thought: "If I make a mistake, I am lost." I drag a chair out into
the garden, and, sitting under the starry sky, I reflect on what is
happening. Am I ill? Impossible: for until I disclosed my incognito, I
was quite well. Is it an attack? Yes, because I saw the preparations
for it going on. For the rest, I feel better here outside in the
garden beyond the power of my enemies, and my heart beats quite
regularly. While reflecting thus, I hear someone cough in the room
adjoining mine. It is at once answered by a low cough from the room on
the other side. Doubtless it is a signal, just like the one I heard my
last night in the Pension Orfila. I try to open forcibly the glass-door
of the ground-floor room, but the bolt holds.
Wearied by the useless fight against invisible powers, I sink on
a garden seat. Sleep has pity on me, so that under the stars of a
beautiful summer night I fall asleep among the roses whispering in the
warm airs of July.
* * * * *
The sun awakes me, and I thank Providence which has saved me from
death. I pack my things, and mean to go to Dieppe to find shelter with
some friends, whom I have neglected as I have all others, but who are
considerate and generous towards the fallen and shipwrecked. When I ask
to speak to the directress of the house, she is not visible, and sends
a message to say she is unwell. I might have expected that she would be
involved in the plot against me. I leave the house with a curse on the
head of my knavish enemies, and call on heaven to send down fire on
this den of robbers--whether rightly or wrongly, who knows? My Dieppe
friends were alarmed, when they saw me mounting the hill of their town
with my bag heavy with manuscripts.
"Where have you come from, poor fellow?"
"I come from death."
"I doubt it, for you look as if you had not been dug out yet."
The kind, good-hearted lady of the house takes me by the hand and leads
me before a looking-glass, that I may see myself. I certainly look a
pitiable object; my face blackened by smoke from the engine, my cheeks
fallen in, my hair grown grey, my eyes staring wildly, and my linen
dirty.
But when I was left alone in the dressing-room by my kind hostess,
who treated me like a sick, deserted child, I examined my face more
closely. There was an expression in my features which alarmed me.
It was not fear of death or wickedness, but something else, and had
I at that time known Swedenborg, he would have explained to me the
impression made by the evil spirit on my soul, and the occurrences
of the last weeks. Now I felt ashamed and angry with myself, and my
conscience pained me on account of my ingratitude towards this family,
which had proved a harbour of refuge for me, as for so many other
shipwrecked voyagers. As a punishment, I shall be driven hence also
by the furies. Here is a beautiful artistic home, ordered domestic
economy, married happiness, with charming children, cleanness and
comfort, boundless hospitality, charitable judgment, an atmosphere of
beauty and goodness which dazzles me--a paradise, in short, and I in
the midst of it, all like a lost soul. I see spread out before my eyes
all the happiness which life can offer, and all that I have lost.
* * * * *
I occupy an attic room looking out on a hill where there is an asylum
for old people. In the evening I observe two men looking over the wall
of the institution towards our villa, and pointing at my window. The
idea that I am being persecuted by means of electricity again takes
possession of me.
The night between the 25th and 26th of July, 1896, comes on. We have
searched together all the attic rooms near mine, and the loft itself,
so as to satisfy me that no one with evil intentions could be lurking
there. Only in a lumber-room an object of no significance in itself has
a depressing effect upon me. It is only the skin of a polar bear used
as a rug; but the gaping jaws, the threatening teeth, I lie sparkling
eyes irritate me. Why should this creature lie just now, just there?
Without taking off my clothes, I lie down on the bed, determined to
wait for the fateful hour--two o'clock.
While I am reading, midnight approaches. One o'clock strikes, and
the whole house is wrapped in slumber. At last two o'clock strikes!
Nothing happens. Then in a dare-devil spirit, or perhaps only with the
intention of making a physical experiment, I rise, open both windows,
and light two candles. Then I sit at the table behind them, expose
myself with bared breast as a mark, and challenge the unknown: "Attack,
if you dare!"
Then I feel, at first only faintly, something like an inrush of
electric fluid. I look at my compass, but it shows no sign of wavering.
It is not electricity then. But the tension increases; my heart beats
violently; I offer resistance, but as if by a flash of lightning my
body is charged with a fluid which chokes me and depletes my blood. I
rush down the stairs to the room on the ground-floor, where they have
made up for me a provisional bed in case of necessity. There I lie for
five minutes and collect my thoughts. Is it radiating electricity?
