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The Invisible Eye: Tales of Terror by Emile Erckmann and Louis Alexandre Chatrian
Hugh Lamb

Emile Erckmann

Louis Chatrian Alexandre


A collection of the finest supernatural tales by two of the best Victorian writers of weird tales – Erckmann–Chatrian, authors who inspired M. R. James, H. P. Lovecraft, and many others.Emile Erckmann and Louis Alexandre Chatrian began their writing partnership in the 1840s and continued working together until the year before Chatrian’s death in 1890. At the height of their powers they were known as �the twins’, and their works proved popular translated into English. After their deaths, however, they slipped into obscurity; and apart from the odd tale reprinted in anthologies, their work has remained difficult to find and to appreciate.In The Invisible Eye, veteran horror anthologist Hugh Lamb has collected together the finest weird tales by Erckmann–Chatrian. The world of which they wrote has long since vanished: a world of noblemen and peasants, enchanted castles and mysterious woods, haunted by witches, monsters, curses and spells. It is a world brought to life by the vivid imagination of these authors and praised by successors including M.R. James and H. P. Lovecraft. With an introduction by Hugh Lamb, and in paperback for the first time, this collection will transport the reader to the darkest depths of the nineteenth century: a time when anything could happen – and occasionally did.















Copyright (#u178dcf7c-9018-52e6-8797-b16226043927)


HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

Collins Chillers edition published 2018

First published in Canada by Ash-Tree Press 2002

Selection, introduction and notes В© Hugh Lamb 2018

Cover design by Mike Topping В© HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover photographs В© Shutterstock.com (http://www.Shutterstock.com)

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008265380

Ebook Edition В© October 2018 ISBN: 9780008265397

Version: 2018-09-06




Dedication (#u178dcf7c-9018-52e6-8797-b16226043927)


To my wonderful family:

Richard and Maggie

My grandson Jack

Andrew, Tamar, Dylan and Ezra


Contents

Cover (#uff59a6de-d9c6-545d-a2e6-7524d4714f4f)

Title Page (#u02737a9a-e146-5def-9361-3d668b97bce5)

Copyright (#u1602ec46-3b74-5aaa-9b7c-133b06fad33a)

Dedication (#u6d6fea29-1fba-522d-b403-4b22bac71581)

Introduction (#u6d856a3b-55a7-5910-96de-438db6ddf4df)

The Invisible Eye (#uad5bf0dd-ab9c-50ee-8a93-e705b27490b5)

The Owl’s Ear (#u3360de06-4da6-5632-b3ac-693d60ab87fe)

The White and the Black (#u9dfa7cf1-cd29-5cec-a064-e274e220a753)



The Burgomaster in Bottle (#ue607afa0-6924-545d-8742-f518d9e540dc)



My Inheritance (#u856f5ce1-50bc-54b7-9eee-87a44981d06b)



The Wild Huntsman (#u45ef9314-9ae4-5e6d-a9e0-02fd99c58cde)



Lex Talionis (#litres_trial_promo)



The Crab Spider (#litres_trial_promo)



The Mysterious Sketch (#litres_trial_promo)



The Three Souls (#litres_trial_promo)



A Legend of Marseilles (#litres_trial_promo)



Cousin Elof’s Dream (#litres_trial_promo)



The Citizen’s Watch (#litres_trial_promo)



The Murderer’s Violin (#litres_trial_promo)



The Child-Stealer (#litres_trial_promo)



The Man-Wolf (#litres_trial_promo)



Sources (#litres_trial_promo)



Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)



Also in This Series (#litres_trial_promo)



About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




INTRODUCTION (#u178dcf7c-9018-52e6-8797-b16226043927)


It is still uncommon to find the names of Erckmann–Chatrian in studies of Continental literature, a sad reflection on the obscurity suffered by these fine writers for more than a century.

While their main writing efforts – military history and fiction – are now unread and unavailable, their tales of terror have managed to survive in part, even seeing a revival in the early 1970s. The Invisible Eye – the first collection of their stories in Britain since 1981 – will, I hope, introduce more readers to their masterful talent for the macabre.

Emile Erckmann (b. 20 May 1822) and Louis Alexandre Chatrian (b. 18 December 1826) were both natives of Alsace–Lorraine, the border region for so long a bone of contention between France and Germany. Erckmann was born in Phalsbourg, the son of a bookseller, and it is possible that his being surrounded by books from an early age did much to inspire him to his own imaginative works. Chatrian was born in Soldatenthal, the son of a glass-blower. He did not follow his father’s trade, instead becoming a teacher at Phalsbourg college.

It was here that Erckmann met Chatrian, while the former was studying law (a profession he never followed), and the two hit it off very well. It seems that Erckmann was the more literary and imaginative of the two, while Chatrian was of a much more practical and energetic mind. Their writing style seems to have been adapted to this difference between them, with Erckmann writing and Chatrian revising (a working system which was later to produce the most awful trouble).

They started writing together almost immediately, and had the distinction of seeing one of their first efforts, a play on the invasion of Alsace in 1814, banned in 1848 because of its effects on the volatile state of public opinion in the province at the time. They did manage to publish Histoires et Contes Fantastique in 1849, two years after their writing partnership commenced. It was ironic that the first work by the dynamic duo should so neatly sum up their writing career and later obscurity. It was an awful failure, and must have made them wonder if it was all worth the effort. They fared so badly in those early years that, by all accounts, they nearly starved. Thoroughly discouraged, Erckmann resumed his legal studies, and Chatrian took a job in the Eastern Railway Company in France.

It took some time, but they finally cracked the market in 1859 with their novel The Illustrious Doctor Matheus. Four years later, they struck the vein that was to bring them national renown with Madame Therese, a novel about Alsace at the time of the French revolution. They specialised in French history, particularly of the Napoleonic era; a time still alive in the memories of older French citizens, who supplied them with much detail. The books flowed out: Waterloo (1865), La Guerre (1866), Le Blocus (1867), Histoire d’un Paysan (1868) – the list was impressive.

As well as military fiction, they tried their hand at drama, and one result was the interesting Le Juif Polonais, published in English in 1871 as The Polish Jew. This was high drama on the psychological decline of a murderer. It became the stage play The Bells, and gave Sir Henry Irving his most celebrated role. Oddly, it also gave Boris Karloff one of his first horror film roles (five years before Frankenstein) as a hypnotist in the 1926 Chadwick production, directed by James Young from his own screenplay based on the Erckmann–Chatrian work.

Their most interesting book, Contes Fantastiques (not to be confused with their first collection), appeared in 1860. It contains some of their finest tales of terror (several of which are included here), and remains their best work in the genre.

The pair were known as �the twins’ at the height of their fame. According to one source, they worked out the plots of their stories while they sat drinking and smoking; and there is certainly plenty of both activities in their tales.

In Britain they fared very well. Their first book appeared in 1865 – Smith Elder’s translation of The Conscript – and the same firm issued The Blockade four years later. Various publishers issued Erckmann–Chatrian books, including Richard Bentley, J. C. Hotten and Tinsley Brothers, but the writers really struck gold with Ward, Lock & Co. Starting with The Great Invasion of 1813–14 (1870), Ward, Lock & Co. were to publish nineteen of their titles, fourteen of them between 1871 and 1874, which were big sellers. Luckily for us, Ward, Lock’s catalogue was to include nearly all of Erckmann–Chatrian’s short story collections.

Their happy working relationship did not last, however. In 1889 they quarrelled violently and it seems that Chatrian arrogantly claimed the copyright of their work. (Remember that Chatrian had spent the past forty years as the revising half of the partnership.) Erckmann went to court and recovered damages from Chatrian’s secretary (I am unable to find out exactly why). Chatrian went into an immediate decline and died on 3 September 1890. Erckmann lived on for nine years, dying on 14 March 1899. They must have been rather sad years; he does not seem to have written anything of importance on his own following the split.

Within a few years of their deaths, the two writers had slipped into obscurity in Britain. The golden era of Ward, Lock had ended around 1880, and no new title by Erckmann–Chatrian appeared in Britain after 1901. There was a Blackie edition (in French) of Contes Fantastique in 1901 (somewhat late in the day, it must be said), and there were one or two French study editions of their novels, including one, Le Blocus (1913), with a fine introduction by Arthur Reed Ropes, a friend of M.R. James and himself the author of a splendid macabre novel, The Hole of the Pit (1914). But that was it for eighty years.

However, Erckmann–Chatrian did live on, even if only as pale and wan shapes in the corner, thanks to weird fiction. They had attracted the attention of two famous writers in the genre, as different as two authors could ever be – H. P. Lovecraft and M. R. James.

It is entirely due to these two that this book exists at all. If I may be allowed a little personal history, I first encountered the names Erckmann–Chatrian in M. R. James’s Collected Ghost Stories. Being very scared of spiders, I was fascinated to read in his introduction that �Other people have written of dreadful spiders – for instance, Erckmann–Chatrian in an admirable story called L’Araignée Crabe’. I spent many years wondering what terrors lay hidden behind that French title. Then, much later, I came across H. P. Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature (a superlative researcher’s primer), and was fascinated to read more about Erckmann–Chatrian. Lovecraft noted that �“The Owl’s Ear” and “Waters of Death” are full of engulfing darkness and mystery, the latter embodying the familiar over-grown spider theme so frequently employed by weird fictionists’. It was a good bet that �Waters of Death’ was the same story as that mentioned by M. R. James. But how to get a copy? The British Museum catalogue did not mention either title, and I found that the Lovecraft version only appeared in an obscure American edition from the turn of the century, which was impossible to obtain. However, the British Museum catalogue did list several books of short stories by Erckmann–Chatrian and, on the assumption that one of them would contain this intriguing spider story, I set about tracking them down.

I never found an English book version of �L’Araignée Crabe’, much to my annoyance (in the end I got the French translated). What I did find was a set of splendid stories, forgotten for a century, which I duly reprinted in several of my anthologies. Then a chance encounter in 1978 with Thomas Tessier, who was an editor at Millington, led to his suggestion of an Erckmann–Chatrian collection. That Millington book was the original of this much expanded edition.

Erckmann–Chatrian stand apart from most of their contemporaries in European fiction who wrote in this vein. They did not essay the conte cruel, like Villiers de l’Isle Adam, or go in for paranoid fantasies, like Guy de Maupassant. Their tales are simple and straightforward, with all the effects up front. By rights, they should have dated severely. The pleasant surprise for modern readers is that they haven’t.

They wrote two fine, long tales: �The Wild Huntsman’, an essay on teratology with a sunshine-filled forest for a setting, and �The Man-Wolf’, a chilling story of lycanthropy, set in a winter-shrouded Black Forest castle. Their weirdest tales deal with metaphysics. �The Three Souls’ postulates that man is made up of three stages of development: vegetable, animal, and human. An enterprising Heidelberg scholar decides to bring them all out in the hero by starvation. Another seeker after wisdom tries to eavesdrop on the whole world through a freak of geology called �The Owl’s Ear’. In neither case are the results successful or happy.

�The Invisible Eye’ is a remarkable tale of an old woman who induces suicide in the tenants of a hotel room through dummies on which she bestows magical powers. Like all of Erckmann–Chatrian’s work, the story’s florid style (probably exaggerated by the awkward translation of the day) only adds to the marvellous atmosphere. Their most memorable tale is �The Crab Spider’, and it is easy to see why M. R. James liked it so much. He borrowed its structure – mysterious deaths, terrible cause discovered, fiery climax – for his �The Ash-tree’.

In the works of Erckmann–Chatrian, we are able to step back over one hundred and fifty years, to the lost world of mid nineteenth century Europe, full of eminently believable characters – young men wooing, old men reminiscing, drinkers, smokers, noblemen, woodmen, peasants, witches, monsters, murderers, ghosts. Nothing like this is written today. Compared to their contemporaries – authors like Le Fanu or Bulwer-Lytton – Erckmann–Chatrian offer an easy target to critics, with their light touch and often bucolic tales. But these are stories with imagination second to none, and modern readers will not be disappointed. Welcome to the world of Erckmann–Chatrian.

Hugh Lamb

Sutton, Surrey

January 2018




THE INVISIBLE EYE (#u178dcf7c-9018-52e6-8797-b16226043927)


I

When I first started my career as an artist, I took a room in the roof-loft of an old house in the Rue des Minnesängers, at Nuremberg.

I had made my nest in an angle of the roof. The slates served me for walls, and the roof-tree for a ceiling: I had to walk over my straw mattress to reach the window; but this window commanded a magnificent view, for it overlooked both city and country beyond.

The old second-hand dealer, Toubec, knew the road up to my little den as well as I knew it myself, and was not afraid of climbing the ladder. Every week his goat’s head, surmounted by a rusty wig, pushed up the trap-door, his fingers clutched the edge of the floor, and in a noisy tone he cried: �Well, well, Master Christian, have we anything new?’

To which I answered: �Come in: why the deuce don’t you come in? I’m just finishing a little landscape, and want to have your opinion of it.’

Then his long thin spine lengthened itself out, until his head touched the roof; and the old fellow laughed silently.

I must do justice to Toubec: he never bargained with me. He bought all my pictures at fifteen florins apiece, one with the other, and sold them again at forty. He was an honest Jew.

This kind of existence was beginning to please me, and I was every day finding in it some new charm, when the city of Nuremberg was agitated by a strange and mysterious event.

Not far from my garret-window, a little to the left, rose the auberge of the Boeuf-gras, an old inn much frequented by the country-people. The gable of this auberge was conspicuous for the peculiarity of its form: it was very narrow, sharply pointed, and its edges were cut like the teeth of a saw; grotesque carvings ornamented the cornices and framework of its windows. But what was most remarkable was that the house which faced it reproduced exactly the same carvings and ornaments; every detail had been minutely copied, even to the support of the signboard, with its iron volutes and spirals.

It might have been said that these two ancient buildings reflected one another; only that behind the inn grew a tall oak, the dark foliage of which served to bring into bold relief the forms of the roof, while the opposite house stood bare against the sky. For the rest, the inn was as noisy and animated as the other house was silent. On the one side was to be seen, going in and coming out, an endless crowd of drinkers, singing, stumbling, cracking their whips; over the other, solitude reigned.

Once or twice a day the heavy door of the silent house opened to give egress to a little old woman, her back bent into a half-circle, her chin long and pointed, her dress clinging to her limbs, an enormous basket under her arm, and one hand tightly clutched upon her chest.

This old woman’s appearance had struck me more than once; her little green eyes, her skinny, pinched-up nose, her shawl, dating back a hundred years at least, the smile that wrinkled her cheeks, and the lace of her cap hanging down upon her eyebrows – all this appeared strange, interested me, and made me strongly desire to learn who this old woman was, and what she did in her great lonely house.

I imagined her as passing there an existence devoted to good works and pious meditation. But one day, when I had stopped in the street to look at her, she turned sharply round and darted at me a look the horrible expression of which I know not how to describe, and made three or four hideous grimaces at me; then dropping again her doddering head, she drew her large shawl about her, the ends of which trailed after her on the ground, and slowly entered her heavy door.

�That’s an old mad-woman,’ I said to myself; �a malicious, cunning old mad-woman! I ought not to have allowed myself to be so interested in her. But I’ll try and recall her abominable grimace – Toubec will give me fifteen florins for it willingly.’

This way of treating the matter was far from satisfying my mind, however. The old woman’s horrible glance pursued me everywhere; and more than once, while scaling the perpendicular ladder of my lodging-hole, feeling my clothes caught in a nail, I trembled from head to foot, believing that the old woman had seized me by the tails of my coat for the purpose of pulling me down backwards.

Toubec, to whom I related the story, far from laughing at it, received it with a serious air.

�Master Christian,’ he said, �if the old woman means you harm, take care; her teeth are small, sharp-pointed, and wonderfully white, which is not natural at her age. She has the Evil Eye! Children run away at her approach, and the people of Nuremberg call her Fledermausse!’

I admired the Jew’s clear-sightedness, and what he had told me made me reflect a good deal; but at the end of a few weeks, having often met Fledermausse without harmful consequences, my fears died away and I thought no more of her.

One night, when I was lying sound asleep, I was awoken by a strange harmony. It was a kind of vibration, so soft, so melodious, that the murmur of a light breeze through foliage can convey but a feeble idea of its gentle nature. For a long time I listened to it, my eyes wide open, and holding my breath the better to hear it.

At length, looking towards the window, I saw two wings beating against the glass. I thought, at first, that it was a bat imprisoned in my chamber; but the moon was shining clearly, and showed the wings of a magnificent night-moth, transparent as lace. At times their vibrations were so rapid as to hide them from my view; then for a while they would lie in repose, extended on the glass pane, their delicate articulations made visible anew.

This vaporous apparition in the midst of the universal silence opened my heart to the tenderest emotions; it seemed to me that a sylphid, pitying my solitude, had come to see me; and this idea brought the tears to my eyes.

�Have no fear, gentle captive – have no fear!’ I said to it; �your confidence shall not be betrayed. I will not retain you against your wishes; return to heaven – to liberty!’

And I opened the window.

The night was calm. Thousands of stars glittered in space. For a moment I contemplated this sublime spectacle, and the words of prayer rose naturally to my lips. But then, looking down, I saw a man hanging from the iron stanchion which supported the sign of the Boeuf-gras; the hair in disorder, the arms stiff, the legs straightened to a point, and throwing their gigantic shadow the whole length of the street.

The immobility of this figure, in the moonlight, had something frightful in it. I felt my tongue grow icy cold, and my teeth chattered. I was about to utter a cry; but by what mysterious attraction I know not, my eyes were drawn towards the opposite house, and there I dimly distinguished the old woman, in the midst of the heavy shadow, squatting at her window and contemplating the hanging body with diabolical satisfaction.

I became giddy with terror; my strength deserted me, and I fell down in a heap insensible.

I do not know how long I lay unconscious. On coming to myself I found it was broad day. Mingled and confused noises rose from the street below, I looked out from my window.

The burgomaster and his secretary were standing at the door of the Boeuf-gras; they remained there a long time. People came and went, stopped to look, then passed on their way. At length a stretcher, on which lay a body covered with a woollen cloth, was brought out and carried away by two men.

Then everyone else disappeared.

The window in front of the house remained open still; a fragment of rope dangled from the iron support of the signboard. I had not dreamed – I had really seen the night-moth on my window-pane – then the suspended body – then the old woman!

In the course of that day Toubec paid me his weekly visit.

�Anything to sell, Master Christian?’ he cried.

