towards the wall, and following the direction of his gaze I notice
something written on the mortar with a piece of coal. It looks like the
letters F and S interlaced, which are the initials of my wife's name.
She loves me still! The next moment I see, as by a flash, that it is
the chemical symbol for ferrum (iron) and sulphur, and the secret of
gold lies revealed before my gaze. I search the ground and find two
leaden seals fastened together by a string. One displays the initials
V.P., the other, a king's crown. Without committing myself to a further
interpretation of this adventure, I return to Paris with the lively
impression of having experienced something bordering on the marvellous.
* * * * *
In my fireplace I burn coals which, because of their round and regular
shape, are called "monks' heads." One day when the fire is nearly
extinguished I take out a mass of coal of fantastic shape. It resembles
a cock's head with a splendid comb joined to what looks like a human
trunk with twisted limbs. It might have been a demon from some mediæval
witches' sabbath.
The second day I take out again a fine group of two gnomes or drunken
dwarfs, who embrace each other while their clothes flutter in the
wind. It is a masterpiece of primitive culture.
The third day it is a Madonna and Child in the Byzantine style, of
incomparable beauty of outline. After I have drawn copies of all three
in black chalk, I place them on my table. A friendly painter visits me;
he regards the three statuettes with growing curiosity, and asks who
has "made" them. In order to try him, I mention the name of a Norwegian
sculptor. "No," he says, "I should rather be inclined to ascribe them
to Kittelsen, the famous illustrator of the Swedish legends."
I do not believe in demons, and yet I wish to see the impression which
my little figures make on the sparrows who generally take their crumbs
from my window-sill. So I place them there. The sparrows are frightened
and remain aloof. There is then some likeness in the figures which they
can distinguish, and some reality in this conjunction of dead material
and fire.
The sun, as it warms my little figures, makes the demon with the cock's
head collapse. This reminds me of the country-people's saying that if
the dwarfs wait too long till sunrise, they die.
* * * * *
Things happen in the hotel which disquiet me. The morning after my
arrival I find on the board where the keys of the rooms are hung up, on
the ground-floor, a letter addressed to a Mr. X., a student, who has
the same name as my wife. The postmark is "Dornach," the name of the
Austrian village where my wife and child live. But since I am certain
that there is no post-office at Dornach, the matter remains mysterious.
This letter, placed in such a conspicuous position as to challenge the
eye, is followed by others. The second bears the postmark "Vienna," and
is addressed to a Dr. Bitter; the third displays the Polish pseudonym,
"Schmulachowsky."
The Devil certainly has a share in this game, for this name is a
false one, and I understand well for whom the letter is intended--for
a deadly enemy of mine who lives in Berlin. At last there arrives a
letter with the postmark "Vienna," which, according to the printed
envelope, comes from the chemical bureau of Dr. Eder. So they are
trying to spy out my gold-making experiments! Without doubt a plot is
on foot here, but the Devil has mixed these sharpers' cards. These
duffers do not consider that I keep my eyes open towards all quarters
of the compass.
I have made inquiries of the waiter regarding Mr. X., but he gives me
in all simplicity to understand that he is an Alsatian--nothing more.
One fine morning I return from my work and see in the letter-rack quite
close to my keys a post card. For a moment I feel tempted to solve the
riddle by looking at the post card, but my good angel paralysed my
hand, just as the young man came out of his hiding-place behind the
door. I look him in the face and am startled; he is exactly like my
wife. We greet each other silently, and each goes his way.
I have never been able to unravel this conspiracy, since I did not know
the actors in this drama. Moreover, my wife has neither brothers nor
cousins. This undefined threatening spectre of a continuous vengeance
tortured me for half a year. I bore it like everything else as a
punishment for known and unknown sins.
* * * * *
At the New Year a stranger turned up in our restaurant. He was an
American artist, and came exactly at the right time to put new life
into our depressed society. But though he was an active and bold spirit
with cosmopolitan ideas and good company too, he inspired me with
an undefined mistrust. In spite of his confident air his demeanour
revealed to me his real position. The crash came quicker than one
expected.
