_The Torture Chamber_
|IT is only the basest of literature that describes without adequate
reason the weird, the horrible. However, many authors find it necessary
to dilate upon the most satanic personalities of men, and the worst
cruelties imaginable.
Therefore, it is only with the knowledge that the recital of the
misfortunes of Théophraste is destined to throw a light on the most
obscure problems of psychic surgery that the author of these lines
proceeds with this description of the most frightful tortures, moral and
physical, that have ever been endured by man.
The operation to be performed was a singular one, and full of the
gravest of dangers. However, M. Eliphaste was in the habit of performing
the most complicated of psychic operations, and the delicacy of his
astral scalpel was universally acknowledged. But the difficulty was the
delay.
Had M. Lecamus brought Théophraste earlier, the danger would have been
less, but now M. Eliphaste recognized the gravity of the case, and he
said that to kill Cartouche without killing Longuet was to tempt God. It
was the gravest responsibility.
However, he knew how to lead M. Longuet’s mind quietly and without
haste to the subject of his death, and thus he prepared him for death.
He made him live his death the moment that he made him die his death.
Then, at the psychological moment, he made a certain gesture, the double
sign which precipitated in death the spirit of the dead, and brought
back to life the living mind.
These were the details of the operation to be performed, and the
preliminaries, which consisted in making Théophraste live through the
last months of Cartouche’s life, having been started, M. Eliphaste
began asking Théophraste a series of questions. The latter was lying,
groaning, on the bed in the laboratory, which was lighted by the hissing
scarlet flames.
M. Lecamus and Mme. Longuet sat on a low bench at one side of the room.
M. Eliphaste stood beside the bed.
“Where did they take you, Cartouche?”
“In the torture room. My trial is ended. I am condemned to die on
the wheel. Before the torture they wish me to confess the names of my
accomplices, my friends, my mistresses. I should rather die on the wheel
twice! They shall know nothing!”
“And now, where are you, Cartouche?”
“I am going down a small stairway, at the end of the ‘Walk of the
Pillory.’ I open a grating. I am in the dark cellars. These dungeons
do not frighten me. I know them well! Ah! Ah! I was shut up in that
dungeon under Phillippe le Bel!”
Then with a terrible power M. Eliphaste cried out, “Cartouche! Thou
art Cartouche! Thou art in the dungeons by order of the Regent.” Then
he repeated to himself, “Phillippe le Bel?” and then to Théophraste
again, “Where are we going? Where are we? My God! We must not lose our
way! And now where are you, Cartouche?”
“I advance in the darkness of the cellars. There are about me, walking
in the dark, so many guardsmen that I cannot tell the number. I see
below, far, far below, a ray of light that I know well. It is a square
ray of light that the sun has forgotten since the beginning of the
history of France. My guards are not French guardsmen. They mistrust all
French guardsmen. My guards are commanded by the Lieutenant of the Short
Robe of the Châtelet.”
“Where art thou now, Cartouche?”
“I am in the torture chamber. There are before me men clothed in long
robes, but I cannot distinguish their faces. They are my commissioners,
who have been entrusted with the verifications, as appeared to be the
custom. But why do they call it verifications? The thought makes me
smile.” (Théophraste really smiled as he said this.) “Where are you
now, Cartouche?”
“They put me on the criminal stool. They have put my legs in backings.
With incredibly strong cords, they have bound small planks about my
legs. I believe truly that the rascals wish to make me suffer to the
limit, and the whole day’s work will be rough. But I have a heart
hardened by courage. They shall not break it!” At this point M.
Longuet, on his strapped bed, uttered a fearful cry. His mouth was wide
open, and he groaned incessantly. Adolphe and Marceline leaned over him
and asked with horror when that howling would cease, and when that mouth
would close. But M. Eliphaste only said, “The torture has begun. But
if he howls like that at the first blow of the mallet, there is going to
be trouble.” M. Eliphaste was not expecting those groans. He paid no
attention to the howling. He calmed M. Lecamus and Mme. Longuet with a
supreme gesture. He spoke to Théophraste, something they never knew,
for the howling prevented them from hearing anything.
At last the howling became groaning, and eventually the groaning itself
stopped. Théophraste’s face had become comparatively placid.
“Why do you cry out in that way, Cartouche?” “I scream because
it is a punishment that I cannot denounce my accomplices. I have their
names on the end of my tongue! They do not see that if I do not denounce
them it is because I cannot move the end of my tongue! I cannot! I
cannot! I cannot! And they struck with their mallet again! And they sunk
the pieces of wood into my legs again! It is unjust! I cannot move the
end of my tongue!”
“What are they doing to you now, Cartouche?” “The doctor and
the surgeon are leaning over me and feeling my pulse. They are
congratulating themselves on having chosen that kind of torture, which
is, they are saying to the commissioners, the least dangerous to life
and the least susceptible to accidents.”
“And now, Cartouche, what are they doing to you?”
“They are doing nothing to me, and I regret it, for they have decided
to bury the second wedge in me only a half hour after the first, and let
the pain which it produced pass away, and the sensibility be entirely
restored. I am looking at my judges. They have black mouths. I like the
face of the executioner better. He is no more amused than I. He wants
to be somewhere else. But there he comes with the second judge. They are
all around me. They are over me! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!...”