I did not hear him. I was seated on my only chair, my hands upon my knees, my eyes fixed on vacancy before me. Toubec, surprised at my immobility, repeated in a louder tone, �Master Christian! – Master Christian!’ then, stepping up to me, tapped me smartly on the shoulder.

�What’s the matter? – what’s the matter? Are you ill?’ he asked.

�No – I was thinking.’

�What the deuce about?’

�The man who was hung—’

�Aha!’ cried the old broker; �you saw the poor fellow, then? What a strange affair! The third in the same place!’

�The third?’

�Yes, the third. I ought to have told you about it before; but there’s still time – for there’s sure to be a fourth, following the example of the others, the first step only making the difficulty.’

This said, Toubec seated himself on a box and lit his pipe with a thoughtful air.

�I’m not timid,’ said he, �but if anyone were to ask me to sleep in that room, I’d rather go and hang myself somewhere else! Nine or ten months back,’ he continued, �a wholesale furrier, from Tubingen, put up at the Boeuf-gras. He called for supper, ate well, drank well, and was shown up to bed in the room on the third floor which they call the “green chamber”. The next day they found him hanging from the stanchion of the sign.

�So much for number one, about which there was nothing to be said. A proper report of the affair was drawn up, and the body of the stranger buried at the bottom of the garden. But about six weeks afterwards came a soldier from Neustadt; he had his discharge, and was congratulating himself on his return to his village. All the evening he did nothing but empty mugs of wine and talk of his cousin, who was waiting his return to marry him. At last they put him to bed in the green chamber, and the same night the watchman passing along the Rue des Minnesängers noticed something hanging from the signboard-stanchion. He raised his lantern; it was the soldier, with his discharge-papers in a tin box hanging on his left thigh, and his hands planted smoothly on the outer seams of his trousers, as if he had been on parade!

�It was certainly an extraordinary affair! The burgomaster declared it was the work of the devil. The chamber was examined; they replastered its walls. A notice of the death was sent to Neustadt, on the margin of which the clerk wrote – “Died suddenly of apoplexy”.

�All Nuremberg was indignant against the landlord of the Boeuf-gras, and wished to compel him to take down the iron stanchion of his signboard, on the pretext that it put dangerous ideas in people’s heads. But you may easily imagine that old Nikel Schmidt didn’t listen with the ear on that side of his head.

�“That stanchion was put there by my grandfather,” he said; “the sign of the Boeuf-gras has hung on it from father to son, for a hundred and fifty years; it does nobody any harm, it’s more than thirty feet up; those who don’t like it have only to look another way.”

�People’s excitement gradually cooled down, and for several months nothing happened. Unfortunately, a student from Heidelberg, on his way to the University, came to the Boeuf-gras and asked for a bed. He was the son of a pastor.

�Who would suppose that the son of a pastor would take into his head the idea of hanging himself to the stanchion of a public-house sign, because a furrier and a soldier had hung themselves there before him? It must be confessed, Master Christian, that the thing was not very probable – it would not have appeared more likely to you than it did to me. Well—’

�Enough! Enough!’ I cried; �it is a horrible affair. I feel sure there is some frightful mystery at the bottom of it. It is neither the stanchion nor the chamber—’

�You don’t mean that you suspect the landlord? – as honest a man as there is in the world, and belonging to one of the oldest families in Nuremberg?’

�No, no! Heaven keep me from forming unjust suspicions of anyone; but there are abysses into the depths of which one dares not look.’

�You are right,’ said Toubec, astonished at my excited manner; �and we had much better talk of something else. By-the-way, Master Christian, what about our landscape, the view of Sainte-Odile?’

The question brought me back to actualities. I showed the broker the picture I had just finished. The business was soon settled between us, and Toubec, thoroughly satisfied, went down the ladder, advising me to think no more of the student of Heidelberg.

I would very willingly have followed the old broker’s advice, but when the devil mixes himself up with our affairs he is not easily shaken off.

II

In solitude, all these events came back to my mind with frightful distinctness.

The old woman, I said to myself, is the cause of all this; she alone has planned these crimes, she alone has carried them into execution; but by what means? Has she had recourse to cunning only or really to the intervention of the invisible powers?

I paced my garret, a voice within me crying, �It is not without purpose that Heaven has permitted you to see Fledermausse watching the agony of her victim; it was not without design that the poor young man’s soul came to wake you in the form of a night-moth! No! all this has not been without purpose. Christian, Heaven imposes on you a terrible mission; if you fail to accomplish it, fear that you yourself may fall into the toils of the old woman! Perhaps at this moment she is laying her snares for you in the darkness!’

During several days these frightful images pursued me without cessation. I could not sleep; I found it impossible to work; the brush fell from my hand, and shocking to confess, I detected myself at times complacently contemplating the dreadful stanchion. At last, one evening, unable any longer to bear this state of mind, I flew down the ladder four steps at a time, and went and hid myself beside Fledermausse’s door, for the purpose of discovering her fatal secret.

From that time there was never a day that I was not on the watch, following the old woman like her shadow, never losing sight of her; but she was so cunning, she had so keen a scent that without even turning her head she discovered that I was behind her, and knew that I was on her track. But nevertheless, she pretended not to see me – went to the market, to the butcher’s, like a simple housewife; only she quickened her pace and muttered to herself as she went.

At the end of a month I saw that it would be impossible for me to achieve my purpose by these means, and this conviction filled me with an inexpressible sadness.

�What can I do?’ I asked myself. �The old woman has discovered my intentions, and is thoroughly on her guard. I am helpless. The old wretch already thinks she sees me at the end of the cord!’

At length, from repeating to myself again and again the question, �What can I do?’ a luminous idea presented itself to my mind.

My chamber overlooked the house of Fledermausse, but it had no dormer window on that side. I carefully raised one of the slates of my roof, and the delight I felt on discovering that by this means I could command a view of the entire antique building can hardly be imagined.

�At last I’ve got you!’ I cried to myself; �you cannot escape me now! From here I shall see everything. You will not suspect this invisible eye – this eye that will surprise the crime at the moment of its inception! Oh, Justice! It moves slowly, but it comes!’

Nothing more sinister than this den could be imagined – a large yard, paved with moss-grown flagstones; a well in one corner, the stagnant water of which was frightful to behold; a wooden staircase leading up to a railed gallery, to the left, on the first floor, a drain-stone indicated the kitchen; to the right, the upper windows of the house looked into the street. All was dark, decaying, and dank-looking.

The sun penetrated only for an hour or two during the day the depths of this dismal sty; then the shadows again spread over it – the light fell in lozenge shapes upon the crumbling walls, on the mouldy balcony, on the dull windows.

Oh, the whole place was worthy of its mistress!

I had hardly made these reflections when the old woman entered the yard on her return from market. First, I heard her heavy door grate on its hinges, then Fledermausse, with her basket, appeared. She seemed fatigued – out of breath. The border of her cap hung down upon her nose, as, clutching the wooden rail with one hand, she mounted the stairs.

The heat was suffocating. It was exactly one of those days when insects of every kind – crickets, spiders, mosquitoes – fill old buildings with their grating noises and subterranean borings.

Fledermausse crossed the gallery slowly, like a ferret that feels itself at home. For more than a quarter of an hour she remained in the kitchen, then came out and swept the stones a little, on which a few straws had been scattered; at last she raised her head, and with her green eyes carefully scrutinised every portion of the roof from which I was observing her.

By what strange intuition did she suspect anything? I know not; but I gently lowered the uplifted slate into its place, and gave over watching for the rest of that day.

The day following Fledermausse appeared to be reassured. A jagged ray of light fell into the gallery; passing this, she caught a fly, and delicately presented it to a spider established in an angle of the roof.

The spider was so large, that, in spite of the distance, I saw it descend then, gliding along one thread, like a drop of venom, seize its prey from the fingers of the dreadful old woman, and remount rapidly. Fledermausse watched it attentively; then her eyes half-closed, she sneezed, and cried to herself in a jocular tone: �Bless you, beauty! – bless you!’

For six weeks I could discover nothing as to the power of Fledermausse: sometimes I saw her peeling potatoes, sometimes spreading her linen on the balustrade. Sometimes I saw her spin; but she never sang, as old women usually do, their quivering voices going so well with the humming of the spinning-wheel. Silence reigned about her. She had no cat – the favourite company of old maids; not a sparrow ever flew down to her yard, in passing over which the pigeons seemed to hurry their flight. It seemed as if everything were afraid of her look.

The spider alone took pleasure in her society.

I now look back with wonder at my patience during those long hours of observation; nothing escaped my attention, nothing was indifferent to me; at the least sound I lifted my slate. Mine was a boundless curiosity stimulated by an indefinable fear.

Toubec complained.

�What the devil are you doing with your time, Master Christian?’ he would say to me. �Formerly, you had something ready for me every week; now, hardly once a month. Oh, you painters! As soon as they have a few kreutzer before them, they put their hands in their pockets and go to sleep!’

I myself was beginning to lose courage. With all my watching and spying, I had discovered nothing extraordinary. I was inclining to think that the old woman might not be so dangerous after all – that I had been wrong, perhaps, to suspect her. In short, I tried to find excuses for her. But one fine evening, while, with my eye to the opening in the roof, I was giving myself up to these charitable reflections, the scene abruptly changed.

Fledermausse passed along her gallery with the swiftness of a flash of light. She was no longer herself: she was erect, her jaws knit, her look fixed, her neck extended; she moved with long strides, her grey hair streaming behind her.

�Oh, oh!’ I said to myself, �something is going on!’

But the shadows of night descended on the big house, the noises of the town died out, and all became silent. I was about to seek my bed, when, happening to look out of my skylight, I saw a light in the window of the green chamber of the Boeuf-gras – a traveller was occupying that terrible room!

All my fears were instantly revived. The old woman’s excitement explained itself – she scented another victim!

I could not sleep at all that night. The rustling of the straw of my mattress, the nibbling of a mouse under the floor, sent a chill through me. I rose and looked out of my window – I listened. The light I had seen was no longer visible in the green chamber.

During one of these moments of poignant anxiety – whether the result of illusion or reality – I fancied I could discern the figure of the old witch, likewise watching and listening.

The night passed, the dawn showed grey against my window-panes, and, slowly increasing, the sounds and movements of the re-awakened town arose. Harassed with fatigue and emotion, I at last fell asleep; but my repose was of short duration, and by eight o’clock I was again at my post of observation.

It appeared that Fledermausse had passed a night no less stormy than mine had been; for, when she opened the door of the gallery, I saw that a livid pallor was upon her cheeks and skinny neck. She had nothing on but her chemise and a flannel petticoat; a few locks of rusty grey hair fell upon her shoulders. She looked up musingly towards my garret; but she saw nothing – she was thinking of something else.

Suddenly she descended into the yard, leaving her shoes at the top of the stairs. Doubtless her object was to assure herself that the outer door was securely fastened. She then hurried up the stairs, three or four at a time. It was frightful to see! She rushed into one of the side rooms, and I heard the sound of a heavy box-lid fall. Then Fledermausse reappeared in the gallery, dragging with her a life-size dummy – and this figure was dressed like the unfortunate student of Heidelberg!

With surprising dexterity the old woman suspended this hideous object to a beam of the over-hanging roof, then went down into the yard to contemplate it from that point of view. A peal of grating laughter broke from her lips – she hurried up the stairs, and rushed down again, like a maniac; and every time she did this she burst into fresh fits of laughter.

A sound was heard outside the street door, the old woman sprang to the dummy, snatched it from its fastening, and carried it into the house; then she reappeared and leaned over the balcony, with outstretched neck, glittering eyes, and eagerly listening ears. The sound passed away – the muscles of her face relaxed, she drew a long breath. The passing of a vehicle had alarmed the old witch.

She then, once more, went back into her chamber, and I heard the lid of the box close heavily.

This strange scene utterly confounded all my ideas. What could that dummy mean?

I became more watchful and attentive than ever. Fledermausse went out with her basket, and I watched her to the top of the street; she had resumed her air of tottering age, walking with short steps, and from time to time half-turning her head, so as to enable herself to look behind out of the corners of her eyes. For five long hours she remained abroad, while I went and came from my spying-place incessantly, meditating all the while – the sun heating the slates above my head till my brain was almost scorched.

I saw at his window the traveller who occupied the green chamber at the Boeuf-gras; he was a peasant of Nassau, wearing a three-cornered hat, a scarlet waistcoat, and having a broad laughing countenance. He was tranquilly smoking his pipe, unsuspicious of anything wrong.

About two o’clock Fledermausse came back. The sound of her door opening echoed to the end of the passage. Presently she appeared alone, quite alone in the yard, and seated herself on the lowest step of the gallery-stairs. She placed her basket at her feet and drew from it, first several bunches of herbs, then some vegetables – then a three-cornered hat, a scarlet velvet waistcoat, a pair of plush breeches, and a pair of thick worsted stockings – the complete costume of a peasant of Nassau!

I reeled with giddiness – flames passed before my eyes.

I remembered those precipices that drew one towards them with irresistible power – wells that have had to be filled up because of persons throwing themselves into them – trees that have had to be cut down because of people hanging themselves upon them – the contagion of suicide and theft and murder, which at various times has taken possession of people’s minds, by means well understood; that strange inducement, which makes people kill themselves because others kill themselves. My hair rose upon my head with horror!

But how could this Fledermausse – a creature so mean and wretched – have made discovery of so profound a law of nature? How had she found the means of turning it to the use of her sanguinary instincts? This I could neither understand nor imagine. Without more reflection, however, I resolved to turn the fatal law against her, and by its power to drag her into her own snare. So many innocent victims called for vengeance!

I hurried to all the old clothes-dealers in Nuremberg; and by the evening I arrived at the Boeuf-gras, with an enormous parcel under my arm.

Nikel Schmidt had long known me. I had painted the portrait of his wife, a fat and comely dame.

�Master Christian!’ he cried, shaking me by the hand, �to what happy circumstance do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’

�My dear Mr Schmidt, I feel a very strong desire to pass the night in that room of yours up yonder.’

We were on the doorstep of the inn, and I pointed up to the green chamber. The good fellow looked suspiciously at me.

�Oh! don’t be afraid,’ I said, �I’ve no desire to hang myself.’

�I’m glad of it! I’m glad of it! for frankly, I should be sorry – an artist of your talent. When do you want the room, Master Christian?’

�Tonight.’

�That’s impossible – it’s occupied.’

�The gentleman can have it at once, if he likes,’ said a voice behind us; �I shan’t stay in it.’

We turned in surprise. It was the peasant of Nassau; his large three-cornered hat pressed down upon the back of his neck, and his bundle at the end of his travelling-stick. He had learned the story of the three travellers who had hung themselves.

�Such chambers!’ he cried, stammering with terror; �it’s – it’s murdering people to put them into such! – you – you deserve to be sent to the galleys!’

�Come, come calm yourself,’ said the landlord; �you slept there comfortably enough last night.’

�Thank Heaven! I said my prayers before going to rest, or where should I be now?’

And he hurried away, raising his hands to heaven.

�Well,’ said Master Schmidt, stupefied, �the chamber is empty, but don’t go into it to do me an ill turn.’

�I might be doing myself a much worse one,’ I replied.

Giving my parcel to the servant-girl, I went and seated myself among the guests who were drinking and smoking.

For a long time I had not felt more calm, more happy to be in the world. After so much anxiety, I saw approaching my end – the horizon seemed to grow lighter. I know not by what formidable power I was being led on. I lit my pipe, and with my elbow on the table and a jug of wine before me, and sometimes rousing myself to look at the woman’s house, I seriously asked myself whether all that had happened to me was more than a dream. But when the watchman came, to request us to vacate the room, graver thoughts took possession of my mind, and I followed, in meditative mood, the little servant-girl who preceded me with a candle in her hand.

III

We mounted the window flight of stairs to the third storey; arrived there, she placed the candle in my hand, and pointed to a door.

�That’s it,’ she said, and hurried back down the stairs as fast as she could go.

I opened the door. The green chamber was like all other inn bedchambers; the ceiling was low, the bed was high. After casting a glance round the room, I stepped across to the window.

Nothing was yet noticeable in Fledermausse’s house, with the exception of a light, which shone at the back of a deep obscure bedchamber – a nightlight, doubtless.

�So much the better,’ I said to myself, as I re-closed the window-curtains; �I shall have plenty of time.’

I opened my parcel, and from its contents put on a woman’s cap with a broad frilled border; then, with a piece of pointed charcoal, in front of the glass, I marked my forehead with a number of wrinkles. This took me a full hour to do; but after I had put on a gown and a large shawl, I was afraid of myself; Fledermausse herself was looking at me from the depths of the glass!

At that moment the watchman announced the hour of eleven. I rapidly dressed the dummy I had brought with me like the one prepared by the old witch. I then drew apart the window-curtains.

Certainly, after all I had seen of the old woman – her infernal cunning, her prudence, and her address – nothing ought to have surprised even me; yet I was positively terrified.

The light, which I had observed at the back of her room, now cast its yellow rays on her dummy, dressed like the peasant of Nassau, which sat huddled up on the side of the bed, its head dropped upon its chest, the large three-cornered hat drawn down over its features, its arms pendant by its sides, and its whole attitude that of a person plunged in despair.

Managed with diabolical art, the shadow permitted only a general view of the figure, the red waistcoat and its six rounded buttons alone caught the light; but the silence of night, the complete immobility of the figure, and its air of terrible dejection, all served to impress the beholder with irresistible force; even I myself, though not in the least taken by surprise, felt chilled to the marrow of my bones. How, then, would a poor countryman taken completely off his guard have felt? He would have been utterly overthrown; he would have lost all control of will, and the spirit of imitation would have done the rest.

Scarcely had I drawn aside the curtains than I discovered Fledermausse on the watch behind her window-panes.

She could not see me. I opened the window softly, the window over the way softly opened too; then the dummy appeared to rise slowly and advance towards me; I did the same, and seizing my candle with one hand, with the other threw the casement wide open.

The old woman and I were face to face; for, overwhelmed with astonishment, she had let the dummy fall from her hands. Our two looks crossed with an equal terror.

She stretched forth a finger, I did the same; her lips moved, I moved mine; she heaved a deep sigh and leant upon an elbow. I rested in the same way.

How frightful the enacting of this scene was I cannot describe; it was made up of delirium, bewilderment, madness. It was a struggle between two wills, two intelligences, two souls, one of which sought to crush the other; and in this struggle I had the advantage. The dead were on my side.

After having for some seconds imitated all the movements of Fledermausse, I drew a cord from the folds of my petticoat and tied it to the iron stanchion of the signboard.