One evening the unfortunate man came into my room and asked for
permission to remain there a short time. He looked like a lost man, and
such in fact he was. His landlord had driven him out of his studio, his
grisette had left him, he was head over ears in debt, and his creditors
were dunning him; he was insulted in the streets by the supporters of
his unpaid models. But what depressed him most of all was that the
cruel landlord had retained his picture intended for the Champ de Mars
Exhibition. The originality of its subject had given him good grounds
to hope for its success. It displayed an "emancipated woman" crucified
and cursed by the mob.
Since he was also heavily in debt to the restaurant, he had to go
about the streets, hungry. Among other things he confessed that he had
taken morphia enough to kill two people, but death apparently did not
yet want him. After an earnest discussion, we agreed to go to another
quarter, and there eat our meals in some obscure cook-shop. I said I
would not desert him, and that he should pluck up new courage and
begin a new picture for the exhibition of independent artists.
* * * * *
This man becomes now my sole companion, and his misfortunes cause me a
double share of suffering, so closely do I identify myself with him.
I do so in a spirit of defiance, but presently gain an interesting
experience thereby.
He reveals to me his whole past. He is a German by birth, but partly
because of family disagreements, partly because of a lampoon for
which he had been brought into court, he has spent seven years in
America. I discover in him intelligence above the average, a melancholy
temperament, and unbridled sensuality. But behind this mask of a
cosmopolitan I begin to divine another character which disquiets me,
and the full discovery of which I postpone to a favourable opportunity.
Thus pass two months, while I live in union with this stranger and
with him go through all the troubles of an unfortunate artist over
again, without remembering that I am a made man, yes, and rank among
the dramatic celebrities of Paris, though, as a chemical discoverer,
I think little of it now. Moreover, my companion loves me only when I
conceal my successes. If I am obliged to refer to them in passing,
he is annoyed, and assumes the rôle of an unfortunate nonentity, so
that at last, out of sympathy, I put on the air of an old decayed
wreck. This imperceptibly depresses me, while he, who has his future
still before him, elevates himself again at my expense. I am like a
corpse buried at the root of a tree which sucks nutriment out of the
decomposing life, and grows upwards.
At this time I study Buddhist books, and wonder at the self-denial with
which I mortify myself for another. But good works deserve a reward,
and mine did not remain wanting.
One day the _Revue des Revues_ comes with a likeness of the American
prophet and empiric doctor, Francis Schlatter, who in the year 1895
cured five thousand sick persons and then disappeared without ever
being seen again. Now this man's features resembled in a remarkable
way those of my new companion. To confirm my supposition, I show the
_Revue_ to a Swedish sculptor with whom I have an appointment in the
Café de Versailles. He notices the resemblance at once, and reminds me
of a remarkable coincidence of circumstances. Both the doctor and my
friend were Germans by birth, and worked in America. Still further, the
disappearance of Schlatter coincided with the appearance of our friend
in Paris. Since I am initiated a little into the use of occultist
expressions, I start the hypothesis that Francis Schlatter is the
"double" who leads an independent life, without being aware of it.
When I mentioned the word "double" my sculptor was startled, and
drew my attention to the fact that our friend always occupied two
houses, one on the right and the other on the left bank of the river.
Moreover, I learn that my mysterious friend lives a double life in
this sense, that, after he has spent the evening in half-philosophic,
half-religious discussions with me, he is always seen late at night in
Bullier's dancing-saloon.
There is a sure means of proving the identity of these two "doubles,"
as the _Revue des Revues_ contains a facsimile letter of Francis
Schlatter. "Come to dinner to-night," I suggested. "I will dictate to
him Schlatter's letter; if the two handwritings, and especially the
signatures, resemble each other, it will be a proof."
At dinner the same evening everything is confirmed, the handwriting and
signatures are identical. A little surprised, the artist submits to our
examination; at last he asks: "What is your object in this?"
"Do you know Francis Schlatter?"
"I have never heard the name."
"Don't you remember that doctor in America last year."
"Oh, yes! that quack!"
He remembers, and I show him the portrait and facsimile.
He laughs sceptically, and remains quite calm and indifferent. That is
all.
