While I waited, seated in my chair, looking on at everything intently, the Count François and the Vicomte Antoine silently applied themselves to a series of mysterious activities. First they took up each piece of furniture and moved it away from the center of the hall, standing the chairs in line against the wall, and leaving the whole floor clear as if in preparation for a ball. Next, and still without exchanging a syllable, evidently repeating an operation learned from long experience, they brought out the horse, or easel, of which I have spoken, and set it up, being careful to adjust it with precision to the longitudinal axis of the hall, at a point about a third way down the length thereof. Next they opened the antique chest, and drew from it a curious object which they handled with great care, carrying it, with visible effort, to the foot of the horse on which they finally erected it in a vertical position. I noted that this object was about as large as an ordinary cart wheel, that it was flat and circular. A sort of lens, I judged it to be, much like the glass reflector of a powerfulsearchlight. Its substance was not crystal, however, but a material which I could not identify, something translucent rather than transparent, colorless when viewed with even light, but otherwise showing brilliant metallic glints, shading from ruby red to emerald green with a profusion of all the tints of gold. This lustre, moreover, stood out against the colorless background, as if it came from matter distinct from the disk itself, though incorporated in the latter’s substance. You are doubtless acquainted with Danzig brandy, a liquor which seems filled with particles of floating gold; or with samples of Leyden ware showing bits of crumpled tinsel sprinkled through the glass. Such was the dish, or lens, in question.
Finally the two old men stepped cautiously up to their respective father and grandfather, still rigorously motionless in his strangedormeuse; and avoiding the slightest noise, they slowly, gently, wheeled him towards a point on the floor which I noticed was marked off, with geometrical exactitude, by four plaques of glass—one apparently for each of the four legs of the chair. Indeed, when they had pushed the old man to the square, the count and the vicomte kneeled on the floor to make sure that each castor was in the right position. From all their movements I could see that the operation theywere about to perform was one requiring meticulous accuracy. This chair in place, they turned to the seconddormeuse, which, though empty, was advanced just as carefully and noiselessly, and its position verified with just as thorough an examination.
Whereupon, the two old men returned to the seats they had previously occupied, now, however, sitting with their backs against the wall and their faces turned toward me. During all this time, I, for my part, had not stirred; nor had I been once disturbed or caused to change my position in the slightest.
I sat there, observing intently. Things were now arranged as follows in the room: the twodormeusesand the horse stood at three points on a straight line running lengthwise of the hall. The two seats faced each other, with the horse between them but nearer to one than to the other. Assuming the lens to be a refractor, I concluded from a rough computation of the angles, that the image passing through it from one chair would fall exactly into the other.
However, the Marquis Gaspard, his body still relaxed and his eyes closed, continued to give not a sign of life.
A long silence ensued.
A long, long silence....
At first I struggled with all my soul to keep cool and indifferent, preserving on my features the mask of disdain which I had somehow imprinted there. But little by little I could feel that the hold I had on my nerves was growing steadily weaker. My Adventure was beginning to show a semi-supernatural aspect the very indefiniteness of which gradually paralyzed my courage as my motor centers had been paralyzed an hour or more before. So much so that eventually I grew alarmed lest my captors perceive the uncontrollable anxiety that was taking possession of me: I suddenly arose, and with the idea of hiding the expression on my face, I walked several steps away down the room.
Still without moving, asleep perhaps, the Marquis Gaspard seemed not to notice. Not so the Count François nor the Vicomte Antoine, however. They, with a perfection of courtesy and with no trace of irony so far as I could see, inquired as to whether I were tired, or indeed impatient.
“Monsieur,” the count spoke up solicitously,“be so kind as to excuse the slowness of all this. If I have accurately divined my father’s idea, I assure you it is a very bold one, and care in preparation is a matter of unavoidable necessity. We have before us, unless I am quite mistaken, one of the most delicate operations magnetic science knows; and the Marquis Gaspard, with a proper caution, is summoning every particle of energy at his command. Believe me, Monsieur: he will need it all!”
I had stopped, and was looking at the man as he began speaking; but my eyes now turned instinctively toward the strange apparatus which he and his son had but recently put in position on the easel.
“That lens which you are examining,” the Vicomte Antoine explained, “is used for concentrating the magnetic flow on the spot desired. It is made of a special compound invented by the Count de Saint Germain, and it has the power of refracting electrical waves just as glass refracts rays of light. By such inventions and after numberless unsuccessful experiments, the famous count, and my grandfather in his footsteps, were enabled to master the natural magnetism they possessed in their own bodies, and in consequence to obtain results which are rivalled by nothing that your alienists, your psychiatrists—that is what you callthem, is it not?—nor even your wonder-working mediums, have ever dreamed of. You will soon be convinced, I warrant you. The operation that is probably to be tried tonight will furnish you with a prodigious demonstration!”
In spite of my ghastly desperation, I raised my eyebrows inquiringly. The vicomte shook his head, with a significant nod towards his grandfather.
“The marquis did not deem fit to discuss his project with us, nor even to reveal it in any precise detail to you. I should hardly regard myself as authorized to go into the matter more fully at present; but without divulging anything essential, I may ask whether you are familiar with a term from the jargon of the occult sciences—‘exteriorization’? You must have witnessed, at one time or another, the evocation of a so-called spirit by a medium?”
The question seemed so utterly inane that I did not answer.
“I have, anyway,” the vicomte continued, overlooking my silence. “I remember having seen something of the sort with my own eyes. Two fairly skillful performers, one of whom called himself a medium, were entertaining a number of people, myself among them, in a darkened room in Paris; and one day they actually succeeded in producing a luminousshadow of an approximately human form; and this, they claimed, was the ghost of I forget what famous personage. That part of it was all a hoax, of course; though the shadow itself was not by any means. You could see it as plain as day, and almost touch it. There is no doubt in my mind that the practitioner in question was in possession of some of the same processes which we are using all the time, and got this shadow from his colleague by a kind of ‘exteriorization,’ as they call it. This, to be sure, was all a very crude affair; but it does suggest some of the things we do in getting our life-workers to surrender a certain number of their cells or atoms to us; and it resembles more closely still the method we shall employ in a few moments ... but I think I have said too much already....”