The old woman watched me with open mouth. I passed the cord round my neck. Her tawny eyeballs glittered; her features became convulsed.

�No, no!’ she cried, in a hissing tone; �no!’

I proceeded with the impassibility of a hangman.

Then Fledermausse was seized with rage.

�You’re mad! you’re mad!’ she cried, springing up and clutching wildly at the sill of the window; �you’re mad!’

I gave her no time to continue. Suddenly blowing out my light, I stooped like a man preparing to make a vigorous spring, then seizing my dummy slipped the cord about its neck and hurled it into the air.

A terrible shriek resounded through the street; then all was silent again.

Perspiration bathed my forehead. I listened a long time. At the end of an hour I heard far off – very far off – the cry of the watchman, announcing that midnight had struck.

�Justice is at last done,’ I murmured to myself; �the three victims are avenged. Heaven forgive me!’

I saw the old witch, drawn by the likeness of herself, a cord about her neck, hanging from the iron stanchion projecting from her house. I saw the thrill of death run through her limbs and the moon, calm and silent, rose above the edge of the roof, and shed its cold pale rays upon her dishevelled head.

As I had seen the poor young student of Heidelberg, I now saw Fledermausse.

The next day all Nuremberg knew that �the Bat’ had hung herself. It was the last event of the kind in the Rue des Minnesängers.




THE OWL’S EAR (#u178dcf7c-9018-52e6-8797-b16226043927)


On a warm evening in July 1835, Kasper Boeck, a shepherd of the small village of Hirchwiller, presented himself before the burgomaster, PГ©trus Mauerer, who had just finished his supper and was having a glass of Kirsch to help his digestion.

The burgomaster, tall and wiry, with his upper lip covered with a huge grey moustache, had in days gone by served in the armies of the arch-duke Charles. His was a bantering disposition, he had the village under his thumb, it was said, and ruled it with a rod of iron.

�Mr Burgomaster!’ exclaimed the shepherd.

But Pétrus Mauerer, without waiting for the end of his speech, frowned and said to him: �Kasper Boeck, start by removing your hat, remove your dog from the room, and then speak clearly, intelligibly, without stammering, so that I can understand you.’

Kasper took out his dog and returned with his hat off.

�Ah well!’ said Pétrus, seeing him silent. �What’s going on?’

�What’s going on is that the “ghost” has appeared again in the ruins of Geierstein!’

�Ah! I suspected it. Did you get a good look at it?’

�Very good, Mr Burgomaster.’

�Without shutting your eyes?’

�Yes, Mr Burgomaster. I had my eyes wide open. It was a fine moonlit night.’

�What shape did it have?’

�That of a small man.’

�Good!’ And turning towards a glass door on his left, �Katel!’ the burgomaster shouted.

An old female servant half-opened the door.

�Sir?’

�I am going to take a walk on the hill. You will wait for me till ten o’clock. Here is the key.’

�Yes, master.’

Then the old soldier took down a gun from above the door, checked its priming, and slung it across his shoulder; then addressing Kasper Boeck: �You will alert the constable to meet me in the small holly bush lane behind the mill,’ he said. �Your “ghost” must be some marauder … but if it turns out to be a fox, I will have myself a magnificent hat with long flaps made of it.’

Mauerer and the humble Kasper went out. The weather was splendid, the stars clear and innumerable. While the shepherd went and knocked at the constable’s door, the burgomaster disappeared up a small lane of alder trees, which wound its way behind the old church. Two minutes later Kasper and the constable Hans Goerner, a pistol at his hip, ran to join Master Pétrus in the holly-lined lane. The three of them proceeded together to the ruins of Geierstein.

These ruins, situated some twenty minutes from the village, seemed quite insignificant; they were some pieces of dilapidated walls, four to six feet high, which stretched out in the midst of the heather. Archaeologists call them the aqueducts of Seranus, the Roman camp of the Holderlock, or the remains of ThГ©odoric, according to their whim. The only thing which was really remarkable in these ruins was the stairway of a chamber hewn from the rock.

In a manner contrary to spiral stairs, instead of concentric circles narrowing at each step, the spiral of this one got wider, so that the bottom of the cistern was three times wider than the entrance. Was it a whim of architecture, or rather some other reason which gave rise to this bizarre structure? Little does it matter! The fact is that there resulted from it in the cistern this vague roaring such as can be heard by pressing a seashell to one’s ear, and that one can hear the steps of the travellers on the gravel, the stirring of the air, the rustling of the leaves, and even the distant words of those passing along at the foot of the hill.

And so our three characters climbed the little path, between the vines and the kitchen-gardens of Hirchwiller.

�I can see nothing,’ said the burgomaster, raising his nose mockingly.

�Nor I,’ repeated the constable, imitating the tone of the other.

�It is in the hole,’ murmured the shepherd.

�We shall see, we shall see,’ took up the burgomaster.

Thus it was that after a quarter of an hour they arrived at the entrance to the chamber. The night was bright, clear, and perfectly calm. As far as the eye could see the moon outlined nocturnal landscapes of bluish lines, studded with slender trees, whose shadows seem sketched in black pencil. The heather and the broom in blossom perfumed the air with their sharp smell and the frogs of a neighbouring pool sang their full-throated chorus, interrupted with silences. But all these details escaped our fine countrymen. Their sole thoughts were of catching the �spirit’.

When they reached the stair, all three stopped and listened, then looked into the darkness. Nothing appeared, nothing stirred.

�Confound it,’ said the burgomaster. �We have forgotten to bring a candle. You go down, Kasper, you know the way better than me. I’ll follow.’

At this suggestion the shepherd stepped back suddenly. If left to his own devices the poor man would have taken flight. His woeful countenance made the burgomaster burst out laughing.

�Ah well, Hans, since he doesn’t want to go down, you show me the way,’ he said to the constable.

�But, master burgomaster,’ said the latter, �you are well aware that there are steps missing. We would risk breaking our necks!’

�Well then, what are we to do?’

�Yes, what are we to do?’

�Send your dog,’ resumed Pétrus.

The shepherd whistled for his dog, showed him the stairs, urged him down; but he was no more willing than the rest to try his luck.

At that moment a bright idea struck the constable.

�Hey, Mr Burgomaster,’ he said. �If you were to fire a shot into it …’

�Indeed,’ exclaimed the other, �you are right. One will see clearly, at least.’

And without hesitation the good fellow approached the stair, levelling his gun.

But because of the acoustic effect described earlier, the �spirit’, the marauder, the individual, who was actually in the chamber, had heard everything. The idea of being shot at didn’t appeal to him, for in a piercing, high-pitched voice he shouted out: �Stop! Don’t shoot! I’m coming up!’

Then the three dignitaries looked at each other, chuckling, and the burgomaster, leaning forward again into the opening, exclaimed in a coarse voice: �Hurry up, you rogue, or I’ll shoot! Hurry up!’

He cocked his gun. The click appeared to hasten the ascent of the mysterious character. Stones could be heard rolling. However it took another minute before he appeared, the chamber being over sixty feet deep.

What was this man doing in the midst of such darkness? He must be some great criminal! Thus at least thought PГ©trus Mauerer and his assistants.

At last a vague shape emerged from the shadow, then slowly a small man, four and a half feet tall at the most, thin, in rags, his face wizened and yellow, his eyes sparkling like those of a magpie and his hair untidy, came out shouting: �What right have you to come and trouble my studies, you wretches?’

This grandiloquence hardly matched his clothes and his appearance, so the indignant burgomaster replied: �Try and show some respect, you rogue, or I’ll start by giving you a thrashing.’

�A thrashing!’ said the little man, hopping with anger and standing right under the burgomaster’s nose.

�Yes,’ resumed the former, who couldn’t help but admire the courage of the pygmy, �if you don’t answer satisfactorily the questions that I am going to put to you. I am the burgomaster of Hirchwiller, here is the village constable and the shepherd with his dog. We are stronger than you … be sensible and tell me who you are, what you are doing here, and why you don’t dare appear in broad daylight. Then we can see what shall be done with you.’

�All that’s none of your business,’ answered the little man in his curt voice. �I shall not answer you.’

�In that case, march,’ said the burgomaster, grasping him by the nape of the neck. �You’ll spend the night in prison.’

The little man struggled but in vain. Completely exhausted, he said (not without some nobility), �Let me go, sir. I yield to force. I shall follow you.’

The burgomaster, who wasn’t lacking in manners himself, became calmer in his turn.

�Your word?’ he said.

�My word!’

�Fine … Quick march!’

And that is how on the night of 29 July 1835 the burgomaster captured a small red-haired man, as he emerged from the cave of Geierstein.

On their return to Hirchwiller, the vagabond was double-locked in, not forgetting the outside bolt and the padlock. Afterwards everyone went to recover from their exertions. PГ©trus Mauerer, once in bed, pondered over this strange adventure till midnight.

The next day, about nine o’clock, Hans Goerner, the constable, having received orders to bring the prisoner to the town-hall, so that he could undergo a new examination, went with four sturdy lads to the cell. They opened the door, quite curious to look at the will-o’-the-wisp. They saw him hanging by his tie from the bars of the skylight. Several say that he was still kicking … others that he was already stiff. Whichever it was, someone ran off to get Pétrus Mauerer, to inform him of the fact. What is certain is that at the arrival of the latter, the little man had breathed his last.

The magistrate and the doctor of Hirchwiller drew up a formal report of the catastrophe. The unknown man was buried and all was settled.

Now about three weeks after these events, I went to see my cousin PГ©trus Mauerer. I am his closest relative and, consequently, his heir. This circumstance maintains an intimate relationship between us. We were dining together, chatting of this and that, when the burgomaster told me the little story as I have just related it.

�It’s strange, cousin,’ I said to him, �really strange. And you have no other information on this unknown man?’

�None.’

�Have you found anything that could put you on the track of his intentions?’

�Absolutely nothing, Christian.’

�But after all, what could he have been doing in the chamber? What was he living on?’

The burgomaster shrugged his shoulders, filled our glasses, and answered me: �Your health, cousin.’

�And yours.’

We remained silent for some moments. It was impossible for me to accept the sudden end of the adventure. In spite of myself I gloomily pondered over the sad fate of certain men who appear and disappear in this world, like the grass in the fields, without leaving the slightest memory or the slightest regret.

�Cousin,’ I resumed, �how long would it take from here to the ruins of Geierstein?’

�Twenty minutes at the most. Why?’

�Because I would like to see them.’

�You know that today we have a meeting of the town council and I cannot accompany you.’

�Oh! I shall be able to find them on my own.’

�No, the constable shall show you the way, he has nothing better to do.’ My dear cousin called his servant.

�Katel, get Hans Goerner … make him hurry up … It’s two o’clock. I must go.’

The servant went out and the constable wasn’t long in coming. He received orders to guide me to the ruins.

While the burgomaster was making his way solemnly to the council chamber, we were already going up the hill. Hans Goerner pointed out the remains of the aqueduct. At this point the rocky ridges of the plateau, the bluish distances of the Hundsrück, the dismal dilapidated walls, covered in a dark ivy, the tolling of the bell of Hirchwiller, summoning the dignitaries to the meeting, the constable panting, clinging to the brushwood … took on in my eyes a sad, harsh hue. It was the story of this poor hanged man which stained the horizon.

The stairway to the chamber appeared very strange, its spiral elegant. The prickly bushes in the clefts of each step, the deserted appearance of the surroundings, all were in harmony with my sadness. We descended. Soon the bright point of the opening which seemed to grow narrower and narrower and to assume the form of a star with curved rays, alone sent us its pale light.

When we reached the bottom of the chamber what a superb view awaited us of those stairs lit up underneath, throwing their shadows with wonderful regularity. Then I heard the buzzing which PГ©trus had told me about; the huge granite conch had as many echoes as stones!

�Since the little man, has anyone come down here?’ I asked the constable.

�No, sir. The peasants are afraid. They think that the hanged man will return.’

�And you?’

�Me, I’m not curious.’

�But the magistrate … his duty was …’

�Humph! What would he be doing in the “Owl’s Ear”?’

�They call this the Owl’s Ear?’

�Yes.’

�It is almost that,’ I said, looking up. �This inverted vault forms the outer ear very well, the underneath part of the steps represents the drum, and the bends of the stairway the cochlea, the labyrinth and the opening of the ear. That then explains the murmuring that we can hear: we are at the bottom of a colossal ear.’

�That is very possible,’ said Hans Goerner, who seemed to understand nothing of my observations.

We were on our way back up. I had already taken the first steps when I felt something snap beneath my foot. I bent down to see what it could be and I noticed at the same time a white object in front of me. It was a sheet of torn paper. As for the hard matter that had been pulverized, I recognized a sort of pot made of glazed stoneware.

�Ho! Ho!’ I said to myself, �this will be able to throw some light on the burgomaster’s story for us.’

And I joined Hans Goerner, who was by now waiting for me at the kerb of the cistern.

�Now, sir,’ he shouted to me, �where would you like to go?’

�First of all let us sit down a little, we shall see presently.’

And I found a place on a large stone, while the constable let his hawk-like eyes gaze all around the village, to discover marauders in the gardens, if there were any.

I carefully examined the stoneware vessel, of which no more than a fragment remained. This fragment took the shape of a funnel, lined with down on the inside. It was impossible for me to make out its purpose. Next I read the piece of paper, which was written on in a very steady hand. I transcribe it here according to the text. It seems to be a continuation of another sheet, for which I have since searched in the vicinity of the ruin, but in vain.

My �microeartrumpet’ has therefore the double advantage of multiplying ad infinitum the intensity of sounds, and of being able to fit the ear, which in no way impedes the observer. You cannot imagine, my dear master, the charm that one feels on hearing these thousands of imperceptible sounds which, on fine summer days, blend into one mighty buzzing. The bee has his song like the nightingale, the wasp is the warbler of the mosses, the cicada is the lark of the tall grasses, in this the mite is the wren – it has only a sigh, but this sigh is melodious!

This discovery which, from the sentimental point of view, makes us live the life of universal nature, surpasses in its importance all that I could say about it.

After so many sufferings, privations, and worries how happy it is in the end to gather the rewards of our labours! With what leaps the soul rises up to the divine author of these microscopic worlds, whose splendour is revealed to us. What then are these long hours of anguish, hunger, scorn which overwhelmed us in the past? Nothing, sir, nothing! Tears of gratitude wet our eyes. One is proud to have bought through suffering new joys for humanity and to have contributed to its improvement. But however vast, however admirable are the first results of my �microeartrumpet’, its advantages are not limited to that alone. There are others more positive, more material in some respects, and which can be translated into figures.

Just as the telescope causes us to discover myriads of worlds, completing their harmonious revolutions in the infinite, so too my �microeartrumpet’ extends the sense of hearing beyond all the limits of possibility. Thus, sir, I shall not stop at the circulation of the blood and vital fluids in the living body; you hear them running with the impulsiveness of cataracts, you perceive them with a distinctness which terrifies you, the slightest irregularity in the pulse, the lightest obstacle strikes you and has on you the effect of a rock against which break the waves of a torrent.

It is undoubtedly a tremendous conquest for the development of our physiological and pathological knowledge, but it is not on this point that I insist.

By pressing your ear to the ground you hear the hot springs surging at immeasurable depths, you assess their volume, the currents, the obstacles.

Would you like to go any further? Enter an underground chamber sufficiently large to pick up a considerable quantity of sounds; then, at night, when all is asleep, when nothing disturbs the inner sounds of our globe, listen!

Sir, all that it is possible for me to tell you at present, because in the midst of my abject misery, my privations, and often my despair, I have only a few lucid moments left to gather together geological observations, all that I can assert for you is that the bubbling incandescent lava, the glow of boiling substances is something terrifying and sublime, and which can only be compared to the impression of the astronomer sounding the endless depths of the universe with his telescope.

However, I must admit that these impressions need to be studied further and classified methodically, so as to draw from them fixed conclusions. Consequently as soon as you condescend, my dear and worthy master, to send to me at Neustadt the small sum that I ask to provide for my basic needs, we shall see that we agree with a view to establishing three subterranean observatories, one in the valley of Catania, the other in Iceland, and the third in one of the valleys of Capac-Uren, Songay, or Cayembé-Uren, the deepest of the Cordilleras, and as a consequence …

Here the letter stopped.

I was dumbfounded. Had I read the ideas of a madman, or rather the fulfilled inspirations of a genius? What was I to say? or think? Thus this man, this wretch, living at the bottom of a den like a fox, dying of hunger, had perhaps been one of those chosen people, whom the Supreme Being sends to earth, to enlighten future generations.

And this man had hanged himself out of disgust and despair! His request had not been answered when he only asked for a piece of bread in exchange for his discovery. It was horrible.

A long time, a very long time, I stayed there, dreaming, thanking heaven for having limited my intelligence to the everyday needs for life, for not having wanted to make myself superior to the common crowd. Finally the constable seeing me staring, my mouth wide open, ventured to touch my shoulder: �M. Christian,’ he said to me, �look it is getting late. The burgomaster must have returned from the meeting.’

�Ah! That’s right!’ I exclaimed, crumpling up the paper. �On our way.’

We climbed down the hill again.

My worthy cousin received me, his face beaming, on the threshold of his house: �Well, well! Christian! Have you found anything of this idiot who hanged himself?’

�No.’

�As I suspected. He was some madman who escaped from Stefansfeld or elsewhere. Indeed he did well to hang himself. When one is good for nothing, it’s the simplest thing.’

The following day I left Hirchwiller. I shall never go back.




THE WHITE AND THE BLACK (#u178dcf7c-9018-52e6-8797-b16226043927)


I

At that time we passed our evenings at Brauer’s alehouse, which opens upon the square of Vieux-Brisach. After eight o’clock there used to drop in, one by one, Frederick Schultz the notary; Frantz Martin the burgomaster, Christopher Ulmett the magistrate; the counsellor Klers; the engineer Rothan; the young organist Theodore Blitz; and some others of the chief townsfolk, who all sat around the same table and drank their foaming bok-bier like brothers.

