles. Then he returned to his army corps
and, drawing ten francs out of his pocket, said:

"Now, my friends, go and eat and drink a little something. Only leave
here a detachment of ten men, so that no one leaves the mayor's house."

Ex-Lieutenant Picard chatting with the watch-maker, overheard this.
With a sneer he remarked:

"Pardon me, but if they go out, there will be an opportunity for you to
go in. Otherwise, I can't see how you are to get in there!"

The doctor made no reply, but went away to luncheon. In the afternoon,
he disposed of offices all about town, having the air of knowing of an
impending surprise. Many times he passed before the doors of the mairie
and of the church, without noticing anything suspicious; one could have
believed the two buildings empty.

The butcher, the baker, and the apothecary re-opened their shops, and
stood gossiping on the steps. If the Emperor had been taken prisoner,
there must be a traitor somewhere. They did not feel sure of the
revenue of a new Republic.

Night came on. Toward nine o'clock, the doctor returned quietly and
alone to the mayor's residence, persuaded that his adversary had
retired. And, as he was trying to force an entrance with a few blows of
a pickaxe, the loud voice of a guard demanded suddenly: "Who goes
there?" Monsieur Massarel beat a retreat at the top of his speed.

Another day dawned without any change in the situation. The militia in
arms occupied the square. The inhabitants stood around awaiting the
solution. People from neighboring villages came to look on. Finally,
the doctor, realizing that his reputation was at stake, resolved to
settle the thing in one way or another. He had just decided that it
must be something energetic, when the door of the telegraph office
opened and the little servant of the directress appeared, holding in
her hand two papers.

She went directly to the Commander and gave him one of the dispatches;
then, crossing the square, intimidated by so many eyes fixed upon her,
with lowered head and mincing steps, she rapped gently at the door of
the barricaded house, as if ignorant that a part of the army was
concealed there.

The door opened slightly; the hand of a man received the message, and
the girl returned, blushing and ready to weep, from being stared at.

The doctor demanded, with stirring voice: "A little silence, if you
please." And, after the populace became quiet, he continued proudly:

"Here is a communication which I have received from the Government."
And raising the dispatch, he read:

  "Old mayor deposed. Advise us of what is most necessary,
  Instructions later.
  "For the Sub-Prefect,
  "SAPIN, Counselor."


He had triumphed. His heart was beating with joy. His hand trembled,
when Picard, his old subaltern, cried out to him from a neighboring
group: "That's all right; but if the others in there won't go out, your
paper hasn't a leg to stand on." The doctor grew a little pale. If they
would not go out--in fact, he must go ahead now. It was not only his
right, but his duty. And he looked anxiously at the house of the
mayoralty, hoping that he might see the door open and his adversary
show himself. But the door remained closed. What was to be done? The
crowd was increasing, surrounding the militia. Some laughed.

One thought, especially, tortured the doctor. If he should make an
assault, he must march at the head of his men; and as, with him dead,
all contest would cease, it would be at him, and at him alone that M.
de Varnetot and the three guards would aim. And their aim was good,
very good! Picard had reminded him of that.

But an idea shone in upon him, and turning to Pommel, he said: "Go,
quickly, and ask the apothecary to send me a napkin and a pole."

The Lieutenant hurried off. The doctor was going to make a political
banner, a white one, that would perhaps, rejoice the heart of that old
legitimist, the mayor.

Pommel returned with the required linen and a broom handle. With some
pieces of string, they improvised a standard, which Massarel seized in
both hands. Again, he advanced toward the house of mayoralty, bearing
the standard before him. When in front of the door, he called out:
"Monsieur de Varnetot!"

The door opened suddenly, and M. de Varnetot and the three guards
appeared on the threshold. The doctor recoiled, instinctively. Then, he
saluted his enemy courteously, and announced, almost strangled by
emotion: "I have come, sir, to communicate to you the instructions I
have just received."

That gentleman, without any salutation whatever, replied: "I am going
to withdraw, sir, but you must understand that it is not because of
fear, or in obedience to an odious government that has usurped the
power." And, biting off each word, he declared: "I do not wish to have
the appearance of serving the Republic for a single day. That is all."

Massarel, amazed, made no reply; and M, de Varnetot, walking off at a
rapid pace, disappeared around the corner, followed closely by his
escort. Then the doctors slightly dismayed, returned to the crowd. When
he was near enough to be heard, he cried: "Hurrah! Hurrah! The Republic
triumphs all along the line!"

But no emotion was manifested. The doctor tried again. "The people are
free! You are free and independent! Do you understand? Be proud of it!"

The listless villagers looked at him with eyes unlit by glory. In his
turn, he looked at them, indignant at their indifference, seeking for
some word that could make a grand impression, electrify this placid
country and make good his mission. The inspiration come, and turning to
Pommel, he said: "Lieutenant, go and get the bust of the ex-Emperor,
which is in the Council Hall, and bring it to me with a chair."

And soon the man reappears, carrying on his right shoulder, Napoleon
III. in plaster, and holding in his left hand a straw-bottomed chair.

Massarel met him, took the chair, placed it on the ground, put the
white image upon it, fell back a few steps and called out, in sonorous
voice:

"Tyrant! Tyrant! Here do you fall! Fall in the dust and in the mire. An
expiring country groans under your feet. Destiny has called you the
Avenger. Defeat and shame cling to you. You fall conquered, a prisoner
to the Prussians, and upon the ruins of the crumbling Empire the young
and radiant Republic arises, picking up your broken sword."

He awaited applause. But there was no voice, no sound. The bewildered
peasants remained silent. And the bust, with its pointed mustaches
extending beyond the cheeks on each side, the bust, so motionless and
well groomed as to be fit for a hairdressers sign, seemed to be looking
at M. Massarel with a plaster smile, a smile ineffaceable and mocking.

They remained thus face to face, Napoleon on the chair, the doctor in
front of him about three steps away. Suddenly the Commander grew angry.
What was to be done? What was there that would move this people, and
bring about a definite victory in opinion? His hand happened to rest on
his hip and to come in contact there with the butt end of his revolver,
under his red sash. No inspiration, no further word would come. But he
drew his pistol, advanced two steps, and, taking aim, fired at the late
monarch. The ball entered the forehead, leaving a little, black hole,
like a spot, nothing more. There was no effect. Then he fired a second
shot, which made a second hole, then, a third; and then, without
stopping, he emptied his revolver. The brow of Napoleon disappeared in
white powder, but the eyes, the nose, and the fine points of the
mustaches remained intact. Then, exasperated, the doctor overturned the
chair with a blow of his fist and, resting a foot on the remainder of
the bust in a position of triumph, he shouted: "So let all tyrants
perish!"

Still no enthusiasm was manifest, and as the spectators seemed to be in
a kind of stupor from astonishment, the Commander called to the
militiamen: "You may now go to your homes." And he went toward his own
house with great strides, as if he were pursued.

His maid, when he appeared, told him that some patients had been
waiting in his office for three hours. He hastened in. There were the
two varicose-vein patients, who had returned at daybreak, obstinate but
patient.

The old man immediately began his explanation: "This began by a feeling
like ants running up and down the legs."



THE ARTIST

"Bah! Monsieur," the old mountebank said to me; "it is a matter of
exercise and habit, that is all! Of course, one requires to be a little
gifted that way and not to be butter-fingered, but what is chiefly
necessary is patience and daily practice for long, long years."

His modesty surprised me all the more, because of all performers who
are generally infatuated with their own skill, he was the most
wonderfully clever one I had met. Certainly I had frequently seen him,
for everybody had seen him in some circus or other, or even in
traveling shows, performing the trick that consists of putting a man or
woman with extended arms against a wooden target, and in throwing
knives between their fingers and round their heads, from a distance.
There is nothing very extraordinary in it, after all, when one knows
THE TRICKS OF THE TRADE, and that the knives are not the least sharp,
and stick into the wood at some distance from the flesh. It is the
rapidity of the throws, the glitter of the blades, and the curve which
the handles make toward their living object, which give an air of
danger to an exhibition that has become commonplace, and only requires
very middling skill.

But here there was no trick and no deception, and no dust thrown into
the eyes. It was done in good earnest and in all sincerity. The knives
were as sharp as razors, and the old mountebank planted them close to
the flesh, exactly in the angle between the fingers. He surrounded the
head with a perfect halo of knives, and the neck with a collar from
which nobody could have extricated himself without cutting his carotid
artery, while, to increase the difficulty, the old fellow went through
the performance without seeing, his whole face being covered with a
close mask of thick oilcloth.

Naturally, like other great artists, he was not understood by the
crowd, who confounded him with vulgar tricksters, and his mask only
appeared to them a trick the more, and a very common trick into the
bargain.

"He must think us very stupid," they said. "How could he possibly aim
without having his eyes open?"

And they thought there must be imperceptible holes in the oilcloth, a
sort of latticework concealed in the material. It was useless for him
to allow the public to examine the mask for themselves before the
exhibition began. It was all very well that they could not discover any
trick, but they were only all the more convinced that they were being
tricked. Did not the people know that they ought to be tricked?

I had recognized a great artist in the old mountebank, and I was quite
sure that he was altogether incapable of any trickery. I told him so,
while expressing my admiration to him; and he had been touched by my
open admiration and above all by the justice I had done him. Thus we
became good friends, and he explained to me, very modestly, the real
trick which the crowd do not understand, the eternal trick contained in
these simple words: "To be gifted by nature and to practice every day
for long, long years."

