*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76493 ***



                                _The New
                                 Terror_


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




                                  _The
                               New Terror_

                           _By_ GASTON LEROUX

              AUTHOR OF “THE PHANTOM CLUE,” “WOLVES OF THE
                        SEA,” “MISSING MEN,” ETC.

                    _FRONTISPIECE BY GEORGE W. GAGE_


                                NEW YORK
                         _THE MACAULAY COMPANY_




                  Published in England under the title
                            THE BURGLED HEART
               _Copyright, 1926, by The Macaulay Company_


                _Printed in the United States of America_




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE

      I +My Betrothal to Cordélia+                                     9

     II +The Portrait+                                                12

    III +Vascoeuil and Hennequeville+                                 20

     IV +The Wedding+                                                 29

      V +An Unexpected Present+                                       39

     VI +Patrick+                                                     47

    VII +After the Wedding+                                           72

   VIII +Dr. Thurel+                                                  77

     IX +I Discover a Change in Cordélia+                             92

      X +The Second Night+                                            98

     XI +The Golden Chamber+                                         111

    XII +The Thief+                                                  120

   XIII +Happiness Consists in Realities not in Dreams+              128

    XIV +Happy Days+                                                 138

     XV +In Which My Anxiety About Cordélia’s Polygon is Revived+    141

    XVI +The Appointment+                                            146

   XVII +The Duel+                                                   164

  XVIII +And Now+ ...                                                178

    XIX +The Last Visit+—                                            185

  +A Terrible Tale+                                                  189

  +The Gold Axe+                                                     229




                             THE NEW TERROR

                                CHAPTER I

                        MY BETROTHAL TO CORDÉLIA


Our parents as good as betrothed us from our earliest infancy. When I
was twelve and she was eight, our friends used to remark that we made
a charming couple, and our mothers were lost in admiration of us. We
would gladly have been married at once we were so fond of one another.
We were first cousins, and were often brought together at holiday time.
At that period Cordélia had already given me her heart, the budding
heart of a little maid of eight.

I was a tall, sturdy boy for my age with a fair, almost reddish-brown
complexion, passionately devoted to every form of sport, but idle in
the school-room. Life in the open air was the one thing that attracted
me. Cordélia, who possessed an inclination for reading and the arts,
acquired her taste for outdoor life from me. Her mother was Italian. My
uncle had married her during a business trip to Turin. When Cordélia
was eight years old she was a talented musician, but she surprised us
still more by the facility with which she drew or painted anything
which interested her or struck her fancy. As for myself, whatever came
from her hands seemed to me in the nature of a marvel.

I loved her all the more for her gifts and I bestowed on her unstinted
admiration. It was I who taught her how to ride. She knew no fear.
Sometimes she gave me a fright, but I could not choose but follow her,
and she did with me as she pleased. I was never a dreamer. Once she
said, “Let us dream,” and I pretended as I stood beside her to dream,
meaning thereby that I kept silent. Then she eyed me with a queer
expression and burst into laughter.

“Kiss me,” she said.

I tried to kiss her and she fled.

We made merry in this way until I was nineteen. I had become a tall,
strongly-built fellow with a freckled face. She considered me the
handsomest of men. She always considered me the handsomest of men.
She herself had become beautiful beyond words. The slenderness of the
unruly young girl had given way to a form of ideal elegance and charm.
She was neither fair nor dark. The color of her hair, which I called
a fluffy radiance was all her own. Her eyes were green, flecked with
gold, whose shades were ever changing. And then her graceful figure!
She was as supple as a reed as the saying is, but by no means frail.

We continued to amuse ourselves like children.

Nevertheless one day we took each other by the hand and went thus
together to our parents asking them to consent to our marriage without
loss of time. We were filled with a wild desire to go for a wedding
trip on horseback. Our parents, to our infinite sorrow, refused to
listen to us. They postponed our trip on horseback for five years from
then, and packed me off to America, which seemed to me a cruel and
bitter mockery. And then I returned for my military service. And after
that I was dispatched to America once more.




                               CHAPTER II

                              THE PORTRAIT


My father who was an iron manufacturer intended to take me into his
works, but first of all he was bent on my undergoing a complete course
of study in one of those Technical Institutes in the United States
where one is supposed to learn everything that can be useful to a
mechanic and an engineer, but where the practice of every form of sport
is a particular and glorious feature. I may say that I was the pride of
the Institute though I was the greatest dunce in it. Boxing, tennis,
golf, riding, swimming, boating, into which I fiercely threw myself,
diverted my thoughts from Cordélia without making me forget her.

I counted the months which stood between me and the happiness that
awaited me. Meanwhile my father and mother were carried off almost
at the same time during an epidemic of influenza, as it was then
called. I fulfilled their wishes by making no attempt to precipitate
the course of events. They were of opinion that I ought not to marry
until I reached my twenty-fourth year. I had no desire to thwart them,
particularly now that they were in their graves.

My uncle’s attitude towards me in the circumstances left nothing to be
desired. He took upon himself the management of my business affairs. I
was relieved from all trouble, notwithstanding that both my father and
mother had left me a considerable fortune.

He asked me if I wished to take up the succession to my father’s
business. I answered that I would readily have done so had such been
necessary, but since I was left with sufficient means to insure the
happiness of Cordélia and myself, I had made up my mind to live, in my
own way, upon my income.

He assured me that I would soon become bored unless I engaged in some
work. I answered that I had often felt bored when I was engaged in
work but never when I was not working. My uncle’s ideas belonged to a
different age which did not realize how full life is nowadays. I mean
full of the movement which brings with it health and beauty. An athlete
is never bored.

For that matter, the argument that I am advancing on the subject of
work is by no means necessarily that of a “sportsman.” I have heard a
man of considerable intellectual power, an author—a novelist who worked
his ten hours a day—declare that he had a horror of work because work
swallowed up the best part of his time, leaving him no opportunity of
seeing life which was a marvelous occupation and a spectacle tedious
only to imbeciles. He looked upon work as an ignominious necessity to
which mankind had been doomed for some transgression or other, and
he considered that those mortals who by the favor of the gods were
absolved from it, and yet clamored for it because time hung heavily
upon their hands, were deserving of eternal punishment.

For my part, I hold the same opinion and I add: If they are feeling
bored, bless my soul, let them play football.

At length I reached my twenty-fourth year, and I sailed in the mail
steamer to Havre. I already pictured to myself Cordélia waiting for
me on the pier. I had not seen her for eighteen months. We had never
ceased to write to each other with the greatest freedom. And yet during
the last period of my stay in America I seemed to perceive some change
in her.

True, her heart still remained mine but her mind had become unsettled;
in other words I did not comprehend everything that she said in her
letters. I have mentioned that Cordélia had always displayed an
inclination for the arts and in particular for painting. Well, it was
in connection with a small painting that she sent to me, a portrait of
myself painted from memory, which I considered a splendid likeness,
that she wrote extraordinary things which I scornfully called, without
quite knowing why, a “deterioration,” for they appertained to a sphere
of knowledge in which we were not accustomed to wander at my Technical
Institute.

I said to myself: Cordélia thinks too much. It is high time that I was
home. You bet I’ll make her give up her books and painting and music,
and then to horse! as in the good old days.

But let me return to this portrait and in regard to it I will refer
to my “notes.” I am not, to be sure, one of those persons who write
their recollections from day to day. But I rejoice that I possess these
memoranda, and I will explain how they came to be made almost without
my noticing it, and why I happened to keep them.

I am very methodical and have always kept a strict record of my
expenditure. I still have my little account books. Thus in the evening
after casting up my accounts for the day, I used to sit gazing at
the figures before me and dreaming of Cordélia, and I seldom closed
the book without setting down some thought about her, or adding some
comment upon her last letter.

These were often very simple remarks. For example, I find this entry
under the date of the 25th April, 19——.

“Thirty-five dollars ten cents.... Dearest Cordélia, we shall have
heaps of beautiful children crowding round our knee.” Or else a few
words even more simple still. Under the date of the 30th May of the
same year I find:

“Twenty-five dollars ten cents.... Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!”

Here are my observations concerning the portrait:

“To-day I received my portrait painted by Cordélia. It is a speaking
likeness. It is complete in every respect, even to the scar which I
still bear under the right eyebrow, caused by an unlucky fall against
the corner of the stairs when I was eight. The wound bled copiously,
and I call to mind Cordélia’s sorrow, for we had been playing together.
I feel certain that when she portrayed this little scar she remembered
that unfortunate mishap with some feeling. Dear, dear Cordélia!”

A month later I wrote the following note:

“What is happening? I have received a letter from Cordélia and can
make nothing of it. She asks me to return the portrait. She considers
the painting unworthy. I don’t quite follow whether she considers it
unworthy of me or unworthy of her. Moreover she declares that while it
resembles me it is not like me. What is the meaning of this fantastic
language?”

And still dwelling on the portrait which, however, I was careful not to
return to her because I was delighted with it, I wrote:

“Cordélia says in her letter that I ought to understand that a portrait
should represent something more than the mere lineaments of a person;
for instance, it should convey the expression of the soul and in so far
as the soul is not expressed in a portrait, it expresses nothing at
all!”

Well, I was quite at a loss. I did not understand how she could
materialize my soul which was a thing essentially unseen. Had she meant
by her words that it is indispensable to put life into a portrait, I
should agree with her, and all that is needed for the purpose is a
certain touch of animation in the expression of the eyes, but to depict
the soul!... I shall ask her to explain what she means.

I pass over various comments expressing surprise at the tone of other
letters from Cordélia which, moreover, were becoming very brief and few
and far between. I am eager to arrive at Havre....

And here I was at Havre again.

Alas! Cordélia was not waiting for me on the pier.

On the other hand an old man-servant of my uncle’s came to meet me on
the _Titan_, which was a small steam-tug engaged in the pilot and post
service, and I learnt that Cordélia and her father had set out two days
before on “an urgent journey abroad.”

Though I was physically hardened by my devotion to sport, I could
not restrain my tears, for the news was so unforeseen and coincided
so little with my expectations, that I felt a presentiment that some
irretrievable calamity had befallen me.




                               CHAPTER III

                       VASCOEUIL AND HENNEQUEVILLE


It was not that I entertained the slightest doubt of Cordélia’s love,
but I fancied that my uncle was no longer favorable to our union, and
had contrived the journey in order that I might understand for myself a
position which he would have found hard to explain by word of mouth.

“Have they gone away for any length of time?” I inquired in a trembling
voice.

Old Surdon, the man-servant, who was never a gossip, gave me to
understand by a gesture that he knew nothing.

“Where have they gone?”

Another gesture in like manner to the first completed my discomfiture.
Surdon, however, without undue haste drew a letter from the inside
pocket of his coat.

I snatched it from his hand, opened it, and read:

  “+My dear Nephew+,

  “We find ourselves suddenly compelled to leave for abroad. I have
  to deal with a matter which, as you may readily imagine, is of the
  utmost importance. We shall not remain away longer than we can
  help, but I scarcely think that we shall be able to return for
  a couple of months. We shall frequently write to you through an
  indirect channel, because I am anxious that you alone should know
  where we are. Be careful to keep the secret of our whereabouts to
  yourself. Don’t worry about anything. Cordélia still loves you; and
  you will be married before the end of the year. Look forward to
  seeing us at Vascoeuil where I am sending my servants. Surdon will
  be your servant.”

While this letter and the remark, “You will be married before the
end of the year,” reassured me as to my uncle’s purpose, it greatly
perplexed me as to Cordélia. “Cordélia still loves you.” What was the
necessity to add those words? Moreover, the letter filled me with
a vague misgiving for a number of reasons. What was the meaning of
this mysterious journey, and why should I receive tidings from him
through an indirect source? Most of all, why should I be packed off to
Vascoeuil?

My uncle and Cordélia were in the habit of spending the summer at
Hennequeville, where they owned “Clos Normand,” a splendid estate on
the main road to Honfleur. It was a huge, entirely new structure, by
which I mean that it was built some fifteen years before, and possessed
the most important thing in the world—modern comfort. Vascoeuil, on
the other hand, which we used to visit once during the year, at the
beginning of the hunting season, was a large country house not devoid
of a certain style and charm but antiquated and lacking in well-nigh
everything that makes life easy.

This manor house had always produced on me a peculiar impression, with
its high, colorless walls, its tower at one of the extremities casting
its reflection in the chill waters of the river, its great neglected
courtyard, its dilapidated out-houses, and its ill-kept grounds whose
moss-covered paths gave forth an odor of decay.

The rooms in the house with their paintings from which the freshness
had departed, and the faded mirrors, seemed to be haunted by shades
which our annual visit disturbed. I have never been a believer of
ghosts, but Vascoeuil invariably gave me an uncanny feeling.

Strange to say, Cordélia rather liked the place and found “poetry”
in it. When I began to analyze my feelings, the apprehension which
Vascoeuil caused me seemed to be explained by the fact that I was a
man of sound health and well-balanced mind, and everything round me
which failed to correspond with these solid realities was unendurable.
Vascoeuil was not a “healthy” place. That was enough to make me take a
dislike to it.

My dislike was still further increased when I found myself there with
old Surdon and Mathilde, his wife, but without Cordélia.

I have mentioned that Surdon was never a gossip, but Mathilde was in
the habit of giving free play to her tongue. She had known us from our
infancy and was very fond of us; and for years had spoken with delight
of our future marriage. I had no sooner arrived than, taking her on
one side, I asked her without beating about the bush to tell me the
meaning of the whole thing.

She heaved a sigh and turned on her heel. I ran after her and caught
her by the skirt. She began to cry:

“I swear, monsieur, that it’s nothing,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It
was the master’s idea to live here. He did not ask our advice you may
be sure.”

“Well, if it pleases him, let him come here instead of running about
all over Europe and taking Cordélia away from me. As for myself, I
shall clear out.”

“Where to?”

“Hennequeville.”

As soon as I uttered the word Mathilde betrayed the utmost excitement.

“No, no. Your uncle wouldn’t be pleased if he heard you were at
Hennequeville. He has taken it into his head that you mustn’t go there.”

Mathilde was a native of Darnetal in the Rouen district. That meant
that she was artful and obstinate. I saw that I should get nothing out
of her. But I made up my mind to go to Hennequeville. I reached the
place next day. It was about six o’clock in the evening when I got
there.

Heavens! how pleased I was to see the country and how delightful the
grounds were! In truth, with the glossy and luxuriant verdure of the
meadows, and the sweet-scented hedgerows in full bloom, there was
nothing ghostly about Hennequeville. And yet when, at the turn of the
road, I came in sight of the empty house, my heart was filled with
anguish. Never before had it greeted me with such a vacant look. Its
shuttered windows and locked doors made a strange impression on me.

How remote it all seemed from Cordélia’s laughter and kisses and
the welcome I used to receive when formerly I crossed the beloved
threshold. There was no echo of the olden time. The house no longer
knew me. I lay my head heavily on the garden gate and thus I remained
for I know not how long, a prey to the gloomiest dejection.

Darkness had fallen by now, and when I looked up I was not a little
surprised to perceive a few steps away from me a dark form which I
might have taken for my own shadow, its posture so exactly resembled my
own. The shadow also heaved a sigh. I was struck dumb with fear.

But my amazement did but increase when I heard this shadow give
utterance aloud to feelings which I expressed to myself in a whisper.
In words whose exact form I am unable to set down, but which admirably
conveyed my thoughts, the dark form declared that it was impossible
for a mind endowed with any sensibility to pass this beautiful domain
without stopping long enough at least to regret that all that life of
elegance and enjoyment for which it had been built, seemed to have
departed from it forever.

Whereupon somewhat taken aback I made answer, lying to myself,—for I
say again that my prevision was the same as the shadow’s—that there was
no reason why this house which was closed for the time being, should
not be re-opened some day and be filled once more with joyous life and
activity. But the shadow sighed once more, shook its head, uttered the
one word “Never!” which sent a shudder through me, and gliding behind
the wall vanished from sight.

I left the place more cast down than when I arrived. My curious meeting
with a stranger who seemed to be stirred by an emotion singularly akin
to my own, unnerved me to a degree which at first I failed to realize;
but as I was descending the hill which led me back to the Tongues
valley, I thought I recognized in front of me the dark form of the
man whose voice I had heard near me, and I started to run in order to
overtake him.

I came up with him outside an inn from whose partly-opened door a faint
glimmer of light could be seen. It was sufficient, however, to enable
me to perceive some of his features, for he turned round as I drew
near. Apart from a certain handsomeness, I was at once struck with his
eyes, or rather their brightness. They seemed to burn in the darkness.

Only the eyes of certain albinos, or the eyes of cats who are able to
distinguish things in the dark, unseen by human eyes, have produced a
similar effect on me. The man emerged from the light and I saw his
burning eyes as he stood in the road.

I would have liked to speak to him but my courage failed me.

I remained standing there as though dazed while he walked away. The
fresh breeze from the sea fortunately swept my brow. Some one spoke to
me. It was the innkeeper. I made my way into the inn and asked him if
he knew the man who had just passed his door. He told me that he was a
celebrated English painter, and people in the country round said of him
that he was “a bit touched.”




                               CHAPTER IV

                               THE WEDDING


When I returned to Vascoeuil a letter lay waiting for me. It bore the
Paris postmark, and the address was written in a handwriting unknown
to me. On opening it I found a line from my uncle who had written a
hurried scrawl from the Tyrol.

The Tyrol! People do not go to the Tyrol for business purposes.

What was his object in wandering about the Tyrol with Cordélia while I
was kept waiting for them in this wretched house? He did not attempt to
explain. He gave me an address to which I was to write to him.

  “Write as often as you can; write every day. In the meantime I will
  suggest something which will occupy your time until we return. I
  want you to redecorate Vascoeuil with ‘every modern comfort.’ I
  leave the matter entirely to you. Furnish it to your own taste.
  It belongs to you and Cordélia. I intend to give it to you as
  a wedding present. You will be married at Vascoeuil. I am well
  aware that the property has never greatly appealed to you. Have it
  renovated in such a way that you will like it. But don’t have any
  alterations made in the grounds. That will be Cordélia’s affair.
  She has ideas on the subject. We both send you our love.”

Not a word came from Cordélia. Why did she not write to me? Did she no
longer love me? Ever since my return from Hennequeville I asked myself
the terrible question.

I wrote to my uncle and gave full expression to my misgivings.

I told him that it was impossible for me to apply myself to any task
whatsoever unless I knew how I stood with regard to Cordélia, and she
alone would be able to restore my peace of mind.

A fortnight elapsed without any reply. I spent those two weeks like an
idiot waiting for the postman. Surdon and his wife took pity on me and
endeavored to “argue” with me, but I refused to listen to them. At last
I received a letter. Again it bore the Paris postmark. How I leaped
upon it!

A letter from Cordélia! That is to say a line or two:

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

Well, it was a letter which by no means satisfied me. “I still love you
my dear Hector,” seemed to me a sort of plaster to cure my pain. It was
not what I wanted; and even “We shall meet soon, my husband to be” was
cold comfort to me.

I wrote to Cordélia and poured out all my woes. I wept like a child
over the letter as I reminded her of our vows, and I assured her that
I would rather die in despair than lead to the altar a Cordélia who no
longer loved me as of yore.

Then, oh then, a few days later, I received eight pages from
Cordélia—eight long pages which made me weep for joy. I recognized
in them my little playmate of the long ago, her vivacity, her
impulsiveness, her delight in being with me, her adorable love of
mischief. She seemed to have plunged anew into the past with an
abandon which she wished me to share. She would have no difficulty in
that!

And then suddenly after indulging in these memories she spoke of the
present with an assurance which at once restored my mental and physical
health. She was looking forward to the simple duties of marriage.
She spoke of our taking up our abode at Vascoeuil and entered into
particulars which caused me straightway to fall in love with the place.
She went on:

“You will see how delightful Vascoeuil will look when, between us, we
have had it refurbished to our tastes. You must take a trip to Paris
and buy various things,”—here was a list of suggested purchases.—“I
want you to have everything ready by the time we return, because father
wishes us to be married at once. I shan’t be the one to stand in the
way! Oh, while I think of it: Don’t have anything done to the grounds.
You have never understood them. They have a beauty all their own, which
I am longing to develop to the utmost. I shall transform them into a
garden fit for Pelléas and Melisande. We will take our walks in them
in days of depression, for however happy one may be, life has its days
of depression which, however, are not without a charm of their own. In
the meantime, how delightful it would be to go for our honeymoon on
horseback as though we were both crazy. You will remember that when we
were quite young we used to dream of making such a trip, and we laughed
at those respectable people who went off by the ordinary train. But you
will see that we shall take the train like everybody else. What does
it matter so long as there is a gondola at the end of the journey? We
will go to Venice. That was always understood. The Tyrol is horrible.
Nothing but mountains. And I loathe mountains, particularly when they
keep me apart from you!”

                   *       *       *       *       *

The eight pages continued in this strain. Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!
How could I ever have doubted you and your dear little heart, your dear
little heart!... Quick, to work! Come on bricklayers and painters and
“the whole blooming lot of you” as my uncle would say.

I stirred the men on to greater exertions by my good spirits and
generosity. I myself looked like a bricklayer’s laborer, and Surdon
gave way to silent laughter when he handed me a jug of cider which I
emptied at a gulp in order to show the others that I could do full
justice to the amber liquor.

I did well to hurry on with the work. My uncle and Cordélia arrived
home a week earlier than they had foretold. I expected them about the
eighth of October, whereas they reached Vascoeuil on the last day of
September. The work was not nearly finished.

Cordélia found me on the top of a ladder busily engaged in papering
her boudoir. I fell into her arms. She bore the shock quite well,
exclaiming: “Heavens, how ugly!” I made a gesture which caused her to
burst out laughing. I thought that she was speaking of me while she was
referring to the wallpaper. That was enough to throw us into a state of
merriment which brought my uncle on the scene.

He gave us his blessing and kissed us; kissed us and gave us his
blessing a second time; and recounted that he himself was married in
that house, that Cordélia was born in it, that our children and our
grand-children would be born in it. Whereupon Cordélia, who turned a
deaf ear to him, exclaimed:

“My goodness, how nice the paint smells here. I say, look here, father,
I don’t want to be anything but a house-painter now. How does that
strike you?”

“I approve my dear. Oh, I quite approve. That’s a very healthy idea!”

I was rather surprised to hear him speak like that. I was always under
the impression that the health of a house-painter was subject to
considerable risk, owing, I think, to the white lead in his materials,
and I raised the objection to my uncle, whose only answer was to give
me a friendly pat on the back.

A few minutes later he said with his usual kindly smile:

“You are still the best of all Hectors. I hope you’ll never be any
different.”

I don’t know why he should have given utterance to such a sentiment,
because I have no intention of being any different. Nevertheless on
thinking it over, I have since concluded that he found a simplicity in
me which appealed to him, the unemotional and well-balanced temperament
of a man who is not in the habit of creating difficulties where there
are none, and he counselled me to remain as I was if I wished to insure
our happiness.

The three following weeks passed so quickly and pleasantly that they
stand out in my memory as among the happiest weeks of my life. I
dismissed from my mind every preoccupation having no connection with
the diversions of the day, and these consisted, for Cordélia and me,
of upsetting the entire household, hiding behind doors, chasing one
another like school children and kissing until Cordélia, all flushed,
gently pushed me away exclaiming: “Hector that will do ... leave some
for to-morrow!”

Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!

When she first came home I thought that she was looking rather pale,
overcome doubtless by the fatigues of the journey. Now she had
regained her beautiful color. She was still as slender as before, but I
discerned that none of the natural beauties of a woman were lacking in
her. I hardly know how to express my meaning, but to my mind women were
never more beautiful than they are nowadays; and I still adhere to my
opinion. Mentally and physically she was perfect. I cannot say more.

At last the great day arrived. It was a wonderful function and one
that will long be remembered and talked about at Vascoeuil. Cordélia’s
father, who was a great landed proprietor, had issued invitations to
the entire district after the fashion of his own day. I mean that
representatives of the families round about, the possessors of great
names and great fortunes, were present and entertained with princely
magnificence.

My uncle would have liked the festivities to be kept up for three days,
but he yielded to Cordélia’s entreaties, for she declared that if the
guests remained after six o’clock we should take our departure. The
wedding breakfast, in accordance with Cordélia’s wishes, was called
lunch. And it was indeed a lunch!

But all this was nothing in comparison with the feast which was given
about a mile away at the farm of my uncle’s principal tenant. Tents
had been erected in a large field, and the country people who were
assembled therein let themselves go for all they were worth, like the
guests at the gargantuan wedding feast of Gamache.