No; for the compass has not been affected. Is it a diseased state of
mind induced by fear of the fatal hour of two o'clock? No; for I have
still the courage to defy attacks, but why must I light the candles
and attract the mysterious fluid? In this labyrinth of questioning I
find no answer, and try at last to go to sleep, but a new discharge
of electricity strikes me like a cyclone, forces me to rise from bed,
and the chase begins afresh. I hide myself behind the walls, lie down
close to the doors, or in front of the stove. Everywhere, everywhere
the furies find me. Overmastered by terror, I fly in panic from
everything and nothing, from room to room, and finish by crouching
down on the balcony. The grey-yellow light of dawn begins to break,
the sepia-coloured clouds assume fantastic and monstrous shapes, which
increase my despair. I repair to my friend's studio, lie down on the
carpet, and close my eyes. After barely five minutes' quiet, a rustle
awakes me. A mouse looks at me and seems to wish to come nearer. I
drive it away; it comes back with another one. Good Heavens! Have I
got delirium tremens, though I have been quite temperate the last
three years? (In the daytime I find that there are really mice in the
studio. It was a coincidence, then, but who caused it, and what is his
object?) I change my place, and lie down on the hall carpet. Merciful
sleep descends upon my tortured spirit, and for about half an hour I
lose consciousness of my sufferings. Then a distinct cry "Alp!" makes
me suddenly start up. "Alp!" That is the German for nightmare. "Alp"
is the word which the rainstorm caused to be formed on my paper in
the Hôtel Orfila. Who uttered that cry? No one, for the whole house
is asleep. Is it a devil's game? That is a poetical expression which
perhaps contains the whole truth.
I mount the steps to my attic. The candles have burnt to their sockets;
deep silence reigns. The Angelus rings out. It is the day of the Lord.
I open my breviary and read "De Profundis clamavi ad Te, Domine!" That
comforts me, and I sink down on the bed like a corpse.
_July_ 26_th, Sunday_.--A cyclone devastates the Jardin des Plantes.
The papers contain items which I find especially interesting. To-day,
Andrée's balloon is to ascend for its voyage to the North Pole, but
the occasion is not propitious. The storm has hurled down several
balloons, which have ascended at various points, and killed many
aeronauts.
The next morning I leave Dieppe, uttering a benediction on the house,
over whose well-deserved happiness my sadness had cast a shadow.
Since I do not wish to believe in the interference of supernatural
powers, I imagine that I am the victim of a nervous illness.
Accordingly, I make up my mind to go to Sweden and see a physician who
is a friend of mine.
As a memorial of Dieppe, I take a piece of iron-ore which has a
trefoil shape like a Gothic window, and is marked with the sign of
a Maltese cross. A child has found it on the shore, and tells me
that these stones fall from the sky and are cast by the waves on the
land. I believe him willingly, and keep the gift as a talisman, the
significance of which is hidden from me. (On the coast of Brittany
the coast-dwellers are accustomed after storms to collect stones
shaped like crosses, with a gold-like shimmer. These stones are called
"staurolites.")
* * * * *
The little town to which I now betook myself lies in the extreme south
of Sweden, on the seacoast. It is an old pirates' and smugglers'
haunt, in which exotic traces of all parts of the world have been
left by various voyagers. My doctor's house looks like a Buddhist
cloister. The four wings of the one-storeyed house form a quadrangle,
in the centre of which the dome-shaped wood-shed resembles the tomb of
Tamerlane at Samarcand. The style of which the roof is built and faced
with Chinese bricks recalls the Farther East. An apathetic tortoise
crawls over the pavement and disappears in a Nirvana of innumerable
weeds. In the garden is a pagoda-shaped summer-house completely
overgrown by clematis.
In the whole of this cloister, with its countless rooms, there lives
only one person, the director of the district hospital. He is a
widower, solitary and independent, and from the hard discipline of life
has derived that strong and noble contempt of men which leads to a deep
knowledge of the vanity of all things, oneself included.
The entrance of this man into my life occurred in such an unexpected
manner, that I am inclined to assign it to the dramatic skill of a
_Deus ex machina_.
