THE HOUSE OF STRANGE WORDS
Among all the papers I found in the sandalwood box, by Theophrastus
himself, by M. Lecamus, or by Commissary Mifroid, those which relate to
the death of Cartouche are beyond doubt the most curious and the most
interesting. They are indeed of great historical interest since they
contradict history. Moreover they contradict it with such force and
with such irrefutable reasoning that one asks how men of such weight as
Barbier, who was in the best position of all not to be duped, since he
lived at the time, could have been the victims of a very poor comedy,
and how succeeding generations have failed to suspect the truth.
History then, serious history, teaches us that Cartouche, after having
undergone the Question in its cruellest form without revealing one
single name or fact,--how Cartouche, who had only to die and nothing to
hope, was brought to the Place de Grève to be executed, and that there
he decided to confess; that they took him to the Hôtel-de-Ville, and
that he delivered to justice his chief accomplices; after which he was
broken on the wheel.
The papers of Theophrastus Longuet explain the fraud. Cartouche was
not only an object of terror, but also an object of admiration. His
courage knew no limits; and he proved it under torture. From the moment
that the pain of the Boot failed to make him speak, it was morally
impossible that he should speak. Why should he have spoken? All that
was left for him was to die game. The greatest ladies of the Court and
the city had hired boxes and windows to witness his execution. Among
the three hundred and sixty people who were arrested were men whom he
loved as brothers, and his tenderest and most constant flames. Some of
them came to Paris from the Provinces, contemptuous of all danger, in
the hope that, at the trial, the _Child_ would have the consolation of
seeing them for the last time. The account of the trial which describes
these women as throwing themselves, after he had denounced them, into
his arms at the Hôtel-de-Ville itself, is manifestly nonsense.
I will not reproduce here all the protests of M. Longuet against the
dishonourable death ascribed to Cartouche, but the few lines which
precede this chapter seem, to me at any rate, to prove, _a priori_,
that he is right.
But at this moment all that M. Longuet knew was that _he died at the
Gallows of Montfaucon, but that he was not hanged there_.
In the course of discussing this serious question Theophrastus and
his friend had reached Petit-Pont Street without having crossed the
Petit-Pont. Theophrastus did not so much as look in the direction of
the Petit-Pont. Half-way down the street Theophrastus, who was in a
state half of memory, half of possession, said to his friend: "Look at
that house next to the hotel there, 'The Market-Gardeners' Hotel.' Do
you notice anything remarkable about it?"
Adolphe looked across the street at the hotel, a little old house,
low, narrow, and dirty, with "The Market-Gardeners' Hotel" newly
painted on it. It seemed to be propping itself up against a large
eighteenth-century building to which Theophrastus was pointing with his
green umbrella. This building had a bulging balcony of wrought iron, of
solid but delicate design.
"I see a very fine balcony," said Adolphe.
"What else?"
"The quiver of Cupid carved above the door."
"What else?"
"Nothing else."
"Don't you perceive the thick bars across the windows?"
"Of course I do."
"At that time, my dear Adolphe, people took the greatest care to
have their windows barred; never did one see as many barred windows
in Paris as in the year 1720. And I could swear that these bars here
were fixed the day after the affairs of Petits-Augustins Street.
First the Parisians garnished all their ground-floors with bars. But
this precaution gave us no trouble at all since we had _Simon the
Auvergnat_."
Adolphe thought the moment opportune to find out who Simon the
Auvergnat, who was always appearing in their talk without any
appreciable reason, exactly was.
"He was a very useful object, he was _the base of my column_," said
Theophrastus.
"And what's that--the base of your column?"
"You don't understand? I'll just show you. Suppose you're Simon the
Auvergnat," said Theophrastus with almost boyish eagerness.
Adolphe was quite willing, but not for long. Theophrastus drew him
across the road, set him against the wall of the Market-Gardeners'
Hotel, showed him the position he was to take: to set his legs apart,
and lean, lowering his head and raising his crossed arms, against the
wall.
"I place you here," he said, "because of the little ledge on the left,
_I remember that it is very convenient_."
"And next?" said Adolphe, leaning against the wall in the required
position.
"Next, since you are the base of my column, I mount on that base..."
Before M. Lecamus had the time so much as to imagine a movement even,
Theophrastus had climbed up on to his shoulders, sprung on to the
ledge, leapt from it with one bound to the balcony of the house next
door, and vanished through an open window into the room which opened on
to it. M. Lecamus in a dazed consternation was gazing into the air, and
asked himself where his friend Theophrastus could have vanished, when
the street rang with piercing cries. A despairing voice howled, "Help!
thieves! murderers!"
"I might have expected it!" cried M. Lecamus; and he dashed into the
house from which the screams issued, while the passers-by stood
still, or hurried to the spot. He bounded up the great staircase with
the swiftness of a young man, and reached the first floor at the very
moment when a door opened, and Theophrastus appeared, hat in hand.
He was bowing low to an old lady with chattering teeth, and crowned
with curl papers, and said:
"My dear madame, if I had thought for an instant that I should give you
such a shock by entering your drawing-room by the window, I should have
stayed quietly in the street. I am not, my dear madame, either a thief
or a murderer, but an honest manufacturer of rubber stamps."
Adolphe seized his arm and tried to drag him down the stairs.
