THE DREAM.
This was the Schoolmaster's dream:
He was again in Rodolph's house in the Allée des Veuves. The saloon in
which the miscreant had received his appalling punishment had not
undergone any alteration. Rodolph himself was sitting at the table on
which were the Schoolmaster's papers and the little _Saint-Esprit_ of
_lapis_ which he had given to the Chouette. Rodolph's countenance was
grave and sad. On his right the negro David was standing motionless and
silent; on his left was the Chourineur, who looked on with a bewildered
mien. In his dream the Schoolmaster was no longer blind, but saw through
a medium of clear blood, which filled the cavities of his eyeballs. All
and everything seemed to him tinted with red. As birds of prey hover on
motionless wing above the head of the victim which they fascinate before
they devour, so a monstrous screech-owl (_chouette_), having for its
head the hideous visage of the one-eyed hag, soared over the
Schoolmaster, keeping fixed on him her round, glaring, and green eye.
This fixed stare was upon his breast like a heavy weight. The
Schoolmaster discerned a vast lake of blood separating him from the
table at which Rodolph was seated. Then this inflexible judge, as well
as the Chourineur and the negro, grew and grew, expanding into colossal
proportions, until they touched the ceiling; and then it also became
higher in proportion. The lake of blood was calm, and as unruffled as a
red mirror; the Schoolmaster saw his hideous countenance reflected
therein. Then that was suddenly effaced by the tumult of the swelling
waves. From their troubled surface there arose a vapour resembling the
foul exhalation of a marsh, a livid-coloured mist of that violet hue
peculiar to the lips of the dead. In proportion as this miasma
rises--rises, the faces of Rodolph, the Chourineur, and the negro
continue to expand and expand in an extraordinary manner, and always
remain above this fearful cloud. In the midst of the awful vapour, the
Schoolmaster sees the pale ghosts, and those murderous scenes in which
he had been the actor. In this fantastic mirage he first sees a little
bald-headed old man, clad in a long brown coat, and wearing an eye-shade
of green silk. He is employing himself in a dilapidated chamber in
counting and arranging pieces of gold into piles by the light of a lamp.
Through the window, lighted by the dim moonlight reflected on the tops
of some high trees waving in the wind, the Schoolmaster recognises his
own figure. Pressing his distorted features against the glass, following
every motion of the old man with glaring eyes, then breaking a pane, he
opens the window itself, leaps with a bound upon his victim, and stabs
him between the shoulders with his long and keen knife. The movement is
so rapid, the blow so quick and sure, that the dead body of the old man
remains seated in the chair.
The murderer tries to withdraw his weapon from the dead body,--he
cannot! He redoubles his efforts,--in vain! He then seeks to quit the
deadly steel,--impossible!
The hand of the assassin clings to the handle of the poignard, as the
blade of the poignard clings to the frame of the wounded man. The
murderer then hears the sound of clinking spurs and clashing swords in
the adjoining room. He must escape at all risks, and attempts to carry
with him the body of the feeble old man, from which he cannot withdraw
either his weapon or his hand.
He cannot do even this. The light and feeble carcass weighs him down
like a mass of lead. Despite his herculean shoulders, his desperate
efforts, the Schoolmaster cannot even stir this overwhelming weight.
The sound of echoing steps and jingling sabres comes nearer and nearer.
The key turns in the lock,--the door opens. The vision disappears.
And then the screech-owl flaps her wing, and shrieks out:
"It is the old miser of the Rue de la Roule. Your maiden murder! murder!
murder!"
A moment's darkness,--then the miasma which covers the lake of blood
resumes its transparency, and another spectre is revealed.
The day begins to dawn,--the fog is thick and heavy. A man, clothed like
a cattle-dealer, lies stretched, dead on the bank of the highroad. The
trampled earth, the torn turf, proved that the victim had made a
desperate resistance. The man has five bleeding wounds in his breast. He
is lifeless; yet still he seems to whistle on his dogs, calling to them,
"Help! help!"
But his whistling, his cries, proceed from five large and gaping
wounds,--
"Each one a death in nature,"--
which move like so many complaining lips. The five calls, the five
whistlings, all made and heard at once, come from the dead man by the
mouths of his gushing wounds; and fearful are they to hear!
At this instant the Chouette waves her wings, and mocks the deathly
groans of the victim with five bursts of laughter,--a laughter as
unearthly and as horrible as the madman's mirth; and then again she
shrieks:
"The cattle-dealer of Poissy. Murder! murder! murder!"
Protracted and underground echoes first repeat aloud the malevolent
laughter of the screech-owl. Then they seem to die away in the very
bowels of the earth.