He had been especially struck by the certainty which I expressed that
any trickery must become impossible to him. "Yes," he said to me;
"quite impossible! Impossible to a degree which you cannot imagine. If
I were to tell you! But where would be the use?"

His face clouded over, and his eyes filled with tears. I did not
venture to force myself into his confidence. My looks, however, were
not so discreet as my silence, and begged him to speak; so he responded
to their mute appeal.

"After all," he said; "why should I not tell you about it? You will
understand me." And he added, with a look of sudden ferocity: "She
understood it, at any rate!"

"Who?" I asked.

"My strumpet of a wife," he replied. "Ah! Monsieur, what an abominable
creature she was--if you only knew! Yes, she understood it too well,
too well, and that is why I hate her so; even more on that account,
than for having deceived me. For that is a natural fault, is it not,
and may be pardoned? But the other thing was a crime, a horrible crime."

The woman, who stood against the wooden target every night with her
arms stretched out and her finger extended, and whom the old mountebank
fitted with gloves and with a halo formed of his knives, which were as
sharp as razors and which he planted close to her, was his wife. She
might have been a woman of forty, and must have been fairly pretty, but
with a perverse prettiness; she had an impudent mouth, a mouth that was
at the same time sensual and bad, with the lower lip too thick for the
thin, dry upper lip.

I had several times noticed that every time he planted a knife in the
board, she uttered a laugh, so low as scarcely to be heard, but which
was very significant when one heard it, for it was a hard and very
mocking laugh. I had always attributed that sort of reply to an
artifice which the occasion required. It was intended, I thought, to
accentuate the danger she incurred and the contempt that she felt for
it, thanks to the sureness of the thrower's hands, and so I was very
much surprised when the mountebank said to me:

"Have you observed her laugh, I say? Her evil laugh which makes fun of
me, and her cowardly laugh which defies me? Yes, cowardly, because she
knows that nothing can happen to her, nothing, in spite of all she
deserves, in spite of all that I ought to do to her, in spite of all
that I WANT to do to her."

"What do you want to do?"

"Confound it! Cannot you guess? I want to kill her."

"To kill her, because she has--"

"Because she has deceived me? No, no, not that, I tell you again. I
have forgiven her for that a long time ago, and I am too much
accustomed to it! But the worst of it is that the first time I forgave
her, when I told her that all the same I might some day have my revenge
by cutting her throat, if I chose, without seeming to do it on purpose,
as if it were an accident, mere awkwardness--"

"Oh! So you said that to her?"

"Of course I did, and I meant it. I thought I might be able to do it,
for you see I had the perfect right to do so. It was so simple, so
easy, so tempting! Just think! A mistake of less than half an inch, and
her skin would be cut at the neck where the jugular vein is, and the
jugular would be severed. My knives cut very well! And when once the
jugular is cut--good-bye. The blood would spurt out, and one, two,
three red jets, and all would be over; she would be dead, and I should
have had my revenge!"

"That is true, certainly, horribly true!"

"And without any risk to me, eh? An accident, that is all; bad luck,
one of those mistakes which happen every day in our business. What
could they accuse me of? Whoever would think of accusing me, even?
Homicide through imprudence, that would be all! They would even pity
me, rather than accuse me. 'My wife! My poor wife!' I should say,
sobbing. 'My wife, who is so necessary to me, who is half the
breadwinner, who takes part in my performance!' You must acknowledge
that I should be pitied!"

"Certainly; there is not the least doubt about that."

"And you must allow that such a revenge would he a very nice revenge,
the best possible revenge which I could have with assured impunity."

"Evidently that is so."

"Very well! But when I told her so, as I have told you, and more
forcibly still; threatening her as I was mad with rage and ready to do
the deed that I had dreamed of on the spot, what do you think she said?"

"That you were a good fellow, and would certainly not have the
atrocious courage to--"

"Tut! tut! tut! I am not such a good fellow as you think. I am not
frightened of blood, and that I have proved already, though it would be
useless to tell you how and where. But I had no necessity to prove it
to her, for she knows that I am capable of a good many things; even of
crime; especially of one crime."

"And she was not frightened?"

"No. She merely replied that I could not do what I said; you
understand. That I could not do it!"

"Why not?"

"Ah! Monsieur, so you do not understand? Why do you not? I have I not
explained to you by what constant, long, daily practice I have learned
to plant my knives without seeing what I am doing?"

"Yes, well, what then?"

"Well! Cannot you understand what she has understood with such terrible
results, that now my hand would no longer obey me if I wished to make a
mistake as I threw?"

"Is it possible?"

"Nothing is truer, I am sorry to say. For I really have wished to have
the revenge which I have dreamed of, and which I thought so easy.
Exasperated by that bad woman's insolence and confidence in her own
safety, I have several times made up my mind to kill her, and have
exerted all my energy and all my skill to make my knives fly aside when
I threw them to make a border round her neck. I have tried with all my
might to make them deviate half an inch, just enough to cut her throat.
I wanted to, and I have never succeeded, never. And always the slut's
horrible laugh makes fun of me, always, always."

And with a deluge of tears, with something like a roar of unsatiated
and muzzled rage, he ground his teeth as he wound up: "She knows me,
the jade; she is in the secret of my work, of my patience, of my trick,
routine, whatever you may call it! She lives in my innermost being, and
sees into it more closely than you do, or than I do myself. She knows
what a faultless machine I have become, the machine of which she makes
fun, the machine which is too well wound up, the machine which cannot
get out of order--and she knows that I CANNOT make a mistake."



THE HORLA

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

I love the 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, populous Rouen with its blue
roofs massing under pointed, Gothic towers. Innumerable are they,
delicate or broad, dominated by the spire of the cathedral, full of
bells which sound through the blue air on fine mornings, sending their
sweet and distant iron clang to me, their metallic sounds, now stronger
and now weaker, according as the wind is strong or light.

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

After two English schooners, whose red flags 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 12. I have had a slight feverish attack for the last few days, and
I feel ill, or rather I feel low-spirited.

Whence come those mysterious influences 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 of spirits, with an inclination to sing in my heart. 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 a fit of low spirits? Is it the form of
the clouds, or the tints of the sky, or the colors of the surrounding
objects which are so change-able, 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,
everything 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 being itself.

How profound that mystery of the Invisible is! We cannot fathom it with
our miserable senses: our eyes are unable to perceive what is either
too small or too great, too near to or too far from us; we can see
neither the inhabitants of a star nor of a drop of water; our ears
deceive us, for they transmit to us the vibrations of the air in
sonorous notes. Our senses 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 a harmony. So with our
sense of smell, which is weaker than that of a dog, and so with our
sense of taste, which can scarcely distinguish the age of a wine!

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

May 16. 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
the horrible sensation of some danger threatening me, the apprehension
of some coming misfortune or of approaching death, a presentiment which
is no doubt, an attack of some illness still unnamed, which germinates
in the flesh and in the blood.

May 18. I have just come from consulting my medical man, for I can 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 25. 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, a fear of
sleep and a fear of my bed.

About ten o'clock I go up to my room. As soon as I have entered I lock
and bolt the door. 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, of impeded or heightened circulation, perhaps
the irritation of a nervous center, a slight congestion, a small
disturbance in the imperfect and delicate functions of our living
machinery, can turn the most light-hearted 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 a man throws himself into a pool
of stagnant water in order to drown. I do not feel this perfidious
sleep coming over me as I used to, but a 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 2. 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 life into my veins and impart fresh
energy to my heart. One day I turned into a broad ride in the wood, and
then I diverged 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 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 also it 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 3. 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 2. 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
stood out the outline of that fantastic rock which bears on its summit
a picturesque 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 rock 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 erected to God on earth,
large as a town, and full of low rooms which seem buried beneath
vaulted roofs, and of lofty galleries supported by delicate columns.

I entered this gigantic granite jewel, which is as light in its effect
as a bit of lace and is covered with towers, with slender belfries to
which spiral staircases ascend. The flying buttresses raise strange
heads that bristle with chimeras, with devils, with fantastic ani-mals,
with monstrous flowers, 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 also that two goats bleat, one with a strong, the other with
a weak voice. Incredulous people declare that it is nothing but the
screaming of the sea birds, which occasionally resembles bleatings, and
occasionally human lamentations; but belated fishermen swear that they
have met an old shepherd, whose cloak covered head they can never see,
wandering on the sand, between two tides, round the little town placed
so far out of the world. They declare he is guiding and walking before
a he-goat with a man's face and a she-goat with a woman's face, both
with white hair, who talk incessantly, quarreling in a strange
language, and then suddenly cease talking 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. It
knocks down men, and blows down buildings, uproots trees, raises the
sea into mountains of water, destroys cliffs and casts great ships on
to the breakers; it kills, it whistles, it sighs, it roars. But have
you ever seen it, and can you see it? Yet it exists for all that."

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 3. 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 4. 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 5. 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; 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, who wakes up
with a knife in his chest, a gurgling in his throat, is covered with
blood, can no longer breathe, is going to die and does not understand
anything at all about it--there you have it.

Having recovered my senses, I was thirsty again, so I lighted 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; then
suddenly I was seized by such a terrible feeling that I had to sit
down, or rather fall into a chair! Then I sprang up with a bound to
look about me; 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 solve the puzzle, and my hands trembled! Some
body had drunk the water, but who? I? I without any doubt. It could
surely only be I? In that case I was a somnambulist--was living,
without knowing it, that double, mysterious life which makes us doubt
whether there are not two beings in us--whether a strange, unknowable,
and invisible being does not, during our moments of mental and physical
torpor, animate the inert body, forcing it to a more willing obedience
than it yields to ourselves.

