a large dark picture that hangs behind the altar, one of a series
illustrating the miracles of St. Bertrand. The composition of the
picture is well-nigh indecipherable, but there is a Latin legend below,
which runs thus:
"Qualiter S. Bertrandus liberavit hominem quem
diabolus diu volebat strangulare." (How St.
Bertrand delivered a man whom the Devil long
sought to strangle.)
Dennistoun was turning to the sacristan with a smile and a jocular
remark of some sort on his lips, but he was confounded to see the old
man on his knees, gazing at the picture with the eye of a suppliant in
agony, his hands tightly clasped, and a rain of tears on his cheeks.
Dennistoun naturally pretended to have noticed nothing, but the question
would not away from him, "Why should a daub of this kind affect any one
so strongly?" He seemed to himself to be getting some sort of clue to
the reason of the strange look that had been puzzling him all the day:
the man must be monomaniac; but what was his monomania?
It was nearly five o'clock; the short day was drawing in, and the church
began to fill with shadows, while the curious noises--the muffled
footfalls and distant talking voices that had been perceptible all
day--seemed, no doubt because of the fading light and the consequently
quickened sense of hearing, to become more frequent and insistent.
The sacristan began for the first time to show signs of hurry and
impatience. He heaved a sigh of relief when camera and note-book were
finally packed up and stowed away, and hurriedly beckoned Dennistoun to
the western door of the church, under the tower. It was time to ring the
Angelus. A few pulls at the reluctant rope, and the great bell
Bertrande, high in the tower, began to speak, and swung her voice up
among the pines and down to the valleys, loud with mountain-streams,
calling the dwellers on those lonely hills to remember and repeat the
salutation of the angel to her whom he called Blessed among women. With
that a profound quiet seemed to fall for the first time that day upon
the little town, and Dennistoun and the sacristan went out of the
church.
On the doorstep they fell into conversation.
"Monsieur seemed to interest himself in the old choir-books in the
sacristy."
"Undoubtedly. I was going to ask you if there were a library in the
town."
"No, monsieur; perhaps there used to be one belonging to the Chapter,
but it is now such a small place----" Here came a strange pause of
irresolution, as it seemed; then, with a sort of plunge, he went on:
"But if monsieur is _amateur des vieux livres_, I have at home something
that might interest him. It is not a hundred yards."
At once all Dennistoun's cherished dreams of finding priceless
manuscripts in untrodden corners of France flashed up, to die down again
the next moment. It was probably a stupid missal of Plantin's printing,
about 1580. Where was the likelihood that a place so near Toulouse would
not have been ransacked long ago by collectors? However, it would be
foolish not to go; he would reproach himself for ever after if he
refused. So they set off. On the way the curious irresolution and sudden
determination of the sacristan recurred to Dennistoun, and he wondered
in a shamefaced way whether he was being decoyed into some purlieu to be
made away with as a supposed rich Englishman. He contrived, therefore,
to begin talking with his guide, and to drag in, in a rather clumsy
fashion, the fact that he expected two friends to join him early the
next morning. To his surprise, the announcement seemed to relieve the
sacristan at once of some of the anxiety that oppressed him.
"That is well," he said quite brightly--"that is very well. Monsieur
will travel in company with his friends; they will be always near him.
It is a good thing to travel thus in company--sometimes."
The last word appeared to be added as an afterthought, and to bring with
it a relapse into gloom for the poor little man.
They were soon at the house, which was one rather larger than its
neighbors, stone-built, with a shield carved over the door, the shield
of Alberic de Mauléon, a collateral descendant, Dennistoun tells me, of
Bishop John de Mauléon. This Alberic was a Canon of Comminges from 1680
to 1701. The upper windows of the mansion were boarded up, and the whole
place bore, as does the rest of Comminges, the aspect of decaying age.
Arrived on his doorstep, the sacristan paused a moment.
"Perhaps," he said, "perhaps, after all, monsieur has not the time?"
"Not at all--lots of time--nothing to do till to-morrow. Let us see what
it is you have got."
The door was opened at this point, and a face looked out, a face far
younger than the sacristan's, but bearing something of the same
distressing look: only here it seemed to be the mark, not so much of
fear for personal safety as of acute anxiety on behalf of another.