Cordélia gracefully went the round of the tables without evincing the
least repugnance for all this excessive gorging and I was very glad. I
accompanied her like a little dog.

“They’re not at all stuck up. We hope they’ll be happy,” we heard our
guests exclaim on every hand.




                                CHAPTER V

                          AN UNEXPECTED PRESENT


On returning to the house we found our guests in the drawing-room
gazing enraptured at the wedding presents which were on view. Heaven
knows that they were numerous enough!

It was at this juncture that Surdon came in carrying, with some
difficulty, a large flat package wrapped in canvas upon which a small
square piece of cardboard was pinned bearing in writing the words:

                     “_My offering for the wedding_”

The card was not signed.

Several guests had read the inscription, and were amused over the
wedding “offering.” Our attention was attracted by their laughter,
and when my uncle, Cordélia and myself drew near, they were already
speaking of a wedding surprise, and eagerly expressing a wish to see
the present.

My uncle read the card, turned pale, lifted his eyes and looked at
Cordélia, who also read it. A deep blush suffused her cheeks. But she
displayed no confusion, and smiling said:

“It’s from him. He often uses one word instead of another. Sometimes he
does it on purpose as it amuses him. Besides, it’s his writing.”

To me the incident was a complete riddle. My uncle’s pallor, Cordélia’s
blushes, the words that passed between them—these things began to
trouble me.

“We might as well see what it is,” I said, pointing to the package.

“What’s the use?” returned my uncle. “We’ll have a look at it later on.”

Cordélia left us and went to an adjoining drawing-room.

Then I was seized with a feeling of curiosity and opened the package
myself. When the canvas which covered it was removed, I could not
repress a cry of admiration, and the guests around me were breathless
with wonder.

It was a portrait—a portrait of Cordélia. And such a portrait!

It was a picture of a marvelous radiance. It seemed to have been
painted with the softest of lights. It was utterly impossible to
conceive by what magic of coloring a human being who had nothing at
his command save brushes and the pigments in metal tubes, was able to
transmit to canvas so ideal a visual image.

I had never before encountered anything which could lead me to suspect
the existence of such an art. I had had an opportunity, like all those
who assist at great public functions in Paris, and delight in such
things, of visiting one or two exhibitions of paintings which affected
to be original, and professed to revolutionize art. Those works
expressed either an exaggerated symbolism or flights of the wildest
fantasy—were a great hoax in fact. I say freely what I think and if
any one takes offense the more’s the pity. As a general rule these
paintings are enshrouded in an erudite obscurity from which shines a
vague and eccentric glimmer of light.

But the miracle of this portrait consisted in this: It was the picture
itself which was painted in such a way that rays seemed to radiate from
it of themselves, without the intervention of any sort of trick.

The artist had succeeded in showing to the ordinary eye what it does
not usually perceive, that is to say, the invisible light which the
body radiates around itself....

I can speak of these things now that I have acquired the most painful
and terrible experience in this domain, but at that time I was
conscious of it all without comprehending it, and it would have been
difficult for me to express clearly my thoughts in a language of which
I was ignorant.

In short, in this effulgent portrait it was as though Cordélia’s soul
came to greet you from the first with a divine smile which emanated
from the entire expression of her face.

And now I understood what she meant when she wrote: “A portrait should
represent something more than the mere lineaments of a person; it
should convey the expression of the soul.”

She was obviously acquainted therefore with painting like that which
that day had enraptured us, and also doubtless with the painter
himself, who had sent this “offering” for the wedding.

It was no longer possible for me to doubt it!

I bent over the canvas to discover if the portrait was signed. I
deciphered the one letter “P.”

My uncle and Cordélia were not present to satisfy my curiosity. I went
to look for them but could not find them. I was told that Cordélia had
retired to her room in order to have a short rest.

Our guests were beginning to take their leave. My uncle rejoined me.
The pallor which had made such an impression on me was gone. On the
other hand he was in high good humor and very talkative as he wished
good-bye to his guests. He glanced at me from time to time and smiled
broadly as how should say: “Be happy. All goes well.”

What was the cause of his sudden perturbation during that memorable day?

Yielding to a latent impulse which had been growing in me since the
scene over the portrait, I returned to the drawing-room where the
wedding presents were on show. The portrait was gone.

I asked old Surdon what had become of the masterpiece. He made answer
that by “Mademoiselle’s” orders—he could not get accustomed to call her
“Madame”—he had himself taken it down into the cellar.

When I expressed my astonishment, he assured me that it was the very
place for the devil’s own painting.

I stopped him as he was making off and said:

“Do you know the man who painted the portrait?”

“You have other things to do, monsieur, to-day, than to bother about
such nonsense,” he returned, giving me a look and frowning.

He wanted to slip away, but I held him back.

“Look here, Surdon, I am going to ask you one question, but you will
have to answer me if we are to remain good friends. When I went to
Hennequeville I saw a man outside the garden gate looking up at the
empty house. I was told that this man was an English painter whom
people in the district regarded as slightly ‘touched.’ Is this the man
who sent the portrait to your mistress to-day?”

But Surdon stubbornly turned away, answering me in words which
exasperated me:

“I have already told you, monsieur, that the whole thing is nonsense.”

I was raging within myself and did not know what to say.

Surdon was right, however. That was a day on which nothing but my
happiness ought to have occupied my mind, and here was I questioning
a servant in secret upon incidents which, obviously, were not now
serious, and from which, to all appearance, it was desired to spare me
out of good feeling.

I retired in a more or less ill temper to a secluded part of the park,
which I never cared for because of my thinking it was a dreary place. I
was surprised to find myself harboring thoughts which were unworthy of
Cordélia and me. But, as has been said, man is a foolish animal.

Just then my uncle came up to me. He was in traveling clothes. He had
in fact decided to leave that same evening for Caen. He at once said
that he had something to tell me in confidence; something, however, of
no great importance to which he would certainly not have alluded but
for Surdon, who had acquainted him of my curiosity with regard to the
portrait of Cordélia.




                               CHAPTER VI

                                 PATRICK


I felt somewhat disconcerted, but as occasionally happens in moments of
trepidation, I managed to overcome the difficulty by a bold stroke.

“I say, Uncle, you must excuse me,” I began, “but accident led me
across the path of a man who was gazing gloomily at the house at
Hennequeville, and I was told he was a painter. I thought, perhaps,
that there was some connection between this painter and the portrait
which came to-day, and also certain incidents which caused me, before
our marriage, a great deal of pain.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your hurried departure to....”

“Well, that’s true, and it was about this that I wanted to speak to
you, so that the subject should never again be mentioned between us.
You must know that Cordélia came back to the house one evening with a
stranger whom she had discovered in a farmyard painting some wench
feeding her fowls. She declared that he was a wonderful artist and she
was very grateful to him for agreeing to accept her as a pupil.

“The stranger used to laugh at her youthful enthusiasm and he conducted
himself like a gentleman. He was an Englishman of good family, slightly
eccentric, possessing views on most things which were peculiar to
himself. I did not always follow what he meant, but his ideas cast a
spell over Cordélia for the time being. I saw no reason why they should
not work together either in the house or the country round. Patrick,
for such is his christian name, and the only one by which he signs his
paintings, lived in a cottage on the borders of Tongues forest.

“I was at that time greatly taken up with business which compelled me
to go frequently to Paris, and I failed to perceive the changes which
were taking place in Cordélia.

“It was Surdon and his wife who called my attention to the fact that
she had lost her vivacity, no longer played at farming, or mounted her
horse, but spent her whole time in painting or reading or dreaming,
leaving the house only when the stranger made an appointment to go
sketching in some part of the country, and returning thoughtful and
silent.

“I then took stock of Cordélia and was amazed to discover a new look
on her face. She was now as grave as she used to be gay, and wore a
curious absorbed expression as though lost in a reverie. I bitterly
reproached myself for my carelessness and oversight. However, I said
nothing, the better to keep a watch over her. I soon saw for myself
that Cordélia was living only through the medium of this man Patrick’s
thought.”

“Oh, good Heavens! that’s just what I feared,” I gasped.

“Don’t worry yourself,” went on my uncle, “for as you will see, the
whole business is of no consequence. Do you know the sort of man
Cordélia had to do with?”

“A rogue,” I returned.

“That’s just it. A sort of mountebank who tried to persuade her that
the moon was made of green cheese, and told her a pack of silly tales
about his psychic powers and such-like nonsense, which ended by turning
her head.”

“But did she still love me?” I inquired.

“I believe she still loved you, only she didn’t want to be married!”

“Oh, good Heavens!” I exclaimed.

“I will tell you what happened, and you will see that the whole thing
is of no consequence.”

“Forgive me, Uncle, but I can plainly see that what you tell me is of
the utmost consequence. I never dreamt that it was going to be of so
much consequence!”

“Look here, my boy, you make me ill. Are you a man or not? Aren’t
you married to a girl whom you adore and who loves you now that her
eyes have been opened? If to-morrow morning there is any question of
this imposter of a Patrick may the devil take me! I’ll never shake
you by the hand again. So listen to me, for we must have done with
this business.... I discovered in a desk in the studio a regular
correspondence carried on between Cordélia and Patrick in secret.”

“Well, that’s about the limit!”

“This correspondence,” continued my uncle, “is what these people call a
correspondence between souls. And I can assure you, my dear Hector, it
is not this psychic communion, to use their own words, that will make
me a grandfather one of these days!... Almost at the same time I found
in Cordélia’s room, in addition to this rubbish, a new bookcase crammed
with works on magic. Yes, a library of occult science. An incredible
number of books on the unseen world, on faces and souls. Can’t you
picture a book on ‘faces and souls’? Oh and an illustrated work on
stigmatism, mediums, thaumaturgy and what not....

“To prove to you, my dear fellow, that the whole business is of no
consequence, I must tell you that I had no need even to see Patrick
to get rid of him. Everything came out in the most natural way from
Cordélia, who was always a sensible girl, and herself realized the
danger which she was incurring by listening to this charlatan. When she
discovered me in the thick of all these books and Patrick’s letters
before me, she threw her arms round my neck and cried: ‘Save me,
Papa!’”

“Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!” I could not help interjecting. “That’s
like her old self. I recognize her there!”

“‘Yes, I’ll save you from that madman, my Cordélia,’ I replied. ‘Hector
will soon be home from America, and you shall be married.’ And it was
then, my dear Hector, that she said: ‘But I can’t marry Hector. Patrick
has forbidden me.’”

“Ah, yes!” I said, gasping anew. “Ah yes!... This is too thick....
Really this Patrick having the cheek to forbid her to marry me!”

“Yes, she declared that she was morally bound to obey Patrick, as her
mind belonged to him.”

“Her mind belonged to him! Why hang it all, this beats everything. And
what reply did you make, pray?”

“I said to her: ‘Pack up your things, my dear, and we’ll make a trip
to some part of Europe where there will be no danger of meeting this
delightful gentleman, and above all, let’s have no more letter
writing. We’ll talk about all this again in a couple of months’
time’.... Well, we left here as you know and there was no need to wait
a couple of months. At the end of six weeks this Patrick was forgotten,
and Cordélia thought only of you. And now, my dear boy, say good-by.
Cordélia is yours, and I hope that you won’t have any difficulty in
keeping her. Bless my soul, do your best to make her happy!”

Having said which, he clasped me in his arms almost stifling me, and
left me, muttering between his teeth:

“Stuff and nonsense. Stuff and nonsense.”

When I got back to the house Mathilde, old Surdon’s wife, told me that
her mistress was expecting me in her room. I entered, and my eyes fell
on a dainty little champagne supper which lay ready for us, and it
was none too soon, for Cordélia and I had eaten nothing or scarcely
anything during the day, our attention being fully occupied in greeting
our guests and returning their civilities.

The table was set in the boudoir, and the door leading to Cordélia’s
room was closed. I stood there like a great stupid. I dared not knock
at the door, and I began to cough as I stared fatuously at the walls
which I myself had papered.

At that moment the door was softly opened and I heard Cordélia say once
more in her laughing voice: “Gracious, how ugly! Gracious, how ugly!”

I looked round and joined in the laugh, for this time I knew that she
was not alluding to me.

I was surprised to see her muffled up in a fur cloak.

“Hallo, have you caught cold?” I exclaimed.

“I haven’t caught cold,” she made answer. “I am cold. Don’t you find it
bitterly cold?”

I thought she was jesting, for as a matter of fact, the day had been
unusually warm for the time of the year, and a pleasant wood fire was
blazing in the boudoir which I could very well have dispensed with.

“You know that those sables suit you to perfection, and it’s a little
affectation on your part. Not that I have the faintest objection, but
you’ll be suffocated in them.”

She replied with a shiver and summoned Mathilde to put more wood on the
fire.

My heart sank within me, for I imagined that she must be really out of
sorts.

“I tell you there’s nothing the matter with me,” she said, taking
things very simply, “I feel cold. It might happen to any one to feel
cold. I won’t have you worrying yourself about me. I can’t pretend to
be warm when I’m cold. What a tyrant you are!... I say, we’re beginning
our married life well,” she went on in the funniest manner, as she
kissed me before Mathilde, who did not seem to mind, accustomed as she
was for so many years to see us kiss each other.

It was Cordélia who told Mathilde to leave the room. Then she at once
asked:

“What has father been talking to you about? You and he have been
wandering about the park, which you dislike, for more than
half-an-hour. What did he tell you?”

“He told me a lot of things of no consequence,” I returned. “Let’s have
something to eat. Aren’t you hungry?”

“Oh yes. But you know you may as well tell me what he said. It was I
who sent him out to you. I wanted you to know all, dearest, before you
came upstairs to me here. Believe me the whole thing is utter nonsense.
Tell me that you forgive me.”

“Do I forgive you!... Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!”

As she carved the truffled galantine, she went on:

“When I think of it now I see how silly I was, but he was such an odd
person. Indeed he really seems to have fascinated me.”

“Don’t let us speak of it,” I entreated. “Don’t let us speak of it.”

“You ought to be glad to hear me speak so calmly of it. It shows that
I am entirely cured. And I can assure you that I am quite as pleased
as you are. One must not touch such things as occultism, hypnotism,
and magic you know. One gets carried away and ceases to be master of
oneself. It is a morbid condition to be in.... What do you think of
this galantine? Come, pour me out some champagne.... And kiss me....
What are you thinking about? Surely you’re not going to trouble about
Patrick now. There! To mention his name makes me feel quite queer.”

A shiver passed through her.

“I’m certain, Hector, there’s a draught coming from somewhere.”

“No, dearest, all the doors are closed.”

“An ice-cold draught.”

Her teeth chattered. I rose from the table filled with an indescribable
uneasiness. And suddenly, as I looked at her, I saw her turn pale.

“What is it? What’s the matter Cordélia dearest?”

“I see now what’s the matter,” she returned, drawing her cloak more
closely round her. “It’s the portrait.”

“The portrait! What do you mean?”

“The portrait which Patrick sent to me and I ordered to be taken down
into the cellar.”

“Well?”

“Well, the portrait is cold.”

Cordélia’s words were Greek to me and the look of blank amazement in
my eyes bore witness, not only to my inability to comprehend her, but
also to my uneasiness.

“You don’t understand. You don’t understand,” declared Cordélia in
a quavering voice. “That is what they call the externalization of
sensibility. They assert that men of science have made conclusive
experiments in this respect. For instance, the celebrated M. de
Rochas has demonstrated scientifically that one can take a person’s
sensibility from him and transport it to a glass of water and make that
person suffer by plunging a pin into the glass of water.”

I sprang from my chair utterly dismayed by the tone in which Cordélia
uttered what I regarded as “devil’s tales.”

“Are you going crazy, Cordélia? Surely you don’t believe in such
preposterous stuff. Come.... Come.... Do say something.”

“I feel cold,” she replied, in an increasingly quavering and far-away
voice. “I feel cold. I am as cold as my portrait. I see that I shall
be ill if the portrait is left in the cellar. Besides it was wrong of
me to send it down there. _He_ must be displeased.”

I realized with a feeling of intense sorrow that my Cordélia was not so
completely cured of her strange malady as she imagined, and with tears
in my eyes I exclaimed:

“Where would you like me to put it? I don’t want to go against your
wishes in such a trifling matter.”

“Wherever you please, wherever you please, but don’t leave it in the
cellar. And be careful not to knock it about.”

“Of course not. I’ll go and fetch it,” I said, greatly perturbed.

“You must forgive me, dearest, but it’s not my fault, is it? I’m very
sorry he sent it to us.”

“So am I.”

I went downstairs. I was fuming. I called Surdon and gave him
instructions to fetch the portrait and then I told him not to bother
about it, for after what Cordélia had said, I feared lest he should
subject it to rough usage.

I myself descended into the cellar. I seized the wretched canvas and
carried it to the drawing-room on the first floor, taking care in
spite of myself not to knock it against the furniture or walls. Some
people may say—some people are so clever!—that I behaved like a great
simpleton, an ass. May be. But we shall see about that. We shall see
about that.

The fact is that Cordélia held such sway over my mind that I could not
choose but accede to her wishes.

Nevertheless after I deposited the portrait against the foot of a
round table I flung wide open the French windows of the balcony which
was not calculated to make it warm. The cool freshness of the night
after a beautiful day, floated into the room. No blame could attach
to me. I had treated the portrait with care and it was not now in the
cellar. That was all that was asked of me, and if Cordélia was no
longer feeling cold I should at once be able to cure her of her strange
obsession.

When I returned to her she was still shivering in her cloak, and she
gave me a mournful look.

“Why did you put the portrait in a draught?” she asked. “I was certain
that you would play some trick. It’s too bad of you. I am still cold.
Bring it here, and then I shall be quite easy in my mind.”

“Certainly, that’s the best thing to be done,” I exclaimed, and I went
off again, bitterly regretting my mistaken calculation. I should have
done better to put the thing near the fire; and then, if Cordélia had
taken it into her head that I had left it in the cold, out of spite,
she would have been confounded once for all.

When the portrait was brought into the boudoir, Cordélia, of course,
declared that she was no longer cold. She removed her fur cloak, and I
perceived that she was clad in a charming loosely-fitting robe. Oh what
a delightful, sweet little thing she was!

“My dearest, you can’t think how beautiful you are,” I cried. “That’s
the honest truth, and no mere idle fancy, and when I kiss you I don’t
feel as if I am kissing a portrait!”

“I agree with you,” she said laughing merrily. “You are taking my
breath away.”

Truth to tell I held her somewhat tightly in my arms, for I was
quivering with happiness. She had become entirely normal again, so much
so that she recalled me to the realities of our supper. And we started
afresh to eat with good appetite and a light heart. We drank out of the
same glass like children. Nevertheless, warned by my experience with
the portrait, I was careful to keep the conversation from straying to
the past. Our plans for the future and our impending travel about the
world engrossed our attention.

“How happy we shall be!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, my dear Cordélia, we shall be very happy. We must think of
nothing else.”

I had uttered a word too many.

“What do you expect me to think about, my dear Hector?” she returned,
as she regarded my air of embarrassment. “Oh, of course, you say that
because of the portrait. I admit that I was greatly impressed by it,
or rather by its being sent here, because I have never seen it, and I
don’t want to see it,”—I had placed it in a corner with its face to
the wall—“but the whole thing is over now—quite. Oh quite, I assure
you. And when I think of it, now that I am all right again, I feel a
little foolish of course.”

Nothing could have given me greater pleasure than these last words. I
did not lose the opportunity to score.

“You admit, dear, that just now you were not very well. The exertions
of the day, and the necessity to recover your strength—you were simply
hungry—these things were the cause of the trouble and brought about
that fit of shivering, you may be sure.”

“Yes, I am inclined to think so.”

I kissed her again for these last words, but I thought it as well to
add with the greatest good humor.

“Personally, I have no fear of the ‘externalization of sensibility.’”

I had no sooner made the remark than Cordélia’s face grew serious once
more.

“We make a mistake, I think, to treat these matters lightly. I may
have given way to fancies, but I repeat that the ‘externalization of
sensibility’ has been scientifically proved. It is our modern material
conception of things which has imprisoned the soul within the body, but
in the Middle Ages....”

Oh come, I say, I thought to myself. We are flying off at a tangent
again. We are in the Middle Ages now!

“In the Middle Ages the soul was easily liberated from the body.”

“We are not in the Middle Ages now, my dearest.”

“How wonderful were its wanderings outside its prison!”

“Yes, yes, of course.... I say do try some of this fruit.”

“Have you ever heard of persons being bewitched?”

“Never, and I don’t want to know anything about them.”

“What a great big silly you are, Hector! It is impossible to talk
seriously with you. There are certain things you must know, unless you
want to remain a blockhead.”

“Thank you.”

“The casting of spells is bound up in the history of France, and
modern discoveries have proved to us that these things are not pure
imagination. When a person wanted to cast a spell on any one, he made a
small wax image which resembled as nearly as possible the person whom
he wished to be rid of.”

“Indeed, and what then?” I inquired, slyly putting my arm round her
waist.

“And then after, of course, externalizing the sensibility of this
person to the wax image, he stuck a pin into the image and the person
died.”

“Are you certain that the person died?”

“Am I certain! No, I am not certain about it.”

“I’m glad of that,” I returned as I gazed into my Cordélia’s face with
the tenderest expression.

“But there are persons who are certain of it; persons who even maintain
that many mysterious deaths in the Middle Ages can be accounted for
only on this assumption.”

I dared not ask who those persons were. I was greatly perturbed that
the conversation should once more stray to a subject which was
distasteful to me. Suddenly she stood up.

“Show me the portrait,” she requested, “I want to have a look at it.”

Not five minutes before she had assured me that she had no wish to see
it!

“Is it really necessary, my dear Cordélia?” I asked, not afraid to show
a distrust which I hoped she might share.

But unfortunately her thoughts were once more entirely centered on the
portrait, and it was with a regret which I shall feel all my life that
I saw her bend over the canvas and turn its face towards us.

Though it remained in the shadow, the outline of the figure stood out
clearly in its peculiar radiance.

“Oh how beautiful it is!” whispered Cordélia.

She stood for a few minutes still and silent, and then asked my opinion:

“Don’t you think it is beautiful, Hector?”

“Very beautiful,” I answered. “Very beautiful.”

To be sure I had no wish to contradict her, and moreover I had
expressed my real opinion. Truth to tell, I did not know how to keep my
countenance. When a woman dabbles in high art the simplest gesture by
a man may appear to her a piece of stupidity.... Still I ventured to
press her hand softly to remind her of my presence. She turned her head
towards me, and with a delightful and gentle look in her eyes, pointing
to the canvas, said:

“You can say what you like about the man who painted that portrait,
my dear Hector, you can say that he is cracked, and, in fact, I quite
think that he is a bit crazy, but you must admit that he is a great
artist.”

And as I made the mistake of not replying at once, she went on:

“Oh, can’t you speak.... Besides he is the first artist to paint the
‘aura.’”

“Just so.”

“What do you mean, ‘Just so’? Do you know what the ‘aura’ is?”

“No.”

“Then why did you say ‘Just so’? I will tell you what the ‘aura’ is:
it is the cloud of light which emanates from each individual and is
discernible by the trained consciousness.”

“Indeed! So the consciousness must be trained?”

Cordélia released herself from my arm which was round her waist, and
gave me a stern look:

“Don’t, my dear Hector, adopt an attitude of making game of what you
don’t understand. You would do better to think of all the matter round
us which radiates light. Why should not the human body shed a radiance?
It is not only a trained consciousness which can perceive these
light-rays, but they are visible to the open eyes of certain persons,
I can tell you. Look at this portrait! Besides, the negative of a
photograph can develop these light-rays for us even far from the body
whence they emanate, and sometimes they retain their actual shape. That
is the aura.”

“Really the negative of a photograph?”

“You are the only person to be ignorant of it.”

“I am very sorry.”

“This fluid substance,” she went on with intense seriousness,
“represents our perceptions and something more than our perceptions,
our intellectual life, which emanates from us and precedes us and is
conscious of things long before our body is. It is this force which,
when I am in the street, makes me think of a person whom I shall meet
in another five minutes, because my aura is conscious of him before
he is discernible by my physical vision. Do you follow me? Do you
understand me?”

“Yes,” I acquiesced, absolutely terrified by the turn which the
conversation had taken, “I am beginning to understand.”