He stopped, with an expression of mortification on his face; and the Count François spoke up, as though to detract attention from his son’s last words:
“Monsieur, it is hardly worth while to discuss that subject now, inasmuch as you will have full light upon it soon. I am going to seize this opportunity to congratulate you. Whatever you may be thinking of your experiences this night, it is really a piece of singular good fortune that has befallen you. Here you are anordinary mortal, thrown by accident into the company of the Ever-living Men and forced, by an equally fortunate train of events, to share their lives for a certain length of time. Oh no, I beg of you—do not imagine I am bantering! Just consider! You people can count on less than a hundred years of life; and you are obliged, in consequence, to live in a perpetual hurry, thinking, talking, acting forever in a rush, bolting your daily bread, so to speak. Since you have to live rapidly in order to live at all, you never really know what living means, nor do you ever taste the infinite sweetness that life holds at bottom. Monsieur, the besetting thought that death is nearer by each moment must quite inhibit meditation and soil every leisure hour; and thoughtful idleness I regard as the one true delight, which far outstrips in consoling power the false and disappointing joys of sensuous indulgence. In enjoining on us to perpetuate not our youth but our maturer manhood, the Count de Saint Germain thought he was imposing on us a painful sacrifice that would, however, in the end prove well worth while. Over a long period of years, he himself had never tired of a most stormy voyage on the seas of human passion; and he ended in shipwreck on the shoals laid in his course by a tress of golden hair. I wonder if he ever realizedthat he was missing the haven of real happiness through fundamental misapprehension on his own part of the relative value of things? Now to judge by the interest you seem to show in a certain woman—a good-looking woman, I grant you, but noteworthy in no other way that I can see—you must still be ignorant of the fatuity of carnal satisfactions, when these are compared with the joys that purely spiritual pleasures bring—through eyes, for example, that have learned to sense the simple yet sublime beauties of a sky reddened by the setting sun or of clouds touched with silver by a rising moon!”
The Vicomte Antoine raised an arm in a gesture of sanguine enthusiasm:
“The savor of such enjoyments never cloys, Monsieur; and while you are our guest, I hope to have the opportunity of revealing to you two wonders that Mortal Men have never learned to taste: Night, Monsieur, and Day. The age to which you belong has stubbornly and blindly limited its vision to the mechanical arts, seeking an absurd perfection of bodily comfort and well-being which is useless and contemptible once it has been attained. Your generation has quite lost sight of the gratifications that naturally come to life; and, losing these from view, it has of course lost the power to appreciate them. You, for instance, just a few hours ago, werewalking with me out on the heath. It was raining and the night was menacing with storm. I am sure your mind was engrossed with the slippery muddy path, the cold wet bushes—all the discomforts, in short. Did you once raise your eyes to the romantic splendors with which we were surrounded—those frowning brows of the hills, their crests piercing the pearly mantle of mist and fog in aspiration toward that upper wrapping of transparent silver that Nature throws over her chilly shoulders?...”
I listened on in an amazement that for the moment quite mastered my anxiety. These atrocious demons, these vampires, cannibals indeed since they lived, after all, on human flesh and blood—how could they bring themselves to affect such delicate and poetic hypocrisies? And my thoughts went out to all the pitiable victims who entered that accursed House of the Secret, strong robust young men and women, and left it pale, fainting, emaciated invalids; all to the end that three beasts of prey might eschew “the false and disappointing joys of sensuous indulgence” for the higher ones that “purely spiritual pleasures bring.”
The Count François stopped and looked at his father who still sat, or lay, motionless as a corpse in that singulardormeuse, half chair, half couch. Had there appeared on those utterly blank features some expression which I had not perceived? The count, at any rate, turned at once toward me, and said:
“Monsieur, we are almost ready. Think again, I beg of you. Is there really nothing you would like before the operation begins? Is there anything we can do for you within the limits you now know? Our earnest wish is to satisfy your slightest desire, if possible; and we hope you will enable us to demonstrate our best good will!”
I was about to shake my head from right to left, in sign of refusal, when an idea flashed across my mind, setting my whole being afire with a sudden glow. I checked myself, my eyes fixed upon my interlocutor, one hand raised, my lips opening to form a word.
“Do not hesitate, Monsieur,” the count encouraged.
“Gentlemen,” said I, with decision, andsweeping all three of them with a rapid glance, “Gentlemen, there is one favor you could do me, a favor which I trust you will have no difficulty in according, such immense store do I set upon it. Grant me this boon I ask, and I am ready to repay you not with my passive consent merely, but with my most active and sincere assistance in whatever you intend to do with me—be it even against my life. Look, gentlemen: some time ago you allowed me, did you not, to visit the room where my friend Madame de X.... is sleeping, perhaps in an hypnotic trance. My desire, my fervent prayer is to see her ... once more ... for one last time; but I must see her natural self, awake, that is, conscious, living, so that I may speak to her and hear her speak to me, that I may bid her farewell, forever, and spend one short hour alone, alone, with her. An hour, yes, just one hour. Then ... I shall be at your service, your man, your chattel, anything you wish, for as long a time as you wish.”
I fell silent, crossing my arms upon my chest. Neither the count nor the vicomte replied for a moment; and I could see them consulting each other out of the corners of their eyes. Then, as they had so often done before, they turned toward their respective father and grandfather, and questioned him in silence. Again there wasno change that I could see on that inert and expressionless countenance; and the old man’s eyelids remained firmly closed. But the Count François must have seen something that I did not see; for he addressed me straightway and without the shadow of incertitude:
“Monsieur,” said he, “your wish shall be granted. We will do as you propose.”