Plainly, the owner of the face was the sacristan's daughter; and, but
for the expression I have described, she was a handsome girl enough. She
brightened up considerably on seeing her father accompanied by an
able-bodied stranger. A few remarks passed between father and daughter,
of which Dennistoun only caught these words, said by the sacristan, "He
was laughing in the church," words which were answered only by a look of
terror from the girl.
But in another minute they were in the sitting-room of the house, a
small, high chamber with a stone floor, full of moving shadows cast by a
wood-fire that flickered on a great hearth. Something of the character
of an oratory was imparted to it by a tall crucifix, which reached
almost to the ceiling on one side; the figure was painted of the natural
colors, the cross was black. Under this stood a chest of some age and
solidity, and when a lamp had been brought, and chairs set, the
sacristan went to this chest, and produced therefrom, with growing
excitement and nervousness, as Dennistoun thought, a large book wrapped
in a white cloth, on which cloth a cross was rudely embroidered in red
thread. Even before the wrapping had been removed, Dennistoun began to
be interested by the size and shape of the volume. "Too large for a
missal," he thought, "and not the shape of an antiphoner; perhaps it may
be something good, after all." The next moment the book was open, and
Dennistoun felt that he had at last lit upon something better than good.
Before him lay a large folio, bound, perhaps, late in the seventeenth
century, with the arms of Canon Alberic de Mauléon stamped in gold on
the sides. There may have been a hundred and fifty leaves of paper in
the book, and on almost every one of them was fastened a leaf from an
illuminated manuscript. Such a collection Dennistoun had hardly dreamed
of in his wildest moments. Here were ten leaves from a copy of Genesis,
illustrated with pictures, which could not be later than 700 A.D.
Further on was a complete set of pictures from a psalter, of English
execution, of the very finest kind that the thirteenth century could
produce; and, perhaps best of all, there were twenty leaves of uncial
writing in Latin, which, as a few words seen here and there told him at
once, must belong to some very early unknown patristic treatise. Could
it possibly be a fragment of the copy of Papias "On the Words of Our
Lord," which was known to have existed as late as the twelfth century at
Nîmes?[A] In any case, his mind was made up; that book must return to
Cambridge with him, even if he had to draw the whole of his balance from
the bank and stay at St. Bertrand till the money came. He glanced up at
the sacristan to see if his face yielded any hint that the book was for
sale. The sacristan was pale, and his lips were working.
"If monsieur will turn on to the end," he said.
So monsieur turned on, meeting new treasures at every rise of a leaf;
and at the end of the book he came upon two sheets of paper, of much
more recent date than anything he had yet seen, which puzzled him
considerably. They must be contemporary, he decided, with the
unprincipled Canon Alberic, who had doubtless plundered the Chapter
library of St. Bertrand to form this priceless scrapbook. On the first
of the paper sheets was a plan, carefully drawn and instantly
recognizable by a person who knew the ground, of the south aisle and
cloisters of St. Bertrand's. There were curious signs looking like
planetary symbols, and a few Hebrew words in the corners; and in the
northwest angle of the cloister was a cross drawn in gold paint. Below
the plan were some lines of writing in Latin, which ran thus:
"Responsa 12^{mi} Dec. 1694. Interrogatum est:
Inveniamne? Responsum est: Invenies. Fiamne dives?
Fies. Vivamne invidendus? Vives. Moriarne in lecto
meo? Ita." (Answers of the 12th of December, 1694.
It was asked: Shall I find it? Answer: Thou shalt.
Shall I become rich? Thou wilt. Shall I live an
object of envy? Thou wilt. Shall I die in my bed?
Thou wilt.)
"A good specimen of the treasure-hunter's record--quite reminds one of
Mr. Minor-Canon Quatremain in 'Old St. Paul's,'" was Dennistoun's
comment, and he turned the leaf.
What he then saw impressed him, as he has often told me, more than he
could have conceived any drawing or picture capable of impressing him.
And, though the drawing he saw is no longer in existence, there is a
photograph of it (which I possess) which fully bears out that statement.