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

July 6. 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 10. I have just been through some surprising ordeals. Undoubtedly
I must be mad! And yet!

On July 6, 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, nor the bread, nor the
strawberries were touched.

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

Lastly, on July 9 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.

Deep slumber seized me, 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 12. 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 I have been brought under the power of one of those
influences--hypnotic suggestion, for example--which are known to exist,
but have hitherto been inexplicable. 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 Theatre Francais. A drama by Alexander Dumas the Younger
was being acted, and his brilliant and powerful play completed my cure.
Certainly solitude is dangerous for active minds. We need 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 mind is;
how quickly it is terrified and unbalanced as soon as we are confronted
with a small, incomprehensible fact. Instead of dismissing the problem
with: "We do not understand because we cannot find the cause," we
immediately imagine terrible mysteries and supernatural powers.

July 14. Fete of the Republic. I walked through the streets, and the
crackers and flags amused me like a child. Still, it is very foolish to
make merry on a set date, by Government decree. People are like a flock
of sheep, now steadily patient, 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; then say to it: "Vote for the
Republic," and it votes for the Republic.

Those who direct it are stupid, too; but instead of obeying men they
obey principles, a course which can only be foolish, ineffective, and
false, for the very reason that principles are ideas which are
considered as certain and unchangeable, whereas in this world one is
certain of nothing, since light is an illusion and noise is deception.

July 16. I saw some things yesterday that troubled me very much. I was
dining at my cousin's, Madame Sable, whose husband is colonel of the
Seventy-sixth 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 to the extraordinary
manifestations which just now experiments in hypnotism and suggestion
are producing.

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 assuredly there are some up in the stars,
yonder, of a different kind of importance. 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 feeble penetration
of his organs by the efforts of his intellect. As long as that
intellect 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, of ghosts, I might
even say the conception of God, for our ideas 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 creature. Nothing is
truer than what Voltaire says: 'If God made man in His own image, 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 within the last two or three years especially, we
have arrived at results really surprising."

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, as
if to fascinate her. I suddenly felt myself somewhat discomposed; my
heart beat rapidly and I had a choking feeling in my throat. I saw that
Madame Sable's eyes were growing heavy, her mouth twitched, and her
bosom heaved, and at the end of ten minutes she was asleep.

"Go behind her," the doctor said to me; 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?"

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, for the 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."

She saw these things in that card, in that piece of white pasteboard,
as if she had seen them 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 the five thousand francs which your
husband asks 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 seance 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.

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

She sat down in some agitation, with her eyes on the floor, and without
raising her veil 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 hesitated to answer. I asked myself whether
she had not really been making fun of me with Dr. 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 to me?"

"No; no--no--it contained private matters, things too personal to
ourselves. I burned 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 cry, as if she were in pair; 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 sobbed, 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 Dr. 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 resting 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. 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 pocket-book 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 19. 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 21. 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
Ile de la Grenouilliere.[1] But on the top of Mont Saint-Michel or in
India, we are terribly under the influence of our surroundings. I shall
return home next week.

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

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

August 4. Quarrels among my servants. They declare that the glasses are
broken in the cupboards at night. The footman accuses the cook, she
accuses the needlewoman, and the latter accuses the other two. Who is
the culprit? It would take a clever person to tell.

August 6. 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 Geant 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 remained suspended in the transparent air, 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 wholesome for a
reasonable and serious man to have such hallucinations.

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

August 7. 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 were quite intelligent,
lucid, even clear-sighted in every concern of life, except on one
point. They could speak clearly, readily, profoundly on everything;
till their thoughts were caught in the breakers of their delusions and
went to pieces there, were dispersed and swamped in that furious and
terrible sea of fogs and squalls which is called MADNESS.

I certainly should think that I was mad, absolutely mad, if I were not
conscious that I knew my state, if I could not fathom it and analyze it
with the most complete lucidity. I should, in fact, be a reasonable man
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 dreams, and lead us through the
most unlikely phantasmagoria, without causing us any surprise, because
our verifying apparatus and our sense of control have gone to sleep,
while our imaginative faculty wakes and works. Was it not possible that
one of the imperceptible keys of the cerebral finger-board had 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 avenues of thought has been
accomplished 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 me with love for life, for the swallows, whose swift 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 further and were calling me back. I felt
that painful wish to return which comes on you when you have left a
beloved invalid at home, and are seized by a presentiment that he is
worse.

I, therefore, returned despite 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 surprised and uneasy, more so than if I had
had another fantastic vision.

August 8. 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 terrible to me when He
hides himself thus than if He were to manifest his constant and
invisible presence by supernatural phenomena. However, I slept.

August 9. Nothing, but I am afraid.

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

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

August 12. Ten o'clock at night. All day long I have been trying to get
away, and have not been able. I contemplated a simple and easy act of
liberty, a carriage ride to Rouen--and I have not been able to do it.
What is the reason?

August 13. When one is attacked by certain maladies, the springs of our
physical being seem broken, our energies destroyed, our muscles
relaxed, our bones to be as soft as our flesh, and our blood as liquid
as water. I am experiencing the same 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 14. 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 master of myself, nothing except an enslaved and terrified
spectator of 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 floor in such a manner
that no force of mine can move us.

Then suddenly, I must, I MUST go to the foot 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 15. 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, a 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 as
they do to me? I have never read anything that resembles what goes on
in my house. Oh! If I could only leave it, if I could only go away and
flee, and never return, I should be saved; but I cannot.

August 16. 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 my coachman: "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 speak; but I
shouted--in such a loud voice that all the passers-by turned round:
"Home!" and I fell back on to the cushion of my carriage, overcome by
mental agony. He had found me out and regained possession of me.

August 17. 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 and a
fear of 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 the unseen one, he has, in his terror, created the whole race
of hidden beings, 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? Do those who are thinkers in those
distant worlds know more than we do? What can they do more than we?
What do they see which we do not? Will not one of them, some day or
other, traversing space, appear on our earth to conquer it, just as
formerly the Norsemen crossed the sea in order to subjugate nations
feebler than themselves?

We are so weak, so powerless, so ignorant, so small--we who live on
this particle of mud which revolves in liquid air.

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 an indescribably confused and strange sensation. At
first I saw nothing, and then suddenly it appeared to me as if a page
of the 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 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 18. 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 19. 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, by a species of vampire, which feeds on their life
while they are asleep, and which, besides, drinks water and milk
without appearing to touch any other nourishment.

"Professor Don 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 eighth 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 He sprang from the
ship on to 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 seeing him appear, He to whom the imaginations 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, men more enlightened gave him a
truer form. 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 mesmerism, hypnotism, suggestion, I know not what? I have
seen them diverting themselves like rash 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 sharp-horned buffalo; man has killed the lion
with an arrow, with a spear, with gunpowder; but the Horla will make of
man what man has 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, sometimes the animal rebels 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 eyes of animals, as
they differ from ours, do not distinguish as 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? Listen; there
is the wind which is the strongest force in nature; it knocks men down,
blows down buildings, uproots trees, raises the sea into mountains of
water, destroys cliffs, and casts great ships on to the breakers; it
kills, it whistles, it sighs, it 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 quicksilver behind it were to bar my way, I should
run into it, just like a bird which has flown into a room breaks its
head against the windowpanes. A thousand things, moreover, deceive a
man and lead him astray. How then is it surprising that he cannot
perceive a new body which is penetrated and pervaded 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 delicate, its body finer and
more finished than ours. Our makeup is so weak, so awkwardly conceived;
our body is encumbered with organs that are always tired, always being
strained like locks that are too complicated; it lives like a plant and
like an animal nourishing itself with difficulty on air, herbs, and
flesh; it is a brute machine which is a prey to maladies, to
malformations, to decay; it is broken-winded, badly regulated, simple
and eccentric, ingeniously yet badly made, a coarse and yet a delicate
mechanism, in brief, the outline of a being which might become
intelligent and great.

There are only a few--so few--stages of development 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 products one from
the other?

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

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 gaze 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 20. 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 nerves.

I had lighted my two lamps and the eight wax candles on my mantelpiece,
as if, by this light I should discover 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 dress by every day, and in which I was in the habit
of inspecting 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.
Horror! 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.
I did not dare advance; I did not venture to make a movement; feeling
certain, nevertheless, 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, or
through a veil 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 hid me did not
appear to possess any clearly defined outlines, but was 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 Him! And the horror of it remained with me, and makes me
shudder even now.

August 21. How could I kill Him, since I could not get hold of Him?
Poison? But He would see me mix it with the water; and then, would our
poisons have any effect on His impalpable body? No--no--no doubt about
the matter. Then?--then?

August 22. 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 a coward, but I do not care about
that!

September 10. 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 quite, 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 into the drawing-room
which was under my bedroom. I took the two lamps and poured all the oil
on to 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 on to 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, heart-rending cry, a woman's cry, sounded through the night,
and two garret windows were opened! I had forgotten the servants! I saw
the terror-struck faces, and the frantic waving of their arms!

Then, overwhelmed with horror, I ran off to the village, shouting:
"Help! help! fire! fire!" Meeting some people who were already coming
on to the scene, I went back with them to see!

By this time the house was nothing but a horrible and magnificent
funeral pile, a monstrous pyre which lit up the whole country, a pyre
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 on to
that furnace, I saw the flames darting, and I reflected 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 were 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, He who was only to die at his own proper hour
and minute, because He had touched the limits of his existence!