But Theophrastus went on: "It is entirely Adolphe's fault, my dear
madame. He would have me show him how _Simon the Auvergnat acted as the
base of my column_."
Adolphe, behind Theophrastus, made signs to the lady of the curl papers
that his friend was off his head. Thereupon the lady fell fainting into
the arms of her maid, who came running up. Adolphe dragged Theophrastus
down the staircase just as the hall filled with people from the street.
The crowd took them for fellow-rescuers; and they escaped from the
house without difficulty.
In the street Theophrastus said cheerfully, "The most surprising thing
about the whole matter, my dear Adolphe, was that this Simon the
Auvergnat served us as the base of our column for more than two years
without ever suspecting anything. He thought that he lent his strong
shoulders to a band of young gentlemen of quality, who were amusing
themselves!"[3]
[Footnote 3: This is authentic. It was proved at the trial of
Cartouche's accomplices; and Simon the Auvergnat was acquitted.]
But Adolphe was not listening to Theophrastus. With one hand he was
dragging him towards Huchette Street, and with the other he was wiping
the sweat from his brow.
"The time has come!" he muttered. "The time has come!"
"Where are you dragging me to?" said Theophrastus.
"To see one of my friends," said Adolphe shortly, continuing to drag
him along.
In Huchette Street they passed through a red porch into a very
old house. Adolphe seemed to know his whereabouts, for he dragged
Theophrastus up a dozen worn stone steps and pushed open a heavy door.
They found themselves in a large hall, lighted by a lamp hanging by
iron chains from the stone ceiling.
"Wait for me here, I shan't be long," said Adolphe, closing the door.
Theophrastus sat down in a large armchair, and gazed round him. The
sight of the walls filled him with the wildest amazement. In the first
place, there was an incredible quantity of words painted in black
letters. They seemed to crawl about the wall without any order, like
flies.
He spelt some of them to himself: Thabethnah, Jakin, Bohaz, Theba, Pic
de la Mirandole, Paracelsus, Jacque Molay, Nephesch-Ruach-Neschamah,
Ezechiel, Aïsha, Puysegur, Cagliostro, Wronski, Fabre d'Olivet, Louis
Lucas, Hiram, Elias, Plotinus, Origen, Gutman, Swedenborg, Giorgius,
Apollonius of Tyana, Cassidorus, Eliphas Levi, Cardan, Allan Kardec,
Olympicodorus, Spinoza, and scores besides; and, repeated a hundred
times, the word IHOAH. Turning towards the other wall, he saw a sphinx
and the Pyramids, a huge rose, in the centre of which Christ stretched
out his arms in a circle of flame, and these words on the rose:
_Amphitheatrum sapientiæ æternæ solius veræ_. It was the rose of the
Rosicrucians.
Below it were these words:
"Of what use are brands, and torches, and spectacles
To him who shuts his eyes that he may not see?"
"I am not shutting my eyes," said Theophrastus to himself, "and I am
wearing spectacles, yet I'll be hanged if I know where I am!"
His eyes fell on this inscription in letters of gold:
"From the moment that you have performed an action, a single action,
apply to it all the intelligence you have, seek its salient points,
examine it in the light, _abandon yourself to hypotheses, fly in front
of them, if need be_."
He saw hawks, vultures, jackals, men with heads of birds, several
scarabs, a god with an ass's head, then a sceptre, an ass, and an eye.
Finally he read these words in blue letters:
"The more the soul shall be rooted in its instincts, the more it shall
lie forgotten in the flesh, the less shall it have knowledge of its
immortal life, _and the longer it shall remain prisoner in living
carcasses_."
Growing impatient at the long absence of Adolphe, after a while
he rose to draw apart the curtains through which his friend had
disappeared. As he was about to pass through them, his head struck
against two feet hanging in the air which rattled with the noise of dry
bones. He looked up: it was a skeleton.
He gazed at it with a sincere and gentle compassion.
"You would be much more at your ease in Saint-Chaumont Cemetery," he
said and went on with a sad smile.
The corridor down which he walked had no windows. It was lighted from
one end to the other by a crimson glow. At first Theophrastus could not
make out where it came from. Then he perceived that he was walking on
it. It came from the cellars, through the thick sheets of glass with
which the corridor was paved. What were those crimson flames below, in
whose glow he walked, doing?
He did not know. He did not even ask. He did not even ask why he,
Theophrastus, found himself walking in this glow. He had ceased to
ask, "Why am I in this house in Huchette Street?" He had ceased to ask
because nobody answered.
_Emmanuel, Noun, Samech, Hain... Sabaoth... Adonai..._
Still names on the stone walls.
The only ornament on these walls about which names crawled was, at the
height of a man, an endless line of stars formed by the two triangles
of Solomon's Seal. Between each star or seal, in green letters, was the
word NIRVANA.
The corridor did not run in a straight line. It had curves and angles.
Presently he came to a spot at which two other corridors ran into it at
right angles, and prudently stopped. But soon he grew impatient again,
and plunged down one of these side corridors. Three minutes later,
without knowing how it came about, he found himself back at the spot
where the corridors crossed. Then he went back down the first corridor,
retracing his steps to the hall. But he did not find the hall.
He was on the point of howling with distress, when Adolphe appeared
before him. His eyes were red as if he had been weeping.
"Where am I?" cried Theophrastus tempestuously.
"You are in the house of the Mage--in the house of M. Eliphas de
Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox!"