The picture in question was a sepia drawing at the end of the
seventeenth century, representing, one would say at first sight, a
Biblical scene; for the architecture (the picture represented an
interior) and the figures had that semi-classical flavor about them
which the artists of two hundred years ago thought appropriate to
illustrations of the Bible. On the right was a king on his throne, the
throne elevated on twelve steps, a canopy overhead, soldiers on either
side--evidently King Solomon. He was bending forward with outstretched
scepter, in attitude of command; his face expressed horror and disgust,
yet there was in it also the mark of imperious command and confident
power. The left half of the picture was the strangest, however. The
interest plainly centered there. On the pavement before the throne were
grouped four soldiers, surrounding a crouching figure which must be
described in a moment. A fifth soldier lay dead on the pavement, his
neck distorted, and his eyeballs starting from his head. The four
surrounding guards were looking at the King. In their faces the
sentiment of horror was intensified; they seemed, in fact, only
restrained from flight by their implicit trust in their master. All this
terror was plainly excited by the being that crouched in their midst.
I entirely despair of conveying by any words the impression which this
figure makes upon any one who looks at it. I recollect once showing the
photograph of the drawing to a lecturer on morphology--a person of, I
was going to say, abnormally sane and unimaginative habits of mind. He
absolutely refused to be alone for the rest of that evening, and he told
me afterwards that for many nights he had not dared to put out his light
before going to sleep. However, the main traits of the figure I can at
least indicate. At first you saw only a mass of coarse, matted black
hair; presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful
thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like
wires. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with
long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a
burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the
throned king with a look of beast-like hate. Imagine one of the awful
bird-catching spiders of South America translated into human form, and
endowed with intelligence just less than human, and you will have some
faint conception of the terror inspired by the appalling effigy. One
remark is universally made by those to whom I have shown the picture:
"It was drawn from the life."
As soon as the first shock of his irresistible fright had subsided,
Dennistoun stole a look at his hosts. The sacristan's hands were pressed
upon his eyes; his daughter, looking up at the cross on the wall, was
telling her beads feverishly.
At last the question was asked, "Is this book for sale?"
There was the same hesitation, the same plunge of determination, that he
had noticed before, and then came the welcome answer, "If monsieur
pleases."
"How much do you ask for it?"
"I will take two hundred and fifty francs."
This was confounding. Even a collector's conscience is sometimes
stirred, and Dennistoun's conscience was tenderer than a collector's.
"My good man!" he said again and again, "your book is worth far more
than two hundred and fifty francs, I assure you--far more."
But the answer did not vary: "I will take two hundred and fifty francs,
not more."
There was really no possibility of refusing such a chance. The money was
paid, the receipt signed, a glass of wine drunk over the transaction,
and then the sacristan seemed to become a new man. He stood upright, he
ceased to throw those suspicious glances behind him, he actually laughed
or tried to laugh. Dennistoun rose to go.
"I shall have the honor of accompanying monsieur to his hotel?" said the
sacristan.
"Oh no, thanks! it isn't a hundred yards. I know the way perfectly, and
there is a moon."
The offer was pressed three or four times, and refused as often.
"Then, monsieur will summon me if--if he finds occasion; he will keep
the middle of the road, the sides are so rough."
"Certainly, certainly," said Dennistoun, who was impatient to examine
his prize by himself; and he stepped out into the passage with his book
under his arm.
Here he was met by the daughter; she, it appeared, was anxious to do a
little business on her own account; perhaps, like Gehazi, to "take
somewhat" from the foreigner whom her father had spared.
"A silver crucifix and chain for the neck; monsieur would perhaps be
good enough to accept it?"
Well, really, Dennistoun hadn't much use for these things. What did
mademoiselle want for it?
"Nothing--nothing in the world. Monsieur is more than welcome to it."
The tone in which this and much more was said was unmistakably genuine,
so that Dennistoun was reduced to profuse thanks, and submitted to have
the chain put round his neck. It really seemed as if he had rendered the
father and daughter some service which they hardly knew how to repay. As
he set off with his book they stood at the door looking after him, and
they were still looking when he waved them a last good-night from the
steps of the Chapeau Rouge.