“Well, it is none too soon! If you only knew how interesting in reality
the whole thing is. It is indeed the new thought—the only one that will
matter in a few years’ time. And this aura—your perceptions and my
perceptions—is a force which can operate from a distance; and be made
to operate from a distance; that is a well-known phenomenon. In this
particular aspect it is called suggestion; and suggestion is a reality
which is as indisputable as a mathematical formula—as two and two make
four, for instance. By means of suggestion, auras have been seen at an
incredible distance from the body, if not separated from it altogether,
for that would involve death at least ... almost to forget the body.”

And after uttering these last words in tones of rapt excitement which
utterly overwhelmed me, she became once more plunged in thought.

What was she thinking about? What was she thinking about?

I sank into a chair and as I gazed at her a sense of hopelessness came
over me. I saw her in profile as she stood erect facing the infernal
picture. The light wrap which covered her shoulders had slipped off,
and I beheld her bare young throat, the adorable outline of her arm
as it hung with infinite grace by her side. My feeling of dejection
gradually gave way to an admiration which longed to find expression.

I drew myself up cautiously and stole towards her like a thief; and I
closed my arms round her to seize her as though I already feared lest
my dear beauteous treasure should be torn away from me.

Taken aback, a slight cry escaped her and she turned round with a
peculiar look in her eyes which I had never beheld in them before, and
stared at me as if she no longer knew me.

“Cordélia, I am your husband and I adore you,” I whispered.

And I pressed my lips to hers, but the terror of it! I met lips which
were as cold as stone, and I had no sooner placed a kiss upon them than
she became a statue in my arms. I was holding to my heart an inanimate
form; a form not devoid of life, but from which life had taken wing
elsewhere.

Cordélia had fallen on my shoulders in a cataleptic-like sleep. I
called to her. I used the most endearing words. I implored her to speak
to me. She did not hear me. So far from returning my kisses she was
unconscious of them.

“Cordélia! Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!” I cried. “Where are you? Where
are you?”

At last, after laying her on the sofa in her deadly immobility, I began
to shout and summon assistance like a madman.




                               CHAPTER VII

                            AFTER THE WEDDING


Mathilde and Surdon came hurrying into the room and were not less
terrified than I was to discover Cordélia in this statue-like
condition. The only thing which we could be certain about was that she
was not dead. I cannot remember all that we attempted, Mathilde and
I, to “bring her back to her senses,” while Surdon went to fetch the
nearest doctor.

We carried Cordélia in her state of insensibility on to the balcony. We
brought her back again. We tried the effects of cold and heat in turn.
We placed hot bricks to her feet and cold compresses to her forehead.
What alarmed us more than anything else was the complete rigidity in
which she lay in our arms, and nothing that we could do succeeded in
relaxing the tension.

I employed a phrase just now with the full meaning of which I
was unacquainted. I said that Cordélia fell on my shoulder in a
cataleptic-like sleep. That was true, but I more or less learned for
the first time the meaning of catalepsy from the village doctor whom
Surdon brought back.

And even then I failed to grasp the significance of what he was saying
except that Cordélia was suffering from a nervous malady which had
reached the critical point, and must have been brought about by great
mental and physical strain and the unwonted excitement of a wedding
day. He did not tell us anything new from this point of view, for it
was in this sense that we regarded her illness. To what other cause
could we, in our ignorance, attribute it save to excitement and fatigue?

Unfortunately this blockhead of a doctor proved his inability to awaken
Cordélia. After blowing on her eyes without effect he seemed greatly
perplexed. He knew more about it than we did, perhaps, but he was as
powerless as we were. To our stormings and complaints he could but
reply: “She will wake up of her own accord just as she fell asleep.”
And he counseled me to have patience.

Have patience!... He was the limit!... I asked him in a voice strained
with anxiety, how long this torpor could last. His only answer was to
shake his head. He exasperated me.

“But, look here, will it last one hour—two hours?”

“One can never tell.... One can never tell.”

“Still it can’t go on for a couple of days, I suppose?” I cried,
incensed.

“Well, there have been such cases, but generally speaking....”

I could have struck him. And yet he was a worthy man who strove to
comfort me, to persuade me that the case was not very serious, to lead
me to hope that we were confronted with a phenomenon which, if due
precautions were taken, might not recur, and, moreover, would yield to
treatment. And at the finish he recommended me to consult a specialist
in nervous diseases. Having said so much, he gave me the slip.

I at once sent Surdon in the car to Rouen, whence he was to bring back
Dr. Thurel, celebrated in the district for certain unusual cures which
bordered on the miraculous.

I turned Mathilde out of the room, for since the doctor’s remedies
and her own nostrums were of no avail, she imagined that we were the
victims of the devil, and she wearied me with her lamentations and
exorcisms. I had the utmost difficulty in preventing her from going for
the priest. What a honeymoon!

Left alone before the sofa on which Cordélia’s statue-like form lay, I
felt less affected by the pitiable spectacle of my beloved than by a
sort of almost childish frenzy against the fate which had played this
trick upon me. Heaven knows I deserved to be pitied! To have waited
so long for this day and to pass it with a woman who had been turned
to stone! By what fatality had Cordélia fallen asleep at the very
moment when she was in my arms? It was indeed, to use my uncle’s words,
“utterly silly.”

In my intense selfishness, knowing now that Cordélia’s life was in no
danger, I mourned rather for myself than for her. I was, so I thought,
the victim.... Thus many men when they are balked of something on which
they have set their hearts, or when the object of their desire escapes
them, act like brutes. I am ashamed when I think of myself cursing
Heaven in this room in which Cordélia and I were “at last alone.” I
am bound to say, however, in my own favor, that by degrees this blind
resentment which arose in me against things in general, gave way to a
feeling of great compassion and sorrow for the beloved being who still
slept.

As the hours slipped away I was oppressed by an ever-increasing
anguish. Now I kept watch over Cordélia as though she were dead,
and I bowed in wonder before this great mystery, which was not less
terrifying than the mystery of death itself. Poor, poor, poor Cordélia!




                              CHAPTER VIII

                               DR. THUREL


The day was beginning to dawn when Surdon returned with Dr. Thurel.

He had to seek the famous doctor at an official function. Not that he
had, however, to drag him away by main force. The story which he told,
straightway induced the doctor to leave, and he did not even take the
trouble to return to his house and change his clothes.

I shall always remember his arrival in the wan light of day with his
white shirt-front, his long, pallid face, his colorless eyes whose
expression of deep thought it was impossible to forget when once you
had encountered it.

From that day the image of Dr. Thurel has lingered in my memory. He
brought with him so much that was new to me as I stood struggling on
the threshold of this mysterious drama, and shed so much light on it.
True, I was not at first dazzled, but I was at once “stirred” by the
depths of my ignorance.

While the facts themselves had merely aroused my wrath without making
any impression on my mind, he was able in a few words to reveal a new
world to me. He was a man who was constantly saying the most astounding
things and yet they were always impregnated with good sense. One felt
compelled to understand the meaning and to believe in him unless one
wished to be taken for a fool.

He gazed at Cordélia for some time, used the stethoscope, drew himself
up and said:

“This is not exactly a case of catalepsy. It is what is called hypnotic
sleep with muscular rigidity. Have no fear. We shall get the better of
it.”

Thereupon he bent over her, blew on her eyes and made some curious
gestures, but obtained no greater success than his country colleague.
Nevertheless after each futile experiment he seemed quite satisfied.

“That must be it. That must be it. Of course,” he muttered.

Strange to say, whatever he did, and even the fact that his efforts
were of no avail inspired me with perfect confidence. I felt sure
that, thanks to him, we should soon be out of our misery.

He requested me to step into the boudoir and questioned me at great
length. He told me that, on the way, he had drawn out the servant, and
the man had acquainted him of his mistress’s peculiar mental condition
a few months before our marriage. He begged me to confide everything
to him without reserve, and regard him not only as a doctor, but as a
father confessor.

Then I recounted the story of the English painter and the portrait and
the various incidents relating to it, and how Cordélia had complained
of being “as cold as the portrait.”

He asked to be allowed to see the canvas, and after examining it,
observed:

“All the trouble comes from this picture. There is no doubt about that.
Your wife, monsieur, is under the influence of this man Patrick, but we
will rid her of it, you may be certain.”

“But she hasn’t seen the man Patrick for several months.”

“Very likely, but then there is the portrait. Patrick can do a great
deal through the instrumentality of this portrait. He has renewed the
link with her through it.”

After that he told me facts about the externalization of sensibility
compared with which Cordélia’s remarks were so much child’s play, and
told them so simply and accompanied them by such logical explanations
that they no longer astounded me.

There could be no doubt that Dr. Thurel possessed the gift of
persuasion.

“So my wife’s sensibility was really in the portrait?” I said.

“Yes, to some extent. The body may be in one place and its sensibility
in another. A clairvoyant’s body, for instance, does not move, but his
individual vision is at the spot which he is describing. In like manner
your wife’s sensibility was transmitted to the portrait by means of
thought.”

“By means of thought?”

“Her thought yielded to that of another person. But her sensibility was
there, for thought holding absolute command over sensibility is able
to produce on it the desired effect.... Dr. Charcot, the master of us
all, made an experiment in this regard by applying a sheet of paper to
the epidermis of a patient whom he had hypnotized, and indicated by
suggestion that he had employed a blistering plaster. At once the usual
effects of a blistering plaster were apparent, such as the swelling of
the skin and so forth. I am quoting this experiment because it is the
most typical case, and you will see for yourself the conclusion that
may be drawn from it.”

Suddenly he stopped, looked steadily at the portrait which had been
left in the boudoir. Like every one else, he was enraptured by it. He
lifted it and blew upon it.... He blew sharply upon the eyes.

Then he replaced it in its position and walked on tiptoe towards the
next room, the door of which had been left ajar, making a sign to me to
remain where I stood. He looked into the room. Almost at once he turned
around with the light of victory shining on his face.

He came back to me still walking on tiptoe.

“She’s waking up,” he said in an undertone. “Don’t say anything of all
this to her. Pretend to think that she’s been in a natural sleep. I can
do nothing more here for some hours. I shall go and have a rest. Never
mind about me. Look after her. I must tell you this: If you kiss her,
kiss her as a brother.”

“What do you mean—as a brother?”

“Well, be kind and gentle to her as a brother. I assure you....”

But I did not wait to hear more. Already I stood in the doorway.
Cordélia’s eyes were wide open and she seemed to be looking for me. And
yet when her eyes alighted on me there was a look of astonishment in
them as if she had not expected to see me there.

“Hullo, there you are,” she breathed. “Where are we now?”

“Why, at home, my dear Cordélia.”

I saw her cheeks flush, her eyes smile, her lips bloom again.

“Oh yes, of course,” she returned. “Oh my dear Hector, what a lovely
night! But why didn’t you go to bed when you came in? You haven’t
caught cold? There was a cool breeze by the riverside. What a couple
of sillies we are? Who would have thought of a honeymoon in the
moonlight? Well, what did I tell you about my park? Can you imagine a
more beautiful bridal chamber?”

I listened to her incomprehensible chatter with a feeling of
consternation. Her first words: “What a lovely night!” struck a pang at
my heart. It was indeed a lovely night! And what did she mean by her
“beautiful bridal chamber?” And why, as she spoke, did she look round
as if she beheld our room for the first time? From what sort of dream
had she awakened? I had no opportunity to put these questions to her.
Her head drooped again on the pillow, her eyes closed, and this time
she fell into a calm, natural sleep. A soft regular breathing escaped
from her lips, and she wore a smile which ought to have delighted, but
which perturbed me. For, after all, what was she smiling at? I was
afraid in my dazed condition to ask myself _whom_ was she smiling at.
She had awakened out of her first torpor but to fall into another,
without giving me time to kiss her even as a brother. What was this
walk along the riverside? What was this bridal chamber of which I
knew nothing? I was once more alone, alone with her, and I could not
restrain my tears, while she continued to smile in her sleep. It was
more than I could bear.

And so the hours went by. At last it was morning.

I set my forehead against the window-pane and watched as in a sort of
dream the life of the country outside awakening around me. For that
matter the entire episode seemed to me a dream, an optical illusion.

Was the night through which I had just passed, this incredible wedding
night, a reality? Had I indeed emerged from it and were my eyes now
looking out upon everyday things? Were not those carts which rolled
along the roads, phantom carts? I was in the last stage of exhaustion,
and yet I was conscious that it would be impossible for me to seek
forgetfulness in the sleep which was essential to my physical and
mental health. My suffering mind was never more restless.

And my thoughts were revolving, endlessly revolving, round the
extraordinary language uttered by Cordélia in the interval between the
two sleeps. “Why didn’t you go to bed when you came in?” Well, I said
to myself with a feeling of dull resentment against my wavering and
insensate imagination, well, what is there in all this to cause so much
painful excitement. Cordélia dreamt that she was wandering with you in
the park during the night. Why make such a fuss about it?

Of course, of course. I wished Dr. Thurel was awake. I longed to talk
to him. I longed to talk to him.

He had been given a room in the left wing of the château. From where I
stood I could perceive the windows with their closed wooden shutters.
Truth to tell, I stared at nothing else.

Cordélia on the bed behind me was sleeping her peaceful sleep and
still smiling. I turned away from her. No, and again no! I failed to
understand how she could smile, even in her sleep, when I was so much
to be pitied.

And then I saw the shutters in the doctor’s room being opened. I
slipped out of the room. I crossed the courtyard. I knocked at his
door.

“It’s I, Doctor.”

“Well?” he questioned as I entered.

“Well, she is still asleep. She is sleeping in the most peaceful manner
as if nothing had happened.”

“That was to be expected, and all is for the best.”

“She said a few things before she fell asleep.”

“What did she say? Tell me what she said.”

I repeated her words, and observing that the doctor was in deep
thought, added:

“Apparently she was recalling a dream that she had when she was in her
trance.”

“A dream! You think it was a dream? It may have been. But....”

“But what?”

“Why, there’s another theory which the undoubted fact that your wife
was under the influence of suggestion renders quite plausible.”

“What theory?”

“Well, we are plainly confronted with the phenomenon which we call the
externalization....”

“I know, I know.... The externalization of sensibility.”

“One moment. The phenomenon of the externalization of sensibility finds
its counterpart here in another phenomenon: the externalization of
motive power.”

“What then?”

“Why then her active individuality, her vital force, her aura, as the
magicians call it, might really have left her last night, and taken
that walk, and it would have been no dream.”

“It’s amazing.”

“Not at all.”

“Still, if she actually left us, how do you account for her talk about
having a walk with me? I personally did not leave here either in body
or mind.”

“I have already explained,” returned the doctor, “that we are not
dealing in this case”—these were his own words “in this case” spoken
with the composure of an expert which did but increase my agitation—“we
are not dealing with a cataleptic condition, properly so called, for,
in that event, she would not have remembered what she had been doing,
but of a rigid hypnotic condition from which the subject sometimes
awakes with vague recollections.... Here obviously there were vague
recollections.”

“You mean,” I exclaimed, “that she thinks she remembers going out with
me, but that, in reality, to use your own language, she went for a walk
with another person. It’s ridiculous ... utterly ridiculous.”

“Or she went alone.... Calm yourself.”

It was all very well for him to say, “Calm yourself.” I refused to be
pacified.

“All this, Doctor, seems to me appalling. You don’t mean to say that a
person can do such things while the body is asleep, and not dream of
them?”

“My dear fellow, have you still to learn that an ignorant person in a
condition of somnambulism can become a scholar, can spend his nights
furnishing his polygon with multifarious learning, and even acquire
foreign languages? That is what can be done while one is asleep.”

“What do you mean by his polygon?”

“We will deal with that another time, young man. It would lead us too
far from the subject we are discussing.”

“Meanwhile there is one thing that I do understand,” I returned. “My
wife is suffering from some terrible mental disorder.”

“But, my dear fellow, there is no reason to lose hope,” returned the
doctor in a confident voice. “An illness of the mind can be cured by
the mind. Have confidence in my treatment, and take me to your wife.”

Cordélia had just risen. I found her clad in a kimono, her hair falling
loosely over her shoulders, standing in front of the glass making
faces. As soon as she saw me she threw herself into my arms and cried
in a mocking voice:

“Oh, my poor husband!”

Then all of a sudden she asked:

“Who is in the next room?”

No movement of any kind could be heard. Dr. Thurel had seated himself
in the boudoir without a sound, and I had closed the door behind me. I
was so greatly surprised that I made no answer.

“Is it one of your friends?” she asked. “Why don’t you introduce him to
me?”

She forgot the place and her incomplete toilette—everything. She made
for the door with a firm tread, opened it softly, caught sight of
the strange-looking old gentleman in evening dress, seemed in no way
disconcerted, smiled, and went up to him with outstretched hand.

“This is Dr. Thurel,” I said. “He is, in fact, a friend—one of my best
and most reliable friends.”

“Indeed, I have often heard of you,” she returned. “Oh, doctor, how
pleased I am to meet you.”

She sat down beside him. He still held her hand. And now he kept his
eyes fixed on hers, and her gaze seemed riveted on him.

“Leave us,” he whispered peremptorily, “I want to talk to her.”

I left them together, and I descended into the garden, impelled by an
irritability which made my teeth chatter.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ten minutes elapsed, which seemed so long drawn out that I could have
shouted aloud. At length Dr. Thurel appeared. He was beaming.

“Cheer up,” said the old gentleman, “I think I have rid her mind of
any thought of the other person. All the same he had exerted a magical
power of attraction over her. Good-bye, my dear fellow.”

“If that is so,” I cried excitedly, “how shall I ever be able to
express my gratitude to you?”

“Stuff! Look here, give me the portrait. I will place it in my private
collection.”

I gave him the portrait and, Heaven only knows, with a glad heart!




                               CHAPTER IX

                     I DISCOVER A CHANGE IN CORDÉLIA


I must admit that, at first, I thought I should have but to rejoice,
for as the worthy doctor had led me to anticipate, Cordélia displayed,
after his departure, a perfectly free and normal mind.

It was as though nothing out of the way had happened. When she came
downstairs clad in a gossamer robe, and clung to my arm with a
grace and trustfulness which enchanted me, old Surdon and Mathilde
complimented her on her appearance, and conveyed to me by certain signs
that all was as well as well could be.

Surdon wanted to saddle Thunder and Monarch, or to get out the gig so
that we might go for a long drive before lunch, but Cordélia would
not hear of it. She expressed a wish to stroll through the fields, to
wander on my arm along the country lanes.

“We don’t want to ride or drive to-day,” she said, leading me away and
gently pressing my hand. “We don’t need anything or anybody. Let us
think only of ourselves. I have so many things to say to you now that I
am your wife.”

These last words were spoken in a serious and intense voice which I
failed to recognize; and I could not help giving a start when I looked
at her.

As she uttered them, she lifted her eyes to me and they seemed to
contain an expression which, like her voice, was new to me. I read
in them, beyond the shadow of a doubt, an emotional tenderness and
gratitude which startled me without my knowing exactly why. At all
events, I could not at the moment analyze what was passing within me.
But one thing was certain: I felt distinctly uneasy. I fully expected,
indeed, to see a look in my dear Cordélia’s eyes like that one day; to
see this impulse, this quivering emotion of thankfulness towards the
man who had become everything to her, but I did not expect to see that
look after the dreadful time through which we had just passed.

In a word, I was unspeakably surprised. Our walk, our conversation at
lunch, the sweet surrender with which, leaning upon my shoulder, she
confided to me her plans for the future—all this did nothing to remove
from my mind the curious impression that I was confronted with a new
Cordélia who was no longer the young girl of the day before. I turned
pale at the thought of it.

She noticed it and in her turn betrayed a certain anxiety at my
agitation.

“But dearest what is the matter? Are you not feeling well? You don’t
say anything.”

I kissed her hair and whispered tritely:

“I love you.”

My heart was pounding as though it would burst. She could hear it.

“I really believe that you do love me,” she said, “and, besides, your
heart tells me so. Listen to my heart which will tell you, too, how it
loves you.”

She took my head between her two little hands, and placed it on her
young, heaving bosom with the quiet gesture of a woman who is giving
herself up to the husband to whom she belongs.

I was speechless.

She went on as she stroked my hair:

“What a night! What a beautiful night! Oh how well you understand me!
You are wonderful, my Hector.”

I am unable to say whether I really seemed wonderful to her, but I drew
myself up roughly. My face underwent a fierce contortion. She looked at
me with disquiet.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.... Nothing. It’s over—a slight attack of neuralgia.”

“Ah my love, you are tired. You had no sleep.”

“Yes, you’re right. I had no sleep.”

“You ought to have gone to bed. I told you so when we came back from
our walk in the park.”

“Ah yes.... Our walk in the park.... Of course, of course.”

“But what is the matter with you?”

“Nothing I tell you.... A slight headache.”

“Well, be sensible. You must go to bed, dearest.”

I had to give way. She came with me to the door of my room. I let
myself be led by her little hands. Strange to say I made no effort to
keep her. She left the room, and I threw myself on the bed as an animal
lies down. And soon, in order to cease thinking about things which
seemed either appalling or ridiculous, I fell asleep.

The light was waning when I woke up feeling greatly refreshed. I have
always been able to sleep soundly. A shower bath helped to restore my
self-possession. My uncle had returned during my nap. He had come from
Caen, and was leaving that same evening for Paris. I discovered from
his first words that he knew nothing of the incidents of the previous
night. Surdon and Mathilde, perceiving that “all was well as well could
be,” had not considered it necessary to enlighten him. I could not but
approve of their discretion.

My uncle had been for a short walk with Cordélia, and when she
returned her face was beaming with happiness.

“Have you had a good sleep, dearest?” she asked as she threw herself
into my arms. “Has that awful headache gone?”

I kissed her ardently in return.

My uncle wore a smile as he contemplated the pleasant spectacle. He
endeavored to take me aside to express his gratification.

“Well, what did I say? There you are, the happiest of men and she is
the happiest of women. She told me so. I congratulate you—you rascal!”

I could have struck him. I could have struck him. He gave me no
opportunity. He embraced us and went off muttering repeatedly:

“What a handsome couple they make!”




                                CHAPTER X

                            THE SECOND NIGHT


I have taken particular care to trace in detail the various stages
of this extraordinary story in order that the reader who would fain
judge us, notwithstanding the jury’s verdict, may know as much about
the facts as I do, and be in a position to fix the responsibility
definitely as between me and the man who was the greatest thief
that ever lived. If the reader will follow me step by step he will
understand me, and it will be open to any candid person of average
intelligence to measure the extent of the calamity which befell me.

I now come to the second night, which will throw a light upon the
events which occurred at Vascoeuil and those which were to follow;
a light which others may regard as supernatural, but which I am
compelled, unfortunately, to proclaim as entirely natural after what I
know and saw with my own eyes.

At least that is what I maintain to-day, but considering that I was
sailing on an unknown sea, it will be realized how far I had to go
before I recognized the truth.

Cordélia wished to wind up the day, as on the previous evening, by a
little homely supper in her boudoir, and, to be sure, I should have
been the last person to think of raising any objection. Anything that
could bring me closer to her gave me the constantly renewed hope that I
might succeed in driving away, once for all, the delusions which kept
us apart. I use the word delusions advisedly, because that is how I
regarded the matter on that second evening when I sat down beside her
at dinner.

And how could it have been otherwise? How could I fail to cling to
this word when I take into consideration the abyss over which my
poor distracted mind hung suspended for a moment in the course of
this startling day. Just think. Remember the altogether unforeseen
attitude of a Cordélia filled with gratitude and affection. Delusions!
Delusions! I appealed to you, O delusions, in defense of her, and, as
the lesser of my enemies, to her unhealthy imagination, at once ardent
and poetic—for the whole thing was but the aberration of a highly
sensitive mind. I tried to convince myself of it.

And thus I no longer wished to remember anything but Dr. Thurel’s
reassuring words: “I have rid her mind of any thought of the other
person. She is cured.”

Upon my word, when I think of her as I beheld her on that second
evening seated at our little domestic fête, helping me as though I were
a spoiled child, anticipating my every wish, stirring the fire lest I
should catch cold, assuming the superior and tyrannical graces of a
nurse which caused us to burst out laughing, I cannot but cry: “There
she was as God made her, and as He gave her to me—my dear, dear, dear
Cordélia!”

Before she met the thief, she was sweet and fresh and girlish and
perfectly natural, slightly inclined to be mischievous and self-willed,
but born to make a husband happy who would have made her happy. And,
take it from me, it is not necessary to be clever or brilliant to make
a woman happy. It is a question of being an ordinarily decent man; at
least I still think so, and I have yet to meet the person who can prove
the contrary. I know what I mean. One must also be in love with her.
Who ever loved her more than I did? And did she love any one more than
she loved me? Did she love the thief? Lord above, let those persons who
know everything tell me if the dove which is transfixed in its flight
loves the hawk whom it encounters on its way from the nest....