No--no--there is no doubt about it--He is not dead. Then--then--I
suppose I must kill MYSELF!


[1] Frog-island.



MISS HARRIET

There were seven of us in a four-in-hand, four women and three men, one
of whom was on the box seat beside the coachman. We were following, at
a foot pace, broad highway which serpentines along the coast.

Setting out from Etretat at break of day, in order to visit the ruins
of Tancarville, we were still asleep, chilled by the fresh air of the
morning. The women, especially, who were but little accustomed to these
early excursions, let their eyelids fall and rise every moment, nodding
their heads or yawning, quite insensible to the glory of the dawn.

It was autumn. On both sides of the road the bare fields stretched out,
yellowed by the corn and wheat stubble which covered the soil like a
bristling growth of beard. The spongy earth seemed to smoke. Larks were
singing high up in the air, while other birds piped in the bushes.

At length the sun rose in front of us, a bright red on the plane of the
horizon; and as it ascended, growing clearer from minute to minute, the
country seemed to awake, to smile, to shake and stretch itself, like a
young girl who is leaving her bed in her white airy chemise. The Count
d'Etraille, who was seated on the box, cried:

"Look! look! a hare!" and he pointed toward the left, indicating a
piece of hedge. The leveret threaded its way along, almost concealed by
the field, only its large ears visible. Then it swerved across a deep
rut, stopped, again pursued its easy course, changed its direction,
stopped anew, disturbed, spying out every danger, and undecided as to
the route it should take. Suddenly it began to run, with great bounds
from its hind legs, disappearing finally in a large patch of beet-root.
All the men had woke up to watch the course of the beast.

Rene Lemanoir then exclaimed

"We are not at all gallant this morning," and looking at his neighbor,
the little Baroness of Serennes, who was struggling with drowsiness, he
said to her in a subdued voice: "You are thinking of your husband,
Baroness. Reassure yourself; he will not return before Saturday, so you
have still four days."

She responded to him with a sleepy smile.

"How rude you are." Then, shaking off her torpor, she added: "Now, let
somebody say something that will make us all laugh. You, Monsieur
Chenal who have the reputation of possessing a larger fortune than the
Duke of Richelieu, tell us a love story in which you have been mixed
up, anything you like."

Leon Chenal, an old painter, who had once keen very handsome, very
strong, who was very proud of his physique and very amiable, took his
long white beard in his hand and smiled; then, after a few moments'
reflection, he became suddenly grave.

"Ladies, it will not be an amusing tale; for I am going to relate to
you the most lamentable love affair of my life, and I sincerely hope
that none of my friends has ever passed through a similar experience."


I.

"At that time I was twenty-five years old, and was making daubs along
the coast of Normandy. I call 'making daubs' that wandering about, with
a bag on one's back, from mountain to mountain, under the pretext of
studying and of sketching nature. I know nothing more enjoyable than
that happy-go-lucky wandering life, in which you are perfectly free;
without shackles of any kind, without care, without preoccupation,
without thought even of to-morrow. You go in any direction you please,
without any guide save your fancy, without any counselor save your
eyes. You pull up, because a running brook seduces you, or because you
are attracted, in front of an inn, by the smell of potatoes frying.
Sometimes it is the perfume of clematis which decides you in your
choice, or the naive glance of the servant at an inn. Do not despise me
for my affection for these rustics. These girls have soul as well as
feeling, not to mention firm cheeks and fresh lips; while their hearty
and willing kisses have the flavor of wild fruit. Love always has its
price, come whence it may. A heart that beats when you make your
appearance, an eye that weeps when you go away, these are things so
rare, so sweet, so precious, that they must never be despised.

"I have had rendezvous in ditches in which cattle repose, and in barns
among the straw, still steaming from the heat of the day. I have
recollections of canvas spread on rude and creaky benches, and of
hearty, fresh, free kisses, more delicate, free from affectation, and
sincere than the subtle attractions of charming and distinguished women.

"But what you love most amid all these varied adventures are the
country, the woods, the risings of the sun, the twilight, the light of
the moon. For the painter these are honeymoon trips with Nature. You
are alone with her in that long and tranquil rendezvous. You go to bed
in the fields amid marguerites and wild poppies, and, with eyes wide
open, you watch the going down of the sun, and descry in the distance
the little village, with its pointed clock-tower, which sounds the hour
of midnight.

"You sit down by the side of a spring which gushes out from the foot of
an oak, amid a covering of fragile herbs, growing and redolent of life.
You go down on your knees, bend forward, and drink the cold and
pellucid water, wetting your mustache and nose; you drink it with a
physical pleasure, as though you were kissing the spring, lip to lip.
Sometimes, when you encounter a deep hole, along the course of these
tiny brooks, you plunge into it, quite naked, and on your skin, from
head to foot, like an icy and delicious caress, you feel the lovely and
gentle quivering of the current.

"You are gay on the hills, melancholy on the verge of pools, exalted
when the sun is crowned in an ocean of blood-red shadows, and when it
casts on the rivers its red reflection. And at night, under the moon,
as it passes across the vault of heaven, you think of things, singular
things, which would never have occurred to your mind under the
brilliant light of day.

"So, in wandering through the same country we are in this year, I came
to the little village of Benouville, on the Falaise, between Yport and
Etretat. I came from Fecamp, following the coast, a high coast,
perpendicular as a wall, with projecting and rugged rocks falling sheer
down into the sea. I had walked since the morning on the close clipped
grass, as smooth and as yielding as a carpet. Singing lustily, I walked
with long strides, looking sometimes at the slow and lazy flight of a
gull, with its short, white wings, sailing in the blue heavens,
sometimes at the green sea, or at the brown sails of a fishing bark. In
short, I had passed a happy day, a day of listlessness and of liberty.

"I was shown a little farmhouse, where travelers were put up, a kind of
inn, kept by a peasant, which stood in the center of a Norman court,
surrounded by a double row of beeches.

"Quitting the Falaise. I gained the hamlet, which was hemmed in by
great trees, and I presented myself at the house of Mother Lecacheur.

"She was an old, wrinkled, and austere rustic, who always seemed to
yield to the pressure of new customs with a kind of contempt.

"It was the month of May: the spreading apple-trees covered the court
with a whirling shower of blossoms which rained unceasingly both upon
people and upon the grass.

"I said:

"'Well, Madame Lecacheur, have you a room for me?'

"Astonished to find that I knew her name, she answered:

"'That depends; everything is let; but, all the same, there will be no
harm in looking.'

"In five minutes we were in perfect accord, and I deposited my bag upon
the bare floor of a rustic room, furnished with a bed, two chairs, a
table, and a washstand. The room opened into the large and smoky
kitchen, where the lodgers took their meals with the people of the farm
and with the farmer himself, who was a widower.

"I washed my hands, after which I went out. The old woman was
fricasseeing a chicken for dinner in a large fireplace, in which hung
the stew-pot, black with smoke.

"'You have travelers, then, at the present time?' said I to her.

"She answered in an offended tone of voice:

"'I have a lady, an English lady, who has attained to years of
maturity. She is occupying my other room.'

"By means of an extra five sous a day, I obtained the privilege of
dining out in the court when the weather was fine.

"My cover was then placed in front of the door, and I commenced to gnaw
with hunger the lean members of the Normandy chicken, to drink the
clear cider, and to munch the hunk of white bread, which, though four
days old, was excellent.

"Suddenly, the wooden barrier which opened on to the highway was
opened, and a strange person directed her steps toward the house. She
was very slender, very tall, enveloped in a Scotch shawl with red
borders. You would have believed that she had no arms, if you had not
seen a long hand appear just above the hips, holding a white tourist
umbrella. The face of a mummy, surrounded with sausage rolls of plaited
gray hair, which bounded at every step she took, made me think, I know
not why, of a sour herring adorned with curling papers. Lowering her
eyes, she passed quickly in front of me, and entered the house.

"This singular apparition made me curious. She undoubtedly was my
neighbor, the aged English lady of whom our hostess had spoken.

"I did not see her again that day. The next day, when I had begun to
paint at the end of that beautiful valley, which you know extends as
far as Etretat, lifting my eyes suddenly, I perceived something
singularly attired standing on the crest of the declivity; it looked
like a pole decked out with flags. It was she. On seeing me, she
suddenly disappeared. I re-entered the house at midday for lunch, and
took my seat at the common table, so as to make the acquaintance of
this old and original creature. But she did not respond to my polite
advances, was insensible even to my little attentions. I poured water
out for her with great alacrity, I passed her the dishes with great
eagerness. A slight, almost imperceptible movement of the head, and an
English word, murmured so low that I did not understand it, were her
only acknowledgments.

"I ceased occupying myself with her, although she had disturbed my
thoughts. At the end of three days, I knew as much about her as did
Madame Lecacheur herself.

"She was called Miss Harriet. Seeking out a secluded village in which
to pass the summer, she had been attracted to Benouville, some six
months before, and did not seem disposed to quit it. She never spoke at
table, ate rapidly, reading all the while a small book, treating of
some Protestant propaganda. She gave a copy of it to everybody. The
cure himself had received no less than four copies, at the hands of an
urchin to whom she had paid two sous' commission. She said sometimes to
our hostess, abruptly, without preparing herin the least for the
declaration:

"'I love the Saviour more than all; I worship him in all creation; I
adore him in all nature; I carry him always in my heart.'

"And she would immediately present the old woman with one of her
brochures which were destined to convert the universe.