The apparition of Theodore Blitz, who came to us from Jena with a letter of recommendation from Harmosius – his dark eyes, his brown dishevelled hair, his thin white nose, his metallic voice, and his mystic ideas – occasioned us some little disquiet. It used to trouble us to see him rise abruptly and pace two or three times up and down the room, gesticulating the while, mocking with a strange air the Swiss landscapes with which the walls were adorned – lakes of indigo-blue, mountains of an apple-green, paths of brilliant red. Then he would seat himself down again, empty his glass at a gulp, and commence a discussion about the music of Palestrina, about the lute of the Hebrews, about the introduction of the organ into our churches, about the shophar, the sabbatic epochs, etc. He would knit his brows, plant his sharp elbows on the edge of the table, and lose himself in deep thought. Yes, he perplexed us not a little – we others who were grave and accustomed to methodical ideas. However, it was necessary to put up with it; and the engineer Rothan himself, in spite of his bantering spirit, in the end grew calm and no longer continued to contradict the young organist when he was right.

Theodore Blitz was plainly one of those nervously organised beings who are affected by every change of temperature. The year of which I speak was extremely warm; we had several heavy storms towards the autumn, and folk began to fear for the wine harvest.

One evening all our little world was gathered, according to custom, around the table, with the exception of the magistrate Ulmett and the organist. The burgomaster talked about the weather and great hydraulic works. As for me I listened to the wind gamboling without amongst the plane-trees of the Schlossgarten, to the drip of the water from the spouts, and to its dashing against the windows. From time to time one could hear a tile blown off a roof, a door shut to with a bang, a shutter beat against a wall. Then would arise the great clamour of the storm, sweeping, sighing, and groaning in the distance, as if all the invisible powers were seeking and calling on one another in the darkness, while living things hid themselves, sitting in corners, in order to escape a fearful meeting with them.

From the church of Saint-Landolphe nine o’clock sounded, when Blitz hurriedly entered, shaking his hat like one possessed, and saying in his husky voice: �Surely the Evil One is about his work! The white and the black are having a tussle. The nine times nine thousand nine hundred and ninety thousand spirits of Envy battle and tear themselves. Go, Ahriman! Walk! Ravage! Lay waste! The Amschaspands are in flight! Oromage veils her face! What a time, what a time!’

And so saying he walked round the room, stretching his long skinny limbs, and laughing by jerks.

We were all astounded at such an entry, and for some seconds no one spoke a word. Then, however, the engineer Rothan, led on by his caustic humour, said: �What nonsense is that you are singing there, M. Organist? What do Amschaspands signify to us? or the nine times nine thousand nine hundred and ninety thousand spirits of Envy? Ha! ha! ha! It is really comic. Where on earth did you pick up such strange language?’

Theodore Blitz stopped suddenly short in his walk and shut one eye, while the other, wide open, shone with a diabolic irony.

When Rothan had finished: �Oh, engineer,’ said he; �oh! sublime spirit, master of the trowel, and mortar, director of stones, he who orders right angles, angles acute, angles obtuse, you are right – a hundred times right.’

He bent himself with a mocking air, and went on: �Nothing exists but matter – the level, the rule, and the compass. The revelations of Zoroaster, of Moses, of Pythagoras, of Odin – the harmony, the melody, art, sentiment, they are all dreams, unworthy of an enlightened intellect such as yours. To you belongs the truth, the eternal truth. Ha! ha! ha! I bow myself before you: I salute you; I prostrate myself before your glory, imperishable as that of Nineveh and of Babylon.’

Finishing his speech, he made two little turns on his heels, and uttered a laugh so piercing that it was more like the crowing of a cock at daybreak.

Rothan was getting angry, when at the moment the old magistrate Ulmett came in, his head protected by a great otter-skin cap, his shoulders covered by his bottle-green greatcoat bordered with fox-skin. His hands hung down beside him, his back was bent, his eyes were half-closed, his big nose was red, and his large cheeks were wet with rain. He was as wet as a drake.

Outside the rain fell in torrents, the gutters gushed over, the spouts disgorged themselves, and the ditches were swollen into little rivers.

�Ah, heavens!’ cried the good fellow. �Perhaps it was foolish to come out on such a night, and after such work too – two inquests, verbal processes, interrogatories! The bok-bier and old friends, though, would make me swim across the Rhine.’

And muttering these words he put off his otter-skin cap and opened his great pelisse to take out his long tobacco-pipe and his pouch, which he carefully laid down upon the table. After that he hung his greatcoat and his hat up beside the window, and called out: �Brauer!’

�Well, M. Magistrate, what do you want?’

�You would do well to put to the shutters. Believe me, this storm will wind up with some thunder.’

The innkeeper went out and put the shutters to, and the old magistrate, sitting down in his corner, heaved a deep sigh.

�You know what has happened, burgomaster?’ he asked in a solemn voice.

�No. What has occurred, my old Christopher?’

Before he replied M. Ulmett threw a glance around the room.

�We are here alone, my friends,’ said he, �so I am able to tell you. About three o’clock this afternoon some one found poor Gredel Dick under the sluice of the miller at Holderloch.’

�Under the sluice at Holderloch?’ cried all.

�Yes; a cord round her neck.’

In order to understand how these words affected us it is necessary that you should know that Gredel Dick was one of the prettiest girls in Vieux-Brisach; a tall brunette, with blue eyes and red cheeks; the only daughter of an old anabaptist, Petrus Dick, who farmed considerable portions of the Schlossgarten. For some time she had seemed sad and melancholy – she who had beforetime been so merry in the morning at the washing-place, and in the evening at the well in the midst of her friends. She had been seen crying, and her sorrow had been ascribed to the incessant pursuit of her by Saphéri Mutz, the postmaster’s son – a big fellow, thin, vigorous, with an aquiline nose and curling black hair. He followed her like a shadow, and never let her off his arm at the dances.

There had been some talk about their marriage, but old Mutz, his wife, Karl Bremer his son-in-law, and his daughter Saffayel, were opposed to the match, all agreeing that a �heathen’ should not be introduced into the family.

For three days past nothing had been seen of Gredel. No one knew what had become of her. You may imagine the thousand different thoughts which crowded upon us when we heard that she was dead. No one thought any longer of the discussion between Theodore Blitz and the engineer Rothan touching invisible spirits. All eyes were fixed on M. Christopher Ulmett, who, his large bald head bent, his heavy white eyebrows knit, gravely filled his pipe, with a meditative air.

�And Mutz – Saphéri Mutz?’ asked the burgomaster. �What has become of him?’

A slight flush coloured the cheeks of the old man as he answered, after some seconds of thought: �Saphéri Mutz? He has gone.’

�Gone!’ cried little Klers. �Then he acknowledges his guilt?’

�It certainly seems so to me,’ said the old magistrate simply. �One does not scamper off for nothing. As for the rest, we have searched his father’s place, and found all the house upset. The folk seemed struck with consternation. The mother raved and tore her hair; the daughter wore her Sunday clothes, and danced about like a fool. It was impossible to get anything out of them. As to Gredel’s father, the poor fellow is in the deepest despair. He does not wish to say anything against his child, but it is certain that Gredel Dick left the farm of her own accord on Tuesday last in order to meet Saphéri. The fact is attested by all the neighbours. Now the gendarmes are scouring the country. We shall see, we shall see!’

Then there was a long silence. Outside the rain fell heavily.

�It is abominable!’ cried the burgomaster suddenly. �Abominable! To think that every father of a family, even such as bring up their children in the fear of God, are exposed to such misfortunes.’

�Yes,’ replied Ulmett, lighting his pipe. �It is so. They say, no doubt rightly, that heaven orders all things; but the spirit of darkness seems to me to meddle a good deal more than is necessary in them. For one good fellow how many villains do we find, without faith or law? And for one good action how many evil ones? I tell you, my friends, if the Evil One were to count his flock—’

He had not time to finish, for at that moment a terrific flash of lightning glared in through the chinks of the shutters, making the lamp burn dim. It was immediately followed by a clap of thunder, crashing, jerky – one of those claps which make you tremble. One might have thought that the world was coming to an end.

The clock of the church of Saint-Landolphe just then struck the half-hour. The tolling bells seemed to be just hard by one. From far, very far off, there came a trembling plaintive voice, crying: �Help! Help!’

�Some one cries for help,’ said the burgomaster.

�Yes,’ said the others, turning pale, and listening.

While we were all thus in fright, Rothan, curling his lips in a joking fashion, broke out: �Ha! ha! ha! It is Mademoiselle Roesel’s cat singing its love story to Monsieur Roller, the young first tenor.’

Then dropping his voice and lifting his hand with a tragic gesture, he went on: �The time has sounded from the belfry of the chateau!’

�Ill-luck to those who laugh at such a cry,’ said old Christopher, rising.

He went towards the door with a solemn step, and we all followed him, even the fat innkeeper, who held his cotton cap in his hand and murmured a prayer very low. Rothan alone did not stir from his seat. As for me, I was behind the others, with outstretched neck, looking over their shoulders.

The glass door was scarcely opened when there came another flash of lightning. The street, with its white flags washed by the rain, its flushed gutters, its multitude of windows, its old gables, its signboards, glared out from the night, and then was swallowed up in the darkness.

That glance of the eye allowed me to see the steeple of Saint-Landolphe with its innumerable little carvings all clothed in white light. In the steeple were the bells hanging to black beams, with their clappers, and their ropes hanging down to the body of the church. Below that was a stork’s nest, half torn in pieces by the wind – the young ones with their beaks out, the mother at her wits’ end, her wings extended, while the male-bird flew about the shining steeple, his breast thrown forward, his neck bent, his long legs thrown out behind as if defying the thunder peals.

It was a strange sight, a veritable Chinese picture – thin, delicate, light, something strange, terrible, upon a black background of clouds broken with streaks of gold.

We stood, with open mouths, upon the threshold of the inn, and asked: �What did you hear, M. Ulmett? What can you see, M. Klers?’

At that moment a lugubrious mewing commenced above us, and a whole regiment of cats set to work springing about in the gutter. At the same time a peal of laughter filled the room—

�Ah well! ah well!’ cried the engineer. �Do you hear them? Was I wrong?’

�It was nothing,’ murmured the old magistrate. �Thank heaven, it was nothing. Let us go in again. The rain is recommencing.’

As we took our places again, he said: �Is it astonishing, M. Rothan, that the imagination of a poor old fellow, such as myself, goes astray at a time when earth and heaven confound themselves, while good and bad are struggling together, while such mysterious crimes occur around us even at this day? Is it strange?’

We all took our places with a feeling of annoyance with the engineer, who had alone remained quiet, and had seen us disconcerted. We turned our backs on him as we emptied our glasses without saying a word, while he, his elbow on the edge of the window-ledge, hummed between his teeth I know not what military march, the time of which he beat with his fingers on the ledge, without deigning to notice our ill-humour.

So things went on for some minutes, when Theodore Blitz said laughingly: �Monsieur Rothan triumphs. He does not believe in invisible spirits. Nothing troubles him. He has a good foot, good eye, and good ear. What more is wanting to convict us of ignorance and folly?’

�Ha,’ replied Rothan, �I should not have dared to say it, but you express things so well, Monsieur Organist, that one cannot disagree with you, especially in any matter that concerns yourself. As for my old friends Schultz, Ulmett, Klers, and the others, it is different, very different. Any one may at times be led astray by a dream, only one must see that it does not become a custom.’

Instead of answering to this direct attack, Blitz, his head bent down, seemed to be listening to some noise without.

�Hush,’ said he, looking at us. �Hush.’

He lifted his finger, and the expression of his face was so striking that we all listened with an indefinable feeling of fear.

The same instant heavy steps were heard in the street without; a hand was laid on the catch of the door, and the organist said to us in a trembling voice: �Be calm – listen and see. Heaven be with us.’

The door opened and SaphГ©ri Mutz appeared.

Should I live to be a thousand years old the figure of that man will never be erased from my memory. He is there – I see him. He advances reeling, pale – his hair hanging about his face – his eye dull, glassy – his blouse tight to his body – a big stick in his hand. He looks upon us without seeing us, like a man in a dream. A winding track of mud is left behind him. He stops, coughs, and says in a low voice, as if speaking to himself: �Well! what if they arrest me! What if they kill me! I would rather be here!’

Then, recollecting himself, and looking at us, one after another, he cried with a movement of terror: �I have spoken! What did I say? Ah! the burgomaster – the magistrate Ulmett.’

He made a bound as if he would fly, and I know not what he saw in the darkness of the night without which drove him once more from it into the room.

Theodore Blitz slowly arose. After he had looked at us, he walked up to Mutz, and, with an air of confidence, he asked him in a low voice, pointing to the dark street: �Is it there?’

�Yes,’ said the man, in the same mysterious tone.

�It follows you?’

�From Fischbach.’

�Behind you?’

�Yes, behind me.’

�That is so, it is surely so,’ said the organist, throwing another look upon us. �It is always thus. Well then, stop here, Saphéri; sit down by the fire. Brauer, go and look for the gendarmes.’

At the word gendarmes the wretched fellow grew fearfully pale, and seemed to think again of flight, but the same horror beat him back once more, and he sank down at the corner of a table, his head between his hands.

�Oh! had I but known – had I but known!’ he moaned.

We were more dead than alive. The innkeeper went out. Not a breath was heard in the room. The old magistrate had put down his pipe, the burgomaster looked at me with a stupefied air. Rothan no longer whistled. Theodore Blitz, sitting at the end of a bench, looked at the rain streaking the darkness.

So we remained for a quarter of an hour, fearful all the time that the man would take it into his head to attempt to fly. But he did not stir. His long hair coiled from between his fingers, and the rain dripped from his clothes on to the floor.

At length the clatter of arms was heard without, and the gendarmes Werner and Keltz appeared upon the step. Keltz, darting a side glance at the man, lifted his great hat, saying: �Good evening, Monsieur Magistrate.’

Then he came in and coolly put the handcuffs on Saphéri’s wrists, while Saphéri covered his face with his hands.

�Come, follow me, my son,’ said he. �Werner close up.’

A third gendarme, short and fat, appeared in the darkness, and all the troop set off.

The wretched man made no resistance.

We looked at one another’s pale faces.

�Good evening, gentlemen,’ said the organist, and he went off.

Then each of us, lost in his own thoughts, rose and departed to his home in silence.

As for me, I turned my head more than twenty times before I came to my door, fearful that I should see the other that had followed SaphГ©ri Mutz ready to lay its hands upon me.

And when at last, thank heaven, I was safe in my room, before I got into bed and blew out my light I took the wise precaution of looking under my bed to convince myself that it was not hidden there. I even said a prayer that it would not strangle me during the night. Well, what then? One is not a philosopher at all times.

II

Until then I considered Theodore Blitz as a species of visionary imbecile. His maintaining the possibility of holding correspondence with invisible spirits by means of the music composed by all the sounds of nature, by the rustling of the leaves, by the murmur of the winds, by the hum of the insects, had appeared to me very ridiculous, and I was not the only one in that opinion.

It seemed all very well to tell us that if the grave sound of the organ awoke in us religious sentiments, that if martial music swept us on to war, and the simple melodies led us into reveries, it was because the different melodies were the invocation of the genii of the earth, who came suddenly into our midst, acted on our organs, and made us participants of their own proper essence. All that, however, appeared to me to be very obscure, and I had never doubted that the organist was just a little mad.

Now, however, my opinions changed respecting him. I said to myself that man is not a purely material being, that we are composed of body and soul; that to attribute all to the body, and to endeavour to ascribe all significance to it, is not rational; that the nervous fluid, agitated by the undulations of the air, is almost as difficult to comprehend as the direct action of occult powers; that we know not how it is that even a mere tickling of our ears, regulated by the rules of counter points, excites in us a thousand agreeable or terrible emotions, elevates the soul to heaven, melts us, awakens in us the ardour of life, enthusiasm, love, fear, pity. No, the first theory was not satisfactory. The ideas of the organist appeared to me more sublime, more weighty, more just, and more acceptable, looking at things all round.

Then how could one explain, by means of mere nervous sensation, the arrival of Saphéri Mutz at the inn; how could one explain the terror of the unhappy man, which forced him to yield himself up; and the marvellous foresight of Blitz when he said to us: �Hush! Listen! He comes! Heaven be with us!’

In the end all my prejudices against an invisible world disappeared, and new facts occurred to confirm me in this fresh manner of thinking.

About five days after the scene I have described, SaphГ©ri Mutz had been transported by the gendarmes to the prison of Stuttgart. The thousand tales which had been set afloat respecting the death of Gredel Dick died away. The poor girl slept in peace at the back of the hill of the Trois-Fontaines, and folk were busied in looking after the wine harvest.

One evening about nine o’clock, as I left the great warehouse of the custom-house – where I had been tasting some samples of wine on behalf of Brauer, who had more confidence in my judgment in such a matter than in his own – my head a little heavy, I chanced to direct my steps towards the great Alley des Plantanes, behind the church of Saint-Landolphe.

The Rhine displayed to my right its azure waters, in which some fishermen were letting down their nets. To my left rose the old fortifications of the town. The air began to grow cool; the river murmured its eternal song; the fir trees of the Black Forest were softly ruffled; and as I walked on the sound of a violin fell on my ear.

I listened.

The black-headed linnet never threw more grace, more delicacy, into the execution of his rapid trills, nor more enthusiasm into the stream of his inspiration. It was like nothing I had heard. It had no repose, no measure. It was a torrent of notes, delirious, admirably symphonising, but void of order or method.

Then, clashing with the thread of the inspiration, came some sharp incisive notes, piercing the ear.

�Theodore Blitz is here,’ said I to myself, putting aside the high branches of an elder hedge at the foot of a slope.

I looked around me, and my eyes fell upon a horse-pond covered with duck-weed, where the big frogs showed their flat noses. A little farther off rose some stables, with their big sheds, and an old dwelling-house. In the court, surrounded by a wall breast-high in which was a worm-eaten door, walked five or six fowls, and under the great stall ran the rabbits, their croups in the air, their tails up. When they saw me they disappeared under the gate of the grange like shadows.

No noise save the flow of the river and the bizarre fantasy of the violin could be heard.

Where on earth was Theodore Blitz?

The idea occurred to me that he was perhaps making trial of his music on the family of the Mutzes, and, curiosity impelling me, I glided into a hiding-place beside the wall to see what would happen in the farm.

The windows were all wide open, and in a room on the ground floor, long, with brown beams, level with the court, I perceived a long table furnished with all the sumptuousness of a village feast. Twenty or thirty covers were there. But what most astonished me was to see but five persons in front of this grand display. There was old Mutz, sombre and thoughtful, clad in a suit of black velvet with metal buttons. His large osseous head, grey, his forehead contracted in fixed thought, his eyes sunken, staring before him. There was the son-in-law, thin, insignificant, the neck of his shirt coming up almost to his ears. There was the mother in a great tulle cap, with a distracted look; the daughter – a rather pretty brunette – in a cap of black taffeta with spangles of gold and silver, her bosom covered with a silk neckerchief of a thousand colours. Lastly, there was Theodore Blitz, his three-cornered hat over his ear, the violin held between his shoulder and chin, his little eyes sparkling, his cheeks standing out in relief from a deep wrinkle, and his elbows thrown out and drawn in, like a grasshopper scraping its shrill aria on the heath.