Dinner was over, and Dennistoun was in his bedroom, shut up alone with
his acquisition. The landlady had manifested a particular interest in
him since he had told her that he had paid a visit to the sacristan and
bought an old book from him. He thought, too, that he had heard a
hurried dialogue between her and the said sacristan in the passage
outside the _salle à manger_; some words to the effect that "Pierre and
Bertrand would be sleeping in the house" had closed the conversation.
At this time a growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over
him--nervous reaction, perhaps, after the delight of his discovery.
Whatever it was, it resulted in a conviction that there was some one
behind him, and that he was far more comfortable with his back to the
wall. All this, of course, weighed light in the balance as against the
obvious value of the collection he had acquired. And now, as I said, he
was alone in his bedroom, taking stock of Canon Alberic's treasures, in
which every moment revealed something more charming.
"Bless Canon Alberic!" said Dennistoun, who had an inveterate habit of
talking to himself. "I wonder where he is now? Dear me! I wish that
landlady would learn to laugh in a more cheering manner; it makes one
feel as if there was some one dead in the house. Half a pipe more, did
you say? I think perhaps you are right. I wonder what that crucifix is
that the young woman insisted on giving me? Last century, I suppose.
Yes, probably. It is rather a nuisance of a thing to have round one's
neck--just too heavy. Most likely her father had been wearing it for
years. I think I might give it a clean up before I put it away."
He had taken the crucifix off, and laid it on the table, when his
attention was caught by an object lying on the red cloth just by his
left elbow. Two or three ideas of what it might be flitted through his
brain with their own incalculable quickness.
"A penwiper? No, no such thing in the house. A rat? No, too black. A
large spider? I trust to goodness not--no. Good God! a hand like the
hand in that picture!"
In another infinitesimal flash he had taken it in. Pale, dusky skin,
covering nothing but bones and tendons of appalling strength; coarse
black hairs, longer than ever grew on a human hand; nails rising from
the ends of the fingers and curving sharply down and forward, gray,
horny and wrinkled.
He flew out of his chair with deadly, inconceivable terror clutching at
his heart. The shape, whose left hand rested on the table, was rising to
a standing posture behind his seat, its right hand crooked above his
scalp. There was black and tattered drapery about it; the coarse hair
covered it as in the drawing. The lower jaw was thin--what can I call
it?--shallow, like a beast's; teeth showed behind the black lips; there
was no nose; the eyes, of a fiery yellow, against which the pupils
showed black and intense, and the exulting hate and thirst to destroy
life which shone there, were the most horrifying feature in the whole
vision. There was intelligence of a kind in them--intelligence beyond
that of a beast, below that of a man.
The feelings which this horror stirred in Dennistoun were the intensest
physical fear and the most profound mental loathing. What did he do?
What could he do? He has never been quite certain what words he said,
but he knows that he spoke, that he grasped blindly at the silver
crucifix, that he was conscious of a movement towards him on the part of
the demon, and that he screamed with the voice of an animal in hideous
pain.
Pierre and Bertrand, the two sturdy little serving-men, who rushed in,
saw nothing, but felt themselves thrust aside by something that passed
out between them, and found Dennistoun in a swoon. They sat up with him
that night, and his two friends were at St. Bertrand by nine o'clock
next morning. He himself, though still shaken and nervous, was almost
himself by that time, and his story found credence with them, though not
until they had seen the drawing and talked with the sacristan.
Almost at dawn the little man had come to the inn on some pretense, and
had listened with the deepest interest to the story retailed by the
landlady. He showed no surprise.
"It is he--it is he! I have seen him myself," was his only comment; and
to all questionings but one reply was vouchsafed: "Deux fois je l'ai vu;
mille fois je l'ai senti." He would tell them nothing of the provenance
of the book, nor any details of his experiences. "I shall soon sleep,
and my rest will be sweet. Why should you trouble me?" he said.[B]
We shall never know what he or Canon Alberic de Mauléon suffered. At the
back of that fateful drawing were some lines of writing which may be
supposed to throw light on the situation:
"Contradictio Salomonis cum demonio nocturno.
Albericus de Mauleone delineavit.
V. Deus in adiutorium. Ps. Qui habitat.
Sancte Bertrande, demoniorum effugator, intercede pro me miserrimo.