At our first greeting, on my arrival from Dieppe, he looks at me
inquiringly, and suddenly asks, "You have a nervous illness! Good! But
that is not all. You look so strange that I do not recognise you. What
have you been after? Dissipation, crime, lost illusions, religion? Tell
me, old fellow!"
But I tell him nothing special, for my first thought is one of
suspicion. He is prejudiced against me, has made inquiries about me
in some quarter, and wants to have me confined. I tell him about my
sleeplessness, nervousness, and bad dreams, and then we talk of other
things.
In my room my attention is arrested by the American bed, with its four
legs topped by four brass balls, which look like the conductors of an
electric machine. Add to this an elastic mattress with copper springs,
resembling Ruhmkorff induction coils, and one can easily imagine my
rage at this diabolical coincidence. Besides, it is impossible to ask
for another bed, as I might be suspected of being mad. In order to
assure myself that nothing is concealed above me, I mount into the loft
overhead. There is only one object there, but it drives me almost to
desperation. An enormous wire-net rolled together stands immediately
over my bed. One could not wish for a better accumulator. If there is a
thunderstorm, such as is frequent here, the wire network will attract
the lightning, and I shall be lying on the conductor. But I do not
venture to say a word.
The first thing that disturbs me is the noise of a machine. Since I
have quitted the Hôtel Orfila I have a roaring in my ears like the
sound of a water-wheel. Doubting the objective existence of this noise,
I ask the cause of it, and learn that it is the printing-press close
by. The explanation is plausible, and, though little satisfied, I do
not wish to excite myself.
The dreaded night comes on. The sky is covered with clouds; the air is
close; we expect a thunderstorm. I do not venture to lie down to sleep,
and write letters for two hours. At last, overcome with weariness, I
undress myself and creep into bed. The lamp is extinguished; a terrible
stillness reigns in the house. I feel that someone is watching me in
the darkness, touches me and feels for my heart in order to suck my
blood. Without waiting any longer, I spring out of bed, fling open
the window and jump into the courtyard--but I have forgotten the
rose-bushes, whose sharp thorns pierce me through my night-shirt.
Scratched and streaming with blood, I grope about the courtyard.
Gravel-stones, thistles, and nettles lacerate my feet; unknown objects
trip me up. At last I reach the kitchen, which adjoins the doctor's
sitting-room. I knock. No answer. Suddenly I discover that it is
raining all the time. O misery of miseries! What have I done to deserve
these tortures? It is hell. Miserere! Miserere!
I knock repeatedly. It is strange that no one is at hand when I am
attacked. Always this solitude! Does it not point to a plot against me
in which all are implicated?
At last I hear the doctor's voice, "Who is there?"
"It is I: I am ill. Open, or I die!"
He opens the door. "What is the matter?"
I begin my report by giving an account of the attack in the Rue de
la Clef, which I ascribe to enemies, who persecute me by means of
electricity.
"Stop, unhappy man! Your mind is affected!"
"The devil it is! Test my intelligence; read what I write daily and
what is printed----"
"Stop! not a word to anyone! These stories of electricity are frequent
in asylum reports."
"All the better! I care so little for your asylum reports that in order
to clear the matter up, I am willing to be examined to-morrow in the
asylum at Lund."
"Then you are lost! Not a word more now! Lie down and sleep."
I refuse to do so, and insist on his hearing me; he refuses to listen.
When I am alone, I ask myself, "Is it possible that my friend, an
honourable man, who has always kept aloof from dirty transactions, at
the close of a blameless career should succumb to temptation? But who
has tempted him?" I have no answer to this question, but many surmises.
"Every man has his price," says the proverb, but a large sum must
have been necessary to bribe this strong character. But one does not
pay very highly for an ordinary piece of revenge. Therefore he must
have a strong interest in the matter himself. Stop! I have it! I have
made gold; the doctor has half-accomplished it also, although, when
asked, he denies having repeated the experiments regarding which I had
corresponded with him. He denies it, and yet as I stepped across the
pavement of the courtyard last evening I found proofs that he had been
experimenting. Therefore he is lying. Moreover, in conversation the
same evening, he enlarged on the sad consequences which the possible
manufacture of gold would entail upon mankind. Universal bankruptcy,
universal confusion, anarchy, ruin. "One would have to kill the
discoverer of the process," he concluded.