A thrill of undescribable emotion swept over me. The count meanwhile held his gaze intently fixed upon his father’s face, interpreting to me the decision he found written there:
“Monsieur,” he repeated, “we shall do as you propose. We shall have the honor of escorting you to the room where Madame de X.... is sleeping. We shall leave you alone with her. As soon as we are gone, she, according to your request, will regain consciousness, and you will be free to converse with her on any subject without any restriction whatsoever. Do not be surprised, Monsieur. During your visit Madame de X.... will be her material self, awake, conscious, living, as you have asked. She will know that you are there, and she will be glad to see you. But of course she will still have over her eyes the invisible blinder that we have placed upon them. She will not know where she is, and will not find it extraordinary to be meeting you in a strange room. Indeed itwill not be strange to her. She will take it for her own or for yours. She will, in short, be unaware of everything which the vital interest of the Ever-living Men requires her not to know. Supposing, for example, you were to spend your time and pains in trying to enlighten this beneficent unconsciousness of hers. You will not succeed, I warn you in advance, for, at the end of the sixtieth minute, Madame de X.... will fall asleep again, as we have bargained, and will lose all memory of this talk with you, which memory will be erased from her mind, rendered absolutely null and nil forever ... Monsieur, will you be so kind as to step this way?...”
He was already on the threshold, and, with the younger man leading, he crossed the same anteroom again. I followed close behind him. I am sure I staggered as I walked along.
Outside the badly jointed door, the familiar perfume that I loved came to my nostrils in warm subtle waves of fragrance. I thought I was fainting as I breathed it in.
“Monsieur,” the Count François was now saying in a low voice, “Monsieur, for the duration of one hour, please consider this your house!”
She was still asleep, lost in that terrible slumber which, assuredly was more like death than like life. Her black eyelids, her livid lips, her ashen cheeks, her cold flesh, I scanned vehemently for some faint, deep-seated flush that would bespeak the coursing of a little blood, at least, through a few of her arteries.... In vain! In vain!
An endless minute passed. I had bent forward over the bed to gaze upon her, not daring to stir the coverlets with the merest touch of my fingers. Finally, from her sunken chest the sound of stronger breathing seemed to come; and simultaneously on both her cheeks I could distinguish the pallid but reassuring blush I had waited for, so long, so ardently....
What now took place was like a swift, miraculous resurrection. Her whole countenance regained its color gradually, her pulse beat more strongly, her beautiful breast began to raise the comforters in a regular rhythmic heaving. I lowered my head till my face almost rested on her eyelids, my lips ready to welcomewith a kiss the first opening of her eyes; I could feel the vital warmth again returning to her forehead and cheeks. She sighed inaudibly and her lips sketched a smile. I could restrain my caress no longer. It was under a passionate shower of kisses from me that she returned to consciousness....
Oh gods of Heaven and Hell! All this was but a few weeks ago! Yet how many ages have died, how many aeons have sunk into eternity, since that kiss was mine?
She said:
“Oh, I have been asleep!... And you were here, saucy boy!”
She knotted her silken arms about my neck; and I felt her body—how light, how alarmingly light it was!—stiffen a little as she drew herself up languidly under the coverlets....
She also said:
“Dearest, dearest love!... Oh, how tired I am!... It seems as though I could never again lift my head or stir a finger!... Never, never again!... But you love your poor little girl, don’t you?... Look out, Monsieur! Perhaps your doll is broken!...”
She said no more—just then; because my lips had smothered her last words.
As she sat up, I piled the pillows behind her. Her hair of greenish gold poured in a sparklingtorrent down over her body. Her white arms still encircled my neck. She laughed—that laugh of mischievous girlish gaiety which I had always so much adored in her. I released myself from her embrace; and resting a knee upon the bed, and throwing an arm around her wonderful shoulders, I plunged my gaze into the bright lucid depths of her eyes.... And I forgot, I forgot, everything, everything!...
She said:
“Why, my hair is all down! I seem to have lost every comb, every pin to my name!” And she laughed aloud.
I listened with all my soul.
She drew up higher on the pillows, with an effort that brought the pallor to her face again. She cast a nervous glance about the room. I was afraid lest she perceive the bare walls, the grated window, the single wicker chair—afraid lest, perceiving them, she take fright at her strange surroundings, and kill the smile of trustfulness and confidence that lingered entrancingly on her lips.... But no! The invisible blinder was securely fastened upon her eyes. She saw nothing unusual in that chamber which was our prison.
She asked simply:
“What time is it? Surely not yet seven o’clock?”
When I answered I too summoned a smile:
“It’s early still, my silly, charming, little girl....”
With a toss of her head, she shook from her face a few golden tresses that had strayed there—they shone with all the splendor of the sun—and sinking back deliciously upon the pillows, on which her light, her exceedingly light form left scarcely any imprint, she observed:
“I’m glad of that ... I can stay in bed a moment longer.... If I overslept, I might be late for dinner.... How tired I am! If you only knew how tired, tired, tired I am!”
She did not move again, but lay there passively, happily, submissive to the kisses which I rained upon her, though barely pressing my lips to her tortured wasted flesh.
No, I would tell her nothing! I would be very careful not to tell her anything! She did not suspect in the least. And what an immense good fortune that she did not know! Why enlighten her, indeed? No! My despair, my terror, my mortal danger, that must all remain for me alone! And she would never, never know! Since I was alone condemned, I alone would bear the horrors of my destiny. She, free, unknowing, redeemed, would be on her way back ... toward life! I alone would stay behind, silently turning my footsteps toward ...nonentity!... But for my silence I would be repaid with one supreme reward; the almost unbearable intoxication of this last love tryst, which would come to me pure, spotless, undisturbed, without a shadow of any kind upon it....
She was becoming more and more wakeful, and now was chatting with a ripple of words, words of no import, that entered like little gleams of freedom into the darkness of our prison.
She said:
“Imagine, dearest! At my dressmaker’s last Tuesday....”
And later on:
“You know very well whom I mean! Marie Thérèse, the ugly thing! I saw her! She was making up to you under my very nose, at the Squadron Ball....”
And again:
“The next time we go for a ride....”
I, meanwhile, kept drawing my two hands down caressingly over her silky hair and silky arms, hungrily absorbing every possible sensation of that living reality which was in her as her very self.... And I thought.... What was I, indeed, but a corpse, listening from the depths of a grave to living beings conversing on the sod overhead ...?
