Last night two superb Satans and a She-devil not less extraordinary
ascended the mysterious stairway by which Hell gains access to the
frailty of sleeping man, and communes with him in secret. These
three postured gloriously before me, as though they had been upon a
stage--and a sulphurous splendour emanated from these beings who so
disengaged themselves from the opaque heart of the night. They bore
with them so proud a presence, and so full of mastery, that at first I
took them for three of the true Gods.
The first Satan, by his face, was a creature of doubtful sex. The
softness of an ancient Bacchus shone in the lines of his body. His
beautiful languorous eyes, of a tenebrous and indefinite colour,
were like violets still laden with the heavy tears of the storm; his
slightly-parted lips were like heated censers, from whence exhaled
the sweet savour of many perfumes; and each time he breathed, exotic
insects drew, as they fluttered, strength from the ardours of his
breath.
Twined about his tunic of purple stuff, in the manner of a cincture,
was an iridescent Serpent with lifted head and eyes like embers turned
sleepily towards him. Phials full of sinister fluids, alternating
with shining knives and instruments of surgery, hung from this living
girdle. He held in his right hand a flagon containing a luminous red
fluid, and inscribed with a legend in these singular words:
"DRINK OF THIS MY BLOOD: A PERFECT RESTORATIVE";
and in his left hand held a violin that without doubt served to sing
his pleasures and pains, and to spread abroad the contagion of his
folly upon the nights of the Sabbath.
From rings upon his delicate ankles trailed a broken chain of gold, and
when the burden of this caused him to bend his eyes towards the earth,
he would contemplate with vanity the nails of his feet, as brilliant
and polished as well-wrought jewels.
He looked at me with eyes inconsolably heart-broken and giving forth
an insidious intoxication, and cried in a chanting voice: "If thou
wilt, if thou wilt, I will make thee an overlord of souls; thou shalt
be master of living matter more perfectly than the sculptor is master
of his clay; thou shalt taste the pleasure, reborn without end, of
obliterating thyself in the self of another, and of luring other souls
to lose themselves in thine."
But I replied to him: "I thank thee. I only gain from this venture,
then, beings of no more worth than my poor self? Though remembrance
brings me shame indeed, I would forget nothing; and even before I
recognised thee, thou ancient monster, thy mysterious cutlery, thy
equivocal phials, and the chain that imprisons thy feet, were symbols
showing clearly enough the inconvenience of thy friendship. Keep thy
gifts."
The second Satan had neither the air at once tragical and smiling, the
lovely insinuating ways, nor the delicate and scented beauty of the
first. A gigantic man, with a coarse, eyeless face, his heavy paunch
overhung his hips and was gilded and pictured, like a tattooing, with
a crowd of little moving figures which represented the unnumbered
forms of universal misery. There were little sinew-shrunken men who
hung themselves willingly from nails; there were meagre gnomes,
deformed and undersized, whose beseeching eyes begged an alms even
more eloquently than their trembling hands; there were old mothers who
nursed clinging abortions at their pendent breasts. And many others,
even more surprising.
This heavy Satan beat with his fist upon his immense belly, from
whence came a loud and resounding metallic clangour, which died away
in a sighing made by many human voices. And he smiled unrestrainedly,
showing his broken teeth--the imbecile smile of a man who has dined too
freely. Then the creature said to me:
"I can give thee that which gets all, which is worth all, which takes
the place of all." And he tapped his monstrous paunch, whence came
a sonorous echo as the commentary to his obscene speech. I turned
away with disgust and replied: "I need no man's misery to bring me
happiness; nor will I have the sad wealth of all the misfortunes
pictured upon thy skin as upon a tapestry."
As for the She-devil, I should lie if I denied that at first I found
in her a certain strange charm, which to define I can but compare to
the charm of certain beautiful women past their first youth, who yet
seem to age no more, whose beauty keeps something of the penetrating
magic of ruins. She had an air at once imperious and sordid, and
her eyes, though heavy, held a certain power of fascination. I was
struck most by her voice, wherein I found the remembrance of the most
delicious contralti, as well as a little of the hoarseness of a throat
continually laved with brandy.
"Wouldst thou know my power?" said the charming and paradoxical voice
of the false goddess. "Then listen." And she put to her mouth a
gigantic trumpet, enribboned, like a _mirliton_, with the titles of all
the newspapers in the world; and through this trumpet she cried my name
so that it rolled through space with the sound of a hundred thousand
thunders, and came re-echoing back to me from the farthest planet.
"Devil!" cried I, half tempted, "that at least is worth something."
But it vaguely struck me, upon examining the seductive virago more
attentively, that I had seen her clinking glasses with certain drolls
of my acquaintance, and her blare of brass carried to my ears I know
not what memory of a fanfare prostituted.
So I replied, with all disdain: "Get thee hence! I know better than wed
the light o' love of them that I will not name."
Truly, I had the right to be proud of a so courageous renunciation. But
unfortunately I awoke, and all my courage left me. "In truth," I said,
"I must have been very deeply asleep indeed to have had such scruples.
Ah, if they, would but return while I am awake, I would not be so
delicate."
So I invoked the three in a loud voice, offering to dishonour myself as
often as necessary to obtain their favours; but I had without doubt too
deeply offended them, for they have never returned.