But let us return to our little supper.

I forget on what subject Cordélia was good-humoredly making fun of me.
I have always possessed an equable temper. I can allow myself to be
teased without taking offense, just as a pet dog will permit his ears
to be pulled by those to whom he is attached. Thus Cordélia could throw
herself into the game to her heart’s content.

But suddenly I sprang to my feet with a look of ferocity on my face,
a very excellent look of ferocity, and walked up to her, grinding
my teeth, as if I had sworn to gobble her up alive. She started to
run round the table, laughing boisterously. I for my part, while I
continued to give chase, strove to keep my countenance and to assume a
more ferocious air than ever. At length she pretended to be frightened
as I was pretending to be in a rage; and when I mention that in our
race round the room the light wrap which she wore rose higher, caught
on to a piece of furniture and even became torn, revealing a glimpse of
some new loveliness, it will be gathered that the game had become an
extremely attractive one; so much so that I thought the best thing I
could do was to finish it by capturing the fugitive and holding her in
my arms.

She had taken refuge in a recess of the window, and it was there that I
dived after her. I caught her, but straightway I was impressed by the
fact that she had stopped laughing. I lowered my eyes to her face, but
it was no longer the face of a young girl. She gazed at me with a look
of grave distress yet, I must say, full of love. I felt her young heart
beat against mine. I held her closer, calling her the most endearing
names.

“Oh dearest,” she breathed. “Have you seen the park? Look at the park.
How beautiful it is!”

She was not now looking at me. Her eyes were turned to the park
which gleamed ghost-like in the moonlight. The night was a dream of
brightness and opalescent light. The tall trees whose leaves had
already fallen, stood erect like huge silver chandeliers, their
wondrous shadows lengthened, as though by the brush of an artist, on
the luminous grassy slopes and gravel paths. In the distance the unseen
mystery of the park into which I had never set foot, stirred under the
motionless, effulgent, impassive moon.

I tried to turn Cordélia’s eyes away from the ill-omened sight, and
bring her back to our own interests. She thrust me aside with her
little hands and returned to the window, pressing her forehead against
the pane. I may be asked: “Why did you not compel her to leave the
window and the perilous spectacle of the park in the moonlight?” Let
those who are unable to understand that more power sometimes lies in a
young girl’s little finger than in an elephant’s foot, cease to read
me!

This is the answer that I have to make:

Men of science, or those who call themselves men of science, have
not yet, perhaps, given a name to this “psychic” force, but if they
were to take the trouble to study and weigh its power mathematically,
and dignify it with a Latin or Greek name, there would be less
astonishment, perhaps, that the aura of a marriageable girl yielded
to the suggestion of a sham-necromancer than to realize that a
mass of flesh and blood weighing about thirteen stone, for that is
approximately my figure, could offer no more resistance to the little
hand of the maid in question than could the sigh of a new-born babe.
Indeed, here we have in all its wonder the phenomenon of levitation.
And from what I saw, it is the mind only that has any weight!

                   *       *       *       *       *

I was perhaps lacking in mind that evening. It does not become any
one to reproach me. In life one must do the best one can. And I was
powerless against Cordélia’s determination to remain at the window.
It was then that she visibly lived over again her experiences of the
night before, and as I listened to her, I began to suffer infinite
pain. It will at once be seen why—at least I hope so.

Her hand had furtively sought mine and she drew me beside her in the
shining moonlight. Her head was resting on my shoulder and, seen from
below, we must have borne some resemblance to those saints linked
together on stained-glass windows which adorn and illumine the chancel
of a church. I set down this thought because it occurred to me at
the time, which shows that in my mind’s eye I realized that we were
somewhat absurd, but, through that very fact, it indicates also that I
was absolutely bereft of any power of resistance.

Poor dear Cordélia was able to do anything, anything she pleased with
me!

“Shall we take a stroll in the park as we did yesterday, dearest?”

“Come, Cordélia, I say....”

“Let’s take this path,”—we did not stir from the window—“Let’s go along
by the poplars.”

Here she uttered some curious sentences about the song of the poplars
when the wind whispers among the branches.

“Let’s go by the river side,”—more strange sentences in the form of
stanzas about the floating heart of the water lily and the tiny cradles
of the fairies sailing over the stream. “This is the path which will
lead us to the marriage-chamber.”

“What marriage-chamber?” I could not help asking.

“You know as well as I do, dearest. The chamber which has been prepared
for us, all in gold.”

And thereupon she gave me a description of the marriage-chamber all in
gold. I cannot recount the exact words which Cordélia used in speaking
of this chamber. From that moment onward, indeed, her language seemed
to lose sight of earth and even mundane things, to become a kind of
music befitting the understanding of angels or poets who are never
unduly troubled to discover the significance of unconventional words.
However that might be with the fanciful melody which flowed from my
beloved’s lips, my natural common sense restored the dream-palace in
which, in Cordélia’s imagination, I had been wandering for some time to
its proper proportions. I gathered that this chamber all in gold, was
neither more nor less than a small glade in the wood, shaped like an
arbor, sheltered by lovely trees on whose branches some foliage still
lingered while beneath them, on the earth, lay a rich, dense carpet of
leaves, yellowed by autumn.

The beginning of my cruel experience on this occasion was that
these flights of fancy, which accompanied our promenade in the
golden chamber, were intoned in English. Cordélia and I knew English
perfectly, but we did not speak it when we were together. My pained
surprise reached its culminating point when Cordélia, with the utmost
seriousness, asked me to recite as, it would appear, I had recited in
the golden chamber the night before, a few lines from “Lara” and “The
Corsair.” I must have opened my eyes in dumb amazement, for Cordélia
became more and more importunate:

“Come, come, dearest, don’t wait to be pressed. Don’t waste time. It’s
so fine, so pathetic, so splendid. And then you can wind up with
Childe Harold’s farewell. You know the lines:

    Adieu, adieu! my native shore
    Fades o’er the waters blue:
    *       *       *       *       *
    Come hither, hither, my little page:
    *       *       *       *       *
    My Native Land—Good Night!

“And while you are reciting I will place my head on your shoulder, as I
did yesterday, so as to hear your delightful voice.”

While she was speaking she laid her head on my shoulder, but I raised
it in my trembling hands and forced her to look into my eyes which
doubtless were disturbing to see, for she suddenly grew restless.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“A very simple matter, Cordélia. I have never known by heart a line of
Byron or any other poet, and I have never read ‘Lara,’ ‘The Corsair,’
or ‘Childe Harold.’”

“What do you say?”

“I say that it was not I who was with you in the golden chamber.”

“Be quiet, you poor dear, be quiet.”

“I say that it was not on my shoulder that you laid your head.”

I came to a stop. Her appearance filled me with dismay. Her eyes were
staring at me with a strange light as if she saw me for the first time.

She gasped a dull moan of despair, and a cry escaped her lips like the
cry of a soul at the point of death striving to cleave to earth:

“Save me, Hector, save me!”

She uttered that cry and uttered it to me proving that she belonged to
me, to me alone, and had never belonged to any one but me. The thief
might say what he liked, he was but a thief. It was all very well to
assume an arrogant attitude at the Assize Court; and the world was able
to grasp his meaning when he said that her heart belonged to him. He
had burgled it. The shame of it!

I replied to Cordélia’s poignant cry of “Save me, Hector, save me!”
with a transport of supreme delight. Yes, my love would indubitably
rescue her from those frightful delusions. It would be no difficult
task for my arms to wrench her this time from the accursed window. She
weighed but a feather in my grasp. Her head, with its hair in disarray,
lay adorably on my shoulder. The look of mingled fear and love depicted
on her face immensely stimulated my strength. I really believed that I
was at length able to dominate this frail and quivering anguish, and I
pressed my lips to hers.

And straightway it seemed as if I had killed her, and was kissing a
dead woman ... I held in my arms, as on the night before, a marble
statue.




                               CHAPTER XI

                           THE GOLDEN CHAMBER


I did not now summon any assistance. I was seized with a cold grim fury
of despair which called for no witnesses. I carried Cordélia into the
next room and laid her on the bed, and gazed at her in impotent rage.

I called to mind every word that Dr. Thurel had said in describing the
condition of bodily immobility in which I now beheld her, and I had not
a doubt from what I heard from Cordélia’s own lips that her mind, which
a little before had given animation to that now lifeless form, had left
it for some other place.

What other place? Was it hard to guess? Was she not at the very moment
when she escaped from me making at full flight for the bridal-chamber
of which I knew nothing?—the bridal-chamber to which, it seemed, an
influence that was independent of her will and mine lured her with a
force which I had vainly striven to shatter with a kiss?

Or rather did it not seem that I had but to press Cordélia’s lips with
my own to cause a repetition of the catastrophe of the night before?

I remembered then, in the growing irritation of my mind, Dr. Thurel’s
amazing words: “If you kiss her, kiss her as a brother.” What did that
mean? I shook with horror and the most terrible resentment. Was I to
understand that every time my lips united with Cordélia’s I should
stand in fear of this awful phenomenon and that she would never be
anything to me but a wife of stone?

At the thought that so infernal a suggestion was within the bounds of
possibility, a tremendous wrath made the blood surge in my veins, and I
felt capable of murdering the man who was responsible—the villain who
was making me suffer agonies to say nothing of the hideous ridicule
which would attach to so grotesque a marital position as mine. I was
perfectly aware of that fact also, and I did not fail to derive from it
a capacity for revenge which in the end swept me off my feet.

In any case I could not consent to remain any longer an impassive and
inactive spectator of a scene which offered me but the image of an
inert body; and I made my way in haste towards the spot where I knew
that Cordélia’s mind was wandering in thought with the mind of another
person.

A few minutes later in the dead silence, under the hostile moon which
looked down, perhaps, upon things invisible to my own eyes, I passed
along the line of tall trees which screened the edge of the park into
which I had never entered.

As soon as I had traversed this screen I found myself in a wood so
densely entangled that I was at a loss at first which way to go; and I
began to think of Cordélia’s words when she described it; a forest full
of snares for those who did not know it and hospitable only to lovers
of woods and solitude.

I was certainly no lover of these woods, and in spite of all my
efforts, I did not succeed in ploughing my way through it, and I made
scarcely any progress. The branches laid hold of me on every side and
held me back with their thousand small arms, or transfixed me, by
stealth, with their thorns. The bridal-chamber which lay within its
recesses was well guarded!

Hardly knowing what she did, however, Cordélia had sufficiently
enlightened me. Nevertheless I knew that before she betook herself, in
mind, to the place, she must have visited it more than once in body,
or else, as I imagined like a simpleton, she would not have described
it to me so fully. That was another opinion which I have since been
constrained to abandon.

And yet how did she get through? I suddenly remembered that the
bridal-chamber stood beside the river. Cordélia’s actual words were:

“In the bridal-chamber there is the great mirror of the river set in a
frame of gold and the rays of the moon make the surface of the water
like a silver sheet. You see yourself in it from head to foot. Owing to
this you are never alone. When you think that you are one, you are two,
and when you think that you are two, you are four. You have to keep
your eyes open!”

“If I follow the river’s bank,” I said to myself, “I shall be certain
to reach the bridal-chamber,” and I made for this bank through the
avenue of poplars.

At first I congratulated myself on my idea, and my path for some way
was properly marked out. My pace, however, began to slacken when I
left the poplars behind me; and soon I had considerable obstacles to
surmount in order to follow the stream. Every trace of a path had
disappeared, and I was forced to hold on to the willows to prevent
myself from falling into the water.

The Andelle, at Vascoeuil, is not a very imposing river. It cannot be
used for towing, and its banks are visited only by an occasional angler
who wishes to savor the delights of solitude among the reeds.

Such as it was, it flowed that night with so much quiet grace between
its pleasant banks, reflecting so coquettishly its clumps of reeds and
rushes, like little silvery chignons, in the midst of this wild nature
where all was beauty and delight—the moon smiled strangely at me from
the river—that despite the mortal horror which stirred me, I was
impressed by its charm, and I interrupted my course, for a moment, to
exclaim from my heart “I understand you, O Cordélia!”

What was it that I understood? In truth, was I about to become affected
by it? Was this park, under the moon, so amazing a sight that my mind
would remain for ever impressed, preferring this wild retreat for my
honeymoon, to the luxurious modern nest which I had built at so great a
cost?

Still, let us pull ourselves together.

Besides, where was the bridal-chamber? Suddenly I caught sight of it
in the distance, or rather I half-saw it. It was the sort of rotunda
which, in the light of day or the twilight, would resemble a red-gold
arbor fashioned by the miracle of autumn on the bank of the murmuring
stream.

With infinite caution I drew nearer. I stole through the grass and
sprigs like a Red Indian on the war path. I no longer felt the sting of
thorns. I held my breath.

And all this—all this—in order to take by surprise, two minds which
had made an appointment to meet in a clearing!

I cannot say if the reader realizes the enormity of my proceedings.
For my part, I performed these actions in a manner at once entirely
unconscious and yet entirely natural. It must be understood from this
that I did not apply my reason, but yielded to a spontaneous impulse
which flung me in the wake of Cordélia’s runaway mind; and while I
experienced the influence of Dr. Thurel’s fantastic though scientific
explanations, I acted altogether like an ordinary, deceived husband,
bent on avoiding the least imprudence which might warn the culprits and
prevent me from obtaining the proof of my misfortune.

In what shape would the proof become manifest? I certainly could not
tell, nor did I even ask myself the question, but I so little doubted
that I was about to learn the truth through one of those psychic
phenomena with which Dr. Thurel had crammed my brain, that when at last
I stealthily made my way on all fours into the bridal-chamber, I was
completely bewildered to behold merely an empty space; that is to say
an atmosphere as pure and clear as crystal, pierced by the brilliant
rays of the moon which had transformed the chamber all in gold into a
chamber all in silver!

It was none the less beautiful, but truth to tell, the scene and
the charm of this sylvan bower were just then the least of my
preoccupations. An empty space and silence! I rose from my stooping
posture and stood awhile breathing hard before this void.

An empty space and silence! And perhaps _they_ were there. But I was
unable, with the eyes of the flesh, to see them!

I looked about me in sheer amazement. I walked round creeping between
the shadow of the trees like a shadow myself searching for two shadows!

Suddenly I burst out laughing. I felt that I was committing a monstrous
piece of folly.

But then, if I was acting with such sheer lunacy, why did my laughter
break in the middle? Why did it come to a stop all of a sudden in my
parched throat, when a gleam of light and a slight shade quivered above
an old moss-covered stone bench within the arbor? Why did I go towards
the bench, leaning forward with clenched fists? What did I intend to
do with my big fists, the fists of a heavy-weight boxer? Challenge the
light? Knock out a moonbeam? Oh the irony of it all! Why do some people
see while others are blind? I felt that if I could see I should be less
afraid, for now I was afraid.... Well I was afraid of what I was about
to see, for though I could not yet see, I could hear!




                               CHAPTER XII

                                THE THIEF


I heard a kind of whisper, a kind of soft whisper. It was still some
distance away, but it indubitably came from a human being who was
drawing nearer, but drawing nearer without making any other sound; and
it was this which filled me with affright.

I expected to hear the twigs and dead leaves crack under the feet of
the persons who were coming, but there was nothing, no sound in the
dead silence of the night but this human murmur which seemed to be
wafted on the air not far from me, and was approaching closer and
closer.

I gave no further thought to the stone bench which I had left. The
voice, soft and clear, was growing more and more distinct, so distinct
that I seemed to hear a few words which sent a shiver through me from
head to foot, and made me draw back and conceal myself in the wood.

I withdrew in haste, in great haste, for the voice was drawing still
nearer. It now seemed borne along by the water, and I turned my head
towards the river. A word, a terrible word—I could distinguish only
this one word—reached my ear from the river. It was the one English
word _love_.

I was standing at no great distance from the bank of the river.
Suddenly I saw the reeds bend and the hearts of innumerable
water-lilies on the silver surface of the water give way to a small
skiff which glided to the bank facing the bridal-chamber.

A man was seated in this light skiff and I at once recognized him by
the curious beating of my heart and his strange sad-looking eyes,
eyes like those of a cat, which seemed to light up his pale face.
I recognized him, too, from other details. He was clad in the same
loose clothes, the same sports jacket open at the neck worn by him on
the evening when I encountered him for the first time. And, he was
bare-headed, as on that evening, and his hair was well brushed back,
disclosing the high white forehead which he had pressed against the
garden gate.

My first impulse was to make a rush at him. I had every reason to
settle my account with him once for all. His presence in my park, on
my property, fully entitled me to take the law into my own hands. It
was the finishing touch to his audacity and his felonious love-making.
It explained quite clearly why my poor dear Cordélia was the victim
of these perverse and uncanny influences. Dr. Thurel’s intervention
had been fruitless, because the instigator of the mischief was near
at hand, prowling round us, prowling round _her_. During the last two
days the scoundrel must have remained hidden in this obscure retreat,
or have left it only to approach Cordélia like a thief; to ensnare,
surprise and recapture her by fixing a gaze upon her which would enable
him to overcome her mind, and carry her away with him to his lair.

Alas! Why did I not that very night make an end of the man who had
burgled Cordélia’s heart? For he was there right enough in flesh and
blood; and Heaven knows that I could have made good use of my fists
despite his great eyes, like the eyes of a mournful cat.

Now this is what happened: He dropped his sculls and stood up in the
skiff, and I was about to throw myself on him when I heard him utter
this sentence in English: “My love I am yours with all my heart,” and
then leaning over the boat he went on: “There is nothing I would not do
for you.”

To whom was he speaking, since he was alone in the skiff?

“Come, come, now,” I said to myself, “You know quite well to whom this
man is speaking these soft words of love and their meaning is obvious.
To whom is he saying ‘My love’? No need to look far. She is seated
beside him. He is leaning over her, whispering in her ear words that
she comprehends as well as you do.... _For she is there_! Cannot you
see her? Cannot you see her? And yet you know that she is seated in the
skiff.”

Well, no, I was unable to see her. In truth I did my utmost to see her,
for I was conscious that he saw her, but I did not possess his vision.
Yet there was no doubt that she was there ... I had only to look at
him. And to listen to him.

He affected an attitude as he drew himself up, and then with his airs
and graces sat down beside her. To me he was grotesque, hideous. I
sincerely pitied Cordélia for having to listen to such an unmitigated
bore. At one moment he was spouting poetry to her. What a comedian!

Suddenly he sat down again, leaned on one side and threw out his arm as
though to place it round her waist. It was more than I could bear. I
resolved to put an end to this grim farce, when a new scene riveted me
to the spot. _I could now see her!_

I must explain what I saw and endeavor to make myself understood. I am
setting down the facts for public information and to relieve my mind,
and also to lay bare the terrible truth. Thus I confine myself to what
I saw, and I do not wish any person to go beyond my own interpretation
of my testimony, nor do I wish any person to stop short of it.

I would urge the reader to be not less courageous than I was in
venturing on this startling voyage into the abyss of psychical research
in which the best hope for the future of mankind lies.

Let this terrifying love story serve at least one purpose. Let the
world learn once for all how mortifying it is to remain a heavy-weight,
hermetically closed in a mass of flesh, when faced by the mind which in
its wanderings is unsubstantial and intangible or at least as elusive
as a handful of water.

The man stood up in the skiff, his head still a little on one side and
his arm round a waist which I was unable to see. For I saw him only
in the skiff; saw him making the gesture of a ladies’ man which had
infuriated me. But though I saw but one person in the skiff, I could
distinguish both of them in the mirror of the water.

In the slight swirl caused by the swing of the boat I discerned in the
moonlight the reflection of the pair of them standing up.

Was it an optical illusion? Was it the result of defective vision? Were
my senses playing me false? At the present time, after having gathered
together and placed in compact form my recollections, I am bound to
say: No it was no optical illusion. I saw. I saw. I saw the reflection
of the skiff in the water, and below it, also in the water, Patrick and
Cordélia leaning against one another.

I am convinced of the fact, for though I turned my eyes, after seeing
the double vision on the water, to the boat, to confirm the reality,
and saw only Patrick alone with his arm thrust out and his head a
little on one side, on the other hand, when I looked again at the water
I beheld the double presentment once more.

I lay stress upon these details because they obviously represent a
phenomenon which unites in a peculiarly interesting manner physical
science with psychic science. I offer it as a subject for investigation
to those men of science who are engaged in their laboratories in
endeavoring to probe the secrets of every aspect of Force.

It would seem that my eyes passed through Cordélia’s aura, as it stood
in the atmosphere, without being in the least aware of it, while,
on the other hand, I could perceive the outlines—somewhat faint,
I confess, but unmistakable for all that—by fixing my gaze on that
part of the water which had taken the picture, just as photographic
negatives were taken of pictures of Katie King during the time that
one of the most renowned scientists of the last century was making his
experiments in psychical phenomena—I mean Professor Sir William Crookes.

It will be readily understood that these interesting scientific
considerations, which I set down here by the way, occurred to my mind
subsequently, and that, at the time, I was much more absorbed in the
phenomenon itself than in attempting to discover an explanation of
it. I was unable, unfortunately, to suppress a cry of fury when I
beheld in the mirror of the river the great thief press a kiss upon
my beloved’s forehead. The picture at once vanished, that is to say,
nothing remained on the surface of the water but Patrick’s reflection.
Cordélia’s silhouette had disappeared, while I heard the villain
exclaim: “Remember! Remember!”




                              CHAPTER XIII

              HAPPINESS CONSISTS IN REALITIES NOT IN DREAMS


When I reached the bank, Patrick and the skiff were hidden from view
behind the reeds which had closed in upon him. A few hundred yards
farther on the river made a bend and left the park. I had no hope of
overtaking my man, and after shouting a few offensive remarks at him,
to which he made no response, I returned to the château as quickly as I
could.

I ran and woke up Surdon telling him that the Englishman was in the
park and ordering him to get his gun out. He grasped the situation at
once.

“Don’t kill him if you can help it,” I cried, “but send a few shots
through him so as to make him feel sick of the place.”

“You can rely on me,” replied Surdon, adding: “That explains
everything.”

“Yes, Surdon, it explains everything.”

After that I went up to Cordélia’s room. She had just wakened. I was in
no way surprised.

“Do you know where you’ve been?” I asked, but she could make no reply.
On this occasion she remembered nothing; at all events she did not seem
to remember anything.

I then described what I had just witnessed. Events were taking such a
turn that we should have to face them together if we ever hoped to gain
the mastery over them. And moreover I realized quite clearly that I
should be powerless without Cordélia’s assistance. She was either on my
side or on _his_. If she was with me, she was bound to help me to wage
war on him and I did not doubt her.

I was sure of her. My intervention on the bank was so involuntary that
I had no time to perceive, from the mirror of the river, Cordélia’s
particular attitude towards him, but I was only too firmly convinced,
since Dr. Thurel’s visit, that she was under the spell of prolonged
magnetization, in other words, her astral body was held captive, so
that I could not find fault with her for not spurning the arm which
clasped her waist with too much affection, or for yielding to a kiss
which she was unable to avert.

When she learned of the thief’s audacity in setting foot into our
property and of his being, doubtless, still in the neighborhood, she
threw her arms round my neck and cried:

“Take me away. Take me a long, long way from here. He is capable of
anything. He is capable of keeping me with him for good.”

Dear, dear, dear Cordélia! I did not wait to be asked a second time,
and a hand-bag was soon packed. Moreover I left word for Surdon to join
us in Paris the following day with our luggage; and we went off in the
small car, which I drove myself.

I soon congratulated myself on introducing my beloved to the
distractions of Paris. She was so delighted that she forgot the strain
of the terrible forty-eight hours through which we had passed. She
entered into the spirit of everything. A walk in the Avenue des Acacias
in the Bois de Boulogne helped her to forget the amazing promenade
in the park in the moonlight; at least I preferred to think so. We
lunched at a smart restaurant in the country, and we emerged from it
laughing at the least thing like children carried away by their first
glass of wine.

Cordélia for the first time tried to smoke, and she discovered an
Egyptian brand of cigarettes which she liked so well that she consumed
a goodly number of them. The result was that when we returned to the
Palace Hotel she had to lie down and take a short rest. I left her
in the custody of Surdon. When I went out I could not repress an
exclamation, for I recognized, standing at the hotel entrance, Dr.
Thurel.