At this sound two large dogs, as black as midnight, with eyes glaring
like burning coals, begin to run rapidly around--around--around the
Schoolmaster, baying furiously. They almost touch him, and yet their
bark appears as distant as if carried on the wind of the morning.
Gradually these spectres fade away as the previous one did, and are lost
in the pale vapour which is continually ascending.
A new exhalation now arises from the lake of blood, and spreads itself
on its surface. It is a sort of greenish, transparent mist; it resembles
the vertical section of a canal filled with water. At first he sees the
bed of the canal covered in by a thick vase formed of numberless
reptiles usually imperceptible to the unassisted eye, but which,
enlarged, as if viewed through a microscope, assume monstrous forms,
vast proportions relatively to their actual size. It is no longer mud,
but a compact, living, crawling mass,--an inextricable conglomeration
which wriggles and curls; so close, so dense, that a sullen and low
undulation hardly stirs the level of this vase, or rather bed of foulest
animalculæ. Above trickles gently--gently, a turbid stream, thick and
stagnating, which, in its dilatory flow, disturbs the filth incessantly
vomited by the sewers of a great city,--fragments of all sorts,
carcasses of animals, etc., etc. Suddenly the Schoolmaster hears the
plash of a body, which falls heavily on the water; in its recoil the
water sprinkles his very face. In the midst of the air-bubbles which
rise thick and fast to the surface of the canal he sees the body of a
woman, which sinks rapidly as she struggles--struggles.
Then he sees himself and the Chouette running hastily along the banks of
St. Martin's Canal, carrying with them a box covered with black cloth;
and yet he is still present during all the variations of agony suffered
by the victim whom he and the Chouette have thrown into the canal. After
the first immersion the victim rises to the surface and moves her arms
in violent agitation like some one who, not knowing how to swim, tries
in vain to save herself. Then she utters a piercing cry,--a cry of one
in the last extremity,--despairing--which ends in the sullen, stifled
sound of involuntary choking; and the woman the second time sinks
beneath the troubled waters.
The screech-owl, which hovers continually motionless, imitates the
convulsive rattle of the drowning wretch, as she mocked the dying groans
of the cattle-dealer. In the midst of bursts of deathlike laughter the
screech-owl utters, "Glou! glou! glou!"
The subterranean echoes repeated the sound.
A second time submerged the woman is fast suffocating, and makes one
more desperate effort for breath; but, instead of air, it is water which
she inspires. Then her head falls back, her convulsed features are
swollen and become livid, her neck becomes blue and tumefied, her arms
stiffen, and, in a last spasmodic effort, the drowning woman in her
agony moves her feet, which are resting on the vase. Then she is
surrounded by a mass of black soil, which ascends with her to the
surface of the water. Scarcely has the choked wretch breathed her last
sigh than she is covered with myriads of the microscopic reptiles,--the
greedy and horrible vermin of the mud. The carcass floats for a moment,
balances for a moment, and then sinks slowly, horizontally, the feet
lower than the head, and between the double waters begins to follow the
current of the land. Sometimes the dead corpse turns, and its pale face
is before the Schoolmaster. Then the spectre fixes on him glaringly its
two blue, glassy, and opaque eyes; the livid mouth opens. The
Schoolmaster is far away from the drowning woman, and yet her lips
murmur in his ears, "Glou! glou! glou!" accompanying these appalling
syllables with that singular noise which a bottle thrust into the water
makes when filling itself.
The screech-owl repeats, "Glou! glou! glou!" flapping her wings, and
shrieking:
"The woman of the Canal St. Martin! Murder! murder! murder!"
The vision of the drowned woman disappears. The lake of blood, through
which the Schoolmaster still constantly beholds Rodolph, becomes of a
bronzed, black colour, then red again, and then changes instantaneously
into a liquid, furnace-like, molten metal. Then that lake of fire
rises--rises--rises towards the sky like an immense whirlpool. There is
now a fiery horizon like iron at a white heat. This immense, boundless
horizon dazzles and scorches the very eyes of the Schoolmaster, who,
fascinated, fastened to the spot, cannot turn away his gaze. Then, at
the bottom of this burning lava, whose reflection seems to consume him,
he sees pass and repass, one by one, the black and giant spectres of his
victims.
"The magic-lanthorn of remorse! remorse! remorse!" shrieks the
night-bird, flapping her hideous wings, and laughing mockingly.