The shades of the setting sun, the old clock with its delf dial with red and blue flowers, and above all the music, which grew more and more discordant, produced an indefinable impression upon me. I was seized with a truly panic terror. Was it the effect of my having breathed too long the rudesheim? Was it the effect of the pale tints of the falling night? I do not know; but without looking farther I glided away as quietly as possible, bending down, creeping by the wall in order to regain the road, when all of a sudden a large dog darted the length of his chain towards me, and made me utter a cry of surprise.

�Tirik!’ cried the old postmaster.

And Theodore, perceiving me, jumped out of the room, crying: �Ah! it is Christian Species! Come in, my dear Christian! You have come most opportunely.’ He strode across the court, and came and took my hands.

�My dear friend,’ said he to me, with strange animation. �This is a time when the black and the white engage with one another. Come, in come in.’

His excitement frightened me, but he would accept none of my excuses, and dragged me on without my being able to make any resistance.

�You must know, dear Christian,’ said he, �that we have this morning baptized an angel of heaven, the little Nickel Saphéri Brêmer. I have celebrated her coming into the world by the chorus of the “Séraphins”. Nevertheless, you may imagine that three-fourths of those who were invited have not come. Ha! ha! ha! Come in then! You will be welcome.’

He pushed me on by the shoulders, and willing or unwilling, I stepped across the threshold.

All the members of the Mutz family turned their heads. I should have liked not to have sat down, but those enthusiasts surrounded me.

�This will be the sixth!’ cried Blitz. �The number six is a good number!’

The old postmaster took my hands with emotion, saying: �Thanks, Monsieur Species, thanks for having come! They say that honest folk fly from us! That we are abandoned alike by God and by man! You will stop to the end?’

�Yes,’ mumbled the old woman, with a supplicating look. �Surely Monsieur Species will stay to the end. He will not refuse us that?’

Then I understood why the table was set in such grand fashion, and why the guests were so few. All of those invited to the baptism, thinking of Gredel Dick, had made excuses for not coming.

The idea of a like desertion went against my heart.

�Oh, certainly,’ I said. �Certainly! I will stay – with pleasure – with great pleasure!’

The glasses were refilled, and we drank of a rough strong wine, of an old markobrГјnner, the austere flavour of which filled me with melancholy thoughts.

The old woman, putting her long hand upon my shoulder, murmured: �Just a drop more, Monsieur Species, just a drop more.’

And I dared not say no.

At that moment Blitz, passing his bow over the vibrating cords, made a cold shudder pass through all my limbs.

�This, my friends,’ said he, �is Saul’s invocation to the Pythoness.’

I should have liked to run away, but in the court the dog was lamentably howling, the night was coming on, and the room was full of shadows. The harsh features of old Mutz, his keen eyes, the sorrowful compression of his big jaws, did not reassure one.

Blitz went on scraping, scraping away at that invocation of his, with great sweeps of his arm. The wrinkle which ploughed itself deep down his left cheek grew deeper and deeper, the perspiration stood on his forehead.

The postmaster filled up our glasses again, and said to me in a low imperious voice: �Your health.’

�Yours, Monsieur Mutz,’ responded I, trembling.

All of a sudden the child in the cradle commenced to cry, and Blitz, with a diabolical irony, accompanied its shrill wailing with piercing notes, saying: �It is the hymn of life – ha! ha! ha! Really, little Nickel sings it as if he were already old – ha! ha! ha!’

The old clock at the same time commenced to strike in its walnut-tree case; and when I raised my eyes, astonished by the noise, I saw a little figure advance from the background, bony, bald, hollow-eyed, a mocking smile on its lips – Death, in short.

He came out a few steps and set himself to gather, by jerks, some bits of flowers painted in green on the edge of the clock-case. Then, at the last stroke of the hour, he turned half round and went back to his den as he had come out.

�Why the deuce did the organist bring me here?’ said I to myself. �This is a nice baptism! And these are merry folk – ha! ha! ha!’

I filled my glass and drank it in order to gain courage.

�Well, let us go on, let us go on. The die is cast. No one escapes his destiny. I was destined before the commencement of the ages to go this evening to the custom-house; to walk in the alley of Saint-Landolphe; to come in spite of myself to this abominable cut-throat place, attracted by the music of Blitz; to drink markobrünner which smacks of cypress and vervain; and to see Death gathering painted flowers! Well, it is droll – truly droll!’

So I dreamed, laughing at men who, thinking themselves free, are dragged on by threads attached to the stars. So astrologers have told us, and we must believe them.

I laughed then amongst the shadows as the music ceased.

A great silence fell around. The clock alone broke the stillness with its regular tick-tack; outside the moon, slowly rising over the Rhine, behind the trembling foliage of a poplar, threw its pale light over innumerable ripples. I noticed it, and saw a black boat pass along in the moon’s reflected light. On it was a man, all dark like the boat. He had a loose cloak around him, and wore a large hat with a wide brim, from which hung streamers.

He went by like a figure in a dream. I felt my eyelids heavy.

�Let us drink,’ cried the organist.

The glasses clattered.

�How well the Rhine sings! It sings the air of Barthold Gouterolf,’ said the son-in-law, �ave-ave-stella!’

No one made reply.

Far off, far off, we could hear the rhythmic beat of two oars.

�Today,’ cried the old postmaster suddenly, in a hoarse voice, �Saphéri makes expiation.’

No doubt he had long been thinking, thinking of that. It was that which had rendered him so sad. My flesh crept.

�He thinks of his son,’ said I to myself, �of his son who dies today!’

And a cold shiver ran through me.

�His expiation,’ cried the daughter with a harsh laugh, �yes – his expiation!’

Theodore touched my shoulder, and, bending to my ear, said: �The spirits are coming – they are at hand!’

�If you speak like that,’ cried the son-in-law, whose teeth were chattering. �If you speak like that I shall be off!’

�Go then, go then, coward!’ said the daughter. �No one has need of you.’

�Very well, I will be off,’ said he, rising.

And taking his hat off the hook in the wall, he went away with long strides.

I saw him pass rapidly before the windows, and I envied him.

How could I get away?

Something was walking upon the wall in front. I stared – my eyes wide open with surprise, and at length saw that it was a cock. Far off between the old palings the river shone, and its ripples slowly beat upon the sand of the shore. The light upon it danced like a cloud of sea-gulls with great white wings. My head was full of shadows and weird reflections.

�Listen, Peter,’ cried the old woman, at the end of a moment. �Listen, you have been the cause of all that has happened to us.’

�I,’ cried the old man huskily, angrily, �I! of what have I been the cause?’

�Yes,’ she went on. �You never took pity on our lad. You forgave nothing. It was you who prevented his marrying that girl!’

�Woman,’ cried the old man, �instead of accusing others, remember that his blood is on your own head. During twenty years you have done nought but hide his faults from me. When I punished him for his evil disposition, for his temper, for his drunkenness, you – you would console him, you would weep with him, you would secretly give him money, you would say to him, “your father does not love you; he is a harsh man!” And you lied to him that you might have the greater portion of his love. You robbed me of the confidence and respect that a child should have for those who love him and correct him. So then, when he wanted to marry that girl, I had no power to make him obey me.’

�You should have said “yes”,’ howled the woman.

�But,’ said the old man, �I had rather say no, because my mother, my grandmother, and all the men and women of my family would not be able to receive that pagan in heaven.’

�In heaven,’ chattered the woman. �In heaven!’

And the daughter added in a shrill voice: �From the earliest time I can remember, our father has only bestowed upon us blows!’

�Because you deserved them,’ cried the old man. �They gave me more pain than they did you.’

�More pain! Ha! ha! ha! more pain!’

At that moment, a hand touched my arm. It was Blitz. A ray of the moon, falling on the window-panes, scattered its light around. His face was white, and his stretched-out hand pointed to the shadows. I followed his finger with my eyes, for he evidently was directing my attention to something, and I saw the most terrible sight of which I have a memory – a shadow, motionless, appeared before the window, against the light surface of the river. This shadow had a man’s shape, and seemed suspended between heaven and earth. Its head hung down upon its breast, its elbows stood out square beside the body, and its legs straight down tapered to a point.

As I looked on, my eyes round, wide opened with astonishment, every feature developed in that wan figure. I recognised SaphГ©ri Mutz; and above his bent shoulders I saw the cord, the beam, and the outline of the gibbet. Then, at the foot of this deathly apparition, I saw a white figure, kneeling, with long dishevelled hair. It was Gredel Dick, her hands joined in prayer.

It would seem as though all the others, at the same time, saw that strange apparition as well as myself, for I heard them breathe: �Heaven! Heaven have mercy on us!’

And the old woman, in a low choking voice, murmured: �Saphéri is dead!’

She commenced to sob.

And the daughter cried: �Saphéri! Saphéri!’

Then all disappeared, and Theodore Blitz, taking me by the hand, said: �Let us go.’

We set off. The night was fine. The leaves fluttered with a sweet murmur.

As we went on, horrified, along the great Alley des Plantanes, a mournful voice from afar off sang upon the river the old German song:

�The grave is deep and silent,

Its borders are terrible!

It throws a sombre mantle

It throws a sombre mantle

Over the kingdom of the dead.’

�Ah!’ said Blitz, �if Gredel Dick had not been there we should have seen the other – the fearful one take Saphéri. But she prayed for him! The poor soul! She prayed for him. What is white remains white!’

The voice afar off, growing feebler and feebler, answered the murmur of the tide:

�Death does not find an echo

For the song of the thrush,

The roses which grow on the grave,

The roses which grow on the grave,

Are the roses of grief.’

The horrible scene which had unfolded itself to my eyes, and that far-off melancholy voice which, growing fainter and fainter, at length died away in the distance, remain with me as a confused mirage of the infinite, of that infinite which pitilessly absorbs us, and engulfs us without possibility of our escape. Some may laugh at the idea of such an infinity, like the engineer Rothan; some may tremble at it, as did the burgomaster; some may groan with a pitiable voice; and others may, like Theodore Blitz, crane themselves over the abyss in order to see what passes in the depths. It all, however, comes to the same thing in the end, and the famous inscription over the temple of Isis is always true:

I am he that is.

No one has ever penetrated the mystery which envelops me.

No one shall ever penetrate it.




THE BURGOMASTER IN BOTTLE (#ulink_b25e98fe-f834-5bb7-b16a-bc918c818698)


I have always professed the highest esteem, and even a sort of veneration for the Rhine’s noble wine; it sparkles like champagne, it warms one like Burgundy, it soothes the throat like Bordeaux, it fires the imagination like the juice of the Spanish grape, it makes us tender and kind like lacryma-christi; and last, but not least, it helps us to dream – it unfolds the extensive fields of fancy before our eyes.

In 1846, towards the end of autumn, I had made up my mind to perform a pilgrimage to Johannisberg. Mounted on a wretched hack, I had arranged two tin flasks along his hollow ribs, and I made the journey by short stages.

What a fine sight a vintage is! One of my flasks was always empty, the other always full; when I quitted one vineyard, there was the prospect of another before me. But it quite troubled me that I had not any one capable of appreciating it to share this enjoyment with me.

Night was closing in one evening; the sun had just disappeared, but one or two stray rays were still lingering among the large vine-leaves. I heard the trot of a horse behind me. I turned a little to the left to allow him to pass me, and to my great surprise I recognised my friend Hippel, who as soon as he saw me uttered a shout of delight.

You are well acquainted with Hippel, his fleshy nose, his mouth especially adapted to the sense of taste, and his rotund stomach. He looked like old Silenus in the pursuit of Bacchus. We shook hands heartily.

The aim of Hippel’s journey was the same as mine; in his quality of first-rate connoisseur he wanted to confirm his opinion as to the peculiarities of certain growths about which he still entertained some doubts.

So we continued our route together. Hippel was extremely gay; he traced out our route among the Rhingau vineyards. We halted occasionally to devote our attention to our flasks, and to listen to the silence which reigned around us.

The night was far advanced when we reached a little inn perched on the side of a hill. We dismounted. Hippel peeped through a small window nearly level with the ground. A lamp was burning on a table, and by it sat an old woman fast asleep.

�Hallo!’ cried my comrade; �open the door, mother.’

The old woman started, got up and came to the window, and pressed her shrunken face against the panes. You would have taken it for one of those old Flemish portraits in which ochre and bistre predominate.

As soon as the old sybil could distinguish us she made a grimace intended for a smile, and opened the door for us.

�Come in, gentlemen – come in,’ cried she with a tremulous voice; �I will go and wake my son; sit down – sit down.’

�A feed of corn for our horses and a good supper for ourselves,’ cried Hippel.

�Directly, directly,’ said the old woman assiduously.

She hobbled out of the room, and we could hear her creeping up stairs as steep as a Jacob’s ladder.

We remained for a few minutes in a low smoky room. Hippel hurried to the kitchen, and returned to tell me that he had ascertained there were certain sides of bacon by the chimney.

�We shall have some supper,’ said he, patting his stomach; �yes, we shall get some supper.’

The flooring creaked over our heads, and almost immediately a powerful fellow with nothing but his trousers on, his chest bare, and his hair in disorder, opened the door, took a step or two forward, and then disappeared without saying a word to us.

The old woman lighted the fire, and the butter began to frizzle in the frying-pan.

Supper was brought in; a ham put on the table flanked by two bottles, one of red wine, the other of white.

�Which do you prefer?’ asked the hostess.

�We must try them both first,’ replied Hippel, holding his glass to the old woman, who filled it with red.

She then filled mine. We tasted it; it was a strong rough wine. I cannot describe the peculiar flavour it possessed – a mixture of vervain and cypress leaves! I drank a few drops, and my soul became profoundly sad. But Hippel, on the contrary, smacked his lips with an air of satisfaction.

�Good! very good! Where do you get it from, mother?’ said he.

�From the hillside close by,’ replied the old woman, with a curious smile.

�A very good hillside,’ returned Hippel, pouring himself out another glass.

It seemed to me like drinking blood.

�What are you making such faces for, Ludwig?’ said he. �Is there anything the matter with you?’

�No,’ I answered, �but I don’t like such red wine as this.’

�There is no accounting for tastes,’ observed Hippel, finishing the bottle and knocking on the table.

�Another bottle of the same,’ cried he, �and mind, no mixing, lovely hostess – I am a judge! Morbleu! this wine puts life into me, it is so generous.’

Hippel threw himself back in his chair; his face seemed to undergo a complete transformation. I emptied the bottle of white wine at a draught, and then my heart felt gay again. My friend’s preference for red wine seemed to me ridiculous but excusable.

We continued drinking, I white and he red wine, till one o’clock in the morning.

One in the morning! It is the hour when Fancy best loves to exercise her influence. The caprices of imagination take that opportunity of displaying their transparent dresses embroidered in crystal and blue, like the wings of the beetle and the dragon-fly.

One o’clock! That is the moment when the music of the spheres tickles the sleeper’s ears, and breathes the harmony of the invisible world into his soul. Then the mouse trots about, and the owl flaps her wings, and passes noiselessly over our heads.

�One o’clock,’ said I to my companion; �we must go to bed if we are to set off early tomorrow morning.’

Hippel rose and staggered about.

The old woman showed us into a double-bedded room, and wished us goodnight.

We undressed ourselves; I remained up the last to put the candle out. I was hardly in bed before Hippel was fast asleep; his respiration was like the blowing of a storm. I could not close my eyes, as thousands of strange faces hovered round me. The gnomes, imps, and witches of Walpurgis night executed their cabalistic dances on the ceiling all night. Strange effect of white wine!

I got up, lighted my lamp, and, impelled by curiosity, I went up to Hippel’s bed. His face was red, his mouth half-open, I could see the blood pulsating in his temples, and his lips moved as if he wanted to speak. I stood for some time motionless by his side; I tried to see into the depths of his soul, but sleep is an impenetrable mystery; like death, it keeps its secrets.

Sometimes Hippel’s face wore an expression of terror, then of sadness, then again of melancholy; occasionally his features contracted; he looked as if he was going to cry.

His jolly face, which was made for laughter, wore a strange expression when under the influence of pain.

What might be passing in those depths? I saw a wave now and then mount to the surface, but whence came those frequent shocks? All at once the sleeper rose, his eyelids opened, and I could see nothing but the whites of his eyes; every muscle in his face was trembling, his mouth seemed to try to utter a scream. Then he fell back, and I heard a sob.

�Hippel! Hippel!’ cried I, and I emptied a jug of water on his head.

This awoke him.

�Ah!’ cried he, �God be thanked, it was but a dream. My dear Ludwig, I thank you for awakening me.’

�So much the better, and now tell me what you were dreaming about.’

�Yes, tomorrow; let me sleep now. I am so sleepy.’

�Hippel, you are ungrateful; you will have forgotten it all by tomorrow.’

�Morbleu,’ replied he, �I am so sleepy, I must go to sleep; leave me now.’

I would not let him off.

�Hippel, you will have the same dream over again, and this time I shall leave you to your fate.’

These words had the desired effect.

�The same dream over again!’ cried he, jumping out of bed. �Give me my clothes! Saddle my horse! I am off! This is a cursed place. You are right, Ludwig, this is the devil’s own dwelling-place. Let us be off!’

He hurried on his clothes. When he was dressed I stopped him.

�Hippel,’ said I, �why should we hurry away? It is only three o’clock. Let us stay quietly here.’

I opened the window, and the fresh night air penetrated the room, and dissipated all his fears. So he leaned on the window-sill, and told me what follows.

�We were talking yesterday about the most famous of the Rhingau vineyards. Although I have never been through this part of the country, my mind was no doubt full of impressions regarding it, and the heavy wine we drank gave a sombre tinge to my ideas. What is most extraordinary, in my dream I fancied I was the burgomaster of Welcke’ (a neighbouring village), �and I was so identified with this personage, that I can describe him to you as minutely as if I was describing myself. This burgomaster was a man of middle height, and almost as fat as I am. He wore a coat with wide skirts and brass buttons; all down his legs he had another row of small nail-headed buttons. On his bald head was a three-cornered cocked hat – in short, he was a stupidly grave man, drinking nothing but water, thinking of nothing but money, and his only endeavour was to increase his property.