Never had Théophraste looked so terrible. His mouth was wide open,
and his tongue seemed paralyzed. Foam was around his lips, and his eyes
seemed to start out of his head.
M. Lecamus looked across to M. Eliphaste, who said, when the second howl
had died away, “Why do you scream, Cartouche?”
“Because these torturers will not listen to the names that are on the
end of my tongue.”
“But you have not told us any names. You have only screamed.”
“It is Cartouche they are torturing and Longuet who screams,”
answered Théophraste.
M. Eliphaste was taken aback by this last response. He turned toward the
two silent onlookers and said in a low, trembling voice, “Then it is
he who is suffering.”
There was no room for doubting this truth. The fearful expressions on
Théophraste’s face as he imagined the executioner forcing the wedge
in, showed too plainly that though it was Cartouche whom they tortured,
it was Théophraste who really suffered.
M. Eliphaste seemed very concerned. Never before had such a case come
before his astral scalpel. The identity of the soul had been proven, and
suffering Cartouche had cried out in distress after two centuries. This
cry had waited to come from the lips of Théophraste.
M. Eliphaste leaned his head on his hands and prayed. After a short
silence he turned to M. Lecamus and said, “We are only at the second
wedge, and there are seven of them.”
“Do you think my husband will have the strength to bear them?” asked
Marceline.
M. Eliphaste leaned over the prostrate form of Théophraste and examined
his head, just as the doctor had done to Cartouche in the torture
chamber.
“The man is all right,” said he. “I don’t believe there is
anything to fear now. We must kill Cartouche.”
“I think so, too,” said Lecamus. “It is necessary for the future
security and definite happiness of M. Longuet.”
M. Eliphaste then continued his interrogations:
“And now what are they doing to you, Cartouche?”
“They are questioning me. I cannot reply. Why doesn’t that man in
the corner of the dungeon do his duty? I have not yet seen his face. He
turned his back to me and made a noise with old irons. The executioner
is very quiet. He is leaning against the wall, yawning. There is a lamp
on the table which gives light to two men, who write incessantly.
Behind the man who is making the noise I see a little red light. The
executioner’s assistant has loosened the knots in the cords a little,
which gives me a relief for which I am grateful... But... but... but
the assistant on the other side pulls and pulls. If he continues to pull
the cords so he will cut my legs off. They bring a crucifix for me to
kiss. Behind the man who turned his back on me I hear something like
crackling embers, and there are small red flames which lick the stone
walls. Between the two men who are writing there is a man who makes a
sign. The executioner has a kind face. I sign to him for some water. I
could bear the pain better if I had not such a thirst. The executioner
raises his mallet! I swear I cannot say the names which are at the end
of my tongue. They will not leave me. I cannot speak! Oh! why cannot you
hear them? Take them from me!”
By this time his mouth had become closed, but the lips were opened in
such a way as to make it appear that he had no lips. The teeth were
locked and welded together tightly. A muffled cry of suffering came
from the throat, but could not escape through the closed teeth. Suddenly
there was a sharp grinding, and his teeth began to break under the great
pressure of that closed jaw. Pieces of teeth were scattered over the
bed, and blood issued from his mouth. His horrible groaning continued,
and Théophraste showed signs of weakening under the great strain.
At this horrible spectacle M. Eliphaste declared wearily that he had
never assisted or suspected that he could assist at such suffering. He
confessed that until to-day he had never operated on a reincarnated soul
of less than five hundred years. It was obvious that in spite of all his
science and all his experience the illustrious medium was nonplussed.
M. Eliphaste did not try any longer to dissimulate his anxiety. He could
have stopped the operation there if he had had time. But they buried
the wedges in so rapidly that it did not even permit him to question M.
Longuet.
During this last performance M. Longuet’s toothless mouth opened
again. Other cries issued from it which were not like human cries at
all. They were so curious and so weird that all three onlookers leaned
over him, trembling with terror to see how such a cry could be made by a
human mouth.
Mme. Longuet wanted to run away, but in her fright she fell. When she
arose the cries had ceased. M. Eliphaste commanded her to be quiet,
recalling to her with a severe look her responsibility in the operation.
M. Théophraste now reposed peacefully on his strap-mattress. That
peacefulness, following immediately the horrors of such suffering, was
extraordinary. He was not in pain. He remembered none of it. After the
torturing was over he ceased to think of it, and consequently this was
how he could reply to M. Eliphaste in the intervals of torture, in the
most natural way, without physical emotion.
M. Eliphaste again began to interrogate him:
“And now where are you, Cartouche?”
“I am still in the torture chamber. Ah! they hold me! They hold me
tightly! They hold my arms! What are they going to do? The man in the
center says, ‘By order of the Regent we must have the names. So
much the worse if he dies for it! Are the tongs ready? Begin with the
breasts!.. Oh! Oh! The man kneeling before the burning coals gets
up, making a noise with the irons. He hands the red tongs to the
executioner. They uncover my right breast! Oh! Oh! It is dreadful! I
cannot live through it!”