Notwithstanding the intolerable anguish which his impatient gaze
creates, the Schoolmaster has his eyes fixed on the grisly phantoms
which move in the blazing sheet. Then an indefinable horror steals over
him. Passing through every step of indescribable torture, by dint of
contemplating this blazing sight, he feels his eyeballs--which have
replaced the blood with which his orbits were filled at the commencement
of his dream--he feels his eyeballs grow hot, burning, and melt in this
furnace--to smoke and bubble--and at last to become calcined in their
cavities like two crucibles filled with red fire. By a fearful power,
after having seen as well as felt the successive transformations of his
eyeballs into ashes, he falls into the darkness of his actual blindness.
But now, suddenly, his intolerable agonies are assuaged as though by
enchantment. An odorous air of delicious freshness passes over his
burning eyeballs. This air is a lovely admixture of the scents of
springtime, which exhale from flowers bathed in evening dew. The
Schoolmaster hears all about him a gentle murmur, like that of the
breeze which just stirs the leaves--like that of a brook of running
waters, which rushes and murmurs on its bed of stone and moss "in the
leafy month of June." Thousands of birds warble the most enchanting
melodies. They are stilled, and the voices of children, of angelic tone,
sing strange, unknown words--words that are "winged" (if we may use the
expression), and which the Schoolmaster hears mount to heaven with
gentle motion. A feeling of moral health, of tranquillity, of undefined
languor, creeps over him by degrees. It is an expansion of the heart, an
elevation of the mind, an effort of the soul, of which no physical
feeling, how delicious soever it may be, can impart the least idea. He
feels himself softly soaring in a heavenly sphere; he seems to rise to
an immeasurable height.
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
After having for some moments revelled in this unspeakable felicity he
again finds himself in the dark abyss of his habitual thoughts. His
dream continues; but he is again but the muzzled miscreant who
blasphemes and curses in the paroxysm of his impotent rage. A voice is
heard--sonorous--solemn. It is Rodolph's. The Schoolmaster starts "like
a guilty thing upon a fearful summons." He has the vague consciousness
of a dream; but the alarm with which Rodolph inspires him is so great
that he tries, but vainly, to escape from this fresh vision. The voice
speaks--he listens. The tone of Rodolph is not severe; it is "rather in
sorrow than in anger."
"Unhappy man," he says to the Schoolmaster, "the hour of your repentance
has not yet sounded. God only knows when it will strike. The punishment
of your crimes is still incomplete; you have suffered, but not expiated.
Destiny follows out its work of full justice. Your accomplices have
become your tormentors. A woman, a child, tame, subdue, conquer you.
When I sentenced you to a terrible punishment for your crimes I said--do
you remember my words?--'You have wickedly abused the great bodily
strength bestowed upon you; I will paralyse that strength. The strongest
have trembled before you; I will make you henceforward shrink in the
presence of the weakest of beings.' You have left the obscure retreat in
which you might have dwelt for repentance and expiation. You were afraid
of silence and solitude. You sought to drown remembrance by new crimes.
Just now, in a fearful and bloodthirsty access of passion, you have
wished to kill your wife. She is here under the same roof as yourself.
She sleeps without defence. You have a knife. Her apartment is close at
hand. There was nothing to prevent you from reaching her. Nothing could
have protected her from your rage--nothing but your impotence. The dream
you have had, and in which you are still bound, may teach you much, may
save you. The mysterious phantoms of this dream bear with them a most
pregnant meaning. The lake of blood, in which your victims have
appeared, is the blood you have shed. The molten lava which replaced it
is the gnawing, eating remorse, which must consume you before one day,
that the Almighty, having mercy on your protracted tortures, shall call
you to himself, and let you taste the ineffable sweetness of his
gracious forgiveness. But this will not be. No, no! these warnings will
be useless. Far from repenting, you regret every day, with horrid
blasphemies, the time when you could commit such atrocities. Alas! from
this continual struggle between your bloodthirsty desires and the
impossibility of satisfying them,--between your habits of fierce
oppression and the compulsion of submitting to beings as weak as they
are depraved,--there will result to you a fate so fearful, so appalling.
Ah, unhappy wretch!"
Rodolph's voice faltered, and for a moment he was silent, as if emotion
and horror had hindered him from proceeding. The Schoolmaster's hair
bristled on his brow. What could be--would be--that fate, which even his
executioner pitied?
"The fate that awaits you is so horrible," resumed Rodolph, "that, if
the Almighty, in his inexorable and all-powerful vengeance, would make
you in your person expiate all the crimes of all mankind, he could not
devise a more fearful punishment! Ah, woe for you! woe for you!"
At this moment the Schoolmaster uttered a piercing shriek, and awoke
with a bound at this horrid, frightful dream.