* * * * *
Some days later I am sitting with my mysterious friend, with our
glasses of absinthe, on the terrace of the Café de Versailles, when a
fellow in workman's clothes, with a malicious aspect, suddenly stops
before the café, then rushes through the customers, and bawls at my
friend in his loudest voice: "At last I have you, you sharper, who
fleeced me! What is the meaning of it? First of all, you order a cross
for thirty francs, and then you disappear. Son of a dog! Do you think a
cross like that makes itself?"
He continued to rage. The café waiters vainly attempted to remove him;
he threatened to fetch the police, while the unfortunate accused,
motionless, dumb, and prostrate, like a condemned man, remained
exposed to the gaze of a circle of artists who all knew him more or
less. When the commotion was over, I asked him with a bewildered mind,
as if I had witnessed a witches' sabbath: "What cross worth thirty
francs? I don't understand a word of the business?"
"It was a model of Joan of Arc's cross which I was going to use for my
picture of the crucified woman."
"He certainly was a devil, that workman."
After a pause, I continue: "It is odd, but one does not play unpunished
either with the Cross or with Joan of Arc."
"You believe in them?"
"I don't know!--But the thirty pieces of silver!"
"Enough! Enough!" he exclaims in a tone of vexation.
From this evening a certain coldness ensues between us. Our
acquaintance had now lasted four terrible months. My companion had
studied in quite a new school, and had time to strike out new paths in
his art, so that he could finally throw aside "the crucified woman"
as an old toy. He had learned to regard suffering as the only real
joy in life, and so had attained to resignation. He was a hero in his
poverty. I admired him when twice in the same day he measured on foot
the distance between Montrouge and the Market Halls with boots worn
down at the heel, and without food. In the evening, when he had visited
the offices of seventeen illustrated papers, and sold three drawings,
without however being paid for them at once, he quickly swallowed two
sous' worth of bread and hurried to the Bal Bullier.
At last, in silent agreement, we dissolved the partnership we had
entered on for mutual help. We both felt that it was enough, and that
our destinies must go on to separate fulfilments. When we exchanged our
last farewells, I knew that they were our last. I have never seen the
man again, nor heard what has become of him.
* * * * *
In the course of the spring, while I was feeling depressed by my own
and my friend's untoward destiny, I received a letter from the children
of my first marriage, informing me that they had been very ill in
hospital. When I compared the time of their illness with my mischievous
attempt at magic, I was alarmed. I had frivolously played with hidden
forces, and now my evil purpose, guided by an unseen Hand, had reached
its goal, and struck my heart. I do not excuse myself, and only ask
the reader to remember this fact, in case he should ever feel inclined
to practise magic, especially those forms of it called wizardry, or
more properly witchcraft, and whose reality has been placed beyond all
doubt by De Rochas.[1]
One Sunday before Easter I went very early through the Jardin de
Luxembourg, crossed the street, and passed under the arcades of the
Odeon; I stood still before an edition of Balzac in a blue binding,
and by chance picked out his novel _Séraphita_. Why just that one?
Perhaps it is an unconscious recollection of reading a criticism of my
book, _Sylva Sylvarum_, in the periodical _Initiation_, in which I was
called "a countryman of Swedenborg." When I got home I opened the book,
which was almost entirely unknown to me, for so many years had passed
between my first acquaintance with it and this second reading. It was
like a new work to me, and now my mind was prepared for it, I swallowed
down the contents of this extraordinary book wholesale. I had never
read anything of Swedenborg, for in his own native land and mine he
passed for a charlatan, dreamer, and quack. But now I was seized with
enthusiastic admiration, as I heard this heavenly giant of the last
century speak by the mouth of such a genial French interpreter.
I read now with religious attention, and found on page 16 the 20th of
March given as the day on which Swedenborg died. I stopped, considered,
and consulted the almanac; it was exactly the 20th of March, and also
Palm Sunday. It was then that Swedenborg entered into my life, in
which he was to play such a great part as judge and master, and on the
anniversary of his death he brought me the palm, whether of the victor
or the martyr--who could say?