He was not less surprised than I was. He at once asked after Cordélia,
and was so greatly interested in my story of what happened on the
second night of my honeymoon, that he took me off with him to his flat.
Here, he got me to repeat the facts in detail, taking notes the while,
and then he said:

“The thing is quite logical. As long as your wife was under the direct
influence of the man who was close by, anything that I was able to do
to release her was bound, of course, to be reduced to naught as soon
as I left you. That is precisely what did happen, but it shows also
that your wife is subject to this influence only when the hypnotizer is
comparatively near. There are patients who are in worse case than she
is,” went on the doctor thoughtfully, “and you certainly must not lose
hope. You did well to bring her away from Vascoeuil. You must travel
about the world. The case will respond to treatment. Everything depends
on you.”

He repeated this last sentence with emphasis, and I could not help
giving vent to my impatience and ill-humor.

“Everything depends on me!” I cried. “That is easy enough to say. But
what influence, if you please, can I exert if every time my lips touch
hers she falls into a trance? You must be fair and admit that I am at
least as much to be pitied as she is.”

“I have advised you to kiss her as a brother.”

“Do you really believe that a brother’s influence will be enough to rid
her of that man?”

“No, I don’t say that, but I believe that it is absolutely necessary,
if you wish to risk a kiss, to remove your wife’s recollection from
that man’s power of suggestion through time and space. Travel about,
and have patience until you both feel yourselves the master of her ‘O’
and have nothing more to fear from her ‘polygon.’”

I held my head in my hands. For the second time this geometrical term
occurred when Dr. Thurel was speaking. What was this “polygon” and what
did he mean by the “O” of which it was incumbent upon me to obtain the
mastery?

The doctor vouchsafed the explanation that these were figures of
psychical speech employed by Dr. Grasset in his work entitled
“Spiritualism in relation to Science” in order to explain fully certain
characteristics. I should like, in my turn, to enable the reader to
understand them as the kindly old gentleman explained them to me. I
should not attempt to do so if it were not that he had the goodness to
lend me certain books to read; so that I might become acquainted with
a science which would prove useful to me in Cordélia’s condition of
mind—books which I strove to assimilate from love of her without her
knowledge.

It would seem, then, that there is a superior psychicism, that is
to say, there are psychic acts which are deliberate and carried out
by the free will of a person, and preceded by thought which Dr.
Grasset symbolizes by the letter O, and an inferior psychicism which
is quasi-automatic and symbolized by the nervous centers which are
connected together in the shape of a polygon.

This polygon must be regarded either in its physiological
condition—absent-mindedness, sleep, dreams—or its extra-physical
condition—artificially induced hypnotism—or its pathological
condition—somnambulism, ambulatory automatism and so forth.

When the O is no longer concerned with the polygon, the latter
does more or less what it pleases, and thus one can do with it
almost what one wills. For this reason it suffices for the O to
be absent-minded—for instance I am thinking of one thing while I
continue with my polygon to pour from a jug into a glass which is
already full—and it suffices also for the mind of another to take
possession for the time being of the O. In that case the polygon can be
transmitted to a remote distance.

All this seemed to me as clear as noonday, so lucidly did the doctor
explain it, and I exclaimed:

“You can rely on me, Doctor. I will keep a watch over Cordélia’s
polygon! And it won’t be my fault if it slips away from me!”

“Meanwhile take the train,” returned the worthy doctor. “And be quick
about it. You might possibly meet that man here as you met me. This
Palace Hotel is not a place where one can prevent one’s self from being
seen. And besides, no city in the world is so small as Paris!”

I hastened to the station and inquired about sleeping-cars, and that
same evening we caught the train for Rome. We took Surdon with us.

When two days later we beheld the walls of Servius Tullius, Cordélia
uttered shouts of joy. On alighting from the train she had a mind to
make for the Forum, but by hurrying her a little I soon managed—the
thing was to acquire some influence over her—to make her forget for
the time being all those old things, and give her a taste of more
modern pleasures such as are found in the thorough comfort of the best
hotel in Rome. We lunched in the Italian manner at the Castello di
Constantino, where we were served on the terrace from which the eye
took in a landscape of rare loveliness, though it was somewhat marred
by the sight of ruins which are supposed to be impressive but which,
for my part, I have always found tedious.

We had, however, to visit some of the ancient monuments. The Colosseum
greatly attracted Cordélia, who told me mournful stories about the
martyrdom of the early Christians. I hastened to take her away to less
dismal scenes. A promenade at the fashionable hour in the gardens of
Pincio, iced-drinks in a café in the Corso, and in the evening, after
dinner, the tarantella danced by pretty girls in the grand hall of the
hotel, threw us into the vortex of life in Rome.

Cordélia took an immense pleasure in these elegant displays of Italian
manners. I was myself greatly stirred to see her eyes shining with
happiness. She never seemed to me more beautiful. When we returned to
our rooms I held her close and told her so, but I acted cautiously,
and at the same time with a feeling of great anxiety. Had I become
sufficient master of her O to be no longer in fear of the whims of her
polygon? The thought that if I kissed her she might at once fall into
a trance, in my arms, brought beads of perspiration trickling down my
forehead.

“Good gracious, how hot you are, Hector!” she cried as with an adorable
gesture she wiped my forehead with her handkerchief.

I no longer knew what I was doing. Her lips smiled at me. The fragrance
that clung to her carried me away, and, in truth, I forgot all my good
resolutions and kissed her passionately.

Marvel of marvels, she did not fall into a sleep!




                               CHAPTER XIV

                               HAPPY DAYS


Dear, dear, dear Cordélia! What splendid weeks were ours and how
completely we forgot the doleful Patrick! I am bound to say that I
neglected nothing to bring about this result. I proceeded to overwhelm
my Cordélia with every attention that a husband in love could offer to
his young wife in order to divert her thoughts.

Entertainment followed entertainment, and I wanted my beloved to be the
best-dressed and the most beautiful woman of them all. We made a few
acquaintances. By the good offices of a Secretary to an Embassy who was
a friend of mine, the most exclusive drawing-rooms were open to us, and
Cordélia was the queen of them. She no longer worried me about visits
to ancient ruins. I acted in such a way that her whole time was taken
up by our life of amusement. The museums were forgotten. I had very
good reason to be suspicious of pictures!

When she was weary of Rome we set out for Naples where new joys awaited
us. The wonderful bay with its most beautiful seashore was a witness to
our love. We went to Capri Sorrento and Castellammare. The boatmen sang
as they plied their oars. I burned those little works which are called
“guides,” for I had observed that when Cordélia was carrying them with
her wherever she went, she spoke of nothing but the dead, which was
anything but cheerful.

My holocaust spared us many a story about Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and
the rest of them. That was something to the good. We could not, of
course, escape Pompeii, which, however, is not a tiresome promenade.
Always a great concourse of people is wandering about the ruins;
tourists dressed in such a way that one feels inclined to laugh, and
they alone are worth the trouble....

Dear, dear, dear Cordélia! She was all mine in those happy hours when
we thought only of rejoicing at the beauty of the day, and of our
love, without concerning ourselves with what had existed before our
time and would exist after we were gone. Was not that the essential
condition of happiness? We must not let ourselves give way to too much
thought. No, no, we must not let ourselves think too much.

Observe how happy we had both become since we began to think as
little as possible. In point of fact, though we were always together,
facing each other, we had no occasion to ask the question: “What are
you thinking of?” It is during fits of abstraction, when the mind is
preoccupied, that the “polygon” is up to its tricks. The best method of
preventing one’s thoughts from wandering is to refuse to think at all.
I know what I am talking about.

But the mind must be occupied. After Naples we retraced our steps to
Florence, and finally we reached Venice which I had reserved for the
last. A disastrous town! But let us not anticipate events.




                               CHAPTER XV

         IN WHICH MY ANXIETY ABOUT CORDÉLIA’S POLYGON IS REVIVED


Surdon had engaged a suite of rooms for us at the Hotel Danieli on
the Riva degli Schiavoni. It was in this hotel, it seems, that Alfred
de Musset fell ill and learned the treachery of his lady love, George
Sand. Cordélia heard the story of this lamentable event on the second
day after our arrival, and it seemed unduly to depress her. I hated the
bungler and his story and wanted to leave the hotel. But Cordélia had
taken a fancy to it, and I had to give way to her.

One day I found her with a book in her hand. It was de Musset’s
correspondence with this George Sand. I read a few lines and threw the
book out of the window, went over to my beloved and embraced her, and
told her that it was a crime to spoil our perfect happiness by opening
the door to disagreeable thoughts about two persons who did not know
how to love.

Was I not right?

“Oh, my dear, now you are preventing me from reading,” she made answer.
“Think, Hector, you have already refused to let me visit the museums.”

“Heaven forbid, Cordélia, that I should refuse you anything whatever,”
I exclaimed. “I am your slave as you know. If you are really keen on
seeing some pictures, we’ll go this afternoon to your museum. Would you
like me to countermand our trip to the Lido?”

“That would be too much,” she returned, smiling. “We’ll go to the Lido
for dinner and supper. All the same I shall be glad if you will show a
little more eagerness to see the ‘wonders of art.’”

“Lord above, what string are you harping on now?” I exclaimed. “Did we
not go, as was proper to the Doge’s Palace and see the dungeon in which
Marino Faliero was imprisoned?”

“Oh, Hector, it amused you to slip our cards into the secret letter-box
which was used at one time for anonymous accusations to the Council of
Ten. And you call that seeing the ‘wonders of art!’”

“Yes, and I denounced the proprietor of our hotel, accusing him of
trying to poison us! You had a good laugh at the time, you must admit.”

She was not laughing now. What new shadow was passing over her brow?
She seemed carried away by a depression of spirits which rendered her
more beautiful still, but which filled me with alarm, because it was
akin to sadness. And, indeed, her eyes were bedewed with tears. I threw
myself at her feet.

“I have hurt your feelings,” I exclaimed.

“No, let me cry,” she returned in a broken and far away voice. “Tears
that we owe to the emotion caused by beautiful things are sweet tears.
I remember those happy moments when we left our gondola and entered the
church of Santa Maria della Salute. Just think of the lagoon, the grand
canal—all that marvel of walls and towers and opalescent water.”

“A walk in the Salute!” I cried, making no effort to conceal my
amazement. “We were never together in the Salute, dear.”

“Oh you don’t mean it,” she protested. “We went through the church
thoroughly.”

Thereupon she took a great deal of trouble to describe it to me. And
then suddenly, observing my bewilderment, she came to a stop, and
declined to say another word about her visit to the Salute. She went as
red as a cherry; and I left her in a state of profound uneasiness.

I felt the need of being alone to ponder over what had come to pass.
While we were at Venice we had not parted from each other. I left her
sometimes in her room, but I remained in the hotel. She could not,
therefore, have visited the Salute.

I hurriedly made my way there, and I was dumbfounded to discover that
her description of the church was accurate.

I was intensely alarmed, for I could no longer doubt that Cordélia’s
polygon was beginning to play its tricks again. While she was supposed
to be asleep her polygon was wandering about the Salute! I recalled to
mind Dr. Thurel’s words:

“Just as cases are quoted in which the subject discovers in a dream,
memories placed therein without his cognizance by his polygon while
awake—the O being then in a state of abstraction—so there are numerous
instances in which the subject while awake discovers memories placed
therein, without his cognizance, by the polygon which has been at work
while he was asleep—the O being lulled to sleep or under the influence
of suggestion.”

When I landed from the gondola and found myself again on the Riva degli
Schiavoni I could not help exclaiming:

“The misery of it! It’s that confounded polygon again. Still we in
Venice are a long way from Patrick.”

I had no sooner uttered these words than a voice behind me exclaimed:

“You make a mistake, monsieur. Patrick is here!”




                               CHAPTER XVI

                             THE APPOINTMENT


It was Surdon who had spoken. He seemed not less perturbed than I was.
I took him in hand with an excitement which may easily be imagined.

“Patrick here!” I cried. “How do you know that?”

“I’ve seen him.”

“When?”

“This morning.”

“And since this morning couldn’t you....”

“I’ve followed him, monsieur, and I can assure you that I haven’t
wasted my time.”

“Out with it! Tell me what you know. The whole thing is awful.”

“Yes, monsieur, awful.”

“I shall kill him.”

“Of course, that would be the best thing to do, for there’s no question
that he isn’t chasing you.”—The worthy Surdon dared not make any
allusion to “madame”—“This Patrick assumed that you would be passing
through Venice. He’s been expecting you here for the last three weeks.
And since you came here he has pretty well lost his head.”

“Oh, come, he has done that before, Surdon. But tell me everything you
know down to the least detail.”

“Well, it’s like this. I was brushing your clothes this morning when I
happened to put my nose out of a window, and caught sight of a man in
a gondola staring with such persistence at our windows that I stopped
my work. He did not see me. To come to the point—his eyes were fixed on
madame’s room.”

“Was madame out?” I inquired breathlessly.

“No, monsieur, she was getting ready to go out, and you were waiting
for her in the hall. Just then I recognized Patrick, and I continued to
watch his game.”

“Do you know if madame saw him?”

“I don’t know. I can’t be positive. The gondola stopped for a moment,
then having changed its course turned down towards the lagoon. I
rushed out of the hotel just as you were leaving it with madame, and
had the luck to reach the bend of the Riva degli Schiavoni as Patrick’s
gondola rounded the point. I took a gondola and followed him. My
intention was to find out where he was staying. For hours he dragged
me about to impossible and apparently uninteresting places. Finally he
landed at the Grand Hotel where I was told that he had taken a room
with the windows on the ground floor—I mean on a level with the water
of the Grand Canal opposite Santa Maria della Salute.”—At the mention
of this church I gave another start.—“The servant who waits upon him
had no objection to give me certain particulars which, for that matter,
show Patrick as the laughing-stock of the staff at the Grand Hotel....

“It seems, monsieur, that during the last four days he has regularly
shut himself up in his room between five and seven o’clock after
ordering a light meal for two persons to be served on a small round
table.”

“A meal for two persons between five and seven o’clock!” I exclaimed,
feeling a shiver pass through me from head to foot.

“Just so, monsieur. The servant has to lay two places, and the beauty
of it is that no one has ever seen our man enter his room with another
person, while he is always seen to come out alone. And yet this
servant hasn’t the least doubt that two persons sit down to this small
round table and partake of the meal which has been served. It’s a
mystery which amuses every one, though Patrick doesn’t appear to be
aware of it, for he never speaks to a soul. He is generally looked
upon as eccentric and even slightly mad. Most sensible people are of
opinion that he is playing a part with himself and living upon past
recollections.... Good Lord, how pale you are! Perhaps I made a mistake
to tell you all this. It would have been better to keep it from you
that he was here.”

“No, Surdon, you were quite right. You are a sharp and faithful
servant. But, tell me, when did you leave the Grand Hotel?”

“Just now, monsieur.”

“What about Patrick?”

“I left him shut up in his room as usual at this time.”

I looked at my watch which shook in my hand.

“That’s true,” I said. “This is the hour for his meal. Wait for me in
this gondola, Surdon. I shall be back soon.”

I hastened to the hotel in a state of agitation which bordered on
frenzy. I was unnerved, be it understood, less by the evidence which
Surdon brought me of Patrick’s renewed efforts to secure control of
Cordélia’s O, than by the apparent willingness with which my beloved
consented to allow her polygon to be influenced by this most dangerous
of tempters. The mere thought of it made me shake with fever, but could
I doubt the truth when I recalled what had passed that very day between
Cordélia and me? She had spoken in the most natural terms of her visit
to the church of Santa Maria della Salute, and then perceiving, from my
look of amazement, that her polygon had chattered too freely, she at
once enjoined it to be silent, blushing to the roots of her hair.

Not long before when she observed something abnormal passing between
us, she threw her arms round my neck and cried: “Save me, Hector, save
me!” but now she seemed to display only a certain embarrassment for
having allowed the secret of a psychic condition to be discovered which
ought to have been kept from me; the secret of another existence which
she considered perhaps that I was unworthy to share, and which, in any
case, no longer gave her a fright seeing that her O, after reflection,
made no such request as: “Take me away!”

Was it not another who now took her away wherever he wished, if not
with her complete assent—for in my delirium I strove to be just—at
least with very little opposition from her? The pity of it! No, she
made very little resistance, or else she would have warned me and cried
aloud: “He has come back, the thief—the man who stole my love!”

Her O and her polygon were now in league to conceal this ignominy from
me. For after all, the nervous fluid, to use Dr. Thurel’s words, is
not strongly united to the body in certain subjects—and obviously
Cordélia was among these—yet it is impossible to lure it far from
its visible focus, the body, without producing a certain amount of
suffering which in Cordélia’s case formerly caused her to resist, while
now she accepted it. Cordélia was failing me, for she was now accepting
her suffering. It was a dreadful thought, a thought beyond all bearing.

These tragic considerations did not enter my mind, as may be imagined,
only as the result of inferences which I drew from the scene with
Cordélia that morning, but from my memory of various other little
scenes of this kind which had impressed me less, because they were of
less importance, but which now acquired their full significance, and
that, too, from the first hour of our arrival in Venice.

Still, it was the terrible thought that during the last few days she
had asked me to let her take a short rest before dressing for dinner,
that made me mount the stairs four at a time, for the request, perhaps,
concealed a subterfuge intended to keep me away during the great
secret of the polygonal promenade.

Everything that Surdon had told me about Patrick’s curious behavior at
the Grand Hotel at that hour, merely strengthened the infernal idea
which led to my accusing Cordélia of a veritable crime, the crime of
premeditation, whereas it may have been simply a coincidence; but
jealousy invariably goes to extremes and never feels satisfied unless
it has multiplied its torments by some new supposition.

When out of breath I reached our rooms, however, I clung for a while to
a last hope, the hope of discovering Cordélia standing before the glass
putting the finishing touches to her evening toilet; but unfortunately
the door of her room was locked and it was in vain that I shook it with
all my strength.

“Cordélia! Cordélia!” I shouted, but there was no reply. I bent down
and looked through the keyhole, and I saw her lying at full length
on a sofa near the window in the rigid posture which had so greatly
perturbed me at Vascoeuil.

I could not restrain a yell of fury and, clenching my fists and
grinding my teeth, I ran to join Surdon in the gondola.

“As quickly as you can to the Grand Hotel,” I ordered.

The gondola took us there in a few minutes. As we drew near, Surdon
pointed to a window which was lit up on the right of the principal
entrance, for at this time of the year it grew dark early.

“There you are,” he said.

I at once propelled the gondola forward so that we hugged the foot of
the wall and became merged in its shadow. We did not make the least
sound.

When the gondola stopped under the window, I stood up and managed
without difficulty to hold on to a small cornice, resting my elbow on
the stone embrasure of the window. The latter was partly opened. I
could thus both see and hear.

My excitement had reached its height, and I shall not attempt to
describe it. Moreover, it is not difficult to conceive what passed
through my mind from that moment, and the feelings with which I was
stirred by the spectacle which I alone could understand, and from which
I alone was to suffer.

The two covers on the small round table which occupied the center of
the room were close together; the two chairs were side by side. In one
of them Patrick was seated, leaning over the other in an attitude of
sentimental tenderness, while his face, like the face of a mournful
cat, wore an expression of peace, not to say bliss, which made me long
to rush into the room and box his ears. But I restrained myself.

A chandelier which shed a soft light on persons and things stood on
the table. Why do I say “persons”? I observed only Patrick, and as to
Cordélia, I failed to perceive her in spite of my concentrated will
and strained attention. I would have given, at that moment, everything
that I possessed to be able to see with the same facility as Patrick,
who was assuredly caressing the exquisite outlines of Cordélia’s astral
figure.

O those eyes like the eyes of a mournful cat, calm and content, while
I was seething with excitement at the window!

How was it that I had the power to control my impulse?... I wanted to
know more.... And now I listened, for as he stretched out his hand to
take an apple from the fruit-dish and place it on Cordélia’s plate, he
began to speak:

“A union of minds begets sympathy, and from this sympathy is born real
love, compared with which the other is but the blind instrument of
nature in the fulfilment of its essential functions.”

I shall remember that sentence for the rest of my life.

“The bond which unites us, O Cordélia”—he used the words “O Cordélia”
and I felt as if my heart were being pierced with a sword—“the bond
which unites us recognizes no impediment; nothing can restrain it,
nothing can shatter it; it can penetrate walls, traverse space, set
time at defiance. It partakes of the divine essence,” and so on and so
forth.

I could not repeat everything that he said in this strain while peeling
a pear which he shared with her—I mean the half of which he laid on
the plate beside his own.

I must confess that his gestures perplexed me more than his
speechifying. To me it was unendurable that he should lean over the
next chair, and I experienced an uncanny feeling as I saw him lift a
glass of wine to his lips which he had previously placed in space on
his right on a level with a mouth, which had, perhaps also drunk from
it.

“The wretches are drinking out of the same glass,” I muttered between
my teeth. “Don’t mind me!”

I was in such “good training” by the psychic phenomena of which I
had been the victim since my wedding-day, and also by the scientific
explanations to which I had listened, and by that which I still saw,
that nothing could surprise me, and the impossibility for an astral
body to swallow the material substance of a meal did not occur to me
at first. It was not until I had seen for myself that the wine was
entirely drunk by Patrick, and the food on Cordélia’s plate conveyed
in the end to his plate, that I gave up this absurdly fantastic idea,
which shows once more that the mind deflected from its accustomed
groove easily loses all sense of proportion, and is ready to open the
door to every form of self-deception; and my delusion at that cruel
moment when others beside myself might likewise have lost their common
sense, was to believe in the reality of this fallacy—of this farce
which was being played between Patrick and Cordélia’s astral body when
under his influence. The real truth was that they provided themselves
with the vision and delight of a little dinner for two in this room,
but the person who was in fact eating it could only be Patrick.

And as he drank wine for two, which seemed to me to be tokay, he looked
less like a mournful cat, and began to talk nonsense which was not
without a touch of humor.

As it happened he spoke of the material limits which his magnetic power
encountered.

“It is a pity,” he said, “that I cannot attract your body here as I
can attract your sensibility, but that is a miracle, for all we know,
which psychic science, which is still in its infancy, may achieve
in the near future. See what has already been done in the matter of
table turning. The day when those idiots—I am referring to official
experts—cease to laugh at these phenomena, we shall not be far from
discovering the method which will enable the unseen mind to control
visible matter. On that day we shall learn something that Newton did
not know, namely, that gravitation is a variable quantity in space.[1]

  [1] Einstein has since merely repeated the words used by Cordélia’s
  admirer and given a mathematical formula to his theory. Author’s
  Note.

“That reminds me of a rather amusing story that old Surdon used to
tell, my dear Cordélia”—how it hurt me to hear him say “My dear
Cordélia!”—“He said ‘I can make this table jump out of the window when
and as I please. One day two friends were taking their coffee on it. I
commanded the table to move. It remained motionless. When they left I
lectured the table. Do you know what it said in reply? “They are such
fools!”’”

Whereupon Patrick began to laugh, and I seemed to hear Cordélia laugh
as well. Their gaiety disturbed me more than their gloom of a few
minutes before. Suddenly they stopped laughing, and began to converse
in complete silence.

I was absolutely convinced of it.

They were talking and understanding each other. It is generally
recognized that subjects and mediums and persons who have it in them
to control the mind can converse among themselves without the aid of
sounds, by the mere power of suggestion, and communion. When Patrick
spoke from the throat it was done over and above his psychic power,
from habit, and possibly to give himself the illusion to which,
whatever he may have said, he seemed to set store, of Cordélia’s
bodily presence beside him in his room, but the use of his voice was
unnecessary. He was now speaking to her with the voice of the mind.

And there could be no doubt that Cordélia was answering him, for it
must not be assumed that I was witnessing, in this extraordinary and
loathsome seance, a monologue. Far from it. But when Patrick used his
ordinary voice there were pauses which were undoubtedly furnished with
Cordélia’s answers. Patrick’s remarks which followed were a sufficient
proof of it.

I was more or less aware of what was passing, but now they were
conversing in silence. What were they saying? Why was Patrick bending
over her with his right arm resting on the back of her chair?... I
could perceive a tremulous movement of his arm....

Suddenly he raised his head and said aloud: “It is unfair of me to
reproach heaven for not giving you to me body and soul, because your
soul is mine and I have the best part of your body.” And then he took
his glass in his left hand without moving his right hand which still
shook as it lay on the back of Cordélia’s chair, and exclaimed: “I have
tasted your lips, O Cordélia. I have tasted your life. I drink to our
longing for everlasting love!”