Yes, a corpse....
My gaze was fixed upon her bright sea-green eyes, and upon her delicate, gaily chirping lips; and within me was a scream of desperate anguish!
“You, you are my destroyer ... you! You crossed my path, and I followed you; and you guided me, almost by the hand, to the yawning gateway of the tomb! Yes, that was true: a will-o’-the-wisp of the deadliest lineage, leading the luckless wayfarer blindly to destruction! And I succumbed! Everything is lost ... for me! But now ... can’t you see, can’t you feel, my agony? You are gay? You laugh? You chatter? Is it not written on my face, is it not written in my heart, that I am doomed, that I shall never, never more set eyes upon you? Yes, it is all written there—my love, my fate, my death! And if you fail to read, it is because you know not how to read; and if you know not how to read, it is because you do not love. Oh my dear lost love! Oh my fragile Goddess! You do not love me ... so you will not miss me, overmuch.... You will find another man to love.... Youth will erase unhappy memories.... You will begin life anew ... life anew! Better thus! Much better thus! I ... I love you! I am saving you! I love you!”
And this last phrase I pronounced aloud, as though I were answering in those three words all that she had been saying to me:
“I love you ...!”
She stopped, and looked at me in astonishment. Then she burst into a gay laugh:
“You love me? You love me? Thanks, Monsieur! If ever you dared say you didn’t ...!”
To punish me, she drew my head down teasingly, and pressed her lips to mine, in a kiss that lasted ... that lasted, till I knew no more....
When her clasp relaxed, I sat up again. She had sunk gently back upon the pillows.
Suddenly her eyelids quivered.
“Oh!” she said; “how that kiss fatigued me! Dearest, it cannot be seven o’clock? Won’t you tell me that I needn’t get up? I’m so tired! So tired! It can’t be sev....”
She collapsed suddenly upon the pillows, her eyes closed.
The door behind me opened.
“Monsieur,” said the Marquis Gaspard to me, “it was a great pleasure to be able to allow you this hour you so much desired. I hope it came up fully to your expectations.”
He was standing in the center of the large hall to which I had just returned—taller he seemed to me than formerly, with a carriage more erect and eyes agleam with a brighter, more imperious flame.
The candles along the wall had been put out; only the two lamps to the right and left of the fireplace were still lighted, and the Count François was busy lowering the wicks of these.
“Monsieur,” the marquis continued, “will you not kindly take your place for what we still have to do?”
He pointed to the deep chair in which he himself had been resting before I left the room.
I was anxious to betray no uneasiness whatever. I advanced without hesitation to the seat appointed and calmly sat down.
“Antoine!” the count called.
I was in that one of the two chairs which seemed nearest to the great lens. Facing me,and some ten or twelve paces away was the other seat, its arms opening toward me. It was empty. The stuffed cushions on the back of my chair, of the seat, arms and head-rest, seemed to accommodate my body perfectly; so that I was not conscious of any weight or fatigue at all. I stiffened nevertheless when I saw what the Vicomte Antoine was about to do. At his father’s call, the younger man stepped forward in my direction carrying in his hand a sort of dark lantern, much larger than the one which had lighted our path over the mountains.
“Look out! Look out, Monsieur!” he called, noticing that I had fixed my eyes in some alarm upon him. “Turn your head the other way, or you may be blinded.”
He slipped the shutter over the spot-light aside. I was bathed from head to foot in a harsh raw light which was all the more painful from the relative darkness of the rest of the room. I closed my eyes at first. When I opened them again, I avoided the stream of radiance that was turned upon me, and looked past it to one side, toward the lens and the empty chair beyond the latter.
Despite my efforts to control myself, I trembled, stupidly trembled, at what I saw. The chair was no longer empty; someone, or rather, something, was occupying it—the luminousshadow of a man seated, a shadow of myself, in fact. Of this I furnished proof at once by raising my arm, a movement which the shadow repeated with absolute fidelity. Now I understood; the hypothesis I had formed when the lens was first brought out was the correct one; the second chair was fixed on the spot where the image of the other chair, passing through the lens, would fall. The moment a vivid light was thrown upon me in that darkened room, my image became visible over there. There was nothing so mysterious in all that so far. I was somewhat ashamed of my first quiver of fright.
After a second or so, the vicomte closed his lantern again, and the image disappeared. Then only did I remember something very strange, which at first had not occurred to me. If the apparatus nearby were an ordinary lens, my image, as I had just observed it, should have been upside down, my feet above my head. Now such was not the case. It was right side up, a thing which I could not account for then, and have not been able to account for since.
Meanwhile, there had been a question, delivered in the shrill falsetto of the marquis:
“Is the image clear?”
The vicomte’s low-pitched voice responded:
“Perfectly, Monsieur!”
I had let my head fall back against the propbehind it; and it half buried itself in the upholstery, which sustained its weight so evenly and firmly that I am sure I could have fainted and yet still have kept to the same position without bending my neck. The field of my vision was proportionately reduced, however: I could see no one now except the Count François, who was still watching his lamps, turning them by this time so low that a faint blue flicker only was visible around the wicks.
The marquis asked another question, and this time of me:
“Monsieur, you are well seated in your chair, quite comfortable, quite relaxed? It is very important that you should be, I caution you!”
I tested the springs and mattressing:
“I think I am all right,” I answered briefly.
As I replied, I touched my fingers to the covering of thedormeuseabout me. It was not satin, nor velvet, as I had supposed; but a kind of silk so closely woven that I guessed it to be for purposes of insulation. Leaning over I now noticed also for the first time that the four legs of my chair were shod with glass.
When I sat up again, I saw the Marquis Gaspard standing in front of me.
“Monsieur,” said he, with the very greatest gentleness in his manner and tone of voice, “Monsieur, the dawn will soon be upon us. Wecan delay no longer now. You are quite sure you have no objection to our beginning?”
One last wave of anguished rebellion gathered in my throat, and choked me. Nevertheless, I shook my head impatiently, to indicate that I had no objection whatever.