Moreover, I know the fairly modest private means of my friend. I am
astonished to hear him speak of his intended purchase of the ground on
which his dwelling stands. He is in debt, must even economise, and yet
means to be a landowner. Everything combines to render me suspicious of
my good friend.
Grant that I am suffering from persecution-mania, but what smith forges
the links of these hellish syllogisms?
"The discoverer would have to be killed." This is the thought with
which my mental torment subsides into sleep about the time of sunrise.
* * * * *
We have commenced a cold-water cure. I have changed my room, and have
fairly quiet nights now, although not without relapses.
One evening the doctor sees the breviary lying on my table, and becomes
angry and excited. "Always this religion! That is also a symptom, don't
you know?"
"Or a necessity like other necessities!"
"Enough! I am no atheist, but I think the Almighty does not wish to be
addressed in such intimate terms as formerly. These flatteries of the
Deity belong to the past, and personally I agree with the Mohammedans,
who only ask for the gift of resignation in order to support the burden
Destiny imposes upon them with dignity."
Significant words, from which I extract some grains of gold for myself.
He carries away my breviary and Bible, and says: "Read indifferent
matters of secondary interest, world histories, or mythologies, and
leave idle dreaming. Above all things, beware of occultism, that
caricature of science. It is forbidden to us to spy out the Creator's
secrets, and woe to them who seek to do so!"
On my objecting that the occultists in Paris form a whole body by
themselves, he only says, "All the worse for them." In the evening he
brings me, without any ulterior purpose, I am sure, Victor Rydberg's
_German Mythology_.
"Here is something to send you to sleep, standing. It is better than
sulphonal."
If my good friend had known what a spark he was throwing into a keg of
powder, he would rather----
The _Mythology_ which he put into my hands is in two volumes, has
altogether a thousand pages, and opens, so to speak, of itself. My eyes
are arrested by the following lines which are imprinted in letters of
fire on my memory:--"As the legend relates, Bhrign, having out-grown
his father's teaching, became so conceited, that he believed he could
surpass his teacher. The latter sent him into the underworld where, in
order to humble him, he had to witness countless terrible things, of
which he had never had a conception."
That means: "My conceit, my pride, my ὕβρις, has been
punished by my father and teacher. And I am in hell, driven thither by
the powers. And who is my teacher? Swedenborg."
I turn over more leaves of this wonderful book: "One may compare with
this the German myth of the fields of thorns which tear the feet of the
unrighteous."
Enough! Enough! Thorns, too! That is too much! No doubt of it--I am in
hell! And in fact, real occurrences support this idea so powerfully,
that I must at last believe it.
The doctor seems to me to be struggling with conflicting emotions. At
one time he seems prejudiced against me, looks at me contemptiously,
and treats me with humiliating rudeness; at another he seems himself
unhappy, and soothes and comforts me as though I were a sick child. But
then, again, it seems to give him pleasure to be able to trample under
his feet a man of worth for whom he has formerly had a high regard.
Then he lectures me like a pitiless tormentor. I am to work, but not
to give way to exaggerated ambition; I am to fulfil my duties to my
fatherland and family: "Leave chemical speculations alone," he says;
"they are a chimera. There are so many specialists, authorities, and
professional scientists well versed in their own branches."
One day he proposes to me to write for the newest Stockholm society
paper. A fine idea, indeed! I answer him that I do not require to
write for the newest Stockholm paper, since the leading paper of Paris
and of the whole world has accepted my manuscripts. Then he plays the
incredulous, and treats me as a braggart, although he has read my
articles in the _Figaro_, and has himself translated my first one in
_Gil Blas_.
I am not angry with him; he only plays the rôle assigned to him by
Providence. I forcibly suppress the growing hatred which I feel
towards this unexpected tormentor, and curse the fate which changes
what might have been thankfulness towards a generous friend into
unnatural ingratitude.
* * * * *
Trifling occurrences ceaselessly arouse my suspicions regarding the
doctor's evil intentions. To-day he has deposited in the garden
verandah an entirely new set of axes, saws, and hammers. What does
he want with them? In his sleeping-room are two guns and a revolver,
and in a corridor a collection of axes which are much too heavy for
merely domestic purposes. What a Satanic coincidence that I should have
these implements of execution and torture before my eyes! For I cannot
explain to myself what they mean, and why they are there. My nights now
pass fairly quietly, while the doctor has taken to roaming about at
night. Once at midnight I am startled by the sudden report of a gun.