He had no sooner poured the glass of wine down his throat than I sprang
into the room.

It seemed that I was literally foaming with rage. He himself said so
afterwards, and it was, in truth, quite possible, for my patience which
my restless and insidious curiosity had held in check, was exhausted,
and I was overcome with fury.

I rushed up to _them_ and cried:

“I’m thirsty too. Aren’t you going to invite me?”

He stood up and thrust himself in my path as though to shield her.

“How clumsy you are! You have wounded her,” he murmured, stooping to
pick up a knife which, when I darted to the table had fallen to the
floor.

“What do you mean—‘wounded her?’” I said excitedly.

“Calm yourself, monsieur,” he returned with characteristic English
coolness. “Indeed, it’s nothing, though it might have been serious. Let
this be a lesson to you. Another time, don’t forget to knock at the
door or the window.” He spoke in a tone which set me beside myself.

“It shall never happen again,” I said hoarsely, casting a glance in the
direction of Cordélia’s chair.

“Oh, you may finish what you were saying,” he interrupted with a
gesture of encouragement. “We are alone. She is no longer here.”

“Well, monsieur, what I wish to say is simply this—there are two of us
here, which is one too many.”

“That’s my opinion, monsieur,” he acquiesced, “but it’s not I who am in
the way.”

“We shall see about that—to-morrow!”

“Just as you please.”

I had nothing more to say to him that day, and I turned towards the
window, but he opened the door for me, and we bowed to each other with
perfect propriety.




                              CHAPTER XVII

                                THE DUEL


When I read over again the preceding pages I find nothing in them to
eliminate, for they truthfully set down the intolerable situation in
which I found myself after Surdon informed me of Patrick’s presence in
Venice. In my belief I had good reason for suspecting that my beloved’s
ego had yielded without any great resistance to the whims of culpable
hypnotic suggestion. And when I conjure up the vision of the meeting in
the little room in the Grand Hotel, I see myself again as I was then,
that is to say, less distracted by rage against Patrick than tortured
by Cordélia’s apparent acquiescence.

Fool that I was! Ought I not in my ignorance of the tremendous nature
of psychic mystery, or in my mistrust of it as an entirely new
initiate, to have warned Cordélia of all that appeared suspect and
impossible to understand in it? And yet I took a bitter pleasure in my
misery!

In short, my blood was fired by those fatuous words: “It wouldn’t have
happened if she hadn’t wanted it to happen.” And it was with these
words on my lips and this injustice to her in my heart, that I hastened
back to the Hotel Danieli.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Cordélia, whom I found still lying on the sofa, had just awakened from
her sleep, and was wrapping a piece of linen round her finger, an
incident to which in my agitation I attached no importance. The chamber
maid was offering her a thread of cotton. I requested her to leave us.

At the sound of my voice Cordélia gave a start and raised her head, and
I perceived that she was deadly pale.

“Patrick is here and you know it,” I cried savagely. “Why didn’t you
tell me?”

She contemplated my wrath first with dumb amazement, and then with
dismay. She seemed no longer to know me. I had ceased to be her
Hector. She wisely remained silent. What could she say to a raging lion
who neither heard nor understood reason?

Then I went on wildly:

“You deny yourself nothing. Trips in gondolas, art galleries,
churches—the Santa Maria della Salute!”

At these last words she murmured:

“Oh, good gracious, so it was true! I thought it was only a dream.”

Her words ought to have enlightened me and taught me that she was still
the victim of the endless machinations of that man. But I had set out
to make us both suffer, and I was not to be stopped mid-way.

“You meet every day between five and seven o’clock.”

“What do you say?”

And Cordélia lifted herself, and opened her eyes wide with wonder, as
if she began to discover from the sound of my voice now that she was
awake, the impressions which had been transmitted to her polygon while
she was asleep.

“I say that you take advantage of my confidence. While I thought that
you were resting here, you were off having a meal with Patrick in his
room in the Grand Hotel.”

She uttered a cry and covered her face with her hands.

“Oh don’t deny it. I saw you. I heard you.”

“What did you hear? Did I tell him that I loved him?” she asked in a
voice strained with anxiety.

“I didn’t hear you say that,” I returned, surprised at the tone in
which she asked the question, “but you know quite well that I cannot
hear your ‘silent voice.’”

“If I didn’t say that I said nothing,” she declared gazing at me with
staring eyes. “All else is beyond me.”

So saying she lay back on the sofa, her whole body shaken by a fit of
sobbing.

I fell on my knees. The horror of my conduct and at the same time
Cordélia’s innocence, became manifest to me. Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!

I hated myself. I strove to assuage her grief. I took her hand, and
then I saw that the strip of linen round her finger was quite red.

“Your finger is bleeding, Cordélia. Have you cut it?”

“I suppose I knocked it against a piece of furniture when I woke up,”
she said between her tears.

“It’s not imagination,” I said with a tremor, unwinding the linen,
for Dr. Thurel’s explanation of the meaning of the externalization
of sensibility flashed through my mind. “No, it was not imagination,
unfortunately, and here we have the sad proof of it. When you, in mind,
were at the Grand Hotel, I burst into the room with such violence as
to disturb everything, and a knife which was on the table fell to the
floor and Patrick exclaimed: ‘She is wounded!’”

This time Cordélia rose to her feet so white-faced, that she might have
been taken for her own ghost.

“How could you think that I did not love you?” she breathed. “It’s my
heart’s blood that is flowing from the wound which you inflicted on me
in Patrick’s room. Do you understand what I mean?”[2]

  [2] The following note was discovered among Hector’s papers:

  In regard to pains and wounds transmitted to a subject from a
  distance as in the peculiar case of the glass of water mentioned
  by Dr. Rochas, see also instances quoted by Dr. Chazalin in his
  work on “Materializations.” Cases have been known where violent
  blows have been transmitted from a distance to subjects in profound
  trance, in plain daylight, with the result that these subjects have
  borne marks of the hand and scratches and bruises on the face.
  Author’s note.

I was still on my knees, and when I heard those glorious words I
clasped her in my trembling arms and implored her to forgive me, but
her mind was possessed with some other thought, and I realized that it
was this thought which was the cause of her pallor.

“What did you say to each other afterwards?” she asked.

I was at a loss for an answer and could but stammer a falsehood.

“Swear to me, that there will be no fighting.”

I was constrained to swear that there should be no fighting, but she
was unconvinced.

“You have sworn falsely. That’s too bad of you. Never mind. I don’t
want you to fight each other. You mustn’t fight each other. I shall go
with you everywhere.”

I could have wished that she had said: “I don’t want you to fight him.”

She so managed that it was impossible for me to leave the hotel, and as
I was bent on getting rid of my adversary, once for all, I was obliged
to send Surdon to him, without her knowledge, in order to let him know
what was happening, and to request him to take upon himself the burden
of providing weapons, seconds and so forth. I asked that the duel
should take place at dawn, for I intended to slip away while Cordélia
was in her morning sleep which would not fail to be a heavy one after
the excitement through which she had passed.

Surdon came back to tell me that there was no need for me to trouble
about anything except to appear at daybreak at the Comte de C——’s
house, which stood at the far end of what are called the “public
gardens.”

Cordélia had regained her composure. We strolled to the Piazzetta, and
even went as far as the Café de Florian, where we drank port to the
music of the guitar. The scene around us was one of great gaiety. I
did my utmost to appear cheerful also, but Cordélia remained gloomily
wrapped in thought. When we returned to the hotel she declared that she
would not go to bed.

“I don’t believe you. You didn’t speak the truth. If I go to bed you’ll
seize the opportunity to leave the hotel and fight a duel. I don’t want
you to fight each other.”

I shrugged my shoulders to indicate that it was a matter of
indifference to me, but I was intensely annoyed. I had a wonderful
and legitimate opportunity of getting rid of the author of my
misfortunes—we were to fight with pistols, and I was certain of
bringing my man down—and now Cordélia’s obstinacy bid fair to
compromise everything. Fortunately I was able to send Surdon again to
tell Patrick what was happening, for I saw no way out of the difficulty
unless he consented to send Cordélia into a hypnotic trance so that I
might be able to get away and fight him. I would never have believed
that one day I should be making an appeal of this character to the man
whose psychic powers were the cause of my troubles. But let that pass.
The whole incident shows once more that whatever conception we may
form of the world, and the relation which subsists between spirit and
matter, we are but an atom of dust dancing in a momentary ray of the
sun.

Surdon came back with a message from the Englishman that he was not
less anxious than I was for the duel to take place, and he would carry
out my wishes.

I passed a grievous night, a night which seemed interminable. The
torture of it! If I had but known what was about to happen! If I had
but known! With what dread I should have counted the minutes as they
all too quickly sped past!

Cordélia kept her word. Say and do what I might, she would not go to
bed. She lay on the sofa reading, or pretending to read. And I—I stood
watching her.

I was waiting with impatience for the event which my adversary had
promised to bring about. It occurred shortly after five o’clock in the
morning. Her eyes closed, her book fell from her hands to the floor,
and her body assumed the rigid posture which I recognized only too well.

I locked the door of the room, put the key in my pocket, and then
called Surdon. At six o’clock we arrived at the Comte de C——’s house.

Patrick had not yet come, but the doctor and the seconds were already
there. Two seconds were allotted to me. I made their acquaintance and
was entirely satisfied. The Comte de C——, who belonged to the old
Venetian nobility, was away, but he was, it seems, greatly interested
in art and artists, and had placed his house at Patrick’s disposal.

The public gardens in Venice are well known. They occupy one of the
few islets in the old city which have not been encroached upon by
the builder. Nevertheless the Comte de C——’s mansion stood there and
possessed a private entrance to the gardens after the manner of private
houses in the Monceau Gardens in Paris. Here the Comte de C—— alone
enjoyed this privilege, so that at that hour, when the gardens were
closed, it was as though we were in the Comte’s own private property.

Meantime Patrick made his appearance, unarmed, as I swore at the Assize
Court. The revolvers were in the cases which the seconds brought with
them, and which they obtained the evening before at a gunsmith’s.
Patrick had no knowledge of the weapons; at least so he declared, and I
believe him. Moreover we drew lots and agreed that the revolvers which
the seconds had brought with them should be used.

We were now in the great central walk of the gardens. I have heard that
in spring it is a lovely spot, an enchantment, with beds of roses which
are nothing short of marvelous; but it was the fall of the year, and I
beheld in the wan light of early morning a somewhat dreary place, well
suited to be the scene of a terrible tragedy.

And, indeed, the thing happened with incredible rapidity. The
twenty-five paces which were to separate us were marked out. We were to
exchange four shots. But I am a crack shot with a revolver, and I felt
certain of bringing my man down at the first attempt. I had made up my
mind to it, and I had no scruple of remorse. I felt that there was no
happiness for me with Cordélia in this world as long as Patrick was
alive. Let him go to the devil!

I was perfectly cool when the words rang out: “Fire! One ... two ...
three!” We fired almost simultaneously as the second in charge of the
duel shouted: “Two!” Patrick, however, fired in the air uttering a
despairing cry. I had already fired my shot on a level with his heart,
and yet I must confess that I was conscious that he had not uttered
that cry because he was struck by my bullet. Indeed he was not hit. To
this cry another cry of unutterable anguish went up. It sprang from my
throat, and my heart, and yet I was not hit either. The only person
whose cry of agony we did not hear, was the person who was smitten. And
I swear before God and man that my cry was torn from me by the vision
of Cordélia’s form which suddenly arose between us at the moment when
our fingers were pressing the trigger; but Patrick had the time to
raise his weapon, while I fired mine.

The image vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. I swear that
Cordélia’s astral body, which until then—save in the mirror of the
water, and here I must ask myself whether I was not the sport of the
water and my imagination—had remained unseen by my physical vision,
now appeared before me quite distinctly. This phenomenon, moreover, so
fully supported the many other well-known instances where the spirit of
a person has appeared to beloved relatives at the very moment when it
throws off, for ever, its mortal covering, that I grasped the meaning
of Patrick’s cry of dismay, for he too had seen.

“Unhappy man!” he cried. “Unhappy man, what have you done!”

My hair must have stood on end with horror and both of us were
conscious only of a feeling of unspeakable dread.

Without concerning ourselves with the seconds, or making the least
explanation, we left the entire business of the duel and hurriedly
flung ourselves into a gondola. Not a word was spoken on the way.
Moreover I felt that I should go mad.

On reaching the hotel we made a rush for Cordélia’s room. Everything
seemed quiet, and precisely as I had left it. I was filled with a
great hope; and yet my hand shook so much that I was unable to put the
key in the lock. It was Patrick who opened the door.

We darted into the room. Cordélia was still lying on the sofa, but her
face already wore an unearthly look, and drops of blood stained her
dressing-gown near her throat. She had been killed by a bullet through
the heart.




                              CHAPTER XVIII

                               AND NOW ...


And now this pierced heart which the greatest thief that ever lived had
burgled from its bodily prison is all mine. I can kneel in peace before
the urn in which I have reverently enclosed it. No one can rob me of it
now.

It was when it was still swayed by all the emotions of life, it was
when its ardent beating animated an adored wife, that a villain strove
to make a splendid victim of it, and to take it by force from my very
arms; but now when it is no more than a little dust and a great memory,
no one will contend with me for it.

During the terrible proceedings at the Assize Court, where the case was
regarded as the most extraordinary that had come before the ordinary
judicial bench within the memory of man, I clearly perceived that
the man who stole Cordélia’s heart no longer cared about her who had
been his victim. Not once in the course of the trial, which excited,
without satisfying, the world’s curiosity—not once did the thief cast
a glance on the table in which lay the material evidence—this sacred
relic which had come from the hands of the “experts”; while I, alas,
could not remove my sorrow-stricken eyes from it.

O heart of Cordélia, I alone loved thee! My rival was never anything
but an artist.... But I, O Cordélia, I was never anything but a poor
man in love, and I am still but a poor man in love before your dead
heart as I was before your living heart.... The little that I may have
of you I am taking away. With a trembling hand I have removed your
beloved heart from its legal receptacle to this funeral urn. It will
never, I think, be stolen from me again.

I no longer feel the shadow of the thief over me. And yet in spite of
my perfect assurance of peace I have had another lock placed on the
door of the retreat to which I have withdrawn from my fellow-men.

I have endeavored in this seclusion to fulfil the chief duty which
I owe to myself and others. I have set down here the various
circumstances which, to my knowledge, preceded, paved the way for,
and accompanied the terrible tragedy. I have told in plain language
how these things came to pass, even though they may seem entirely
improbable. If the reader will follow me step by step and believe me,
he will understand.

It was because the Assize Court did not believe me that they failed to
understand. And yet I did not spare myself. I took on my own shoulders
the responsibility for the whole fatal incident. Why did they not
proceed against me? I say that it was I who killed her.... The misery
of it! I may rejoice to-day that Cordélia’s heart will not again be
stolen from me, because it is dead. And it was I who killed it. I shout
it aloud and I repeat: Do not doubt it since I myself no longer doubt
it.

The preliminary investigation took some time, and was postponed by the
illness which came upon me as a result of the tragedy. When I was in
a position to give evidence I found that the authorities were on the
wrong scent as was to be expected.

Surdon, for instance, was arrested on the plea that he possessed a
revolver from which one bullet had been discharged. It was alleged that
he had made his way into his mistress’s room while she was asleep in
order to steal her jewelry.

This was so much obtuseness and stupidity, and how could it be
otherwise? The judges were confronted with the case of a woman killed
by a bullet through the heart in a room every part of which was closed,
the windows being shut on the inside and the door locked.

The most amazing thing was that a minute search failed to reveal the
bullet. It had passed through the body, but it could not be found
either in the sofa or walls. I myself knew where the bullet was. It was
somewhere in the public gardens in Venice.

The police were obliged to release Surdon, but they afterwards arrested
Patrick and kept him in custody until the trial at the Assize Court. A
post-mortem examination was held, and the expert’s report showed that
death was caused not by a shot from a revolver, but by a shot from
a pistol of the same bore as that of the pistols which Patrick had
procured for use at the duel.

As the magisterial enquiries proved that Patrick was prowling round
the Hotel Danieli during the night preceding and the morning of the
duel, nothing more was needed to enable the authorities to accuse
him of having entered Cordélia’s room at the hotel by means of some
master key, or some key that he managed to obtain beforehand from
an accommodating servant whom he had bribed to assist him in his
nefarious purpose. He had shot Cordélia out of jealousy to prevent her
from belonging to another if he were killed in the duel.... It was
simple.... How very simple it was!... Poor human nature!

The trouble was that a pistol shot causes a concussion, and no one in
the hotel had heard the least sound.

In vain Patrick denied the charge, recounting stories about the power
of suggestion and the communion of minds which made the Court laugh.
The reason for his presence near the Hotel Danieli on this particular
night was that I had requested him to send Cordélia to sleep so
that she should not interfere with our plan to fight each other, and
Cordélia could only be influenced by suggestion within a limited
distance.

When I corroborated his statement, and gave it as my opinion that
Cordélia had been killed in the Hotel Danieli by a shot fired by me in
the public gardens in Venice, the judges ceased to smile and evinced
considerable wrath. I was looked upon as a madman by some, and a fool
by others, and these people were greatly incensed with me for not
joining them in crushing Patrick. Cordélia’s father could not forgive
me for it, and left me to myself with contempt.

The press agencies reported the result as far as Patrick was concerned
in a few lines. The material proofs were too slight to justify a
conviction, and the jury acquitted him in spite of the efforts of the
public prosecutor.

Had the European political situation been less troubled, and had the
trial not taken place in a foreign country, the facts would not have
failed to create a tremendous sensation, as they deserved, for they
brought the judicial bench face to face with the greatest conceivable
drama, namely that which is enacted between the seen and the unseen
worlds.

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

There is a Latin phrase which expresses it, a phrase which was in use
in the Middle Ages, but I cannot call it to mind.




                               CHAPTER XIX

                             THE LAST VISIT


O Cordélia, you died by my hand! If I still live, be assured that it is
by way of atonement. How often have I conjured up your image before the
mortal remains of your heart! How often have I called to you! But you
have never come to me!

For many days I was unable to add a word to these lines, and I
remained, as it were, paralyzed by the inscrutable mystery of life and
death, when one day the door of my cell was opened, and a man came in.
It was Patrick. He was but the shadow of his former self.

I thrust myself before the urn which contained my beloved’s heart. He
understood me and gave a bitter smile.

“Have no fear,” he said, “I leave it to you. What is her earthly heart
to me? I possess her heart which is in Heaven.”

I rose to my feet staggering like a drunken man under his words which
filled me with an agony of jealousy.

“What do you mean?” I asked hoarsely. “Do you still see Cordélia?”

He shook his head.

“Calm yourself, I do not see her,” he made answer. “She is too remote
from us, and I have never believed in spirits of the dead revisiting
this world. When I say that I possess her heart which is in Heaven, I
mean that I did possess it. Death has deprived me of it,” he went on in
somber, intense tones, “but death will restore it to me.”

“No more of that,” I exclaimed. “What has all this to do with me?”

“Well, if you look upon it in that light I don’t know why I am here.”

“Nor I.”

“I came to you, monsieur,” he said in a voice of wonderful dignity,
“to ask you if you have any message for her, for she loved you
sincerely—you too!”

“She loved me only,” I asserted, yet strangely perturbed by his manner
and words.

He sighed and shook his head once more.

“You thought so, but that was impossible,” he objected gently,
“otherwise she would still be of this world.”

“So it was you who killed her, or at least were responsible for her
death? I always thought so!”

“It was you and I. It was both of us,” he declared in a tone of great
dejection. “Yes, I, on my side, was to blame. I was too eager in my
frenzy, in my longing for her spirit, in the love which consumed me
for her ego, to separate her mind from her body, but you—you were too
eager to separate her body from her mind. We were marching toward an
inevitable catastrophe.”

His words struck me like a sword, and I did not interrupt him.

“It shows,” he went on, turning toward the door, “that we can only give
happiness to a being of this world if we bring to her a well-balanced
mind which we were unable to do. Had Cordélia met a little of you and
a little of me, in one and the same man, she would have been happy; at
least I like to think so. But where she is now her spirit needs only
her mind. I am going to her!... Farewell, monsieur!”

                   *       *       *       *       *

I read this morning in the newspapers the announcement of Patrick’s
death. It shall not be said that I allowed him to pursue Cordélia at
his will. I hear her calling me: “Save me, Hector! Save me!”

I, too, intend to become a pure spirit, and the sooner to achieve my
purpose, I shall make the same journey as Cordélia, and by the same
route. Though Patrick set out first he will arrive too late. He will
be deceived. The heart of Cordélia points the way that lies before me.
The bullet will enter my heart at the same spot at which it pierced
Cordélia’s heart. I shall breathe the same sigh which will lead me to
the same point in space where she awaits me.... I am persuaded of it!...

Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!




                             A TERRIBLE TALE


Captain Michel had but one arm, which he found useful when he lit his
pipe. He was an old sea dog whose acquaintance, with that of four
other old salts, I made one evening on the open front of a café in the
Vieille Darse, Toulon, where I was taking an appetizer. And in this way
we fell into the habit of foregathering over a glass within a stone’s
throw of the rippling waves and the swinging dingeys, about the hour
when the sun sinks behind Tamaris.

The four old marines were known as Zinzin, Dorat—Captain
Dorat—Bagatelle, and Chanlieu—that old fellow Chanlieu. They had, of
course, sailed every sea and met with a thousand adventures; and now
that they were retired on their pensions, they spent their time telling
each other terrible tales.

Captain Michel alone never indulged in any reminiscences. And as he
seemed in no way surprised by anything he heard, his old comrades in
the end grew exasperated with him.

“Look here, Captain Michel, hasn’t anything out of the way ever
happened to you?”

“Oh, yes,” the captain made answer, taking his pipe from his mouth.
“Yes, something happened to me once—just once.”

“Well, let’s have it.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s too awful. You might not be able to stand it. I’ve often
tried to tell the story but people have slipped away before I finished
it.”

The four sea dogs vied with each other in the loudness of their
guffaws, declaring that Captain Michel was trying to find some excuse,
because in reality, nothing extraordinary had ever happened to him.

The old fellow stared at them a moment, and then suddenly accepting
the situation, laid his pipe on the table. This unusual gesture was in
itself startling!

“Messieurs, I’ll tell you how I lost my arm,” he began.

“In those days—some twenty years ago—I owned a small villa, in the
suburb of Le Mourillon, which had been left to me, for my family were
long settled in these parts and I myself was born here.

“It suited me to take a little rest after a long voyage and before
setting sail again. For that matter, I rather liked the place, and
lived quite peaceably among sea-faring men and colonials who troubled
me very little, and whom I rarely saw, occupied as they were as a rule
in opium-smoking with their lady friends, or with other business which
did not concern me. Of course there is no accounting for tastes, but as
long as they didn’t interfere with me, I was satisfied....

“It so happened that one night they did interfere with my habit of
going to sleep. I was awakened with a start by an extraordinary uproar,
the meaning of which I couldn’t possibly make out. I had left my window
open as usual. I listened in a state of bewilderment to a tremendous
din, which was a cross between the rumbling of thunder and the roll
of a drum, but such a drum! It was as though a couple of hundred
drumsticks were being madly beaten, not on ordinary drum-skin, but on a
wooden drum.

“The disturbance came from the villa opposite, which had been empty for
some five years, and on which I had noticed, the previous evening, a
board bearing the announcement: ‘To be sold.’

“I let my gaze stray from the window of my bedroom, on the first floor,
beyond the small garden in which the house stood, and my eye took in
every door and window, even the doors and windows on the ground floor.
They were still closed as I had seen them during the day; but I caught
sight of gleams of light through the chinks in the shutters on the
ground floor. Who and what were these people? How had they found their
way into this solitary house at the far end of Le Mourillon? What
sort of company was it that had obtained admission into this deserted
dwelling, and why were they kicking up such a shindy?

“The extraordinary din, like the thunderous beating of a wooden drum,
continued. It went on for another hour, and then as dawn was breaking,
the front door opened, and there appeared in the doorway the most
radiant creature that I have ever beheld. She was clad in a low-necked
dress, and held with perfect grace a lamp whose beams fell over the
shoulders of a goddess. I distinctly heard her say in the echoing
night, while a kind and quiet smile flickered across her face:

“‘Good-bye, dear friend, till next year.’