“That is better than I dared hope,” the marquis exclaimed; “I cannot tell how grateful to you I am!”
He was looking at me with an emotion that quite surprised me. Visibly affected, and with some hesitation, he resumed:
“Monsieur, there is one thought which I cannot bear your having even for a single moment: the thought that you have fallen, this night, into the hands of heartless, inhuman men.”
I stared at him coldly without answering.
“The operation I am about to try on you,” he resumed, “is something absolutely new. I advise you with the utmost frankness that it is a very dangerous one, though it is not, unfortunately, in my power to avoid it. The best I can guarantee is that you will not suffer much pain. To add just one more chance that the issue will be favorable, I have decided not to put you to sleep; though the experiment conducted under such conditions will cost me a far greater effort, and much more physical suffering. But if you are awake, with your nervesand muscles at normal tension, you will be better able to withstand the loss of substance you must undergo.”
He inclined his head to one side, his cheeks resting on three of his fingers.
“I wonder ...” said he, in a voice somewhat changed in tone.
“I was just thinking,” he began again. “Without any doubt you have papers on your person addressed to you under your name, your former name, that is.... Yes! And a pocket book perhaps?... Exactly.... Would you be so very, very kind as to entrust them all to me?... They might interfere with our results....”
Without comment, I unbuttoned my coat and thrust a hand into my inside pocket. I found there my card case, with a number of visiting cards, my road maps, two or three blank envelopes, and finally, crumpled through my haste in putting it away, the letter—the letter of the colonel of artillery. I handed them all to the marquis.
“I thank you!” said he.
The fold of his thin mouth grew deeper, and his tone was now one of great solemnity:
“Monsieur,” said he, “everything is ready now. My last request is that you be kind enough, in view of the fact that you will retain yourconsciousness, to relax completely, not only every sinew of your body but every tension of mind and will. Try to play ‘dead,’ if I may say such a thing. Play you are sound asleep. Notice, Monsieur, that I attach great importance to these suggestions, which, you can rely upon it, are made in the best interests of us both.”
I acquiesced with a slight arching of my brow.
He saluted me with his most correct and formal bow:
“That is all, Monsieur,” said he; “Farewell!”
He had disappeared.
But a moment later I was conscious of his presence close behind me. I knew that he was standing there, his eyes fixed upon me; for between my neck and shoulders I could feel a weight, an impact, like the one I had experienced when the Vicomte Antoine found me lying on the heath, and the one with which the Count François welcomed me on my entrance into the House of the Secret....
Like these, I say ... but no! The present pressure was something incomparably heavier and more forceful—a veritable succession of hammer blows descending upon me with a violence that left me bruised and dazed.
Then suddenly ... everything began to go round and round—an overpowering dizziness assailed me. The lens of the golden sparkles, the armchair opposite me, the clock in the corner, the antique chest against the wall, all seemed to be caught up in a cyclonic whirl of which I was the tottering, collapsing center. In spite of the downy prop behind my head and the cushions that contained me all around, I seemedto be falling, falling, or soaring, soaring; and my frenzied fingers clutched the arms of my chair, which, to my sense, now plunged into bottomless depths, now darted upwards to impossible heights, rocking frightfully meanwhile and even turning completely over and around. A measureless void was all about me, and my single intelligent thought was one of surprise that I was not hurtling into this gulf of nothingness.
An atrocious torture, but a short one! A deadening stupor came over me progressively, first relieving and finally overcoming my dizziness. My sensation now was one of extreme fatigue, more exhausting than any I had ever before experienced. My head especially seemed emptied of all its cerebral substance as a result of the first shocks I had received; and it lay helpless, lifeless, in its hollow formed in the upholstery. A whimsical interest in what time it might possibly be came to obsess me. I remember that I could hardly move my eyes when I tried to turn them toward the clock; and if I did succeed eventually in focussing them on that point, I could not read the clock’s hands, so dark and murky had my eyeballs become, so insensitive my retina.
A curious tingling began at the ends of my fingers and toes, and spread upwards into myhands and arms, and into my feet and legs. It was like the beginning of a cramp.
But the cramp did not come. What I felt rather was a kind of chill. But neither was this a clearly defined sensation, so rapid, so confused, were the changes and variations in my impressions. It was, on the whole, as though my body were disintegrating little by little, being torn apart, filling meanwhile with a strange liquid, lighter than blood, in which all my organs, freed from their muscles and tendons, seemed to be afloat and drifting.
The conviction came over me that I was about to die....
* * * * * * * * *
It were better not to resume my story!
My pencil has been lying idle for a long time. Here on this marble slab is the black-bordered register. I hesitate.... I cast my eyes around....
The noon-day sun is gilding the tips of the cypress trees, while through their stiffened branches the winter wind is playing fitfully. Not a cloud is visible in that cold blue sky. Despite the torpor that besets the arid marrow of my bones, I feel almost a thrill of joy at the splendor of this last day of mine....
Yes, it were better to stop my story here!
Why write on? No one will believe me!Indeed I myself almost doubt the reality of this fabulous, this impossible, this incredible experience! If I were not here in this place, if I could not read the fateful, irrevocable epitaph graven on this stone on which my elbows rest—if I could not run my palsied fingers through this long snow-white beard—no, I would not believe, I would not believe! I would say rather that I were dreaming, that I were raving in some ghastly mad obsession.
But the proof, the proof is there! I cannot hold my peace! I must finish the narrative I have begun. All men, all women—my brothers and sisters—are in danger! I must save them!
O you who read this my confession, this my last will and testament,—for the love of your God, if you have one, do not doubt me! But read, understand, believe!
* * * * * * * * *
Yes, I thought I was about to die.