"In the village she was not liked. In fact, the schoolmaster had
declared that she was an atheist, and that a sort of reproach attached
to her. The cure, who had been consulted by Madame Lecacheur, responded:

"'She is a heretic, but God does not wish the death of the sinner, and
I believe her to be a person of pure morals.'

"These words, 'atheist,' 'heretic,' words which no one can precisely
define, threw doubts into some minds. It was asserted, however, that
this English-woman was rich, and that she had passed her life in
traveling through every country in the world, because her family had
thrown her off. Why had her family thrown her off? Because of her
natural impiety?

"She was, in fact, one of those people of exalted principles, one of
those opinionated puritans of whom England produces so many, one of
those good and insupportable old women who haunt the tables d'hote of
every hotel in Europe, who spoil Italy, poison Switzerland, render the
charming cities of the Mediterranean uninhabitable, carry everywhere
their fantastic manias, their petrified vestal manners, their
indescribable toilettes, and a certain odor of india-rubber, which
makes one believe that at night they slip themselves into a case of
that material. When I meet one of these people in a hotel, I act like
birds which see a manikin in a field.

"This woman, however, appeared so singular that she did not displease
me.

"Madame Lecacheur, hostile by instinct to everything that was not
rustic, felt in her narrow soul a kind of hatred for the ecstatic
extravagances of the old girl. She had found a phrase by which to
describe her, I know not how, but a phrase assuredly contemptuous,
which had sprung to her lips, invented probably by some confused and
mysterious travail of soul. She said: 'That woman is a demoniac.' This
phrase, as uttered by that austere and sentimental creature, seemed to
me irresistibly comic. I, myself, never called her now anything else
but 'the demoniac.' feeling a singular pleasure in pronouncing this
word on seeing her.

"I would ask Mother Lecacheur: 'Well, what is our demoniac about
to-day?' To which my rustic friend would respond, with an air of having
been scandalized:

"'What do you think, sir? She has picked up a toad which has had its
leg battered, and carried it to her room, and has put it in her
washstand, and dressed it up like a man. If that is not profanation, I
should like to know what is!'

"On another occasion, when walking along the Falaise, she had bought a
large fish which had just been caught, simply to throw it back into the
sea again. The sailor, from whom she had bought it, though paid
handsomely, was greatly provoked at this act--more exasperated, indeed,
than if she had put her hand into his pocket and taken his money. For a
whole month he could not speak of the circumstance without getting into
a fury and denouncing it as an outrage. Oh yes! She was indeed a
demoniac, this Miss Harriet, and Mother Lecacheur must have had an
inspiration of genius in thus christening her.

"The stable-boy, who was called Sapeur, because he had served in Africa
in his youth, entertained other aversions. He said, with a roguish air:
'She is an old hag who has lived her days.' If the poor woman had but
known!

"Little kind-hearted Celeste did not wait upon her willingly, but I was
never able to understand why. Probably her only reason was that she was
a stranger, of another race, of a different tongue, and of another
religion. She was in good truth a demoniac!

"She passed her time wandering about the country, adoring and searching
for God in nature. I found her one evening on her knees in a cluster of
bushes. Having discovered something red through the leaves, I brushed
aside the branches, and Miss Harriet at once rose to her feet, confused
at having been found thus, looking at me with eyes as terrible as those
of a wild cat surprised in open day.

"Sometimes, when I was working among the rocks, I would suddenly descry
her on the banks of the Falaise standing like a semaphore signal. She
gazed passionately at the vast sea, glittering in the sunlight, and the
boundless sky empurpled with fire. Sometimes I would distinguish her at
the bottom of a valley, walking quickly, with her elastic English step;
and I would go toward her, attracted by I know not what, simply to see
her illuminated visage, her dried-up features, which seemed to glow
with an ineffable, inward, and profound happiness.

"Often I would encounter her in the corner of a field sitting on the
grass, under the shadow of an apple-tree, with her little Bible lying
open on her knee, while she looked meditatively into the distance.

"I could no longer tear myself away from that quiet country
neighborhood, bound to it as I was by a thousand links of love for its
soft and sweeping landscapes. At this farm I was out of the world, far
removed from everything, but in close proximity to the soil, the good,
healthy, beautiful green soil. And, must I avow it, there was something
besides curiosity which retained me at the residence of Mother
Lecacheur. I wished to become acquainted a little with this strange
Miss Harriet, and to learn what passes in the solitary souls of those
wandering old, English dames."


II.

"We became acquainted in a rather singular manner. I had just finished
a study which appeared to me to display genius and power; as it must
have, since it was sold for ten thousand francs, fifteen years later.
It was as simple, however, as that two and two make four, and had
nothing to do with academic rules. The whole of the right side of my
canvas represented a rock, an enormous rock, covered with sea-wrack,
brown, yellow, and red, across which the sun poured like a stream of
oil. The light, without which one could see the stars concealed in the
background, fell upon the stone, and gilded it as if with fire. That
was all. A first stupid attempt at dealing with light, with burning
rays, with the sublime.

"On the left was the sea, not the blue sea, the slate-colored sea, but
a sea of jade, as greenish, milky, and thick as the overcast sky.

"I was so pleased with my work that I danced from sheer delight as I
carried it back to the inn. I wished that the whole world could have
seen it at one and the same moment. I can remember that I showed it to
a cow, which was browsing by the wayside, exclaiming, at the same time:
'Look at that, my old beauty; you will not often see its like again.'

"When I had reached the front of the house, I immediately called out to
Mother Lecacheur, shouting with all my might:

"'Ohe! Ohe! my mistress, come here and look at this.'

"The rustic advanced and looked at my work with stupid eyes, which
distinguished nothing, and did not even recognize whether the picture
was the representation of an ox or a house.

"Miss Harriet came into the house, and passed in rear of me just at the
moment when, holding out my canvas at arm's length, I was exhibiting it
to the female innkeeper. The 'demoniac' could not help but see it, for
I took care to exhibit the thing in such a way that it could not escape
her notice. She stopped abruptly and stood motionless, stupefied. It
was her rock which was depicted, the one which she usually climbed to
dream away her time undisturbed.

"She uttered a British 'Oh,' which was at once so accentuated and so
flattering, that I turned round to her, smiling, and said:

"This is my last work, Mademoiselle.'

"She murmured ecstatically, comically, and tenderly:

"'Oh! Monsieur, you must understand what it is to have a palpitation.'

"I colored up, of course, and was more excited by that compliment than
if it had come from a queen. I was seduced, conquered, vanquished. I
could have embraced her--upon my honor.

"I took my seat at the table beside her, as I had always done. For the
first time, she spoke, drawling out in a loud voice:

"'Oh! I love nature so much.'

"I offered her some bread, some water, some wine. She now accepted
these with the vacant smile of a mummy. I then began to converse with
her about the scenery.

"After the meal, we rose from the table together and walked leisurely
across the court; then, attracted by the fiery glow which the setting
sun cast over the surface of the sea, I opened the outside gate which
faced in the direction of the Falaise, and we walked on side by side,
as satisfied as any two persons could be who have just learned to
understand and penetrate each other's motives and feelings.

"It was a misty, relaxing evening, one of those enjoyable evenings
which impart happiness to mind and body alike. All is joy, all is
charm. The luscious and balmy air, loaded with the perfumes of herbs,
with the perfumes of grass-wrack, with the odor of the wild flowers,
caresses the soul with a penetrating sweetness. We were going to the
brink of the abyss which overlooked the vast sea and rolled past us at
the distance of less than a hundred meters.

"We drank with open mouth and expanded chest, that fresh breeze from
the ocean which glides slowly over the skin, salted as it is by long
contact with the waves.

"Wrapped up in her square shawl, inspired by the balmy air and with
teeth firmly set, the English-woman gazed fixedly at the great
sun-ball, as it descended toward the sea. Soon its rim touched the
waters, just in rear of a ship which had appeared on the horizon,
until, by degrees, it was swallowed up by the ocean. We watched it
plunge, diminish, and finally disappear.

"Miss Harriet contemplated with passionate regard the last glimmer of
the flaming orb of day.

"She muttered: 'Oh! I love--I love--' I saw a tear start in her eye.
She continued: 'I wish I were a little bird, so that I could mount up
into the firmament.'

"She remained standing as I had often before seen her, perched on the
river bank, her face as red as her flaming shawl. I should have liked
to have sketched her in my album. It would have been an ecstatic
caricature. I turned my face away from her so as to be able to laugh.

"I then spoke to her of painting, as I would have done to a
fellow-artist, using the technical terms common among the devotees of
the profession. She listened attentively to me, eagerly seeking to
divine the sense of the obscure words, so as to penetrate my thoughts.
From time to time, she would exclaim: 'Oh! I understand, I understand.
This is very interesting.' We returned home.

"The next day, on seeing me, she approached me eagerly, holding out her
hand; and we became firm friends immediately.

"She was a brave creature, with an elastic sort of a soul, which became
enthusiastic at a bound. She lacked equilibrium, like all women who are
spinsters at the age of fifty. She seemed to be pickled in vinegary
innocence, though her heart still retained something of youth and of
girlish effervescence. She loved both nature and animals with a fervent
ardor, a love like old wine, mellow through age, with a sensual love
that she had never bestowed on men.

"One thing is certain: a mare roaming in a meadow with a foal at its
side, a bird's nest full of young ones, squeaking, with their open
mouths and enormous heads, made her quiver with the most violent
emotion.

"Poor solitary beings! Sad wanderers from table d'hote to table d'hote,
poor beings, ridiculous and lamentable, I love you ever since I became
acquainted with Miss Harriet!