“To whom was she speaking? It was impossible for me to tell for I could
see no one standing beside her. She remained at the entrance holding
the lamp for some minutes, until the garden gate opened by itself and
closed by itself. Then the front door of the house was shut in its
turn, and I saw nothing more.

“It seemed to me that I was either losing my head or was the sport of a
dream, for I knew that it was out of the question for any one to pass
through the garden without my perceiving him.

“I was still planted at the window, incapable of the least movement or
thought, when the door of the house opened a second time, and the same
vision of beauty appeared still carrying a lamp and still alone.

“‘Hush,’ she said, ‘don’t make a noise, any of you. We mustn’t disturb
our neighbor opposite. I’ll come with you.’

“And silently and alone she crossed the garden and stopped at the gate
on which the full rays of the lamp shone; so much so, indeed, that I
clearly saw the knob of the gate turn of its own accord without any
hand being placed upon it. And the gate opened once again by itself in
the presence of this woman who, moreover, did not evince any surprise.
Need I explain that from where I was posted, I could see both in front
and behind the gate; in other words, that I saw it sideways?

“This ‘splendid apparition’ made a charming movement of her head toward
the empty darkness which the glare of the lamp made visible; then she
smiled and said:

“‘Well, good-bye until next year. My husband is very pleased. Not a
single one of you failed to answer the call. Good-bye, messieurs.’

“And I heard several voices in unison:

“‘Good-bye, madame, good-bye, dear madame, until next year.’

“And as the mysterious hostess was preparing to close the door herself,
I heard a voice:

“‘Oh, please, don’t trouble.’

“And the door was once more closed.

“The next moment the air was filled with a curious sound; it was like
the chirping of a flock of birds, and it seemed as if this beautiful
woman had opened the cage of a whole brood of house sparrows.

“She quietly walked back to the house. The lights on the ground floor
were then out, but I noticed a glimmer in the windows of the first
floor.

“When she reached the house she said:

“‘Are you upstairs, Gérard?’

“I could not hear the answer, but the front door was again closed, and
a few minutes later the light on the first floor went out.

“I was still standing at my window at eight o’clock in the morning,
staring in blank amazement at the house and garden which had revealed
such strange happenings in darkness, and which now in the full light
of day assumed their familiar aspect. The garden was a waste, and the
house itself seemed as desolate as it was the day before.

“So much so, indeed, that when I told my old charwoman who had just
come, of the queer events which I had witnessed, she tapped my forehead
with her dirty forefinger and muttered that I had smoked one pipe too
many. Now I have never been a smoker of opium, and her answer gave me
a good opportunity of sacking the old sloven whom I had for some time
wanted to get rid of, and who came for a couple of hours each day to
‘clean up’ the place for me. For that matter I did not need any one, as
I was setting sail again next day.

“I barely had time to put my things together, make a few purchases, say
farewell to my friends, and catch the train for Havre. I had fixed up
an appointment with the Transatlantic company which would keep me away
from Toulon for some eleven or twelve months.

“In due course I returned to Toulon, but though I had refrained from
mentioning my adventure to a soul, I still continued to think of it.
The vision of the lady of the lamp obsessed me wherever I went, and
the last words which she uttered to her unseen friends still rang in my
ears:

“‘Well, good-bye until next year.’

“And I never ceased to think of the meeting. I, too, was determined to
be there and to discover, at whatever cost, the solution of a mystery
which was intensely perplexing to a sensible man like myself, who did
not believe in ghosts or phantom vessels.

“Unfortunately I was soon to learn that neither heaven nor hell was
concerned in the terrible story.

“It was six o’clock in the evening when I set foot again in my house
at Toulon; and it was two days before the anniversary of the wonderful
night.

“The first thing that I did on going inside was to run up to my room
and open the window. It was summer and broad daylight, and my eyes at
once fell upon a lady of great beauty who was placidly walking about
gathering flowers in the garden of the house opposite. At the noise
made by the opening window she looked up.

“It was the lady of the lamp. I recognized her, and she seemed not less
beautiful by day than by night. Her skin was as white as the teeth of
an African nigger, her eyes bluer than the waters at Tamaris, her hair
as soft and fair as the finest flax.

“Why should I not make the confession? When I beheld this woman of whom
I had been dreaming for a year, a strange feeling came over me. She
was no illusion of a diseased imagination. She stood before me in the
flesh; and every window of the house was open and flower-bedecked by
her hands. There was nothing fantastic in all this.

“She caught sight of me and at once displayed some degree of annoyance.
She walked a few steps farther in the center path of the garden, and
then shrugging her shoulders as though she were disconcerted said:

“‘Let’s go in, Gérard. I’m beginning to feel the coolness of the night.’

“I let my gaze stray round the garden. I could perceive no one. To whom
was she speaking?... Nobody there!

“Then was she mad? It scarcely seemed so.

“I watched her return to the house. She passed into it, the door was
closed, and she at once shut the windows.

“I did not see or hear anything worth noticing that night. Next morning
at ten o’clock I observed my neighbor leaving the garden attired as if
for a walk. She locked the gate after her and set out in the direction
of Toulon.

“I started off in my turn. Pointing to the fashionably dressed figure
in front of me I asked the first tradesman whom I met if he knew the
lady’s name.

“‘Why, of course. She’s your neighbor. She is living with her husband
at the Villa Makoko. They moved in about a year ago, just as you went
away. They are regular boors. They never speak to anybody, unless it’s
absolutely necessary, but every one in Le Mourillon, as you know,
goes his own way, and is never surprised at anything. The captain for
one....’

“‘What captain?’

“‘Captain Gérard. It seems he is an ex-captain of marines. Well, no
one ever sees him.... Sometimes when food has to be delivered at the
house, and the lady is not in, some person shouts out an order from
behind the door to leave the stuff on the step, and waits until you are
a good distance away before taking it in.’

“You can imagine that I was growing more and more puzzled. I went to
Toulon in order to ask the agent who let the villa a few questions
about these people. He, likewise, had never seen the husband, but he
told me that his name was Gérard Beauvisage.

“When I heard the name I uttered a cry: ‘Gérard Beauvisage! Why I know
him!’

“I had an old friend of that name whom I had not seen for twenty-five
years. He was an officer in the marines and had left Toulon for Tonkin
about that period. How could I doubt that it was he? At all events, I
had a straightforward reason for calling on him, that very evening,
though he was expecting a visit from his friends, for it was the
anniversary of the famous night. I made up my mind to renew my old
friendship with him.

“When I got back to Le Mourillon I espied in front of me, in the sunk
road leading to the Villa Makoko, the figure of my neighbor. I did not
hesitate, but hastened to overtake her.

“‘Have I the honor of speaking to Madame Beauvisage, the wife of
Captain Gérard Beauvisage?’ I asked with a bow.

“She colored and tried to pass on without answering me.

“‘Madame, I am your neighbor, Captain Michel Alban,’ I persisted.

“‘Oh, please forgive me, monsieur,’ she returned, ‘my husband has often
spoken of you ... Captain Michel Alban....’

“She seemed terribly ill at ease, and yet in her confusion she was more
beautiful than ever, if that were possible. In spite of her obvious
desire to elude me I went on:

“‘How comes it that Captain Beauvisage has returned to France without
letting his old friend know? I shall be particularly obliged if you
will tell Gérard that I’m coming to shake hands with him this very
evening.’

“And observing that she was hastening her steps, I bowed, but as I was
speaking she turned round, betraying an agitation which was more and
more difficult to comprehend.

“‘Impossible to-night.... I promise to tell Gérard of our meeting.
That’s the most I can do. Gérard doesn’t wish to see any one—any one.
He lives alone.... We live alone.... And we took the house because we
were told that the next house was occupied only for a few days once or
twice a year by some one who is never seen!...’

“And she added in a voice tinged with sadness:

“‘You must forgive Gérard, monsieur. We do not receive any one—any one.
Good day, monsieur.’

“‘Madame, the Captain and you receive friends occasionally,’ I returned
with some impatience. ‘For instance, to-night you are expecting friends
with whom you made an appointment a year ago.’

“She flushed scarlet.

“‘Oh, but that’s an exceptional case ... that’s an absolutely
exceptional case.... They are our very particular friends.’

“Having said which she made her escape, but at once stopped her
retreat and turned back.

“‘Whatever you do, don’t call to-night,’ she entreated, and disappeared
into the garden.

“I returned to my house and began to keep watch on my neighbors. They
did not show themselves, and long before it was dark I saw the shutters
being closed and lights gleaming through the openings, such as I had
seen on that amazing night a year ago. But I did not hear the same
extraordinary din like the thunderous beating of a wooden drum.

“At seven o’clock I began to dress for I called to mind the low-necked
robe worn by the lady of the lamp. Madame Beauvisage’s last words had
but strengthened my determination. The captain was seeing some of his
friends that evening; he dared not refuse me admission. After dressing
it crossed my mind, before I went downstairs, to put my revolver in my
pocket, but in the end I left it in its place, considering that to take
it would be an act of stupidity.

“The stupidity lay in not taking it with me.

“On reaching the entrance to the Villa Makoko I turned the handle of
the gate on the off chance—the handle which last year I had seen turn
by itself. And to my intense surprise the door opened. Therefore my
neighbors were expecting visitors. I walked up to the house and knocked
at the door.

“‘Come in!’ a voice cried.

“I recognized Gérard’s voice. I walked gaily into the house. I passed
first through the hall, and then as the door of a small drawing-room
stood open, and the room was lit up, I entered it.

“‘Gérard it’s me,’ I exclaimed, ‘your old pal Michel Alban.’

“‘Oh, really, so you made up your mind to come, my dear old Michel! I
told my wife only just now that you would come and I should be glad
to see you.... But you are the only one, apart from our particular
friends.... Do you know, my dear Michel, you haven’t altered much....’

“It would be impossible for me to describe my stupefaction. I heard
Gérard, but I could not see him. His voice rang in my ears, but no one
was near me, no one was in the drawing-room. The Voice went on:

“‘Sit down, won’t you? My wife will soon be here, for she will remember
that she left me on the mantelpiece!’

“I looked up, and then discovered above me ... above me resting on a
high mantelpiece—a bust.

“It was this bust which had been speaking. It resembled Gérard. It was
Gérard’s body. It had been placed there as people are wont to place
busts on mantelpieces. It was a bust like those carved by sculptors,
that is to say, it was without arms.

“‘I can’t shake hands with you, my dear Michel,’ the voice went on,
‘for as you see I have no hands, but if you raise yourself on tiptoe
you will be able to take me in your arms and place me on the table. My
wife put me up here in a moment of temper, because she said I was in
the way when she swept the room. She’s a funny thing is my wife.’

“And the bust burst out laughing.

“It seemed to me that I was the victim of an optical illusion as
happens in those entertainments where you behold living heads and
shoulders suspended in mid-air, the result of tricks with mirrors; but
after setting down my friend on the table, as he requested, I had to
admit that this head and body without arms or legs was indeed all that
remained of the excellent officer whom I had known in days gone by.
His body was resting on a small wheeled platform, such as are used by
cripples without legs, but Gérard did not possess even the stumps of
legs which can be seen in the case of most cripples. To think that my
old friend was nothing but a bust!

“Small hooks took the place of arms, and language fails me to describe
how, leaning for support on a hook here, or on another there, he set to
work to hop, skip and jump and perform a hundred swift movements which
shot him from the table to a chair, from a chair to the floor, and then
suddenly made him appear on the table once more, where he indulged in
the gayest chatter.

“Myself, I was in a state of consternation. I was rendered speechless.
I watched this freak perform his antics and say with a chuckle which
alarmed me:

“‘I have greatly changed I daresay. You must admit, my dear Michel,
that you hardly recognize me. You did quite right to call this evening.
We shall see some sport. We have a few very special friends, and, you
know, apart from them I don’t care to meet any one—merely as a matter
of pride. We don’t even keep a servant. Wait for me here. I must get
into my smoking jacket.’

“He went off, and almost at once the lady of the lamp appeared. She
wore the same low-necked dress of the year before. As soon as her eyes
fell upon me, she seemed strangely perturbed, and said in a strained
voice:

“‘Oh, so you are here! You’ve made a mistake, Captain Michel. I gave
your message to my husband, but I forbade you to call this evening.
I may tell you that when he learnt that you were in this place, he
asked me to invite you this evening, but I did no such thing because,’
she went on, ill at ease, ‘I had good reasons. We have certain very
particular friends who are rather a worry—they are very fond of
noise—uproar. You must have heard them last year,’ she added, giving me
a look out of the corner of her eye. ‘Well, promise me to leave early.’

“‘I promise to leave early, madame,’ I returned, and yet a vague
misgiving took possession of me at this conversation, the meaning of
which I was far from understanding. ‘I promise you faithfully, but can
you tell me how it is that I find my old friend in such a state? What
terrible accident happened to him?’

“‘None at all, monsieur, none.’

“‘What do you mean, “none at all”? Don’t you know anything about the
accident which deprived him of arms and legs? Yet he must have met with
it since your marriage.’

“‘No, monsieur, no. I married the captain as he is now.... But excuse
me, our guests will be here presently, and I must help my husband to
put on his smoking jacket.’

“She left me to myself, dazed by the one stupefying thought: ‘She
married the captain as he is now!’ and almost at once I heard sounds in
the hall, the curious sounds which had accompanied the lady of the lamp
to the garden gate and baffled me last year. This noise was followed
by the appearance, on their wheeled platforms, of four cripples without
arms or legs who stared at me in wonder. They were all attired in
perfectly-fitting evening dress with snow-white shirt fronts.

“One wore gold-rimmed pince-nez, another, an old man, spectacles, the
third a single eyeglass, and the fourth was content to gaze at me out
of his own proud, shrewd eyes with an expression of boredom. All four,
however, saluted me with their little hooks, and asked after Captain
Beauvisage. I told them that he was dressing, and Madame Beauvisage was
quite well. When I took the liberty of speaking of Madame Beauvisage,
I caught an exchange of glances between them which seemed to embody a
certain raillery.

“‘Haw, haw, I presume you are a great friend of our good old captain,’
drawled the cripple with the monocle.

“The others smiled with a look which was by no means pleasant, and then
they all started to talk in the same breath:

“‘Sorry, sorry, monsieur.... We are quite naturally surprised to meet
you at the house of the good old captain, who swore on his wedding day
to shut himself up in the country with his wife, and not to receive any
one—any one but his very special friends, you understand. When one is
so thoroughly a cripple as the captain consented to be, and is married
to such a beautiful woman, it is quite natural—quite natural. But,
after all, if in the course of his life he met a man of honor who does
not happen to be a cripple, we’re glad of it.... We congratulate you.’

“And they repeated: ‘We’re glad of it.... We congratulate you.’

“Lord how odd they were, these dwarfs! I watched them and held my
peace. Others arrived in twos and threes and so on. And they all
contemplated me with a look of surprise or uneasiness or irony. For my
part I was rendered speechless by the spectacle of so many cripples
without arms or legs; for after all I was beginning to see through most
of the extraordinary happenings which had so greatly stirred my mind;
and though the cripples, by their presence, explained many things,
the presence of the cripples still required explanation, as also did
the monstrous union of that splendid woman with that awful shred of
humanity.

“True, I realized now that these little ambulating trunks were bound to
pass unperceived by me in the narrow garden path lined with verbena,
and the road running between two low hedges; and, truth to tell, when
at the time I said to myself that it was impossible to avoid seeing
any person going down those paths, I had in mind persons who would be
standing upright on their two legs.

“The handle of the garden gate itself no longer puzzled me, and in my
mind’s eye I saw the invisible hook which had turned it.

“The peculiar noise which I heard was but the creaking made by the
small badly oiled wheels of these cars for freaks. Finally, the
extraordinary sound like the thunderous beating of a wooden drum, was
obviously caused by the many cars and hooks striking the floor when,
after an excellent dinner, our friends the cripples indulged in a dance.

“Yes, all this was capable of explanation, but I was conscious as I
caught a curious eager gleam in their eyes, and heard the peculiar
sound of their nippers, that something terrible still remained to be
cleared up, and that all else which had surprised me was of no account.

“Meanwhile Madame Beauvisage promptly appeared, accompanied by her
husband. They were greeted with shouts of delight. The little hooks
‘applauded’ them with an infernal din. I was deafened by it. Then I was
introduced. Cripples were all over the place: on the tables, chairs,
stools, on stands usually occupied by vases, on the sideboard. One of
them sat on the shelf of a dresser like a Buddha in his recess. And
each one politely held out his hook to me. They seemed for the most
part people of good position, with titles and names indicating their
relationship to aristocratic families, but I learned afterwards that
these were false names given to me for reasons which will be obvious.
Lord Wilmer certainly maintained the best front of them all, with
his fine golden beard and no less fine mustache which he continually
stroked with his hook. He did not leap from chair to table like the
others, nor did he have the air of a huge bat taking wing from wall to
wall.

                   *       *       *       *       *

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

“The doctor arrived. He was a cripple but he possessed both arms.

“He offered one of them to Madame Beauvisage and led her to the
dining-room. I mean that she touched his arm with the tips of her
fingers.

“Covers were laid in the room with the closed shutters. The table,
which was laden with flowers and _hors d’œuvre_, was illuminated by a
large candelabrum. There was no fruit. The dozen cripples at once leapt
upon their chairs and began to pick greedily from the dishes with their
hooks. It was not a pleasant sight, and I marveled at the voracity with
which these trunks of men, who seemed just before so well-mannered,
devoured their food.

“And then suddenly they quietened down; their hooks kept still, and
it seemed to me that they lapsed into what is usually described as a
‘painful silence.’

“Every eye was turned on Madame Beauvisage, whose husband sat by her
side, and I noticed that she buried her face in her napkin, looking
very uncomfortable. Then my friend Gérard, clapping one hook against
the other with a flourish, said:

“‘Well, my dear old friends, it can’t be helped. One doesn’t meet the
luck of last year every day. But don’t distress yourselves. With the
exercise of a little imagination we shall succeed in being as merry as
we were then....’

“And turning to me as he lifted the small handle of the glass which
stood on the table before him:

“‘Your health my dear Michel. To us all!’

“And each man raised his glass by its handle with the end of his hook.
The glasses swung over the table in the quaintest fashion.

“My host went on:

“‘You don’t seem to be equal to the occasion, my dear Michel. I have
known you in merrier mood, more up to the mark. Is it because we are
“like this” that you are so gloomy? What do you expect? We are what we
are. But let us have some amusement. We are met together here, all of
us very special friends, to celebrate the time when we became “like
this.” Is that not true my friends of the _Daphné_?...’

“Then my old comrade,” Captain Michel went on to explain, heaving a
deep sigh, “told us how the _Daphné_, which sailed between France and
the Far East, was wrecked; how the crew escaped in the boats, and how
these miserable people took refuge on a chance raft.

“Miss Madge, a beautiful young girl who lost her parents in the
catastrophe, was also picked up by the raft. Some thirteen persons
in all were on it, and at the end of three days the victuals were
consumed, and at the end of a week the survivors were dying of hunger.
It was then that, as the old song says, they agreed to draw lots as to
‘which should be eaten.’

“Messieurs,” added Captain Michel, in a serious voice, “such things
have happened more often perhaps than they have been talked about, for
the great blue waters close over these peculiar feats of digestion.

“They were on the point, therefore, of drawing lots on the raft when
the doctor’s voice was heard: ‘Mesdames and Messieurs,’ said the
doctor, ‘you have lost all your belongings in the wreck of the ship,
but I have saved my case of instruments and my forceps for arresting
hemorrhage. This is my suggestion: There is no object in any one of us
running the risk of being eaten as a whole. Let us, to begin with, draw
lots for an arm or leg at will, and we will then see to-morrow what the
day brings forth, and perhaps a sail may appear on the horizon.’”

At this point in Captain Michel’s story the four old salts, who up to
this had not interrupted, cried:

“Well done!”

“What do you mean ‘well done’?” asked Captain Michel with a frown.

“Yes, ‘well done!’ Your story is a good joke. These people were ready
to lose an arm or leg in turn.... That’s a good joke, but there’s
nothing frightful about it.”

“So you really find it a good joke!” growled the Captain, bristling
with annoyance. “Well, I swear that if you had been seated among all
those cripples whose eyes were bulging like live coal, and heard the
story, you wouldn’t have found it such a good joke.... And if you had
noticed how restless they were in their chairs! And how vigorously they
clasped hooks across the table with an obvious delight which I couldn’t
make out, but which was none the less frightful for all that.”

“No, no,” broke in Chanlieu once more—that old fellow Chanlieu—“your
story is not in the least frightful. It is funny simply because it is
logical. Would you like me to tell you the end of the story? You shall
say whether I am right or not. The people on the raft drew lots. The
lot fell to Miss Madge who was to lose one of her beautiful limbs.
Your friend the captain, who is a gentleman, offered his own instead,
and he had his four limbs amputated so that Miss Madge should remain
unscathed.”

“Yes, old man, you’ve got it. That is so,” exclaimed Captain Michel,
who felt a longing to break the heads of these imbeciles who treated
his story as a good joke. “Yes, and what’s more, when it was a question
of cutting off Miss Madge’s limbs after the survivors, except the young
lady and the doctor—who had been left with both arms because they were
wanted—had lost all their limbs, Captain Beauvisage had the pluck to
have the poor stumps left from the first operation, cut off on a level
with his body.”

“And the young lady could do no other than offer the Captain her hand
which he had so heroically saved,” interposed Zinzin.

“Why, of course,” growled the Captain in his beard. “And you consider
it a good joke!”

“Did they eat all those limbs quite raw?” inquired that ass of a
Bagatelle.

Captain Michel struck the table such a resounding blow that the glasses
danced like rubber balls.

“That’ll do, shut up,” he exclaimed. “All that I’ve told you is
nothing. Now comes the frightful part of it.”

The four friends looked at each other smiling, and Captain Michel grew
pale, whereupon seeing that they had carried matters too far they hung
their heads.

“Yes, the frightful part of it,” went on Michel with his gloomiest air,
“was that these people who were only rescued a month later by a Chinese
sailing vessel which landed them somewhere on the Yang-Tse-Kiang where
they separated—the frightful part of it was that these people retained
a taste for human flesh, and when they returned to Europe arranged to
meet together once a year to renew as far as possible the abominable
banquet. Well, messieurs, it did not take me long to find that out!
First of all there was the scarcely enthusiastic reception accorded to
certain dishes, which Madame Beauvisage herself brought to the table.
Though she ventured to claim, but with no great assurance, that they
were pretty nearly the same thing, the guests were of one mind in
abstaining from congratulating her. Only certain slices of tunny-fish
were received with any sort of favor, because they were, to use the
doctor’s terrible expression, ‘well cut,’ and, ‘if the flavor was not
entirely satisfactory at all events the eye was deceived.’ But the
cripple with the spectacles met with general approval when he declared
that ‘it was not equal to the plumber.’

“When I heard those words I felt my blood run cold,” growled Captain
Michel huskily, “for I remembered that about this time the year before
a plumber had fallen from a roof near the Arsenal and was killed, and
his body was picked up minus an arm.

“Then ... O then ... I could not help thinking of the part which my
beautiful neighbor must, of necessity, have played in this horrible,
culinary drama, I turned my eyes to her and I noticed that she had put
on her gloves again, gloves which covered her arms to the shoulder, and
also hastily thrown a wrap over her shoulders which wholly concealed
them. The guest on my right, who was the doctor, and, as I have said,
was the only man among the cripples with both arms intact, had also put
on his gloves.

“Instead of bothering my head in vain to discover the reason of this
fresh eccentricity, I should have done better to follow the advice
which Madame Beauvisage gave me at the beginning of this infernal
party, namely, to leave the place early—advice which she did not repeat.

“After showing an interest in me during the first part of this amazing
feast in which I seemed to discern—I don’t know why—a sort of pity,
Madame Beauvisage now avoided looking at me and took a part which
greatly grieved me in the most frightful conversation which I have
ever heard. These little people with a vigorous clatter of nippers
and clinking of glasses indulged in bitter recriminations or warm
congratulations with regard to their peculiar appetite.

“To my horror Lord Wilmer, who until then had been most correct, nearly
‘came to hooks’ with the cripple with the monocle, because the latter
had once on the raft complained of the former being tough, and the
mistress of the house had the greatest difficulty in putting things in
their true light by retorting to the monocled bust, who was obviously
at the time of the shipwreck a good-looking stripling, that neither was
it particularly agreeable to have to put up with ‘an animal that was
too young.’”

“That’s also funny,” the old salt Dorat could not help interjecting.