The strange tingling, now the only sensation which I could isolate with any distinctness, was running through my whole body, from the tips of my toes to the tips of my hair. It was no longer like the first symptoms of a cramp, as it had been at the beginning. No, it was something more regular in beat, more enthralling in power. It caused my mind to revert to Madeleine and the morning rides we used to taketogether; to our picnics in the forest clearings, to a fondness she had for burying her naked arms in the ground so that I could compare the feeling of the smooth warm sand with that of her smooth warm skin. Through my half-opened fingers I would strain the minute grains and as they fell they made a faint continuous sound that I remember for its peculiarity. Such a sound I was hearing now; but it came not from between my fingers, but from under my skin, from inside my flesh—the murmur of an invisible sand which my veins and nerves were sweeping along their channels in a full, regular, unbroken flow, from my heart and my other internal organs toward my hands and toward my feet. This strange flood became a rushing torrent about my wrists and ankles, and around the joints of my fingers—narrow passages which confined, condensed, cramped the current. But it went beyond my own extremities, far beyond! How far I could not say. I know simply that my fingers and toes were at once moist and chilled, like vessels of unglazed pottery which give off water drop by drop and become ice-cold from evaporation....
And all the time, on the back of my head and between my shoulders, I could feel blow after blow in furious succession, blows which I know came from the all-powerful eyes of the oldmarquis, who stood there relentlessly raining them upon me.
I grew weaker still. A few moments before I had tried vainly to look at the clock against the wall. Now even my eyelids were paralyzed. I could not close my eyes nor could I turn them. They were glued inexorably upon the objects directly in front of them—the translucent lens (the golden glints in its substance glowing now mysteriously); the armchair where, for a second, I had glimpsed the seated image of myself; beyond, a bit of white-washed wall—all blending in a blurred whirling confusion.
As second followed on second I thought I could feel more and more of my life flowing silently out of my wasting body....
Then suddenly, something extraordinary occurred; and I was so shocked by it that I managed, calling on I know not what reserves of energy, to open my eyes a little wider and to clear their vision by winking my eyelids several times.
In the chair where I had before seen my own image seated, now I could see, clearly, distinctly, beyond any possible doubt whatever, beyond any chance of its being an hallucination—I could see with an unspeakable overwhelming certitude—another image, likewise seated, anotherimage also made of light, but of a different kind of light—a sort of fluctuating phosphorescent shadow which was gradually taking form ... out of nothing....
... taking form from nothing....
At first it could hardly be said to exist at all ... something more tenuous than a shadow ... as transparent as glass ... all the particulars of the chair visible through it—covering, head-rest, arms and back ... something formless, colorless ... a sort of pallid luminousness hazy in outline, changing in texture, suggesting the vague fluorescence in a Gessler tube....
Yet something, nevertheless, something more certainly real than the image I had seen shortly before—the image of myself refracted through the lens ... something material, tangible, ponderable ... as I could sense, as I could feel, as I knew with a conviction that excluded all doubt ... something living, perhaps!
Living, certainly! Yes, something alive; for now, inside the tissue, inside the substance of this luminous something, I thought I could see ... I could see ... I could see with absolute distinctness ... a sort of web, a veritable network of veins and nerves ... outlined in light ... in light brighter than the light of thething itself ... and along those nerves and through those veins, rushing, streaming, leaping in regular pulsations, a phosphorescent liquid ... all coming from one center ... and that center ... a heart!
I could see ... but the testimony of my eyes was nothing ... my senses, my feelings, my very consciousness ... told me, convinced me, assured me, that that shadow was alive.... Of its life I had the same perception that I had of my own life. I could feel the beating of that heart, as I could feel the beating of my own heart; and I could feel, the streaming of that phosphorescent blood in those arteries of light as I could feel my own red blood in my own arteries of flesh.... Then at last I knew....
I knew that that Something, that that Presence, that that Being was taking form, not from nothing, but from me. Not only was it from me; it was my very very Self.
From the depths of my weakness and of my agony, from the abyss of mortal terror in which my consciousness and my intelligence had been engulfed, that one persuasion rose—a clear, clear comprehension of all that had been explained, suggested, threatened in words that had hitherto seemed so obscure to me....
Yes, that Shadow there was I, that Shadow sitting in the chair before me, that Shadow ofpallid light that was already losing its transparency!
* * * * * * * * *
I lost my hold on the wisp of sentience to which I had been clinging. Weakness overcame me. Sight faded from my eyes, and hearing from my ears. A black opaque veil descended over me, enshrouding me, burying me. I became as one dying, dying ... dead.
* * * * * * * * *
Later, I know not how much later, but after, I think, a long, long time, I came to myself again.
And when I came to myself again, all the life that I had lived before I sank into that deathly slumber, seemed to have receded into a past infinitely, eternally remote, a past more ancient than all the ages.
A pair of cold hands was pressing on my temples. I could feel drops of water trickling down my face. They came from a wet handkerchief that had been drawn tight across my brow. I knew that the Count François was standing in front of me, and that he was working to bring me back to consciousness.
A sigh forced its way through my lips. My eyes opened. I stretched my fingers that had gripped the two arms of my chair....
The count removed his hands from my temples.
He wiped my forehead dry.
He went away.
Then I saw....
I saw, in the chair opposite me, seated, a Man.
A Man like me, exactly like me, like me to the last detail: myself.
I looked at him, and I was not sure whether he or I were I. And I was not sure whether we were two men, or one man in two persons. I raised—how painfully!—an arm; and I succeeded in raising it because now it had become as light as gauze. I raised an arm, I say, to see whether the other Man, the other I, would be forced, by what I did, to do the same, to raise an arm that is, the arm that I raised. But no! I moved: and he did not. So then ... there were two of us: I and a Man: two different men, separate, distinct Beings.
Distinct, separate, and yet, unquestionably, two parts of one whole, a single whole; and all my flesh, all my wasted rarefied substance cried out desiringly toward that other flesh, that other substance that had been torn from me, “exteriorized” from me.
Another Man: a Man, and not a shadow, and not a ghost! No spectral trappings; no sheets, no shrouds! Clothes! A riding suit, exactlylike my riding suit. I looked at the clothes I was wearing. I had just bought them new. Now they were old, worn out, threadbare.... As old, as worn, as threadbare as I myself!
Alas! Alas! Why, why am I writing still? I know that you who read will not believe.... But I tell you I am not insane! Would a madman talk as I talk? Another thing: I am about to die; and a man does not cross the threshold of Eternity with falsehood on his lips.... Two good reasons for not doubting my veracity....