Primum uidi nocte 12^{mi} Dec. 1694: uidebo mox ultimum.
Peccaui et passus sum, plura adhuc passurus. Dec. 29, 1701."[C]
I have never quite understood what was Dennistoun's view of the events
I have narrated. He quoted to me once a test from Ecclesiasticus: "Some
spirits there be that are created for vengeance, and in their fury lay
on sore strokes." On another occasion he said: "Isaiah was a very
sensible man; doesn't he say something about night monsters living in
the ruins of Babylon? These things are rather beyond us at present."
Another confidence of his impressed me rather, and I sympathized with
it. We had been, last year, to Comminges, to see Canon Alberic's tomb.
It is a great marble erection with an effigy of the Canon in a large wig
and soutane, and an elaborate eulogy of his learning below. I saw
Dennistoun talking for some time with the Vicar of St. Bertrand's, and
as we drove away he said to me: "I hope it isn't wrong: you know I am a
Presbyterian--but I--I believe there will be 'saying of Mass and singing
of dirges' for Alberic de Mauléon's rest." Then he added, with a touch
of the Northern British in his tone, "I had no notion they came so
dear."
* * * * *
The book is in the Wentworth Collection at Cambridge. The drawing was
photographed and then burnt by Dennistoun on the day when he left
Comminges on the occasion of his first visit.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] We now know that these leaves did contain a considerable fragment of
that work, if not of that actual copy of it.
[B] He died that summer; his daughter married, and settled at St.
Papoul. She never understood the circumstances of her father's
"obsession."
[C] _I.e._, The Dispute of Solomon with a demon of the night. Drawn by
Alberic de Mauléon. _Versicle._ O Lord, make haste to help me. _Psalm._
Whoso dwelleth (xci.).
Saint Bertrand, who puttest devils to flight, pray for me most unhappy.
I saw it first on the night of Dec. 12, 1694: soon I shall see it for
the last time. I have sinned and suffered, and have more to suffer yet.
Dec. 29, 1701.
The "Gallia Christiana" gives the date of the Canon's death as December
31, 1701, "in bed, of a sudden seizure." Details of this kind are not
common in the great work of the Sammarthani.
THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS
OR,
THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN
BY EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
A friend of mine, who is a man of letters and a philosopher, said to me
one day, as if between jest and earnest,--"Fancy! since we last met, I
have discovered a haunted house in the midst of London."
"Really haunted?--and by what? ghosts?"
"Well, I can't answer that question: all I know is this--six weeks ago
my wife and I were in search of a furnished apartment. Passing a quiet
street, we saw on the window of one of the houses a bill, 'Apartments
Furnished.' The situation suited us; we entered the house--liked the
rooms--engaged them by the week--and left them the third day. No power
on earth could have reconciled my wife to stay longer; and I don't
wonder at it."
"What did you see?"
"Excuse me--I have no desire to be ridiculed as a superstitious
dreamer--nor, on the other hand, could I ask you to accept on my
affirmation what you would hold to be incredible without the evidence of
your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or
heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our
own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us
away, as it was an undefinable terror which seized both of us whenever
we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither
saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for
once in my life I agreed with my wife, silly woman though she be--and
allowed, after the third night, that it was impossible to stay a fourth
in that house. Accordingly, on the fourth morning I summoned the woman
who kept the house and attended on us, and told her that the rooms did
not quite suit us, and we would not stay out our week. She said, dryly,
'I know why: you have stayed longer than any other lodger. Few ever
stayed a second night; none before you a third. But I take it they have
been very kind to you.'
"'They--who?' I asked, affecting to smile.
"'Why, they who haunt the house, whoever they are. I don't mind them;
I remember them many years ago, when I lived in this house, not as a
servant; but I know they will be the death of me some day. I don't
care--I'm old, and must die soon anyhow; and then I shall be with them,
and in this house still.' The woman spoke with so dreary a calmness,
that really it was a sort of awe that prevented my conversing with her
further. I paid for my week, and too happy were my wife and I to get off
so cheaply."
"You excite my curiosity," said I; "nothing I should like better than to
sleep in a haunted house. Pray give me the address of the one which you
left so ignominiously."