It looked as if Captain Michel would fly at his throat, particularly as
the three other mariners seemed to be shaking with inward joy and gave
vent to queer little clucks. It was as much as the Captain could do to
control himself. After puffing like a seal he turned to the foolhardy
Dorat:

“Monsieur you have two arms still, and I have no wish for you to lose
one of them, as I did on that particular night, to make you see the
frightful part of the story. The cripples had drunk a great deal. Some
of them jumped on the table round me, and were gazing at my arms in a
very embarrassing manner and I ended by hiding them from sight as far
as possible by thrusting my hands deep into my pockets.

“I realized then, and it was a startling thought, why Madame Beauvisage
and the doctor, the two persons who still had arms and hands, did not
show them. I grasped the meaning of the sudden ferocity which blazed in
the eyes of some of them. And at that very moment, as luck would have
it, I wanted to use my pocket handkerchief, and instinctively I made a
movement which revealed the whiteness of my skin under my sleeve, and
three terrible hooks swooped down at once on my wrist and entered my
flesh. I uttered a fearful shriek.”

“That’ll do, Captain, that’ll do,” I exclaimed, interrupting Captain
Michel’s story. “You were quite right. I’m off. I can’t stand any more.”

“Stay, monsieur,” said the Captain in a peremptory tone. “Stay,
monsieur, for I shall soon finish this frightful story which has made
four imbeciles laugh. When a man has Phocean blood in his veins,”
he added with an accent of unspeakable contempt turning to the four
ancient mariners who were obviously choking in their efforts to keep
back their laughter, “when a man has Phocean blood in his veins, he
can’t get over it.

“And when a man lives in Marseilles he is doomed never to believe in
anything. So it is for you, for you alone, monsieur, that I am telling
this story, and, be assured, I will pass over the most loathsome
details, knowing as I do how much the mind of a gentleman can bear. The
tragedy of my martyrdom proceeded so quickly that I can call to mind
only their inhuman cries, the protests of some and the rush of others
while Madame Beauvisage stood up and murmured:

“‘Be careful not to hurt him!’

“I tried to leap to my feet, but by this time a posse of mad cripples
was round me who tripped me up and I crashed to the floor. And I felt
their awful hooks hold my flesh captive just as the meat in a butcher’s
shop is held captive on its hooks.

“Yes, monsieur, I will spare you the details. I pledged you my word;
all the more so as I couldn’t give them to you, for I did not see
the operation. The doctor clapped a plug of cotton wool steeped in
chloroform on my mouth by way of a gag.

“When I came to myself I was in the kitchen, and I had lost an arm.
The cripples were all around me. They had ceased their wrangling. They
seemed to be united in the most touching harmony; in reality they were
in a state of dazed intoxication which caused them to sway their heads
like children who feel the need to go and lie down after eating their
fill, and I had not a doubt but that they were beginning, alas! to
digest me.... I was stretched at full length on the floor, securely
bound, and deprived of all power of movement, but I could both see and
hear them. My old comrade, Gérard Beauvisage, had tears of joy in his
eyes as he exclaimed:

“‘I should never have thought you would be so tender!’

“Madame Beauvisage was not present, but she, too, must have taken part
in the feast, for I heard some one ask Gérard how ‘she liked her share.’

“Yes, monsieur, I have finished my story. I have finished my story.
Those loathsome cripples having satisfied their weakness, must have at
last realized the full extent of their iniquity. They made themselves
scarce, and Madame Beauvisage, of course, escaped with them. They left
the doors wide open but no one came to set me free until four days
afterwards, when I was pretty well dead with hunger....

“Those miserable wretches had not even left the bone behind!”




                              THE GOLD AXE


Many years ago I was at Gersau, a small health resort on the Lake of
the Four Forest Cantons, a few miles from Lucerne. I wanted to complete
certain work, and I had arranged to spend the autumn in the quiet of
this delightful village whose ancient pointed roofs were reflected in
the romantic waters of the lake on which William Tell sailed in days of
old.

It was the end of autumn, and tourists had scattered, while the many
hideous Tartarins who had descended upon us from Germany with their
alpenstocks, their puttees and their little round hats decked with
the indispensable feather, had returned to their lager beer, their
sauerkraut and their “big concerts,” leaving the country between
Pilatus, the Mythen and the Rigi free to us at last.

Not more than half-a-dozen of us foregathered in the hotel at meal
time, and when evening came related our experiences of the day or
indulged in a little music.

An old lady, always enveloped in deep mourning, who when the little
hotel was swarming with noisy visitors had never addressed a word to
any one, and seemed the embodiment of woe, stood revealed as a pianist
of the first rank, and without waiting to be pressed, played Chopin to
us and, in particular, a certain lullaby by Schumann which she rendered
with such exquisite tenderness that she brought tears to our eyes.

We were all so grateful to her for the pleasant hours which she enabled
us to pass, that we joined together to present her, at the moment of
her departure, with a slight souvenir of our stay at Gersau.

One of us who went that day to Lucerne undertook to buy the gift. He
returned in the evening with a gold brooch in the form of a small axe.

Neither on that evening nor the following one did the old lady make her
appearance; and the visitors who were leaving entrusted the gold brooch
to my care.

Her luggage was still in the hotel, and I was prepared to see her
return, sooner or later, reassured as to her well-being by the
proprietor who told me that she was in the habit of disappearing for a
day or two, and he had no reason to feel anxious about her.

As a matter of fact the day before my departure, as I was making a
final tour of the lake and had pulled up a few steps from Tell’s
Chapel, I saw the old lady standing at the entrance of the building.

Never until then had I been impressed by the unspeakable distress
depicted on her face down which the tears were coursing, and never had
I so clearly observed the traces, which were still manifest, of her
former beauty. She caught sight of me, lowered her veil, and walked
toward the lake. Nevertheless, I did not hesitate to overtake her, and
bowing, expressed the visitors’ regret that we were about to lose her;
and then, as I had the gift on me, I presented her with the small case
containing the gold axe.

She opened it with a sweet, far-away smile, but no sooner did she
perceive the jewel inside than she began to tremble with emotion, and
drew back some distance from me, as though she had something to fear
from my presence, and with an insensate gesture threw the brooch into
the lake.

I displayed so much amazement at this unaccountable reception that she
begged my forgiveness and burst into a fit of sobbing. A seat stood in
this secluded spot, and we both sat down. And after a few lamentations
against the decrees of fate which left me quite at a loss, she confided
to me her strange, melancholy story which I was never to forget. For,
in truth, I know of no more terrible destiny than that which befell the
old lady in the black veil, who had played Schumann’s lullaby to us
with such exquisite emotion.

                   *       *       *       *       *

“I will tell you the whole story,” she said, “for I am about to leave
for ever this country which I determined to visit for the last time.
And then you will understand why it was that I threw the little gold
axe into the lake.

“I was born in Geneva, monsieur. We belonged to one of the leading
families and were rich, but some unfortunate speculations on the stock
exchange ruined my father, who died from the shock. When I was eighteen
I was a beautiful girl without a dowry. My mother gave up all hope of
marrying me. And yet she yearned to make sure of my future before she
went to join my father.

“I was twenty-four when a suitor whom every one looked upon as an
unhoped-for chance appeared.

“A young man from Briesgau who was accustomed to spend the summer in
Switzerland and whose acquaintance we made in the casino at Evian,
fell in love with me, and I liked him. Herbert Gutmann was a tall
young fellow, kindly, unobtrusive and good-natured. He seemed to unite
qualities alike of heart and mind. He possessed a certain affluence
without being actually wealthy. His father was still engaged in
business, and made him an allowance in order that he might travel until
the time came for him to succeed him in his business. We were all
intending to visit the elder Gutmann at his place in Todtnau, in the
Black Forest, when the state of my mother’s health greatly hastened
the course of events.

“Conscious that she no longer possessed the physical strength to
travel, my mother hurriedly returned to Geneva, where she received
from the civil authorities of Todtnau, to whom she had written, the
most satisfactory information in respect of Herbert and his family.
Herbert’s father had begun life as an ordinary woodcutter, and then
had left the district, returning to it with a small fortune which he
had ‘made in timber.’ That was all, at least, that was known of him in
Todtnau.

“This was enough to induce my mother to press forward the formalities
of my marriage, which took place a week before her death. She died with
her mind at rest for, as she said, she felt ‘reassured about my future.’

“My husband helped me to overcome the grief which this sore trial
caused me by his constant goodness and solicitude. Before we set out
for Todtnau we came here to Gersau to spend a week, and then to my
great surprise we undertook a long journey instead of making our visit
to Herbert’s father. My sorrow would have gradually been dispelled if,
as the days sped by, I had not noticed, almost with dismay, that my
husband was more and more becoming a prey to melancholy.

“I was more surprised than I can express, because Herbert had seemed to
me of a humorous disposition, open, unrestrained and extremely frank.
Was I to discover that the liveliness which he used to display was
forced, and veiled some deep mortification? Alas, his sighs when he
thought himself alone, and the agitation which sometimes disturbed his
night’s rest, scarcely left room for doubt, and I made up my mind to
question him.

“At the first word that I ventured to speak on the subject he made
answer by bursting into laughter, treating me as a silly little goose
and kissing me passionately, which merely served to strengthen my
conviction that I was in the presence of some painful mystery.

“I could not hide from myself that there was something in Herbert’s
demeanor which was very like ‘remorse.’ And yet I could have sworn that
he was incapable of committing, I will not say a low or mean action,
but even one lacking in propriety.

“It was then that the fate which had dogged my footsteps, struck us
another blow in the person of my father-in-law of whose death we learnt
whilst we were in Scotland. This grievous piece of news depressed
my husband more than I can say. He remained the whole night without
uttering a word, nor did he shed tears nor appear to listen to the
words of consolation by which I, in my turn, endeavored to rouse his
spirit. He seemed to be overwhelmed. At last, when the light was
beginning to dawn, he rose from the arm-chair in which he had sat
huddled, and turning toward me a face terribly distorted by suffering,
said in a harrowing voice:

“‘Come, Elizabeth, we shall have to go back. We shall have to go back.’

“These words seemed to possess a significance from the tone in which
they were spoken which I failed to understand. A return to the land of
his father’s was quite natural at a moment like that, and I could not
see why he should fight against the necessity of going home. From that
day onward Herbert changed completely; he grew extraordinarily silent,
and more than once I came upon him sobbing wildly.

“The grief which the loss of a beloved father might occasion could not
entirely explain the horror of our position, for there is nothing more
terrible than mystery, the deep mystery which steals in between two
beings who are devoted to each other, and separates them from their
happiness....

“We reached Todtnau in time to breathe a prayer over the newly made
grave.

“This little town in the Black Forest, at no great distance from
Höllenthal, was a dreary spot; and there was scarcely any society in it
for me. The Gutmann’s house, in which we took up our abode, lay on the
borders of a forest.

“It was a gloomy chalet standing in its own grounds, and our one
visitor was an old clockmaker in the place, who was said to be rich and
had been the elder Gutmann’s friend. He appeared from time to time at
the lunch or dinner hour, in order to get himself invited.

“I had no liking for this manufacturer of cuckoo-clocks, this petty
usurer, for though he was rich, he was a miser and incapable of the
least nicety of feeling. Nor did Herbert care for Frantz Basckler,
though he continued out of respect for the memory of his father to keep
on friendly terms with him.

“Basckler, who had no children, had told the elder Gutmann times out of
number that Herbert was his only heir. Herbert spoke to me about it one
day with the most sincere aversion, and I had once more an opportunity
of appreciating the strictness of his conscience.

“‘Would you like to be the heir of this sordid old miser who made his
fortune by ruining all the clockmakers in Höllenthal?’

“‘Certainly not,’ I returned. ‘Your father left us a certain amount of
property, and with what you can honestly earn we shall have enough to
live on even if Heaven chooses to send us a child.’

“I had no sooner uttered these words than I saw my Herbert turn as
white as a sheet. I put my arms round him, for I thought that he was
about to faint, but the blood returned to his face, and he exclaimed in
forcible tones:

“‘Yes, yes, the only true thing is to have the approbation of one’s
conscience.’

“And so saying he rushed wildly from the room.

“Sometimes he was away for a day or two on business, which consisted,
he told me, of buying plantations of standing trees and selling them
again to contractors. He did not work the whole thing himself but left
to others the task of turning the trees into sleepers for railways,
if the wood was of inferior quality, and posts and ships’ masts if it
was of the best quality. The essential thing was to display expert
judgment; and he had acquired his knowledge of timber from his father.

“He never took me away with him on any of his journeys. He left me
alone in the house with an old maid-servant who had received me with
ill-disguised hostility. I kept out of her way and wept in secret, for
I was not happy. I felt convinced that Herbert was hiding something
from me, something which was obsessing his mind, and which I too who
knew nothing, was never able to dismiss from my thoughts.

“And then the great forest frightened me. And the servant frightened
me. And old Basckler frightened me. And the old house! It was very
large with staircases everywhere leading to passages into which I dared
not venture. At the end of one of them in particular, stood a small
room. I had seen my husband enter it two or three times, but I myself
had never set foot in it.

“I could not pass the door of this room, which was always closed,
without a tremor. It was to this study that Herbert was wont to retire,
so he told me, to make up his accounts and balance his books, but it
was also to this room that he retired alone to bewail his secret.

“One night after he had set out on one of his journeys and I was vainly
endeavoring to sleep, my attention was attracted by a slight sound
under my window which I had left partly open on account of the extreme
heat. I got out of bed with every precaution. The sky was overcast and
great clouds hid the stars from sight. It was as much as I could do to
discern the threatening shadows of the nearest trees which faced the
house.

“I could not clearly distinguish my husband and the maid-servant until
they passed under my window, walking on the lawn with infinite caution
so that I should not hear the sound of their footsteps and carrying
between them a sort of long, somewhat narrow trunk which I had never
before seen. They entered the chalet and I did not hear nor see them
again for the next ten minutes.

“My anguish exceeded anything that it is possible to conceive. Why
were they hiding themselves from me? How was it that I had not heard
the coming of the chaise which usually brought Herbert home? Just then
I seemed to catch in the distance the neighing of a horse, and the
maid-servant appeared, crossed the lawn, vanished into the darkness,
and soon returned leading our mare unharnessed over the soft ground.
Never had they taken so many precautions to prevent me from waking up!

“Growing more and more surprised that Herbert did not come to our
room as was his custom after his return at night, I hastily slipped
on a dressing-gown and wandered into the darkness of the passage. My
steps turned quite naturally toward the little study of which I stood
in so much fear. And I had only just entered the corridor which led
to it when I heard my husband say in a rough, muffled voice to the
maid-servant who was mounting the stairs:

“‘Water! Bring me some water. Hot water of course. It won’t come off.’

“I stopped short and held my breath. Besides I could not breathe. I
was stifling. I was filled with the presentiment that some dreadful
misfortune had befallen us. Suddenly I was once more startled by my
husband’s voice:

“‘Ah, at last! That’s done it. It’s come off.’

“My husband and the old woman were still talking in low tones and I
heard his step. That brought me to myself and I fled to my bedroom and
locked myself in. Soon he knocked at the door and I went through the
form of pretending to be asleep and to wake up, and at last I opened
the door. I held a candle in my hand which fell to the floor when I
caught sight of the look on his face.

“‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Are you still asleep? Do go back to
bed.’

“I made a movement to light the candle again, but he stopped me and I
threw myself on the bed. I spent a cruel night.

“Herbert turned and tossed and sighed beside me and could not sleep. He
did not speak a word. At daybreak he rose, pressed an icy kiss on my
brow and left the room. When I got downstairs the old woman gave me a
note from him in which he stated that he was obliged to go away again
for a couple of days.

“At eight o’clock that morning I learned from workmen on their way
to Neustadt, that old Basckler had been found murdered in a small
cottage which he possessed at Höllenthal, where he sometimes spent
the night when his business of money-lending kept him too long among
his peasant-debtors. Basckler had received a terrible blow with an
axe which had split his head in two. It was undoubtedly the work of a
woodman.

“I returned to the house as best I could. And once more my feet led me
toward the little study. I could not explain exactly what was passing
in my mind, but after the words which I had overheard during the night
and the look on Herbert’s face, I felt a need to see what that room
contained. Just then the servant observed me and exclaimed maliciously:

“‘Leave that room alone. You know quite well that M. Gutmann has
forbidden you to touch it. A lot of good it would do you to know what’s
inside.’

“And she walked away with a fiendish laugh.

“I took my bed, suffering from high fever. I was ill for a fortnight.
Herbert looked after me with maternal solicitude. It seemed to me that
I had been the sport of some evil dream, and it was enough now to see
his good-natured face to confirm my impression that I was not in a
normal condition on the night when I fancied that I had seen and heard
so many extraordinary things. Moreover the murderer of Basckler had
been arrested. He was a woodman belonging to Bergen whom the old miser
had ‘bled’ too freely and who had taken his revenge by ‘bleeding’ his
persecutor in his turn.

“This woodman, a man named Mathis Müller, never ceased to protest his
innocence, but though not a single trace of blood was found on his
clothes and his axe was almost like new steel, there was, it seems,
sufficient evidence of his guilt to bring him to justice.

“Our circumstances were in no way affected, as we imagined they might
be, by old Basckler’s death, and Herbert looked in vain for a will
which did not exist.

“To my surprise its absence considerably upset him, and one day when I
questioned him about it he answered irritably:

“‘Well, yes, if you want to know, I was relying a great deal on that
will—a great deal.’

“And as he spoke a black look came over his face, and the terrible face
which I had seen on the mysterious night rose up before me, and after
that never left me. It was like a mask which I was always ready to
place over Herbert’s face even when it was naturally kind and sad.

“During Mathis Müller’s trial at Freiburg I eagerly read the
newspapers; and certain words which fell from the counsel for the
defense haunted me day and night:

“‘Until you have discovered the axe with which the deed was done and
the murderer’s blood-stained clothes, you cannot convict Mathis Müller.’

“Nevertheless Mathis Müller was found guilty and sentenced to death,
and I am bound to say that the verdict strangely affected my husband.
At night he dreamt of nothing but Mathis Müller. I was terrified of him
and my thoughts also terrified me.

“Oh, I longed to know the truth! I was determined to know the truth.
What was the meaning of those words ‘It won’t come off?’

“What was the nature of the work upon which he was engaged in the
mysterious little study during the night?

“One night I rose and groping in the dark stole his keys from him. I
crept into the corridors. I went to the kitchen to fetch a lantern.
With chattering teeth I reached the forbidden room ... I opened the
door and my eyes at once fell on the trunk—the oblong trunk which had
so greatly perplexed me.

“It was locked, but I had no difficulty in finding the small key on the
bunch ... I unlocked it and raised the lid. I went down on my knees in
order to see better, and the sight that met my eyes forced a cry of
horror from me....

“The trunk contained blood-stained clothes and the axe which had struck
the blow still spotted with rust....

                   *       *       *       *       *

“How I managed, after what I had seen, to live with Herbert through the
few weeks which preceded the convicted man’s execution I cannot tell....

“I was afraid that he might kill me....

“How was it that my attitude, the dread that possessed me, failed to
enlighten him? The fact is that at that time his mind was wholly a prey
to fears not less great than my own. The thought of Mathis Müller never
left him.

“To enable him to escape the obsession, apparently, he now shut himself
up in the little study, and I sometimes heard him delivering tremendous
blows, which made the floor and walls resound, as if he were fighting
with his axe against the ghosts and phantoms which beset him.

“Strange to say, and it seemed at first impossible to understand,
Herbert recovered his calmness a couple of days before Müller’s
execution—the calmness of marble, the calmness of a statue. That
evening he said:

“‘I am going away to-morrow morning early. I have some important
business to do near Freiburg. I shall probably be away for a couple of
days. Don’t worry.’

“It was at Freiburg that the execution was to take place, and I had the
impression that Herbert’s composure was the result of the resolution
that he had taken.

“He was going to give himself up!

“The thought was so much of a relief to me that for the first time for
many a night I fell into a sound sleep. It was broad daylight when I
awoke. My husband had already left the house.

“I dressed in haste and without saying a word to the old servant I
started for Todtnau. Here, I took a conveyance and drove to Freiburg.
I reached Freiburg when the light had begun to wane. I went at once to
the Court House, and the first person whom I saw entering the building
was my husband. I stood rooted to the spot. And as Herbert did not come
out again I felt sure that he had surrendered and was being held there
at the disposal of the authorities.

“The prison at that time was next the Court House. I walked round
it like a mad-woman. All that night I wandered about the streets,
returning every now and then to this gloomy building, and the first
gleams of day were beginning to break when my eyes encountered two men
clad in black frock-coats mounting the front steps of the Court.

“I ran up to them and said that I wanted to see the public prosecutor
as soon as possible, as I had a communication of the utmost gravity to
make to him about the Basckler murder.

“As it happened, one of the gentlemen was the public prosecutor, and he
invited me to accompany him to his office. Here I explained who I was
and said that he must have received a visit from my husband the night
before. He told me that he had in fact seen him, and then as he took
refuge in silence I threw myself on my knees before him beseeching him
to have pity on me and tell me whether Herbert had confessed his crime.
He seemed surprised, helped me to rise to my feet, and questioned me.

“Slowly I told him the story of my life, such as I have told it to
you, and at last I described the awful discovery which I had made in
the little study in the chalet at Todtnau. I ended by declaring that I
should never have allowed an innocent man to be executed, and that had
not my husband given himself up, I should not have hesitated to inform
the police. And then I asked him as a final act of mercy, to be allowed
to see Herbert.

“‘Yes, you shall see him, madame,’ he returned. ‘Please come with me.’

“He took me, more dead than alive, to the prison, through the corridors
and up a staircase. Here he stood me before a small barred window which
jutted over a large hall and left me, telling me to have patience. A
number of other persons soon took up their positions at this window,
and looked into the hall without speaking.

“I did as they did. It was as though I was fastened to the bars, and I
had the feeling that I was about to witness some monstrous spectacle.

“The hall was gradually lined with a number of persons all of whom
maintained a mournful silence. Daylight now rendered the scene more
visible. In the center of the hall we could clearly discern a heavy
block of wood, and some one behind me exclaimed:

“‘That’s the headman’s block!’

“So Müller was to be executed! An icy perspiration began to trickle
down my forehead, and I cannot say even now how it was that I did not
fall into a dead faint. A door opened, and a procession appeared headed
by the condemned man, quivering in his shirt which was cut low and
showed his bare neck. His hands were bound behind his back, and he was
supported by two warders. A minister of religion was murmuring in his
ear.

“The wretched man began to speak. In a few trembling words he confessed
his crime and asked forgiveness of God and man. A civic officer took
note of the confession and read out the sentence of the Court; and then
the two warders thrust the convict on his knees and placed his head on
the block.

“Mathis Müller might have already been dead for all the sign of life
he gave, when a man with bare arms carrying an axe on his shoulder,
stepped forward from the side where he had hitherto remained in the
background.

“This man placed his hand upon the prisoner’s head, waved the two
warders aside, lifted the axe and struck a terrible blow. Nevertheless
he had to strike a second time before the head fell. Then he picked it
up by the hair and stood erect.

“How was it that I was able to watch the unspeakably horrible sight
until the end? Yet I could not remove my eyes from this scene of blood,
and it seemed as though there was still something for me to see, and
indeed my eyes did see ... they saw, when holding in his shaking hand
the abominable trophy the executioner drew himself up and raised his
eyes.

“I uttered a piercing shriek, ‘Herbert!’ and fell unconscious.

                   *       *       *       *       *

“Now, monsieur, you know my story. I had married the public
executioner. The axe which I had discovered in the little study was the
executioner’s axe; the blood-stained clothes were the executioner’s
clothes.

“Next day I fled to the house of an old relative, and I very nearly
lost my reason; and I don’t know how it is that I am still in this
world.

“As for my husband, who could not live without me, for he loved me more
than anything on earth, he was found two months later hanging in our
room. I received a last letter from him:

“‘Forgive me, Elizabeth. I have tried every sort of occupation. I
was dismissed as soon as it was discovered that I was the son of my
father. I was forced at an early age to make up my mind to take up the
succession of his work. You will understand now how it is that the
office of public executioner descends from father to son. I was born
an honest man, and the only crime that I have ever committed in my life
was to conceal the truth from you.... Farewell!’”

                   *       *       *       *       *

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


                                 THE END


                          Transcriber’s Notes:

  • Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
  • Text enclosed by pluses is in small caps (+small caps+).
  • Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76493 ***