Out of politeness I pretend not to have heard it. The next morning he
explains that a covey of woodpeckers had flown into the garden and
disturbed his sleep. Another time, at two o'clock at night, I hear the
hoarse voice of the house-keeper, and on another occasion I hear the
doctor sigh and groan and invoke "the Lord." Is this house haunted?
Who has brought me here?
I cannot suppress a smile when I see how the nightmare with which I
have been oppressed now takes possession of my gaoler. But my malicious
joy is promptly punished. I have a terrible nervous attack. My heart
seems to stop beating, and I hear two words, which I have noted in my
diary. An unknown voice calls out, "Luthardt: Druggist." Druggist! Are
they slowly poisoning me with alkaloids such as hyoscyamin, hashish,
digitalis, and stramonin, which cause delirium?
I don't know, but from that time my suspicion is doubled. They do not
dare to murder me, but they are trying to drive me mad by artificial
means, in order to make me disappear in an asylum. Appearances are
stronger and stronger against the doctor. I find out that he has
discovered my process of making gold, and that perhaps he knew it
before I did. Everything which he says contradicts itself the next
moment, and when confronted by a liar my imagination takes the bit
between its teeth and rushes beyond all reasonable bounds.
On the morning of the 8th of August I go for a walk before the town. On
the high road a telegraph post is humming: I step up to it, lay my ear
on it, and listen as if bewitched. At the foot of the post there lies
by chance a horse-shoe. I pick it up and carry it away as an omen of
good luck.
_August_ 10_th_.--The behaviour of the doctor during the last few
days has disquieted me more than ever. By his strange aspect I see
that he has struggled with himself; his face is pale; his eyes seem
dead. During the whole day he sings or whistles; a letter which he has
received has excited him much.
In the afternoon he comes home with bloody hands from an operation, and
brings a two months' old fœtus with him. He looks like a butcher,
and talks in a hateful way: "Let them kill the weak, and protect the
strong! Down with pity, for it degrades men." I hear him with alarm,
and secretly watch him, after we have wished each other good-night on
the threshold which divides our rooms. First of all, he goes in the
garden, but I cannot hear what he does. Then he steps into the verandah
adjoining my sleeping-room and stops there. He busies himself with some
fairly heavy object, and winds up a piece of clock-work which, however,
belongs to no clock. Half-undressed, I await, standing motionless, the
result of these mysterious preparations.
Then once more the well-known electric fluid streams through the
wall on my bed, seeks my breast, and under it, my heart. The tension
increases: I seize my clothes, slip through the window, and do not
dress till I am outside the house. There I am again in the street, on
the pavement, my last refuge and only friend behind me! I wander onward
without a definite aim; but when I come to myself I go direct to the
chief physician of the town. I have to ring and wait, and prepare what
to say so as not to injure my friend.
At last the doctor appears. I excuse myself for paying such an
untimely visit on the plea of sleeplessness, palpitations, and want of
confidence in my own doctor, who, I said, treated me as a hypochondriac
and would not listen to me. The doctor invites me inside, as though he
had been expecting me, asks me to take a seat, and offers me a cigar
and a glass of wine. I breathe freely at finding myself once more
treated as a respectable man, and not a wretched idiot. We chat for two
hours, and the doctor turns out to be a theosophist to whom I can tell
everything, without compromising myself. At last about midnight I rise
in order to find an hotel; the doctor, however, advises me to return
home.
"Never! he is capable of murdering me!"
"But if I accompany you?"
"Then, indeed, we should meet the enemy's fire together. But he would
never forgive me!"
"All the same, let us venture."
So I return to the house. The door is shut, and I knock. When my friend
enters after a minute, it is I who am seized with compassion, he, the
surgeon, who is accustomed to witness suffering without emotion, he,
the advocate of deliberate murder, is an object of pity indeed. He
is pale as death, trembles, stammers, and at the sight of the doctor
standing behind me seems on the point of collapse, so that I feel more
panic-struck than ever. Is it conceivable that this man intended a
murder and now feared detection? No, it is not; I reject the thought;
it is wicked. After insignificant and on my part really ridiculous
remarks, we go to our bedrooms.
* * * * *