�As I had taken the outward appearance of the burgomaster, so had I his disposition also. I, Hippel, should have despised myself could I have recognised myself, what a beast of a burgomaster I was. How far better it is to lead a happy life, without caring for the future, than to heap crowns upon crowns and only distil bile! Well, here I am, a burgomaster.

�When I leave my bed in the morning the first thing which makes me uneasy is to know if the men are already at work among my vines. I eat a crust of bread for breakfast. A crust of bread! what a sordid miser! I who have a cutlet and a bottle of wine every morning! Well, never mind, I take – that is, the burgomaster takes his crust of bread and puts it in his pocket. He tells his old housekeeper to sweep the room and have dinner ready by eleven. Boiled beef and potatoes I think it was – a poor dinner. Well, out he goes.

�I could describe the road he took, the vines on the hillside, to you exactly,’ continued Hippel; �I see them before me now.

�How is it possible that a man in a dream could conceive such an idea of a landscape? I could see fields, gardens, meadows, and vineyards. I knew this belongs to Pierre, that to Jacques, that to Henri; and then I stopped before one of these bits of ground and said to myself: “Bless me, Jacob’s clover is very fine.” And farther on, “Bless me, again, that acre of vines would suit me wonderfully.” But all the time I felt a sort of giddiness, an indescribable pain in the head. I hurried on, as it was early morning. The sun soon rose, and the heat became oppressive. I was then following a narrow path which crossed through the vines towards the top of the hill. This path led past the ruins of an old castle, and beyond it I could see my four acres of vineyard. I made haste to get there; as I was quite blown when I reached the ruins, I stopped to recover breath, and the blood seemed to ring in my ears, while my heart beat in my breast like a hammer on an anvil. The sun seemed on fire. I tried to go on again, but all at once I felt as if I had received a blow from a club; I rolled under a part of a wall, and I comprehended I had a fit of apoplexy. Then the horror of despair took possession of me. “I am a dead man,” said I to myself; “the money I have amassed with so much trouble, the trees I have so carefully cultivated, the house I have built, all, all are lost – all gone into the hands of my heirs. Now those wretches to whom in my lifetime I refused a kreutzer will become rich at my expense. Traitors! how you will rejoice over my misfortune! You will take the keys from my pockets, you will share my property among yourselves, you will squander my gold; and I – I must be present at this spoilation! What a hideous punishment!”

�I felt my spirit quit the corpse, but remain standing by it.

�This spiritual burgomaster noticed that its body had its face blue, and yellow hands.

�It was very hot, and some large flies came and settled on the face of the corpse. One went up his nose. The body stirred not! The whole face was soon covered with them, and the spirit was in despair because it was impotent to drive them away.

�There it stood. There, for minutes which seemed hours. Hell was beginning for it already. So an hour went by. The heat increased gradually. Not a breath in the air, nor a cloud in the sky.

�A goat came out from among the ruins, nibbling the weeds which were growing up through the rubbish. As it passed my poor body it sprang aside, and then came back, opened its eyes with suspicion, smelt about, and then followed its capricious course over the fallen cornice of a turret. A young goatherd came to drive her back again; but when he saw the body he screamed out, and then set off running towards the village with all his might.

�Another hour passed, slow as eternity. At last a whispering, then steps were heard behind the ruins, and my spirit saw the magistrate coming slowly, slowly along, followed by his clerk and several other persons. I knew every one of them. They uttered an exclamation when they saw me: “It is our burgomaster!”

�The medical man approached the body, and drove away the flies, which flew swarming away. He looked at it, then raised one of the already stiffened arms, and said with the greatest indifference: “Our burgomaster has succumbed to a fit of apoplexy; he has probably been here all the morning. You had better carry him away and bury him as soon as possible, for this heat accelerates decomposition.”

�“Upon my word,” said the clerk, “between ourselves, he is no great loss to the parish. He was a miser and an ass, and he knew nothing whatever.”

�“Yes,” added the magistrate, “and yet he found fault with everything.”

�“Not very surprising either,” said another, “fools always think themselves clever.”

�“You must send for several porters,” observed the doctor; “they have a heavy burden to carry; this man always had more belly than brains.”

�“I shall go and draw up the certificate of death. At what time shall we say it took place?” asked the clerk.

�“Say about four o’clock this morning.”

�“The skinflint!” said a peasant, “he was going to watch his workmen to have an excuse for stopping a few sous off their wages on Saturday.”

�Then folding his arms and looking at the dead body: “Well, burgomaster,” said he, “what does it profit you that you squeezed the poor so hard? Death has cut you down all the same.”

�“What has he got in his pocket?” asked one.

�They took out of it my crust of bread.

�“Here is his breakfast!”

�They all began to laugh. Chattering as they were the groups prepared to quit the ruins; my poor spirit heard them a few moments, and then by degrees the noise ceased. I remained in solitude and silence. The flies came back by millions.

�I cannot say how much time elapsed,’ continued Hippel, �for in my dreams the minutes seemed endless. However, at last some porters came; they cursed the burgomaster and carried his carcass away; the poor man’s spirit followed them plunged in grief. I went back the same way I came, but this time I saw my body carried before me on a litter. When we reached my house I found many people waiting for me, I recognised male and female cousins to the fourth generation! The bier was set down – they all had a look at me.

�“It is he, sure enough,” said one.

�“And dead enough too,” rejoined another.

�My housekeeper made her appearance; she clasped her hands together and exclaimed: “Such a fat, healthy man! who could have foreseen such an end? It only shows how little we are.”

�And this was my general oration.

�I was carried upstairs and laid on a mattress. When one of my cousins took my keys out of my pocket I felt I should like to scream with rage. But, alas! spirits are voiceless; well, my dear Ludwig, I saw them open my bureau, count my money, make an estimate of my property, seal up my papers; I saw my housekeeper quietly taking possession of my best linen, and although death had freed me from all mundane wants, I could not help regretting the sous of which I was robbed.

�I was undressed, and then a shirt was put on me; I was nailed up in a deal box, and I was, of course, present at my own funeral.

�When they lowered me into the grave, despair seized upon my spirit; all was lost! Just then, Ludwig, you awoke me, but I still fancy I can hear the earth rattling on my coffin.’

Hippel ceased, and I could see his whole body shiver.

We remained a long time silent, without exchanging a word; a cock crowing warned us that night was nearly over, the stars were growing pale at the approach of day; other cocks’ shrill cry could be heard abroad, challenging from the different farms. A watchdog came out of his kennel to make his morning rounds, then a lark, half awake only, warbled a note or two.

�Hippel,’ said I to my comrade, �it is time to be off if we wish to take advantage of the cool morning.’

�Very true,’ said he, �but before we go I must have a mouthful of something.’

We went downstairs; the landlord was dressing himself; when he had put his blouse on he set before us the relics of our last night’s supper; he filled one of my flasks with white wine, the other with red, saddled our hacks, and wished us a good journey.

We had not ridden more than half a league when my friend Hippel, who was always thirsty, took a draught of the red wine.

�P-r-r-r!’ cried he, as if he was going to faint, �my dream – my last night’s dream!’

He pushed his horse into a trot to escape this vision, which was visibly imprinted in striking characters on his face; I followed him slowly, as my poor Rosinante required some consideration.

The sun rose, a pale pink tinge invaded the gloomy blue of the sky, then the stars lost themselves as the light became brighter. As the first rays of the sun showed themselves, Hippel stopped his horse and waited for me.

�I cannot tell you,’ said he, �what gloomy ideas have taken possession of me. This red wine must have some strange properties; it pleases my palate, but it certainly attacks my brain.’

�Hippel,’ replied I, �it is not to be disputed that certain liquors contain the principles of fancy and even of phantasmagoria. I have seen men from gay become sad, and the reverse; men of sense become silly, and the silly become witty, and all arising from a glass or two of wine in the stomach. It is a profound mystery; what man, then, is senseless enough to deny the bottle’s magic power? Is it not the sceptre of a superior incomprehensible force before which we must be content to bow the head, for we all some time or other submit to its influence, divine or infernal, as the case may be?’

Hippel recognised the force of my arguments and remained silently lost in reverie. We were making our way along a narrow path which winds along the banks of the Queich. We could hear the birds chirping, and the partridge calling as it hid itself under the broad vine-leaves. The landscape was superb, the river murmured as it flowed past little ravines in the banks. Right and left, hillside after hillside came into view, all loaded with abundant fruit. Our route formed an angle with the declivity. All at once my friend Hippel stopped motionless, his mouth wide open, his hands extended in an attitude of stupefied astonishment, then as quick as lightning he turned to fly, when I seized his horse’s bridle.

�Hippel, what’s the matter? Is Satan in ambuscade on the road, or has Balaam’s angel drawn his sword against you?’

�Let me go!’ said he, struggling; �my dream – my dream!’

�Be quiet and calm yourself, Hippel; no doubt there are some injurious qualities contained in red wine; swallow some of this; it is a generous juice of the grape which dissipates the gloomy imaginings of a man’s brain.’

He drank it eagerly, and this beneficent liquor re-established his faculties in equilibrium.

He poured the red wine out on the road; it had become as black as ink, and formed great bubbles as it soaked in the ground, and I seemed to hear confused voices groaning and sighing, but so faint that they seemed to escape from some distant country, and which the ear of flesh could hardly hear, but only the fibres of the heart could feel. It was as Abel’s last sigh when his brother felled him to the ground and the earth drank up his blood.

Hippel was too much excited to pay attention to this phenomenon, but I was profoundly struck by it. At the same time I noticed a black bird, about as large as my fist, rise from the bushes near, and fly away with a cry of fear.

�I feel,’ said Hippel, �that the opposing principles are struggling within me, one white and the other black, the principles of good and evil; come on.’

We continued our journey.

�Ludwig,’ my comrade soon began, �such extraordinary things happen in this world that our understandings ought to humiliate themselves in fear and trembling. You know I have never been here before. Well, yesterday I dreamt, and today I see with open eyes the dream of last night rise again before me; look at that landscape – it is the same I beheld when asleep. Here are the ruins of the old château where I was struck down in a fit of apoplexy; this is the path I went along, and there are my four acres of vines. There is not a tree, not a streamlet, not a bush which I cannot recognise as if I had seen them hundreds of times before. When we turn the angle of the road we shall see the village of Welcke at the end of the valley; the second house on the right is the burgomaster’s; it has five windows on the first floor and four below, and the door. On the left of my house – I mean the burgomaster’s – you see a barn and a stable. It is there my cattle are kept. Behind the house is the yard; under a large shed is a two-horse wine-press. So, my dear Ludwig, such as I am you see me resuscitated. The poor burgomaster is looking at you out of my eyes; he speaks to you by my voice, and did I not recollect that before being a burgomaster and a rich sordid proprietor I have been Hippel the bon vivant, I should hesitate to say who I am, for all I see recalls another existence, other habits and other ideas.’

Everything was in accordance with what Hippel had described. We saw the village at some distance down in a fertile valley between hillsides covered with vines, houses scattered along the banks of the river; the second on the right was the burgomaster’s.

And Hippel had a vague recollection of every one we met; some seemed so well known to him that he was on the point of addressing them by name; but the words died away on his lips, and he could not disengage his ideas. Besides, when he noticed the look of indifferent curiosity with which those we met regarded us, Hippel felt he was entirely unknown, and that his face, at all events, sufficed to mask the spirit of the defunct burgomaster.

We dismounted at an inn which my friend assured me was the best in the village; he had known it long by reputation.

A second surprise. The mistress of the inn was a fat gossip, a widow of many years’ standing, and whom the defunct burgomaster had once proposed to make his second wife.

Hippel felt inclined to clasp her in his arms; all his old sympathies awoke in him at once. However, he succeeded in moderating his transports; the real Hippel combated in him the burgomaster’s matrimonial inclinations. So he contented himself with asking her as civilly as possible for a good breakfast and the best wine she had.

While we were at table, a very natural curiosity prompted Hippel to inquire what had passed in the village since his death.

�Madame,’ said he with a flattering smile, �you were doubtless well acquainted with the late burgomaster of Welcke?’

�Do you mean the one that died in a fit of apoplexy about three years ago?’ said she.

�The same,’ replied my comrade, looking inquisitively at her.

�Ah, yes, indeed, I knew him!’ cried the hostess; �that old curmudgeon wanted to marry me. If I had known he would have died so soon I would have accepted him. He proposed we should mutually settle all our property on the survivor.’

My dear Hippel was rather disconcerted at this reply; the burgomaster’s amour propre in him was horribly ruffled. He nevertheless continued his questions.

�So you were not the least bit in love with him, madame?’ he asked.

�How was it possible to love a man as ugly, dirty, repulsive, and avaricious as he was?’

Hippel got up and walked to the looking-glass to survey himself. After contemplating his fat and rosy cheeks he smiled contentedly, and sat down before a chicken, which he proceeded to carve.

�After all,’ he said, �the burgomaster may have been ugly and dirty; that proves nothing against me.’

�Are you any relation of his?’ asked the hostess in surprise.

�I! I never even saw him. I only made the remark some are ugly, some good-looking; and if one happens to have one’s nose in the middle of one’s face, like your burgomaster, it does not prove any likeness to him.’

�Oh no,’ said the gossip, �you have no family resemblance to him whatever.’

�Moreover,’ my comrade added, �I am not by any means a miser, which proves I cannot be your burgomaster. Let us have two more bottles of your best wine.’

The hostess disappeared, and I profited by this opportunity to warn Hippel not to enter upon topics which might betray his incognito.

�What do you take me for, Ludwig?’ cried he in a rage. �You know I am no more the burgomaster than you are, and the proof of it is my papers are perfectly regular.’

He pulled out his passport. The landlady came in.

�Madame,’ said he, �did your burgomaster in any way resemble this description?’

He read out: �Forehead, medium height; nose, large; lips, thick; eyes, grey; figure, full; hair, brown.’

�Very nearly,’ said the dame, �except that the burgomaster was bald.’

Hippel ran his hand through his hair, and exclaimed: �The burgomaster was bald, and no one dare to say I am bald.’

The hostess thought he was mad, but as he rose and paid the bill she made no further remark.

When we reached the door Hippel turned to me and said abruptly: �Let us be off!’

�One moment, my friend,’ I replied; �you must first take me to the cemetery where the burgomaster lies.’

�No!’ he exclaimed – �no, never! do you want to see me in Satan’s clutches? I stand upon my own tombstone! It is against every law in nature. Ludwig, you cannot mean it?’

�Be calm, Hippel!’ I replied. �At this moment you are under the influence of invisible powers; they have enveloped you in meshes so light and transparent that one cannot see them. You must make an effort to burst them; you must release the burgomaster’s spirit, and that can only be accomplished upon his tomb. Would you steal this poor spirit? It would be a flagrant robbery, and I know your scrupulous delicacy too well to suppose you capable of such infamy.’

These unanswerable arguments settled the matter.

�Well, then, yes,’ said he, �I must summon up courage to trample on those remains, a heavy part of which I bear about me. God grant I may not be accused of such a theft! Follow me, Ludwig; I will lead you to the grave.’

He walked on with rapid steps, carrying his hat in his hand, his hair in disorder, waving his arms about, and taking long strides, like some unhappy wretch about to commit a last act of desperation, and exciting himself not to fail in his attempt.

We first passed along several lanes, then crossed the bridge of a mill, the wheel of which was gyrating in a sheet of foam; then we followed a path which crossed a field, and at last we arrived at a high wall behind the village, covered with moss and clematis; it was the cemetery.

In one corner was the ossuary, in the other a cottage surrounded by a small garden.

Hippel rushed into the room; there he found the gravedigger, all along the walls were crowns of immortelles. The gravedigger was carving a cross, and he was so occupied with his work that he got up quite alarmed when Hippel appeared. My comrade fixed his eyes upon him so sternly that he must have been frightened, for during some seconds he remained quite confounded.

�My good man,’ I began, �will you show us the burgomaster’s grave?’

�No need of that,’ cried Hippel; �I know it.’

Without waiting for us he opened the door which led into the cemetery, and set off running like a madman, springing over the graves and exclaiming: �There it is; there! Here we are!’

He must evidently have been possessed by an evil spirit, for in his course he threw down a cross crowned with roses – a cross on the grave of a little child!

The gravedigger and I followed him slowly.

The cemetery was large; weeds, thick and dark-green in colour, grew three feet above the soil. Cypresses dragged their long foliage along the ground; but what struck me most at first was a trellis set up against the wall, and covered with a magnificent vine so loaded with fruit that the bunches of grapes were growing one over the other.

As we went along I remarked to the gravedigger; �You have a vine there which ought to bring you in something.’

�Oh, sir,’ he began in a whining tone, �that vine does not produce me much. No one will buy my grapes; what comes from the dead returns to the dead.’

I looked the man steadily in the face. He had a false air about him, and a diabolical grin contracted his lips and his cheeks. I did not believe what he said.

We now stood before the burgomaster’s grave. Opposite there was the stem of an enormous vine, looking very like a boa-constrictor. Its roots, no doubt, penetrated to the coffins, and disputed their prey with the worms. Moreover, its grapes were of a red violet colour, while the others were white, very slightly tinged with pink. Hippel leaned against the vine, and seemed calmer.

�You do not eat these grapes yourself,’ said I to the gravedigger, �but you sell them.’

He grew pale, and shook his head in dissent.

�You sell them at Welcke, and I can tell you the name of the inn where the wine from them is drunk – it is The Fleur de Lis.’

The gravedigger trembled in every limb.

Hippel seized the wretch by the throat, and had it not been for me he would have torn him to pieces.

�Scoundrel!’ he exclaimed, �you have been the cause of my drinking the quintessence of the burgomaster, and I have lost my own personal identity.’

But all on a sudden a bright idea struck him. He turned towards the wall in the attitude of the celebrated Brabançon Männe-Kempis.

�God be praised!’ said he, as he returned to me, �I have restored the burgomaster’s spirit to the earth. I feel enormously relieved.’

An hour later we were on our road again, and my friend Hippel had quite recovered his natural gaiety.




MY INHERITANCE (#ulink_b1ae0396-b61a-596b-a65c-867bc1e9f5ef)


At the death of my worthy uncle, Christian Haas, mayor of Lauterbach, I was already music conductor to the Grand Duke Yeri Peter, and I had fifteen hundred florins as salary. That did not prevent me from being in very low water. Uncle Christian, well aware of my position, never sent me a penny, so I cannot help shedding a few tears in learning his posthumous generosity. I inherited from him, alas!… two hundred and fifty acres of good plough-land, vineyards, orchards, a bit of forest, and his fine mansion of Lauterbach.