"I soon discovered that she had something she would like to tell me,
but dared not, and I was amused at her timidity. When I started out in
the morning with my box on my back, she would accompany me as far as
the end of the village, silent, but evidently struggling inwardly to
find words with which to begin a conversation. Then she would leave me
abruptly, and, with jaunty step, walk away quickly.

"One day, however, she plucked up courage:

"'I would like to see how you paint pictures? Will you show me? I have
been very curious.'

"And she colored up as though she had given utterance to words
extremely audacious.

"I conducted her to the bottom of the Petit-Val, where I had commenced
a large picture.

"She remained standing near me, following all my gestures with
concentrated attention. Then, suddenly, fearing, perhaps, that she was
disturbing me, she said to me: 'Thank you,' and walked away.

"But in a short time she became more familiar, and accompanied me every
day, her countenance exhibiting visible pleasure. She carried her
folding stool under her arm; would not consent to my carrying it, and
she sat always by my side. She would remain there for hours immovable
and mute, following with her eye the point of my brush in its every
movement. When I would obtain, by a large splatch of color spread on
with a knife, a striking and unexpected effect, she would, in spite of
herself, give vent to a half-suppressed 'Oh!' of astonishment, of joy,
of admiration. She had the most tender respect for my canvases, an
almost religious respect for that human reproduction of a part of
nature's work divine. My studies appeared to her to be pictures of
sanctity, and sometimes she spoke to me of God, with the idea of
converting me.

"Oh! He was a queer good-natured being, this God of hers. He was a sort
of village philosopher without any great resources, and without great
power; for she always figured him to herself as a being quivering over
injustices committed under his eyes, and helpless to prevent them.

"She was, however, on excellent terms with him, affecting even to be
the confidant of his secrets and of his whims. She said:

"'God wills, or God does not will,' just like a sergeant announcing to
a recruit: 'The colonel has commanded.'

"At the bottom of her heart she deplored my ignorance of the intentions
of the Eternal, which she strove, nay, felt herself compelled, to
impart to me.

"Almost every day, I found in my pockets, in my hat when I lifted it
from the ground, in my box of colors, in my polished shoes, standing in
the mornings in front of my door, those little pious brochures, which
she, no doubt, received directly from Paradise.

"I treated her as one would an old friend, with unaffected cordiality.
But I soon perceived that she had changed somewhat in her manner; but,
for a while, I paid little attention to it.

"When I walked about, whether to the bottom of the valley, or through
some country lanes, I would see her suddenly appear, as though she were
returning from a rapid walk. She would then sit down abruptly, out of
breath, as though she had been running or overcome by some profound
emotion. Her face would be red, that English red which is denied to the
people of all other countries; then, without any reason, she would grow
pale, become the color of the ground, and seem ready to faint away.
Gradually, however, I would see her regain her ordinary color,
whereupon she would begin to speak.

"Then, without warning, she would break off in the middle of a
sentence, spring up from her seat, and march off so rapidly and so
strangely, that it would, sometimes, put me to my wits' end to try and
discover whether I had done or said anything to displease or offend her.

"I finally came to the conclusion that this arose from her early habits
and training, somewhat modified, no doubt, in honor of me, since the
first days of our acquaintanceship.

"When she returned to the farm, after walking for hours on the
wind-beaten coast, her long curled hair would be shaken out and hanging
loose, as though it had broken away from its bearings. It was seldom
that this gave her any concern; though sometimes she looked as though
she had been dining sans ceremonie; her locks having become disheveled
by the breezes.

"She would then go up to her room in order to adjust what I called her
glass lamps. When I would say to her, in familiar gallantry, which,
however, always offended her:

"'You are as beautiful as a planet to-day, Miss Harriet,' a little
blood would immediately mount into her cheeks, the blood of a young
maiden, the blood of sweet fifteen.

"Then she would become abruptly savage and cease coming to watch me
paint. But I always thought:

"'This is only a fit of temper she is passing through.'

"But it did not always pass away. When I spoke to her sometimes, she
would answer me, either with an air of affected indifference, or in
sullen anger; and she became by turns rude, impatient, and nervous. For
a time I never saw her except at meals, and we spoke but little. I
concluded, at length, that I must have offended her in something: and,
accordingly, I said to her one evening:

"'Miss Harriet, why is it that you do not act toward me as formerly?
What have I done to displease you? You are causing me much pain!'

"She responded, in an angry tone, in a manner altogether sui generis:

"'I am always with you the same as formerly. It is not true, not true,'
and she ran upstairs and shut herself up in her room.

"At times she would look upon me with strange eyes. Since that time I
have often said to myself that those condemned to death must look thus
when informed that their last day has come. In her eye there lurked a
species of folly, a folly at once mysterious and violent--even more, a
fever, an exasperated desire, impatient, at once incapable of being
realized and unrealizable!

"Nay, it seemed to me that there was also going on within her a combat,
in which her heart struggled against an unknown force that she wished
to overcome--perhaps, even, something else. But what could I know? What
could I know?"


III.

"This was indeed a singular revelation.

"For some time I had commenced to work, as soon as daylight appeared,
on a picture, the subject of which was as follows:

"A deep ravine, steep banks dominated by two declivities, lined with
brambles and long rows of trees, hidden, drowned in milky vapor, clad
in that misty robe which sometimes floats over valleys at break of day.
At the extreme end of that thick and transparent fog, you see coming,
or rather already come, a human couple, a stripling and a maiden
embraced, interlaced, she, with head leaning on him, he; inclined
toward hers and lip to lip.

"A ray of the sun, glistening through the branches, has traversed the
fog of dawn and illuminated it with a rosy reflection, just behind the
rustic lovers, whose vague shadows are reflected on it in clear silver.
It was well done, yes, indeed, well done.

"I was working on the declivity which led to the Val d'Etretat. This
particular morning, I had, by chance, the sort of floating vapor which
was necessary for my purpose. Suddenly, an object appeared in front of
me, a kind of phantom; it was Miss Harriet. On seeing me, she took to
flight. But I called after her saying: 'Come here, come here,
Mademoiselle, I have a nice little picture for you.'

"She came forward, though with seeming reluctance. I handed her my
sketch. She said nothing, but stood for a long time motionless, looking
at it. Suddenly she burst into tears. She wept spasmodically, like men
who have been struggling hard against shedding tears, but who can do so
no longer, and abandon themselves to grief, though unwillingly. I got
up, trembling, moved myself by the sight of a sorrow I did not
comprehend, and I took her by the hand with a gesture of brusque
affection, a true French impulse which impels one quicker than one
thinks.

"She let her hands rest in mine for a few seconds, and I felt them
quiver, as if her whole nervous system was twisting and turning. Then
she withdrew her hands abruptly, or, rather, tore them out of mine.

"I recognized that shiver as soon as I had felt it: I was deceived in
nothing. Ah! the love shudder of a woman, whether she is fifteen or
fifty years of age, whether she is one of the people or one of the
monde, goes so straight to my heart that I never had any difficulty in
understanding it!

"Her whole frail being trembled, vibrated, yielded. I knew it. She
walked away before I had time to say a word, leaving me as surprised as
if I had witnessed a miracle, and as troubled as if I had committed a
crime.

"I did not go in to breakfast. I took a walk on the banks of the
Falaise, feeling that I could just as soon weep as laugh, looking on
the adventure as both comic and deplorable, and my position as
ridiculous, fain to believe that I had lost my head.

"I asked myself what I ought to do. I debated whether I ought not to
take my leave of the place and almost immediately my resolution was
formed.

"Somewhat sad and perplexed, I wandered about until dinner time, and
entered the farmhouse just when the soup had been served up.

"I sat down at the table, as usual. Miss Harriet was there, munching
away solemnly, without speaking to anyone, without even lifting her
eyes. She wore, however, her usual expression, both of countenance and
manner.

"I waited, patiently, till the meal had been finished. Then, turning
toward the landlady, I said: 'Madame Lecacheur, it will not be long now
before I shall have to take my leave of you.'

"The good woman, at once surprised and troubled, replied in a quivering
voice: 'My dear sir, what is it I have just heard you say? Are you
going to leave us, after I have become so much accustomed to you?'

"I looked at Miss Harriet from the corner of my eye. Her countenance
did not change in the least; but the under-servant came toward me with
eyes wide open. She was a fat girl, of about eighteen years of age,
rosy, fresh, strong as a horse, yet possessing a rare attribute in one
in her position--she was very neat and clean. I had kissed her at odd
times, in out of the way corners, in the manner of a mountain guide,
nothing more.

"The dinner being over, I went to smoke my pipe under the apple-trees,
walking up and down at my ease, from one end of the court to the other.
All the reflections which I had made during the day, the strange
discovery of the morning, that grotesque and passionate attachment for
me, the recollections which that revelation had suddenly called up,
recollections at once charming and perplexing, perhaps, also, that look
which the servant had cast on me at the announcement of my
departure--all these things, mixed up and combined, put me now in an
excited bodily state, with the tickling sensation of kisses on my lips,
and in my veins something which urged me on to commit some folly.

"Night having come on, casting its dark shadows under the trees, I
descried Celeste, who had gone to shut the hen-coops, at the other end
of the inclosure. I darted toward her, running so noiselessly that she
heard nothing, and as she got up from closing the small traps by which
the chickens went in and out, I clasped her in my arms and rained on
her coarse, fat face a shower of kisses. She made a struggle, laughing
all the same, as she was accustomed to do in such circumstances. What
made me suddenly loose my grip of her? Why did I at once experience a
shock? What was it that I heard behind me?