_Séraphita_ became my gospel, and caused me to enter into such a close
connection with the other world, that I felt sick of life, and an
irresistible homesickness for heaven seized me. Doubtless, I was being
prepared for a higher existence. I despised the earth, the impure
earth, its inhabitants and their doings. I felt like a perfectly
righteous man, whom the Eternal was testing, and whom the purgatory of
this world would soon make fit for deliverance. The courage produced
by the consciousness of my confidential relation to the powers was
always increased, when I saw my scientific experiments crowned with
success. According to my computations and the observations of the
metallurgists, I had succeeded in making gold, and I believed I could
prove it. I sent my proofs to Rouen to a friendly chemist. He opposed
me with counter-arguments, and for eight days I could find no flaw in
them. Then turning over by chance the _Chemistry_ of my Master Orfila,
I learned the secret of my mistake.
This old, forgotten, and despised chemical treatise of 1830 helped me
at the critical moment, and became my oracle. My friends Orfila and
Swedenborg protected, encouraged, and chastised me. They did not appear
to me in dreams or waking visions, but in small daily occurrences
showed me that they did not leave me alone in the vicissitudes of my
life. The spirits had become naturalistic like the times, which were no
longer content with visions.
The following, for instance, cannot be explained by the word,
"coincidence."
I had succeeded in producing spots of gold on paper, and I wished now
to do the same on a large scale in the furnace. A couple of hundred
experiments failed, and I laid the blow-pipe aside in despair. One
morning, I walked to the Observatory Avenue, where I often used to
admire the group of the four quarters of the world, for the secret
reason that the most graceful of the female figures resembled my wife.
It stood under the armillary sphere and the sign Pisces, and a pair
of sparrows had built their nest behind her back. At the foot of the
monument I found two pieces of cardboard cut in an oval shape, one
stamped with the number 207, the other with the number 28. These are
the signs for the atomic weight of lead, and of silicium. I made a note
of the discovery, and when I got home began a series of experiments
with lead, leaving silicium for another time. As I was aware, from
my knowledge of metallurgy, that lead refined in a furnace, fed with
bone-ashes, always produces a recognisable amount of silver, and this
silver, a little gold, I drew the conclusion that phosphate of lime,
being the chief constituent of bone-ashes, must be an important element
in the gold produced from lead.
And, as a matter of fact, molten lead poured upon a deposit of chalk
containing phosphate of lime, also assumed on its under-side a
golden colour. The powers, being unpropitious, did not allow me to
finish my experiments. A year later, in Lund, a sculptor, who made
experiments in his own potteries, gave me some glaze composed of lead
and silicium, by means of which I for the first time produced in the
furnace mineralised gold of great beauty. Out of gratitude, I showed
him the two pieces of cardboard numbered 207 and 28. Is one to call it
"accident" or "coincidence," this sign of an irrefragable logic?
* * * * *
I repeat that I have never been plagued by visions, but actual objects
sometimes seem to me to assume a human shape in a grandiose style.
Thus, one day the cushion which my head has been pressing during a
mid-day siesta, looks like a marble head carved in the style of Michael
Angelo. One evening when I return home in the company of the "double"
of the American empiric doctor, I discover, in the half-shadow of the
alcove where my bed is, what looks like a gigantic Zeus reposing on it.
Before this unexpected sight my friend remains seized with an almost
religious fear. His artistic eye comprehends at once the beauty of the
outline. "There is a great forgotten art," he says, "born again! That
is where we ought to learn drawing!"
The more one looks at it, the more lifelike and terrible it appears.
Obviously, the spirits have become realists like the rest of us
mortals. It is no mere accident, for on certain days the cushion takes
the shape of terrible monsters, such as Gothic dragons and serpents;
and one night after I have spent a hilarious evening, I am greeted
on my return by a mediæval demon, a devil with horned head and other
appurtenances. I was not at all frightened; it looked so natural,
but it also made on my mind the impression of something abnormal and
unearthly.
When I invited my friend the sculptor to look at it, he was not at
all astonished, and called me into his studio, where a pencil sketch
hanging on the wall surprised me by its grace of outline.
"Where have you got that from?" I asked. "A Madonna, is n't it?
"Yes, a Madonna of Versailles, copied from the floating plants in a
Swiss lake!"
A new-discovered art of nature! Naturalistic clairvoyance! Why blame
naturalism when it introduces a new art full of capacities of growth
and development. The old gods return, and the watchword of the poets
and artists, "Back to Pan!" has roused such a strong echo that nature
has awoken from her long sleep of centuries. Nothing can exist on earth
without the concurrence of the powers. Now naturalism did once exist,
therefore it ought to be, and what ought it obviously to be--a new-born
harmony of matter and spirit.