Alas! Alas! I know ... I know ... why should I go on ...?
* * * * * * * * *
Nevertheless....
... the Man got up from his chair and walked toward the door.
I saw that He walked with my walk. When He arose, I had felt in the muscles of my hips and back, a sudden stiffening as though I too were making an effort to rise from my chair. Each of his strides thereafter caused rapid contractions of the muscles in my thighs, in the calves of my legs, at my ankles.
He stopped at the door into the anteroom, and stood there with his hand on the latch.
And I heard the voice of the Marquis Gaspard speaking, a voice I could scarcely recognize, so faint, so broken, so husky had it become—a breathing rather than a voice.
It said:
“The papers!”
The towering figure of the Vicomte Antoine came between the Man and me. Nevertheless I could see, I know not how, that into the Man’s pocket the vicomte was slipping my purse and the letter from the colonel of artillery.
“He has them!” the vicomte said.
The Man opened the door and went away.
* * * * * * * * *
Now I say that when He was in the antechamber, separated from me by a thick partition, I could see Him still ... not exactly through the partition; nor could I, exactly, see Him with my own eyes ... but, as it were, with another pair of eyes which went along with Him, and did not leave Him any more than my eyes left me.... With these latter eyes I could see Him more clearly, more distinctly than with my own eyes.
And when He had left the antechamber, and was out there in the garden, under the trees of the thickly matted branches, I could see Him still. And when He had left the garden and was out there on the heath—there where the plants and trees grew sparse and stunted ... I could see Him still....
Once more, for one last time, the falsetto of the Marquis Gaspard grated on my ears; and I sensed that he was mustering all the fainting sonorousness of his throat and lungs for a last irrevocable declaration.
“Monsieur,” I heard him say, “Monsieur, that Man you saw, that Man who has just departed ... be my witness that I created Him ... as God created me. And having created Him I have the same right to destroy Him that God has to destroy me ... if He is able!”
The voice died out....
And I could see Him still....
He was walking rapidly, slipping through the underbrush with surprising ease. And I thought of Madeleine, whom I had seen six hours ... six centuries?... before ... gliding in that same way over the same rough ground.
The dawn was streaking the eastern sky; but the valleys behind the screen of mountains were still sunk in darkness. Nevertheless I could see Him still.... Though to see Him was like touching Him. Those supernatural moving eyes with which I was following Him step by step, those miraculous eyes attached to his flesh doubtless because his flesh was my flesh ... those infallible eyes which made me see with absolute distinctness ... were like two hands ... feeling rather than seeing.
The Man was getting farther and farther away, walking very rapidly now. Around Him I could dimly see the enormous blocks of stone with the smooth hewn faces, those monoliths of geometrical design, rising naked from the soil,which had astonished me on my own passage through them. In that labyrinth the Man did not hesitate at all, but hurried on his way with the same certainty as before....
Around my ankles now I could feel the scratching of the juniper and the briar ... as though it were I and not He whom the thorns were tearing.... And as He kept walking, I grew fatigued, more and more fatigued, till a sharp pain caught me in the joints of my hips and knees....
The Man was beyond the labyrinth of stones, advancing along the deep ravines and precipices which also I recognized from having followed the same path six hours before. Not far from there, indeed, the spotlight of my guide had lighted the faint trail, his cane beating to right and left to open the way before me. Those very brambles that were now scratching the Man’s legs and my legs....
* * * * * * * * *
My cries of “Mercy! Mercy!” had worn me out.
* * * * * * * * *
The Man stopped suddenly.
The glow of sunrise had now climbed to the zenith. The whole landscape was bathed in apale but brightening light. A clump of tall ferns appeared, masking the precipitous wall of a ravine.
The Man stopped, folded his arms, and leaned forward. I leaned forward with Him.
A precipice was there, the precipice on the brink of which I had earlier been moved to terror. I recognized it, as I had recognized the labyrinth of monoliths, the region of ravines and precipices, the thickets of juniper and briar. I recognized the same smooth wall of the chasm, the same white stones of the river bed over which the deep black water was rushing in a torrent.... And I recognized the same nauseating chill of vertigo.
In the strip of bright sky along the eastern horizon, a first splash of red, the color of blood, marked the oncoming of the sun....
I was striving to master that nausea, that vertigo, when an atrocious snap of all my muscles hurled me violently from my chair, hurled me into the air as a diver is tossed from a spring-board. Weak as I was, exhausted, prostrate, my muscles contracted with such desperate violence that I was thrown up up through the air, to fall two, three, four yards from my chair, which was thrown over backwards by the push I gave it.
I fell ... I fell ... my head and armsthrown forward ... and I lost consciousness again.
I lost consciousness again; but not before I had had time to see the Man likewise hurled headforemost into the abyss, where He fell, and fell, and fell, to be dashed to death on the white boulders under the black rushing water....
Thereafter ... I know not what ... I knew nothing more....
Morning ... morning, and raining still. Through the grated window of my bedroom-prison, a sticky viscous light was making its way. I was lying on the bed. When I awakened, I tried to rise on my elbow to look around me. I could not: I had not the strength.
But suddenly I could see ... I could see, in another place....
Rushing water ... tall green reeds ... moss ... a lofty, vertical wall of rock ... white cobblestones washed by a tumbling stream ... and, on the jagged point of a boulder, a corpse, my corpse, me....
I could see that my clothing was soaked, the water covering my breast and shoulders, and filling my wide opened eyes.... But I did not feel the cold liquid contact of the stream, nor the chilling north wind, laden with rain, that was beating upon my back and legs which were out of water on the narrow bank of the torrent there. I could feel nothing. I was dead. I mean to say that the Man was dead, that Manwho was, and still is, I. I could see a large red hole in the back of his head—the wound made by the rock He struck, the wound through which his life had spurted away.... The back of my head ... of me who was lying there on that bed in that chamber ... pained me terribly.