"It was Miss Harriet who had come upon us, who had seen us, and who
stood in front of us, as motionless as a specter. Then she disappeared
in the darkness.

"I was ashamed, embarrassed, more annoyed at having been surprised by
her than if she had caught me committing some criminal act.

"I slept badly that night; I was worried and haunted by sad thoughts. I
seemed to hear loud weeping; but in this I was no doubt deceived.
Moreover, I thought several times that I heard some one walking up and
down in the house, and that some one opened my door from the outside.

"Toward morning, I was overcome by fatigue, and sleep seized on me. I
got up late and did not go downstairs until breakfast time, being still
in a bewildered state, not knowing what kind of face to put on.

"No one had seen Miss Harriet. We waited for her at table, but she did
not appear. At length, Mother Lecacheur went to her room. The
English-woman had gone out. She must have set out at break of day, as
she was wont to do, in order to see the sun rise.

"Nobody seemed astonished at this and we began to eat in silence.

"The weather was hot, very hot, one of those still sultry days when not
a leaf stirs. The table had been placed out of doors, under an
apple-tree; and from time to time Sapeur had gone to the cellar to draw
a jug of cider, everybody was so thirsty. Celeste brought the dishes
from the kitchen, a ragout of mutton with potatoes, a cold rabbit, and
a salad. Afterward she placed before us a dish of strawberries, the
first of the season.

"As I wanted to wash and freshen these, I begged the servant to go and
bring a pitcher of cold water."

"In about five minutes she returned, declaring that the well was dry.
She had lowered the pitcher to the full extent of the cord, and had
touched the bottom, but on drawing the pitcher up again, it was empty.
Mother Lecacheur, anxious to examine the thing for herself, went and
looked down the hole. She returned announcing that one could see
clearly something in the well, something altogether unusual. But this,
no doubt, was pottles of straw, which, out of spite, had been cast down
it by a neighbor.

"I wished also to look down the well, hoping to clear up the mystery,
and perched myself close to its brink. I perceived, indistinctly, a
white object. What could it be? I then conceived the idea of lowering a
lantern at the end of a cord. When I did so, the yellow flame danced on
the layers of stone and gradually became clearer. All four of us were
leaning over the opening, Sapeur and Celeste having now joined us. The
lantern rested on a black and white, indistinct mass, singular,
incomprehensible. Sapeur exclaimed:

"'It is a horse. I see the hoofs. It must have escaped from the meadow,
during the night, and fallen in headlong.'

"But, suddenly, a cold shiver attacked my spine, I first recognized a
foot, then a clothed limb; the body was entire, but the other limb had
disappeared under the water.

"I groaned and trembled so violently that the light of the lamp danced
hither and thither over the object, discovering a slipper.

"'It is a woman! who--who--can it be? It is Miss Harriet.'

"Sapeur alone did not manifest horror. He had witnessed many such
scenes in Africa.

"Mother Lecacheur and Celeste began to scream and to shriek, and ran
away.

"But it was necessary to recover the corpse of the dead. I attached the
boy securely by the loins to the end of the pulley-rope; then I lowered
him slowly, and watched him disappear in the darkness. In the one hand
he had a lantern, and held on to the rope with the other. Soon I
recognized his voice, which seemed to come from the center of the
earth, crying:

"'Stop.'

"I then saw him fish something out of the water. It was the other limb.
He bound the two feet together, and shouted anew:

"'Haul up.'

"I commenced to wind him up, but I felt my arms strain, my muscles
twitch, and was in terror lest I should let the boy fall to the bottom.
When his head appeared over the brink, I asked:

"'What is it?' as though I only expected that he would tell me what he
had discovered at the bottom.

"We both got on to the stone slab at the edge of the well, and, face to
face, hoisted the body.

"Mother Lecacheur and Celeste watched us from a distance, concealed
behind the wall of the house. When they saw, issuing from the well, the
black slippers and white stockings of the drowned person, they
disappeared.

"Sapeur seized the ankles of the poor chaste woman, and we drew it up,
inclined, as it was, in the most immodest posture. The head was in a
shocking state, bruised and black; and the long, gray hair, hanging
down, was tangled and disordered.

"'In the name of all that is holy, how lean she is!' exclaimed Sapeur,
in a contemptuous tone.

"We carried her into the room, and as the women did not put in an
appearance, I, with the assistance of the lad, dressed the corpse for
burial.

"I washed her disfigured face. By the touch of my hand an eye was
slightly opened; it seemed to scan me with that pale stare, with that
cold, that terrible look which corpses have, a look which seems to come
from the beyond. I plaited up, as well as I could, her disheveled hair,
and I adjusted on her forehead a novel and singularly formed lock. Then
I took off her dripping wet garments, baring, not without a feeling of
shame, as though I had been guilty of some profanation, her shoulders
and her chest, and her long arms, slim as the twigs of branches.

"I next went to fetch some flowers, corn poppies, blue beetles,
marguerites, and fresh and perfumed herbs, with which to strew her
funeral couch.

"Being the only person near her, it was necessary for me to perform the
usual ceremonies. In a letter found in her pocket, written at the last
moment, she asked that her body be buried in the village in which she
had passed the last days of her life. A frightful thought then
oppressed my heart. Was it not on my account that she wished to be laid
at rest in this place?

"Toward the evening, all the female gossips of the locality came to
view the remains of the defunct; but I would not allow a single person
to enter; I wanted to be alone; and I watched by the corpse the whole
night.

"By the flickering light of the candles, I looked at the body of this
miserable woman, wholly unknown, who had died so lamentably and so far
away from home. Had she left no friends, no relatives behind her? What
had her infancy been? What had been her life? Whence had she come
thither, all alone, a wanderer, like a dog driven from home? What
secrets of suffering and of despair were sealed up in that disagreeable
body, in that spent and withered body, that impenetrable hiding place
of a mystery which had driven her far away from affection and from love?

"How many unhappy beings there are! I felt that upon that human
creature weighed the eternal injustice of implacable nature! Life was
over with her, without her ever having experienced, perhaps, that which
sustains the most miserable of us all--to wit, the hope of being once
loved! Otherwise, why should she thus have concealed herself, have fled
from the face of others? Why did she love everything so tenderly and so
passionately, everything living that was not a man?

"I recognized, also, that she believed in a God, and that she hoped for
compensation from him for the miseries she had endured. She had now
begun to decompose, and to become, in turn, a plant. She who had
blossomed in the sun was now to be eaten up by the cattle, carried away
in herbs, and in the flesh of beasts, again to become human flesh. But
that which is called the soul had been extinguished at the bottom of
the dark well. She suffered no longer. She had changed her life for
that of others yet to be born.

"Hours passed away in this silent and sinister communion with the dead.
A pale light at length announced the dawn of a new day, and a bright
ray glistened on the bed, shedding a dash of fire on the bedclothes and
on her hands. This was the hour she had so much loved, when the waking
birds began to sing in the trees.

"I opened the window to its fullest extent, I drew back the curtains,
so that the whole heavens might look in upon us. Then bending toward
the glassy corpse, I took in my hands the mutilated head, and slowly,
without terror or disgust, imprinted a long, long kiss upon those lips
which had never before received the salute of love."

      *      *      *      *      *

Leon Chenal remained silent. The women wept. We heard on the box seat
Count d'Etraille blow his nose, from time to time. The coachman alone
had gone to sleep. The horses, which felt no longer the sting of the
whip, had slackened their pace and dragged softly along. And the
four-in-hand, hardly moving at all, became suddenly torpid, as if laden
with sorrow.



THE HOLE

CUTS AND WOUNDS WHICH CAUSED DEATH. That was the heading of the charge
which brought Leopold Renard, upholsterer, before the Assize Court.

Round him were the principal witnesses, Madame Flameche, widow of the
victim, Louis Ladureau, cabinetmaker, and Jean Durdent, plumber.

Near the criminal was his wife, dressed in black, a little ugly woman,
who looked like a monkey dressed as a lady.

This is how Renard described the drama:

"Good heavens, it is a misfortune of which I am the first and last
victim, and with which my will has nothing to do. The facts are their
own commentary, Monsieur le President. I am an honest man, a
hard-working man, an upholsterer in the same street for the last
sixteen years, known, liked, respected, and esteemed by all, as my
neighbors have testified, even the porter, who is not folatre every
day. I am fond of work, I am fond of saving, I like honest men, and
respectable pleasures. That is what has ruined me, so much the worse
for me; but as my will had nothing to do with it, I continue to respect
myself.

"Every Sunday for the last five years, my wife and I have spent the day
at Passy. We get fresh air, not to say that we are fond of fishing--as
fond of it as we are of small onions. Melie inspired me with that
passion, the jade; she is more enthusiastic than I am, the scold, and
all the mischief in this business is her fault, as you will see
immediately.

"I am strong and mild-tempered, without a pennyworth of malice in me.
But she! oh! la! la! she looks insignificant, she is short and thin,
but she does more mischief than a weasel. I do not deny that she has
some good qualities; she has some, and those very important to a man in
business. But her character! Just ask about it in the neighborhood;
even the porter's wife, who has just sent me about my business--she
will tell you something about it.

"Every day she used to find fault with my mild temper: 'I would not put
up with this! I would not put up with that.' If I had listened to her,
Monsieur le President, I should have had at least three bouts of
fisticuffs a month."

Madame Renard interrupted him: "And for good reasons too; they laugh
best who laugh last."

He turned toward her frankly: "Oh! very well, I can blame you, since
you were the cause of it."