The sculptor is a seer. He tells me that he has seen Orpheus and Christ
side by side in a block of stone, and adds that he intends to return
there and use them as models for a group for the Salon.
As I went down the Rue de Rennes one evening with the same seer, he
drew my attention to a book-shop window where coloured lithographs were
exhibited. They represented fantastic scenes with human bodies whose
heads were replaced by pansies. In spite of my botanical observations,
I had never before seen the likeness between the pansy and the human
face. My friend seemed greatly surprised at it.
"Only think!" he said. "When I came home last evening the pansies in
my window-box looked at me like so many human faces. I thought it was
a hallucination of my overexcited nerves. And here are these pictures
drawn a long time ago. It is then a fact and no illusion, for this
unknown artist has made the same discovery before me."
We make progress in the art of vision, and this time it is I who
discover a Napoleon with his marshals on the cupola of the dome of the
Hôtel des Invalides. When one comes from Montparnasse to the Boulevard
des Invalides, one sees above the Rue Oudinot the cupola, the corbels,
and cornices of the substructure of the cupola displayed in the full
light of the setting sun, and apparently assuming human forms which
appear more or less distant according to the point of observation from
which they are viewed. There are Napoleon, Bernadotte, Berthier, and my
friend copies them, "after nature."
"How would you explain this phenomenon?" he asks.
"Explain? Has one ever explained anything by replacing one heap of
words with another heap of words?"
"You don't think, then, that the architect has worked according to a
hidden plan?"
"Listen, my friend. Jules Mansard, who built the dome in 1706, could
not well have foreseen the silhouette of Napoleon who was born in 1769.
That is a sufficient answer!"
* * * * *
Often I have dreams at night, and these dreams prognosticate my future,
warn me against dangers, and reveal to me secrets. For instance, a
long-deceased friend appears to me in a dream, and shows me a piece of
money of uncommon size. On my asking where this remarkable piece came
from, he answers, "From America," and disappears.
The next day I receive a letter from America from a friend whom I
had heard nothing of for twenty years, informing me that an order in
connection with the Chicago Exhibition had been following me in vain
all over Europe. It carried with it an honorarium of 12,000 francs, an
enormous sum for me in my desperate circumstances, which I could very
easily find use for. This 12,000 francs would have secured my future,
and no one besides myself would have guessed that the loss of this
money was a punishment for an evil deed which I had committed out of
anger at the treachery of a literary colleague.
In another dream of wider significance I saw Jonas Lie,[2] with a gilt
bronze clock curiously ornamented. Some days later, when I went to walk
on the Boulevard St. Michel, a watch-maker's shop-window attracted my
attention. "Jonas Lie's clock!" I exclaimed aloud.
It was indeed the same. It was crowned by a celestial globe on which
two female figures leaned; the works were supported by four pillars,
and on the globe a date-indicator pointed to the 13th of August. In a
future chapter I will explain what the fateful 13th of August brought
with it. This and other occurrences took place during my stay in the
Hôtel Orfila between 6th February and 19th July, 1896. Concurrently
with them a larger adventure pursued its often interrupted course till,
with my exit from the hotel, a new section of my life began.
Spring has returned; the valley of tears and sighs under my window
is green and blossoming. Foliage hides the bare ground and its
unsightliness. The Gehenna has turned into a Vale of Sharon full of
lilies, lilacs, and acacias. I feel very melancholy, but the merry
laughter of the girls who play unseen beneath the trees, reaches me and
rouses me again to life. Life hurries by and old age approaches: Wife,
children, home, dispersed and wrecked; without is spring, within is
autumn.
The Book of Job and the Lamentations of Jeremiah comfort me, for, at
any rate, there is a certain resemblance between Job's lot and mine. Am
I not smitten with incurable boils? Am I not visited with poverty and
forsaken by my friends? "I go blackened, but not by the sun; I am a
brother to dragons and a companion to ostriches; my skin is black and
falleth from me, and my bones are burned with heat. My harp is turned
to mourning, and my pipe unto the voice of them that weep."