�Dear uncle,’ I said to myself with much feeling, �now I see the extent of your wisdom, and glorify you for keeping your purse-strings tied up. If you had sent me any money, where would it be now? In the hands of the Philistines! Little Kate Fresserine alone could have given any news about it. But now, by your caution, you have saved the situation. All honour to you, dear Uncle Christian!… All honour to you!’

And having said all this and much more, not less touching or less sincere, I set off on horseback for Lauterbach, It was very odd! The demon of avarice, with whom I never had any dealings, almost made himself master of my soul.

�Kasper,’ he whispered in my ear, �now you’re a rich man. Up to the present you have only pursued vain phantoms. Love and pleasure and the arts are only smoke. A man must be mad to think anything of glory. There is no solidity about anything except lands, houses, and money out on first mortgages. Give up your illusions! Push forward your fences, widen your fields, heap up your money, and you will be honoured and respected. You will become mayor like your uncle, and the people, when you approach, will take off their hats a mile away, saying, “Here comes Herr Kasper Haas … the rich man … the warmest gentleman in the country!”’

These ideas came and went in my head like figures from a magic lantern, and I found they had a reasonable, serious look, and I was much taken with them.

It was in mid-July. In the heavens the lark poured out his unending music; the crops undulated in the plain; the warm puffs of light wind carried to me the love-cries of the quail and the partridge in the corn; the foliage twinkled in the sunlight; the Lauter murmured in the shadow of the large old willows. But I saw or heard nothing of all that. I wished to be the mayor, I stuck out my abdomen; I puffed out my cheeks, and I repeated to myself, �Here comes Herr Kasper Haas … the rich man … the warmest gentleman in the country! Ho! Ho! Ho!’

And my little mare galloped on. I was anxious to try on the three-cornered hat and the great red waistcoat of my Uncle Christian, for I thought that if they suited me it would save me buying others. About four in the afternoon the little village of Lauterbach appeared, nestling in the valley; and it was with some emotion that I looked at the large fine mansion which was to be my residence, the centre of my estate and my power. I admired its picturesque situation on the dusty highway, the immense roof of grey tile, the sheds with their vast wings brooding over carts and wagons and crops, with a farmyard behind, then the kitchen garden, the orchard, the vineyards on the hill slope, the meadows in the distance. I thrilled with pleasure at the spectacle.

And as I went down the main road of the village, old women, with nose and chin meeting like nut-crackers, bare-headed, rumpled children, men in big otter-skin hats, a pipe with a silver chain in their mouths – all these good folks looked at me and greeted me: �Good day, Herr Kasper! Good day, Herr Haas!’

And all the little windows fill with astonished faces. I already feel at home. It seems to me I have always been a great landowner of Lauterbach. My life as a musical conductor is no more than a dream – my enthusiasm for music a folly of youth. How money does alter a man’s way of looking at things!

However, I stopped before the house of Notary Becker. He has the deeds of my property, and must give them to me. Tying my horse to the ring by the door, I jumped on the step, and the old lawyer, his bald head uncovered, his thin spine clad in a long green dressing-gown with a flower pattern, came out to welcome me.

�Herr Kasper Haas! I have much honour in greeting you!’

�Your servant, Master Becker!’

�Will you deign to enter, Herr Haas?’

�After you, Master Becker, after you.’

We crossed the hall, and I saw at the end a little bright airy room, a well-set out table, and, near the table, a pretty girl, graceful and sweet, her cheeks touched with a modest blush.

�Herr Kasper Haas!’ said the venerable notary.

I bowed.

�My daughter Lothe!’ added the worthy man.

While I was feeling my old artistic inclinations revive within me, and admiring the little nose, the scarlet lips, and large blue eyes of Fräulein Lothe, her slender waist, and her little dimpled plump hands, Master Becker invited me to take my place at the table, saying that, as he knew I was about to arrive, he had had a little meal prepared for me.

So we sat down and talked about the beauties of nature. I thought of the old father, and began to calculate what a notary would earn in Lauterbach.

�Fräulein, may I have the pleasure of helping you to the wing of a chicken?’

�Sir, you are very good. With pleasure.’

Lothe lowered her eyes. I filled her glass, and she moistened her red lips with the wine. Father was joyful, and talked about hunting and fishing.

�You will no doubt take up the pleasures of a country life. Our rabbit warrens are splendid, and the streams are full of trout. There is some fine hunting in the forest, and in the evening there is good company at the tavern. The inspector of woods and waters is a charming young man, and the magistrate is an excellent hand at whist.’

I listened, and thought this calm and peaceful sort of life was delicious. Fräulein Lothe seemed to me charming. She talked little, but her smile was so sweet and frank that she must be very loving, I fancied.

At last the coffee and the liqueur arrived. The young lady retired, and the old lawyer got on to serious business affairs. He spoke to me of my uncle’s estate, and I listened very attentively. No will, no legacies, and no mortgage! Everything clear, straightforward, regular! �Happy Kasper!’ I said to myself. �Happy Kasper.’

Then we entered the study to deal with the title-deeds. The closeness of the air, the piles of documents, the rows of law books, quickly chased away the day-dreams of my amorous fantasies. I sat down in a big armchair, and Master Becker thoughtfully fixed his horn spectacles on his long curved nose.

�Here are the title-deeds to your Eichmatt meadowlands, a hundred acres of the best soil in the parish, and splendidly watered. Three crops of hay in a year. It will bring you in four thousand francs. Here are the deeds for your Grünerwald farms, and those for your Lauterbach mansion. It is by far the largest in the village, dating from the sixteenth century.’

�The devil! Master Becker, that is nothing in its favour.’

�On the contrary. It is in a perfect state of repair. It was built by Hans Burckart, the Count of Barth, as his hunting-house. It is true, a good many generations have passed since then, but the upkeep and repair have never been neglected.’

With more explanations, Master Becker handed me the title-deeds of my other properties; and having put the parchments in a bag lent to me by the worthy man, I took leave of him, more convinced than ever of my new importance. Arriving at my mansion, I inserted the key in the lock, and kicking the step, I cried, �This is mine!’ I entered the hall, �This is mine!’ I opened the wardrobes, and seeing the linen piled to the top, �This is mine!’ I mounted to the first floor, repeating always like a madman, �This is mine! This is mine! Yes, I am the owner!’

All my cares of the future, all my fears for the morrow are dissipated. I figure in the world, no longer by the feeble merit men allow me, by the caprice of the fashion of the day, but by the possession of things that everybody covets. Oh, poets!… Oh, artists!… what are you beside this stout owner of land, who nourishes you by the crumbs from his table? You are only the ornament of his banquet … the distraction of his moods of boredom … the songbird on his hedgerow … the statue decorating his garden … You exist only by him and through him … Why should you envy him the fumes of pride and vanity … he who owns the only realities in this world!

If in this moment the poor Musical Conductor Haas had appeared before me, I should have looked at him over the shoulder, and asked myself, �Who is this fool? What has he in common with me?’

I opened the window. Night was falling. The setting sun gilded my orchards, my vineyards that lost themselves in the distance. On the summit of the hill a few white stones indicated the cemetery. I turned round. A vast Gothic hall, the ceiling adorned with heavy mouldings, took my eye. I was in the hunting-lodge of Hans Burckart, the Count of Barth. An antique spinet was placed between two of the windows. I passed my fingers over the keys absent-mindedly. The slack wires knocked together with the strange, twangling, ironic voice of teethless old women humming over the melodies of their youth.

At the end of the hall was the half-vaulted alcove, with great red curtains and a four-poster bed. The sight reminded me that I had been six hours in the saddle. And, undressing with a smile of unspeakable satisfaction, �This is the first time,’ I said, �I have slept in my own bed.’ And lying down, my eyes bent on the immense plain, already bathed in shadows, I felt my eyelids grow heavy in pleasant fashion. Not a leaf murmured; the noises of the village died one by one away … the sun had sunk … some golden gleams marked his trail in infinite space … I soon fell asleep.

It was night, and the moon shone in all her glory when I awoke with no apparent cause. The vague fragrances of summer came through the window to me. The air was filled with the sweet scent of the new hay. I stared around in surprise, for when I tried to get up to close the window, by some inconceivable thing, my body slept on, heavy as lead, while my head was perfectly free. With all my efforts to rise, not a muscle responded. I felt my arms by my side completely inert … my legs were stretched out, motionless; my head moved in vain. The deep, cadenced breathing of my body frightened me … my head fell back on the pillow, exhausted by its efforts. �Am I paralysed in my limbs?’ I asked myself. �Kasper Haas, the master of so many vineyards and fat pasturages, cannot even move this clod of clay that he really owns? O God!… What does it mean?’

And as I was thinking in this melancholy way, a slight sound attracted my attention. The door of my alcove opened; a man dressed in some stiff stuff like felt, as the monks of Saint Gualber in Mayence are … a large grey felt hat with a hawk’s plume in it … his hand buried to the elbow in hide gloves … entered the hall. His bell-shaped boots came above his knees; a heavy gold chain, charged with decorations, hung from his neck. His tanned, bony face, with hollow eyes, wore a look of keen sadness, and there were horrible greenish tints on it.

He walked the hall with hard, firm step, like the tick-tack of a clock; and with his hand on the guard of an immense sword, striking the floor with his heel, he cried, �This is mine!… Mine … Hans Burckart … Count of Barth!’

It was like an old rusty machine grinding out necromantic words. It made my flesh creep. But at the same time the door at the other end opened, and the Count of Barth disappeared through it. I heard his automatic step descend a stair that never seemed to come to an end. The sound of his footfall on each step grew fainter and fainter, as though he were descending to the fiery depths of the earth.

As I still listened, hearing nothing, lo! suddenly the great hall was filled with many people. The spinet sounded … they danced … they sang … made love and drank good wine. I saw against the blue background of the moon, young ladies loll round the spinet; their cavaliers, clad in fabulous lace, and numberless knick-knacks, sat with crossed legs on gold-fringed stools, leaning forward, tossing their heads, waddling about, making themselves pleasant. The little withered fingers of an old lady, with a nose like a parrot’s beak, clicked on the keys of the spinet; bursts of thin laughter rocketed left and right, ending in a mad rattle that made the hairs stand up in my neck.

All this society of folly and grace and fine manners exhaled a smell of rose water and mignonette soured by old age. I made again some superhuman efforts to get rid of this nightmare. Impossible! But at the same moment one of the young ladies said: �Gentlemen, make yourselves at home … This domain—’

She did not have the time to finish. A silence of death followed her words. I looked around. The phantasmagoria had disappeared.

Then the sound of a horn struck my ears. Outside, horses were prancing, dogs barking, and the moon, calm, contemplative, shone into my alcove. The door opened, as by a wind, and fifty hunters, followed by young ladies, two hundred years old, with long trailing gowns, filed majestically from one hall to the other. Four serfs also passed, bearing on their stout shoulders a stretcher of oak branches on which rested – bleeding, frothy at the mouth, with glazed eyes – an enormous wild boar. I heard the sound of the horn still louder outside. Then it died away in the woodlands like the sleepy cry of a bird … and then … nothing!

As I was thinking of this strange vision, I looked by chance in the silent shadows, and was astonished to see the hall occupied by one of those old Protestant families of bygone days, calm, dignified, and solemn in their manners. There was the white-haired father, reading a big Bible; the old mother, tall and pale, spinning the household linen, straight as a spindle, with a collar up to her ears, her waist bound by fillets of black ratteen; then the chubby children with dreaming eyes leaning on the table in deep silence; the old sheep dog, listening to his master; the old clock in its walnut case, counting the seconds; and farther away, in the shadow, the faces of girls and the features of lads in drugget jackets and felt hats, discussing the story of Jacob and Rachel by way of declaring their love.

And this worthy family seemed to be convinced of the holy truths; the old father, with his cracked voice, continued the edifying story with deep emotion:

�This is your promised land … the land of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob … which I have designed for you from the beginning of the world … so that you shall grow and multiply there like the stars of the sky. And none shall take it from you … for you are my beloved people, in whom I have put my trust.’

The moon, clouded for a few moments, grew clear again, and hearing nothing more I turned my head. The calm cold rays lighted up the empty hall; not a figure, not a shadow … The light streamed on the floor, and, in the distance, some trees lifted their foliage, sharp and clear, against the luminous hillside.

But suddenly the high walls were hidden in books. The old spinet gave way to the desk of a learned man, whose big wig showed to me above an armchair of red leather. I heard the goose-quill scratching the paper. The writer, lost in thought, did not stir. The silence overwhelmed me. But great was my surprise when the man turned in his chair, and I recognised in him the original of the portrait of the Jurist Gregorius that is No. 253 in the Hesse-Darmstadt Picture Gallery. Heavens! how did this great person descend from his frame? That is what I was asking myself when in a hollow voice he cried, �Ownership, in civil law, is the right to use and abuse so far as the law of nature allows.’ As this formula came from his lips, his figure grew dimmer and dimmer. At the last word he could not be seen.

What more shall I tell you, my dear friends? During the following hours I saw twenty other generations succeed each other in the ancient castle of Hans Burckart … Christians and Jews, lords and commoners, ignorant people and learned, artists and philistines, and all of them claimed the place as their legitimate property. All thought themselves the sovereign masters of the property. Alas! the wind of death blew them out of the door. I ended by becoming accustomed to this strange procession. Each time one of these worthy persons cried, �This is mine!’ I laughed and murmured, �Wait, my friend, wait, you will vanish like the rest.’

I was weary when, far away, very far away, a cock crowed, and with his piercing voice awoke the sleeping world. The leaves shook in the morning wind, and a shudder ran through my body. I felt my limbs were at last free, and rising on my elbow I gazed with rapture over the silent countryside … But what I saw was scarcely calculated to make me rejoice. All along the little hill-path that led to the graveyard climbed the procession of phantoms that had visited me in the night. Step by step they advanced to the lich-gate, and in their silent march, under the vague grey shadowy tints of the rising dawn, there was something terrible. As I looked, more dead than alive, my mouth gaping, my forehead bathed in a cold sweat, the leaders of the procession seemed to melt into the old weeping willows. There remained only a little number of spectres. And I was beginning to recover my breath, when my uncle Christian, the last figure in the procession, turned round under the old gate, and motioned to me to come with him. A voice, far away … ironical, cried: �Kasper … Kasper … Come … This land is ours!’

Then everything disappeared, and a purple line, stretching across the horizon, announced the dawn. I need not tell you that I did not accept the invitation of Master Christian Haas. It will be necessary for someone more powerful than he to force me to take that road. But I must admit that my night in the castle of Burckart has singularly altered the good opinion I had conceived of my own importance. For the strange vision seemed to me to signify that if the land, the orchards, the meadows do not pass away, the owners vanish very quickly. It makes the hair rise on your head when you think on it seriously.

So, far from letting myself slumber in the delight of an idle country life, I took up music again, and I hope next year to have an opera produced in Berlin. The fact is that glory, which common-sense people regard as moonshine, is still the most solid of all forms of ownership. It does not end with life. On the contrary, death confirms it, and gives it a new lustre. Suppose, for example, that Homer returned to this world. No one would think of denying him the merit of having written the Iliad, and each of us would hasten to render to this great man the honours due to him. But if by chance the richest landowner of his age returned to claim the fields, the forests, the pasturages, which were the pride of his life, it is ten to one he would be treated as a thief, and perish miserably under the blows of the Turks.




THE WILD HUNTSMAN (#ulink_479f321b-f35c-5b43-8ef2-e21859a5fa92)


I

In those happy days of youth, when the sky appears of a deeper blue and the foliage of a more vivid green, when mountain-torrents rush down with greater impetuosity and noise, when lakes are calmer, and their limpid depths more clear; when Nature is clothed in unspeakable grace, and all things sing to us in our hearts, and whisper of love, of art, of poetry – in that happy time I wandered alone through the grand old forest of Hundsrück.

I wandered from town to town, from one forester’s house to the next; singing, whistling, looking about me, without any definite object; fancy-led, seeking ever a deeper depth still more distant and more leafy, where no sound but the whisperings of the wind and the music of trees could ever reach me.

One morning I stepped out before daylight from the door of the Swan hostelry at Pirmasens to cross the wooded hills of Rothalps to the hamlet of Wolfthal. The boots came to arouse me at two o’clock, as I had requested; for towards the end of August it is best to travel at night, as the heat during the day, concentrating at the bottom of the gorges, becomes insupportable.

Picture me, then, on the way at night, my hunting-jacket buttoned closely to my figure, my knapsack depending from my shoulders, my stick in my hand. I walked at a good pace. Vines succeeded to vines, hemp-fields to hemp-fields; then came fir-trees, amongst which the darkened pathway wended; and the pale moon overhead seemed to plough an immense furrow of light beyond.

The excitement of the walk, the deep silence of the solitude, the twittering of a bird disturbed in its nest, the rapid passage through the trees of an early squirrel going to drink at a neighbouring spring, the stars glinting between the hills, the distant murmur of the water in the valley, the first clear notes from the thrush uttered from the topmost spray of the pine-tree, and crying to us that far, far away there was a streak of light, that the day was breaking, and at length the pale crepuscule, the first purple tint on the horizon, appeared across the dark coppices – these numerous impressions of the journey insensibly led up to the birth of the day.

About five o’clock I came out upon the other side of the Rothalps, nine miles from Pirmasens, into a narrow winding gorge.

I can always recall the sensation of freshness and delight with which I welcomed this retreat. Below me a little torrent, clear as crystal, rushed over its moss-grown stones; on the right, as far as the eye could reach, extended a forest of birch; and to the left, beneath the lofty pine-trees’ shade, the sandy path meandered to the deep roads.

Below the road the heather and the heaths sprang up with golden drops; still farther away some briars, and then a streak of water with its clustering green cresses.

Those who during their youth have had the happiness to light upon such a place in the forest depths, at that hour when Nature comes forth from her rosy bath and in her robe of sunshine, when the light plays amongst the foliage, and drops its golden tears into the untrodden depths, when the mosses, the honeysuckle, and all climbing plants burn incense in the shade, and mingle their perfumes under the canopy of the lofty palm-trees, when the parti-coloured tomtits hop from branch to branch in search of insects, when the thrush, the bullfinch, and the blackbird fly down to the rivulet and drink their fill, with wings outstretched over the tiny foaming falls, or the thieving jays, crossing above the trees in flocks, direct their flight towards the wild cherry-trees – at the hour, in short, when all Nature is animated, when everything is enjoying love, and light, and life – such people as those to whom I have referred alone can understand my ecstasy.