Then, facing the President again he said:

"I will continue. We used to go to Passy every Saturday evening, so as
to be able to begin fishing at daybreak the next morning. It is a habit
which has become second nature with us, as the saying is. Three years
ago this summer I discovered a place, oh! such a spot! There, in the
shade, were eight feet of water at least and perhaps ten, a hole with a
retour under the bank, a regular retreat for fish and a paradise for
any fisherman. I might look upon that hole as my property, Monsieur le
President, as I was its Christopher Columbus. Everybody in the
neighborhood knew it, without making any opposition. They used to say:
'That is Renard's place'; and nobody would have gone to it, not even
Monsieur Plumsay, who is renowned, be it said without any offense, for
appropriating other people's places.

"Well, I went as usual to that place, of which I felt as certain as if
I had owned it. I had scarcely got there on Saturday, when I got into
'Delila,' with my wife. 'Delila' is my Norwegian boat, which I had
built by Fourmaise, and which is light and safe. Well, as I said, we
got into the boat and we were going to bait, and for baiting there is
nobody to be compared with me, and they all know it. You want to know
with what I bait? I cannot answer that question; it has nothing to do
with the accident; I cannot answer, that is my secret. There are more
than three hundred people who have asked me; I have been offered
glasses of brandy and liquors, fried fish, matelots,[1] to make me
tell! But just go and try whether the chub will come. Ah! they have
patted my stomach to get at my secret, my recipe. Only my wife knows,
and she will not tell it, any more than I shall! Is not that so, Melie?"

The President of the Court interrupted him:

"Just get to the facts as soon as you can."

The accused continued: "I am getting to them; I am getting to them.
Well, on Saturday. July 8, we left by the five twenty-five train, and
before dinner we went to ground-bait as usual. The weather promised to
keep fine, and I said to Melie: 'All right for to-morrow!' And she
replied: 'It looks like it.' We never talk more than that together.

"And then we returned to dinner. I was happy and thirsty, and that was
the cause of everything. I said to Melie: 'Look here Melie, it is fine
weather, so suppose I drink a bottle of Casque a meche. That is a
little white wine which we have christened so, because if you drink too
much of it it prevents you from sleeping and is the opposite of a
nightcap. Do you understand me?

"She replied: 'You can do as you please, but you will be ill again, and
will not be able to get up to-morrow.' That was true, sensible,
prudent, and clear-sighted, I must confess. Nevertheless, I could not
withstand it, and I drank my bottle. It all comes from that.

"Well, I could not sleep. By Jove! It kept me awake till two o'clock in
the morning, and then I went to sleep so soundly that I should not have
heard the angel shouting at the Last Judgment.

"In short, my wife woke me at six o'clock and I jumped out of bed,
hastily put on my trousers and jersey, washed my face and jumped on
board 'Delila.' But it was too late, for when I arrived at my hole it
was already taken! Such a thing had never happened to me in three
years, and it made me feel as if I were being robbed under my own eyes.
I said to myself, Confound it all! confound it! And then my wife began
to nag at me. 'Eh! What about your Casque a meche! Get along, you
drunkard! Are you satisfied, you great fool?' I could say nothing,
because it was all quite true, and so I landed all the same near the
spot and tried to profit by what was left. Perhaps after all the fellow
might catch nothing, and go away.

"He was a little thin man, in white linen coat and waistcoat, and with
a large straw hat, and his wife, a fat woman who was doing embroidery,
was behind him.

"When she saw us take up our position close to their place, she
murmured: 'I suppose there are no other places on the river!' And my
wife, who was furious, replied: 'People who know how to behave make
inquiries about the habits of the neighborhood before occupying
reserved spots.'

"As I did not want a fuss, I said to her: 'Hold your tongue, Melie. Let
them go on, let them go on; we shall see.'

"Well, we had fastened 'Delila' under the willow-trees, and had landed
and were fishing side by side, Melie and I, close to the two others;
but here, Monsieur, I must enter into details.

"We had only been there about five minutes when our male neighbor's
float began to go down two or three times, and then he pulled out a
chub as thick as my thigh, rather less, perhaps, but nearly as big! My
heart beat, and the perspiration stood on my forehead, and Melie said
to me: 'Well, you sot, did you see that?'

"Just then, Monsieur Bru, the grocer of Poissy, who was fond of gudgeon
fishing, passed in a boat, and called out to me: So somebody has taken
your usual place, Monsieur Renard? And I replied: 'Yes, Monsieur Bru,
there are some people in this world who do not know the usages of
common politeness.'

"The little man in linen pretended not to hear, nor his fat lump of a
wife, either."

Here the President interrupted him a second time: "Take care, you are
insulting the widow, Madame Flameche, who is present."

Renard made his excuses: "I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon, my
anger carried me away. Well, not a quarter of an hour had passed when
the little man caught another chub and another almost immediately, and
another five minutes later.

"The tears were in my eyes, and then I knew that Madame Renard was
boiling with rage, for she kept on nagging at me: 'Oh! how horrid!
Don't you see that he is robbing you of your fish? Do you think that
you will catch anything? Not even a frog, nothing whatever. Why, my
hands are burning, just to think of it.'

"But I said to myself: 'Let us wait until twelve o clock. Then this
poaching fellow will go to lunch, and I shall get my place again. As
for me, Monsieur le President, I lunch on the spot every Sunday; we
bring our provisions in 'Delila.' But there! At twelve o'clock, the
wretch produced a fowl out of a newspaper, and while he was eating,
actually he caught another chub!

"Melie and I had a morsel also, just a mouthful, a mere nothing, for
our heart was not in it.

"Then I took up my newspaper, to aid my digestion. Every Sunday I read
the 'Gil Blas' in the shade like that, by the side of the water. It is
Columbine's day, you know, Columbine who writes the articles in the
'Gil Blas.' I generally put Madame Renard into a passion by pretending
to know this Columbine. It is not true, for I do not know her, and have
never seen her, but that does not matter; she writes very well, and
then she says things straight out for a woman. She suits me, and there
are not many of her sort.

"Well, I began to tease my wife, but she got angry immediately, and
very angry, and so I held my tongue. At that moment our two witnesses,
who are present here, Monsieur Ladureau and Monsieur Durdent, appeared
on the other side of the river. We knew each other by sight. The little
man began to fish again, and he caught so many that I trembled with
vexation, and his wife said: 'It is an uncommonly good spot, and we
will come here always, Desire.' As for me, a cold shiver ran down my
back, and Madame Renard kept repeating: 'You are not a man; you have
the blood of a chicken in your veins'; and suddenly I said to her:
'Look here, I would rather go away, or I shall only be doing something
foolish.'

"And she whispered to me as if she had put a red-hot iron under my
nose: 'You are not a man. Now you are going to run away, and surrender
your place! Off you go, Bazaine!'

"Well, I felt that, but yet I did not move, while the other fellow
pulled out a bream, Oh! I never saw such a large one before, never! And
then my wife began to talk aloud, as if she were thinking, and you can
see her trickery. She said: 'That is what one might call stolen fish,
seeing that we baited the place ourselves. At any rate, they ought to
give us back the money we have spent on bait.'

"Then the fat woman in the cotton dress said in turn: 'Do you mean to
call us thieves, Madame?' And they began to explain, and then they came
to words. Oh! Lord! those creatures know some good ones. They shouted
so loud, that our two witnesses, who were on the other bank, began to
call out by way of a joke: 'Less noise over there; you will prevent
your husbands from fishing.'

"The fact is that neither of us moved any more than if we had been two
tree-stumps. We remained there, with our noses over the water, as if we
had heard nothing, but by Jove, we heard all the same. 'You are a mere
liar.'

"'You are nothing better than a street-walker.'

"'You are only a trollop.'

"'You are a regular strumpet.'

"And so on, and so on; a sailor could not have said more.

"Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, and turned round. It was the other
one, the fat woman who had fallen on to my wife with her parasol.
WHACK! WHACK! Melie got two of them, but she was furious, and she hits
hard when she is in a rage, so she caught the fat woman by the hair and
then, THUMP, THUMP. Slaps in the face rained down like ripe plums. I
should have let them go on--women among themselves, men among
themselves--it does not do to mix the blows, but the little man in the
linen jacket jumped up like a devil and was going to rush at my wife.
Ah! no, no, not that, my friend! I caught the gentleman with the end of
my fist, CRASH, CRASH, one on the nose, the other in the stomach. He
threw up his arms and legs and fell on his back into the river, just
into the hole.

"I should have fished him out most certainly, Monsieur le President, if
I had had the time. But unfortunately the fat woman got the better of
it, and she was drubbing Melie terribly. I know that I ought not to
have assisted her while the man was drinking his fill, but I never
thought that he would drown, and said to myself: 'Bah, it will cool
him.'

"I therefore ran up to the women to separate them, and all I received
was scratches and bites. Good Lord, what creatures! Well, it took me
five minutes, and perhaps ten, to separate those two viragoes. When I
turned round, there was nothing to be seen, and the water was as smooth
as a lake. The others yonder kept shouting: 'Fish him out!' It was all
very well to say that, but I cannot swim and still less dive!

"At last the man from the dam came, and two gentlemen with boat-hooks,
but it had taken over a quarter of an hour. He was found at the bottom
of the hole in eight feet of water, as I have said, but he was dead,
the poor little man in his linen suit! There are the facts, such as I
have sworn to. I am innocent, on my honor."

The witnesses having deposed to the same effect, the accused was
acquitted.


[1] A preparation of several kinds of fish, with a sharp sauce.

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