* * * * * * * * *
So I lay there, inert. Several times I tried to move. Move I could not; nor was there anything I could do. Through the half-opened window the resinous fragrance of rain-soaked fir-trees came. For a moment, they entered the room—the Count François and the Vicomte Antoine, I mean. They examined me, felt my pulse, my legs and arms, the back of my head. But soon they went out again. I was left alone.
* * * * * * * * *
All that I have just been telling even then belonged to the distant past, a past fabulously remote.
I was lying on the bed, inert, watching my dead body awash in the stream. I tried to remember what had happened....
Yes ... I fell.... I was bending over the edge to peer into the depths of the chasm ... and a heavy blow struck me between the shoulders ... one of those blows such as I had severaltimes received between the shoulders ... and on the back of my head ... blows from the overwhelming gaze of those old men ... of the old marquis ... which had pounded me to pulp.
So then, I was watching the dead body ... my dead body.... Carrion already old! Flies swarming on and over it. The torrent foaming around and against it—and running water erodes, dissolves, disintegrates!... Yes, carrion indeed!... The coffin maker must come soon, or little will be left for him!...
* * * * * * * * *
Carrion already old!
But not so old as my living body—that too was old, limitlessly aged!
Was I as old as this, a little while before? Or had the sun merely stopped in the heavens? And if so, how long? For many many years? I could not say....
* * * * * * * * *
I remember, yes ... I fainted.... I lost consciousness completely. When I fell over the cliff ... my head and my hands struck hard on the tiled floor ... the Ever-living Men probably brought me to the room and put me on that bed.... Perhaps the rushing water of the stream, or the rain, or the winter wind turnedme so old.... One cannot help but change ... lying out in the weather!...
Old! old, old! And older, older, every minute, every second!
My hand went to my chin.... A beard was beginning to appear there.... It was growing rapidly ... a gray beard.... As I passed a hand over my temples, I could feel deep wrinkles there.
Three times the door of my chamber opened partly, and I could see the faces of the Ever-living Men peering in at me attentively. On each occasion I feigned sleep, closing my eyes.... But not entirely.... My eyelids were far enough apart for me to spy on what they did.... They did nothing.... But this I saw ... I saw that they were astounded ... plainly, evidently astounded at the age, the sudden age that had come over me....
* * * * * * * * *
I lay there inert....
What time was it, I wondered? What day of the week? What month of the year? And the year—was it of the era of our Lord?
My beard was gray at first. Now it had whitened. It had grown broad and long.... Thus do beards and hair grow on the bodies of the dead, I thought. The flesh seemed to haveleft my hands. Through the dry darkened skin that covered them I could feel brittle knotted bones....
Was the sun setting? It was growing dark in my bedroom-prison. Only a faltering light was now making its way through the grated window. And the water rushed foaming, whirling along, black and green, around my corpse ... softened the latter seemed ... mushy, gluey, loathesome....
* * * * * * * * *
Yes, night was coming on.... Again the Living Men entered to visit me ... the father and the son I mean.... The grandfather was not with them.... He was out of sight and hearing.... They came and stood at my bedside, looking at me for a long time, visibly preoccupied, visibly alarmed....
They went away again, and still without a word. On the tripod candlestick, the candelabrum of the three crossed lances, three candles were burning brightly now ... three points of flame for the three long shafts.... Darkness was creeping down the chasm.... The water was moaning black in the on-coming night.
* * * * * * * * *
Ho! Ho-ho! What was that? Torches in my chamber! And voices shouting! Ah no!Not in my chamber ... down there, along the stream ... up on the cliffs, above the chasm.... Down there, of course! What could I have been thinking of?
Torches on the brink of the abyss.... Faces peering into the black void.... Uniforms! Red trousers, blue coats.... And a stretcher.... A good idea! A good idea!... Of course! Of course! For me, for me!
Voices calling. An oath or two. A voice louder than the others bidding these be silent. I heard everything distinctly. Yes, every word.
“But I see him, I tell you! Look, there he is! Down in that hole! Gotta get down there someway!”
“Watch your step, boy! What a hole!”
“What the hell! I done worse places than this before.... The Devil roast my soul! Stinks a bit, this fellow! Whew!”
“Aw go on, what are you giving us!”
“But I say, Sergeant, he’s rotten!”
“What do you mean, rotten! Can’t have been there more than twelve hours!”
“All right.... I can’t say how long he’s been here.... But I know rotten beef when I smell it.... Guess it’s from being in the water! Say, just chuck that piece of canvas down.... We’ll pass it under him and draw up the four corners.... This is no man ...just soup! Easier to spoon him up with a ladle!”
“Damn it, man ... what have you found? Somebody else? Take a squint at him.... We’ve got to get the right man! What’s he got in his pockets?”
“Sticky damn mess! Whew! But here we are! Our man, all right! Yes! Identification card! Other stuff with his name on it! And here’s his revolver! Our man, Sergeant, no doubt of that. How about that rag! Sending it down?”
“When you get him ready, you give the word and we’ll haul up!”
“Righto! One, two, three, and you pull!... Well, I’ll be damned!”
“What’s worrying you now?”
“Why this here corpse! Weighs about an ounce and a half!”
“What’s that? Lord, if he’s as far gone as that.... Say, give a look around! Maybe you’ve left some on the rocks, a leg or an arm, or something!”
“No! Got everything, Sergeant, head and all! All right at the other end?”
“All right here!”
“Well then up she goes!” ...
“And now we’re off....”
* * * * * * * * *
“Hey, don’t shake the thing so much when you walk!”
“Oh rats! Hell of a lot this bird cares whether there’s springs on his hearse!” ...
* * * * * * * * *
I lay there inert....
I could feel the pressure and the scrape of the canvas on my head, and legs and arms.... The litter went along jostling me.... I could see everything, clearly ... the flickering of the torches there, and the gleaming of the candles at the points of the three crossed lances....
Total darkness outside!... Not a ray of light coming through the grated window. Not one last trace of twilight on the mountain trail....
The canvas tightened, and closed my eyes. There on the heath a shroud of canvas! There in my room a shroud of slumber! Sleep! Another death!...