I seated myself upon the root of an ancient moss-grown oak, my stick resting idly between my knees; and there, for the space of an hour, I abandoned myself, child-like, to endless day-dreams.

By degrees the light increased; the humming of insects grew louder, while the melancholy notes of the cuckoos, repeated by the echoes, marked in a curious way the measure of the universal concert.

While I was thus meditating, a distant sharp note, skilfully modulated, struck upon my ear. From the moment of my arrival at this spot I had heard, without paying any attention to, this note; but so soon as I had distinguished it from the numerous forest noises I thought: �That is the note of a bird-catcher, his hut cannot be far away, and there must be some forester’s house close by.’

I arose and looked about me. Towards the left hand, in the direction of the rising ground, I quickly distinguished a penthouse roof whose dormer windows and white chimneys glistened amid the innumerable branches of the forest pines. The house was quite half an hour’s walk from my resting-place, but that did not prevent me saying aloud, �Thank Heaven!’

For it is no small matter, I may tell you, to know where to find a crust of bread and a flask of kirchenwasser. So I once again shouldered my knapsack, and cheerfully struck into the path which promised to lead me to the house.

For some few minutes longer the bird-catcher’s call continued its cheery notes; then, all of a sudden, it ceased. Towards seven o’clock the small birds would have finished their morning �grub’, and the day, waxing hotter and brighter, would discover the lurking enemy behind the thick leafy screen of his hiding-place; it was time to take up the birdlime.

All these thoughts passed through my mind as I continued to advance, regretting that I had not sooner resumed my journey, when about fifty or sixty paces to the left I caught sight of the bird-catcher, a fine old forester, tall, sinewy, and muscular, clad in a short blue blouse, an immense game-bag depending from his shoulder, the silver badge upon his chest, and the small peaked cap placed jauntily upon his head. He was in the act of taking up his nets, and at first I only caught sight of his broad back, his long muscular limbs arrayed in cloth gaiters reaching up above the knee beneath his blouse; but as he turned I perceived the wiry profile of a regular old huntsman, the grey eyes shaded by long lashes; a long white moustache shrouded the lips; snowy eyebrows, an honest profile, somewhat stem, yet with something of a thoughtful, even a rather ingenuous cast; but the silver-grey hair, and a certain indescribable look in the depths of the eyes, corrected the easy-going impression which struck one at first sight. And if the broad back was somewhat bent, the thin shoulders were so wide that one could not help feeling a certain respect for this fine old forester.

He moved about in all directions, sometimes in the light, sometimes in the shadow, stretching out a hand here, stooping there, perfectly at home. Resting upon my stick, I watched him narrowly, and thought what a capital subject for a picture he would make.

Having taken up his nets and twigs, and wrapped them carefully, he proceeded to string together by the beaks the birds he had captured, the smallest first, garland fashion. At length, having arranged them to his liking, he plunged them all into his game-bag; then swinging it upon his shoulders, he took up the great holly staff that was lying upon the ground beside him, and struck out towards the path.

Then for the first time he noticed me, and his face assumed an official expression consistent with his dress, but involuntarily his sternness disappeared, and his grey eyes beamed kindly upon me.

�Ha, ha!’ he exclaimed in French, but with a curious German accentuation, �good morning, monsieur; how are you this morning? Is it to your taste?’

�Yes, pretty well,’ I replied in the same language.

�Ha, ha!’ said the brave fellow, �you are a Frenchman, then; I saw that at once!’ and he saluted like an old soldier. �Are you not a Frenchman?’ he added.

�Well, not exactly, I come from Dusseldorf.’

�Ah! from Dusseldorf; but it is all the same,’ he said, as he lapsed into the old German tongue; �you are a good fellow nevertheless.’

He placed his hand lightly upon my shoulder as he spoke.

�You are en route early,’ he said.

�Yes, I come from Pirmasens.’

�It is nine good miles from here; you must have set out at three o’clock this morning.’

�At two o’clock, but I halted for an hour in the dell yonder.’

�Ah! yes, near the source of the Vellerst. And, if not impertinent, may I inquire your destination?’

�My destination! Oh! I go anywhere. I walk about, look around me—’

�You are a timber contractor, then?’

�No, I am a painter.’

�A painter – good. A capital profession that. Why you can make three or four crowns a day, and walk about with your hands in your pockets meanwhile. Painters have been here before. I have seen two or three in the last thirty years. It is a capital calling.’

We pursued our way towards the house together, he with bent back, stretching out his long limbs, while I came trudging after, congratulating myself on having pitched upon a resting-place. The sun was getting very warm, and the ascent was steep. At intervals long vistas opened out to the left, and mingled together in deep gorges; the blue distance trended down towards the Rhine, and beyond the hazy horizon mingled with the sky and passed into the infinite.

�What a splendid country!’ I cried as I stood wrapped in contemplation of this wonderful panorama.

The old keeper stopped as I spoke; his piercing eyes took in the prospect, and he replied gravely: �That’s true! I have the most beautiful district of all the mountain as far as Neustadt. Every one who comes to see the country says so; even the ranger himself confesses as much. Now look yonder. Do you see the Losser descending between those rocks? Look at that white line – that is the foam. You must see that closer, sir. You should hear the roar of the cataract in the spring when the snows are melting; it is like thunder amongst the hills. Then look higher up; do you see the blossom of the heather and the broom? Well, there is the Valdhorn; the flowers are falling just now, but in the spring you would perceive a bouquet that rises to heaven. And if you are fond of curiosities, there is the Birckenstein; we must not forget that. All the learned people – for one or two such do come here during the year – never fail to go and read the old inscriptions upon the stones.’

�It is a ruin, then?’

�Yes; an old piece of wall upon a rock enveloped in nettles and brambles – a regular owl’s nest. For my own part, I like the Losser, the Krapenfelz, the Valdhorn; but as they say in France, every one has his own taste and colour. We have everything here, high, medium-sized, and young forest trees, brushwood and brambles, rocks, caverns, torrents, rivers—’

�But no lakes,’ I said.

�Lakes!’ he exclaimed. �No lakes! As if we had not just beyond the Losser a lake a league in circumference, dark and deep, surrounded by rocks and the giant pines of the Veierschloss! They call it The Lake of the Wild Huntsman!’

And he bent his head as if in reflection for some seconds. Then suddenly rousing himself, he resumed his route without uttering a word. It appeared to me that the old keeper so lately enraptured had suddenly struck upon a melancholy chord. I followed him musing. He, bending forward, wearing a pensive air, and learning on his great holly staff, took such long and vigorous strides that it seemed as if his limbs would burst through his blouse every moment!

The forester’s house came into sight between the trees in the midst of a verdant meadow. At the end of the valley the river could be perceived following the undulations of the hills; farther still in the gorge were clusters of fruit-trees, some tilled ground, a small garden surrounded by a low wall, and finally on a terrace having the wood for a background was the house of the old keeper – a white house, somewhat ancient in appearance, with three windows, and the door on the ground floor, four windows above with little diamond-shaped panes, and four others in the garrets amid the brown tiles of the roof.

Facing the wood in our direction was an old worm-eaten gallery with a carved balustrade, the winding staircase outside being fastened to the wall. A lattice trellis-work occupied two sides upon which the honeysuckles and vines clambered and hung back in festoons from the roof. Across the green sward the small black window-panes glittered in the shade. On the wall of the kitchen garden an old chanticleer was proudly strutting in the midst of his hens; upon the mossy roof a flock of pigeons were moving about; in the stream a number of ducks were swimming, and from the threshold we could have perceived the length of the sloping dell, the extensive valley, and the leafy forest shades as far as the eye could reach.

Nothing so calm and peaceable as this house, lost in the solitudes of the mountains, can be imagined; its very appearance touched one more than you might fancy, and made one feel inclined to live and die there – if possible.

Two old hounds ran out to welcome us. A young girl was hanging some linen out to dry upon the balustrade, and seeing the dogs running out, looked up. The old keeper smiled as he pressed forward.

�You are at home here,’ I said.

�Yes, this is my house.’

�May I ask for a crust and a glass of wine?’

�Of course, man, of course. If the keepers sent people away I wonder to what inn the travellers could go. You are right welcome, sir.’

At this moment we reached the gate in the palings of the little garden; the dogs jumped upon us, and the girl in the balcony waved her hand in welcome. At the end of the garden another gate gave us admission to the yard, and the keeper, turning to me, exclaimed in a joyous tone: �You are now at the house of Frantz Honeck, gamekeeper to the Grand Duke Ludwig. Come into the parlour. I will just get rid of my game-bag, take off my gaiters, and join you there.’

We traversed a narrow passage. Talking as we advanced, the keeper pushed open the door of a low square whitewashed room, furnished with beechwood chairs, having a heart-shaped ornament cut in the back of each, a high walnut-wood press, with glittering hinges and rounded feet, and at the farther end was an old Nuremberg clock. In the corner to the right stood the stove, and by the lattice-windows was a firwood table; these made up the furniture of the room. On the table were a small loaf of bread and two glasses.

�Sit down. Make yourself comfortable,’ said the old keeper. �I will return in a few moments.’

He left the room as he spoke.

I heard him enter the next room. Then, delighted to find myself in such good quarters, I took off my great-coat. The dogs stretched themselves on the floor.

�Louise! Louise!’ cried out old Frantz.

The young girl passed the windows, and her pretty rosy face put aside the plants to look into the room. I bowed to her. She blushed, and hastily retired.

�Louise!’ cried the old man again.

�I am here, grandfather, I am here,’ she replied gently as she came into the passage.

Then I could not help hearing their conversation.

�There is a traveller come, a fine lad; he will breakfast here. Go and draw a flask of white wine, and put on two plates.’

�Yes, grandfather.’

�Go and fetch my woollen jacket and my sabots. The birds have turned out well this morning; the young man comes from the Swan at Pirmasens. When Caspar returns send him in.’

�He is tending the cows, grandfather, shall I call him?’

�No, an hour hence will do.’

Every word reached me distinctly. Outside dogs barked, hens cackled, the leaves rustled gently in the breeze; everything was cheerful, fresh, and green.

I placed my knapsack upon the table and sat down thinking of the happiness of living in such a place without any care beyond the daily work.

�What a life!’ I thought. �One can breathe freely here. This old Frantz is as tough as an oak notwithstanding his seventy years. And what a charming little girl his granddaughter is!’

I had scarcely finished these reflections when the old man, clad in his knitted vest and his iron-tipped sabots, came in laughing, and cried out: �Here I am. I have finished my morning’s work. I was up and about before you, sir; at four o’clock I had gone my round of the felled timber. Now we are going to rest ourselves, you and I; take a quiet glass and smoke another pipe – pipes again! But tell me, do you wish to change? You can go up to my room.’

�Thank you, Père Frantz, I have need of nothing but a little rest.’

This title of PГЁre Frantz appeared to please the old man; his cheeks betrayed a smile.

�’Tis true that my name is Frantz,’ he said, �and I am old enough to be your father – ay, your grandfather. But may I ask your age?’

�I am nearly twenty-two.’

At this moment the little Louise entered, carrying a flask of white wine in one hand, and in the other some cheese, upon a beautiful specimen of Delft ware, ornamented with red flowers. Frantz ceased to speak as she came in, thinking, perhaps, it is better to hold his tongue about age in the presence of his granddaughter.

Louise was about sixteen years of age; she was fair as an ear of corn, of good height and figure. Her forehead was high, her eyes were blue, her nose straight, with a tendency to turn up at the end, with delicate nostrils; her curving lips were as fresh as two cherries, and she was shy and retiring. She wore a dress of blue cloth striped with white, braced-up HundsrГјck fashion. The sleeves of her dress scarcely descended below the elbow, and left her round arms displayed, though somewhat burnt by exposure in the open air. One cannot imagine a creature more soft and gentle or more artless, and I am persuaded that the maidens of Berlin, Vienna, or elsewhere, would have lost by the comparison.

Père Frantz, seated at the end of the table, appeared very proud of her. Louise placed the cheese and the flask upon the table without a word. I was quite silent – dreaming. Louise having left the room, quickly returned with two plates, beautifully clean, and two knives. She then appeared about to leave us, but her grandfather, raising his voice, said: �Remain here, Louise; remain here, or they will say you are afraid to meet this youth. He is a fine young fellow too. Ha! what is your name? I never thought of asking your before.’

�My name is Théodore Richter.’

�Well, then, Monsieur Théodore, if you feel so disposed, help yourself.’

He attacked the cheese as he spoke. Louise sat down timidly near the stove, sending now and then a quick glance in our direction.

�Yes, he is a painter,’ continued old Honeck, as he went on eating; �and if you would not mind our seeing your pictures it will give us great pleasure, will it not, Louise?’

�Oh, yes, grandfather,’ she replied; �I have never seen any.’

For some moments I had been cogitating how best I could propose to remain in the neighbourhood and study the environs, but I did not know how to broach this delicate subject. Here was now the opportunity ready made.

�Well,’ I replied, �I desire no better, but I warn you I have nothing very first-rate. I have only sketches, and it will take me a fortnight at least to complete them. There is no painting, only drawing, as yet.’

�Never mind, monsieur; let us see what you have got.’

�With great pleasure,’ I said as I unfastened my knapsack. �I will first show you the neighbourhood of Pirmasens, but what is that to be compared to your mountains? Your Valdhorn, your Krapenfelz, those are what I should like to paint; those are scenes and landscapes!’

PГЁre Honeck made no immediate reply to this. He took gravely the picture I handed to him, the high tower, the new temple, and a background of mountains. I had finished this in water-colours.

The good man having studied this for a few minutes with arched brows and open mouth, selecting the best light by the window, said gravely: �That is splendid – capital; that’s right!’

He appeared quite affected by it.

�Yes,’ he said, �that’s the place; that’s well done; one can recognise it all. Louise, come here, look at that. Wait, take it this side; is not that the old market itself, with the old fruiterer, Catherine, in the corner? And the grocer Froelig’s house, and there is the church porch and the baker’s shop. They are all there – nothing is wanting. Those blue mountains behind are near Altenberg. I can see them almost. Capital!’

Louise, leaning upon the old man’s shoulder, appeared quite wonder-stricken. She said not a word. But when her grandfather asked: �What do you think of that, Louise?’

�I think as you do, grandfather; it is beautiful,’ she replied in a low voice.

�Yes,’ exclaimed the old man, turning to me, and looking me full in the face. �I did not think you had it in you. I said to myself, “Here is a young fellow walking about for amusement.” Now I see you do know something. But mind, it is easier to paint houses and churches than woods. In your place I should stick to houses! Since you have begun I should go on if I were you: that’s certain.’

Then smiling at the ingenuous old man, I showed him a little sketch I had finished at Hornbach – a sunrise on the outskirts of the Howald. If the former had pleased him this threw him into ecstasies. After the lapse of a moment he raised his eyes and exclaimed: �Did you do that? It is marvellous – a miracle! There is the sun behind the trees; we can recognise the trees, too, and there are birch, beech, and oak. Well, Master Théodore, if you have done that I admire you.’

�And suppose I were to suggest, Père Frantz,’ I said, �to remain here for a few days – and pay my way, of course – to look about me and paint a bit, would you turn me out of doors?’

A bright blush crossed the old keeper’s face.

�Look here,’ he said, �you are a good lad; you want to see the country – a most beautiful country it is, too, and I should think myself a brute to refuse you. You shall share our table, eggs, milk, cheese, a hare on occasion; you shall have the room we keep for the ranger, who will not visit us this year; but as for payment, I cannot take your money. No; I will not take a farthing. Besides, I am not an innkeeper – yet—’

Here the good man paused.

�Yet,’ he continued, �you might, perhaps – after all, I do not like to ask; it is too much.’

He glanced at Louise, blushing more and more, and at length said: �That child yonder, monsieur. Is she difficult to paint?’

Louise at these words quite lost countenance.

�Oh, grandfather!’ she stammered.

�Wait a bit,’ cried the good man; �don’t imagine I am asking for anything very grand – not a bit; a bit of paper will do as big as my hand only. Look you, Louise, in thirty or forty years, when you have grown grey, you will be glad to have something like your young self to look at. I will not hide from you, Monsieur Théodore, that if I could see myself in uniform once again, helmet on my head, and my sword in my hand, I should be too delighted.’

�Is that all?’ I exclaimed; �that’s easy enough, I am sure.’

�You agree, then?’

�Do I agree? Not only will I paint Mademoiselle Louise in a large picture, but I will paint you also, seated in your armchair, your musket between your knees, your gaiters and jack-boots on. Mademoiselle shall also be depicted leaning over the chair, and so that the picture may be complete, we will put in that rascal yonder.’

I indicated the dog which lay stretched upon the floor asleep, his muzzle resting upon his paws.

The old keeper gazed at me with tearful eyes.

�I knew you were a good fellow,’ he said after a short silence. �It will give me great pleasure to be painted with my little granddaughter; she at least shall see me as I am now. And if in time she should marry and have children, she will be able to say: “That is Grandfather Frantz, just as he used to be.”’

Louise at this moment quitted the room. The old keeper wished to call her back, but his voice was husky, and he could not. A few moments afterwards, having coughed two or three times behind his hand, he resumed, pointing to the dog: �That, Monsieur Théodore, is a good greyhound, I do not deny; he has a good nose and strength of limb, but there are others as good. If you do not mind, we will put the other in the picture.’

He whistled, and the terrier bounded into the room; the greyhound also got up, and both dogs came wagging their tails to rub their noses against their master’s knees.

�They are both good animals,’ he said as he caressed them. �Yes, Fox has good qualities; he has a good nose still, notwithstanding his age. I should wrong him were I to deny it. But if you want a rare dog, look at Waldine there. She has a nose as fine, ay, finer than, the other, she is gentle, never tires, and has all the qualities a good dog ought to have. But this is all beside the question, M. Théodore; what we have to look for in animals is good sense and “ready wit”.’

�Rest assured, Père Frantz,’ I replied, �we will put both of them in!’

PГЁre Frantz then invited me to see my room. I took up my knapsack, and we went outside to ascend to the gallery. Two doors opened upon the balcony; we passed the first, pushing aside the clustering ivy which stretched across the balustrade, and PГЁre Honeck opened the farther door.

One can scarcely picture my happiness when I reflected that I was about to pass a fortnight – a month – perhaps the whole of the beautiful season – in the midst of these verdant scenes of nature far from the busy hum of men.




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