THE CURE THAT MISSED
At hearing that he was at the house of M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de
Taillebourg de la Nox, Theophrastus was somewhat reassured, for he
had heard both Marceline and Adolphe speak of him with reverence as
a leading member of the Pneumatic Club. Theophrastus had chanced to
hear of the Pneumatic Club; and he had caused Marceline to become a
member of it (he was at the time too busy to join it himself) under
the impression that it was the chief social club of the most prominent
people in the Rubber Industry. But of course everybody knows that
Pneumatology is that part of metaphysics which deals with the soul, in
Greek _Pneuma_; and the Pneumatics are those versed in this science,
which has nothing whatever to do with the elastic and resilient
substance extracted by incision from a tree, which was named by the
benighted savages who discovered it, the Caoutchouc. Marceline did not
trouble the busy Theophrastus with her discovery that the Pneumatic
Club was a branch of Spiritualism and not of the Rubber Industry. She
contented herself with inviting M. Adolphe Lecamus to join it also; and
both of them became devout admirers and disciples of that great expert
in the Occult, M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox. It is
no wonder that, on learning from Marceline of the painful affair of the
ears of Signor Petito, M. Lecamus should have urged instant recourse
to that great expert, to learn the proper methods of dealing with a
reincarnate soul of such unfortunate antecedents.
Adolphe looked at Theophrastus with deep commiseration in his eyes, as
if his conversation with the Mage had given him reason for dismay.
"Come along, Marceline is here; and we are going to introduce you to a
good friend," he said sombrely.
He led the way down the corridor, opened a door, and ushered
Theophrastus into a large, dim room. At once his eyes were attracted
by a marvellous light which fell on the noblest, gentlest, and most
beautiful face of a man he had ever seen. The light was marvellous
because that striking figure did not seem to receive it, but to
diffuse it. When it moved, the light moved with it; it was a figure
and a torch. Before this torch knelt Marceline, her hands joined as if
in supplication; and on her fell some of the rays from this gracious,
almost divine figure.
Then Theophrastus heard a friendly voice, a male voice, but sweeter far
than the voice of any woman, which said, "Come to me without fear."
Theophrastus still gazed in wonder at the kind of astral light which
was diffused from the figure of the Mage, the light which the painter
James Tissot has succeeded in reproducing, in an engraving of great
beauty, from a photograph of a mediumistic apparition communicated
to the Congress of Spiritualists of 1910 by Doctor Macnab. In this
drawing, beside the materialised figure of a young girl, stands M.
Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox and his light.
Theophrastus gazed silently upon the radiant visage of M. Eliphas de
la Nox (it would be unfair on the ink of the printer to give him his
full name every time I mention him). Then, since he felt a sudden
strong sympathy with this radiant being into whose presence he had been
so suddenly introduced, in spite of having found him in a frame he
thought almost diabolic, he plucked up courage and resolved to learn
the meaning of all the strange things he had seen.
"I don't know where I am," he said somewhat plaintively. "But since I
see my friend Adolphe and my wife Marceline with you, I feel reassured.
I should like very much to know your name."
"My friend, I am called Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox."
"You're really called all that?" said Theophrastus, who was beginning
to recover his spirits.
The radiant being bowed his head gravely.
"Well, after all, there's nothing very astonishing in that," said
Theophrastus. "My name, my real name, my actual family name, is
Cartouche; and for a long time everybody has believed that it was a
nickname."
"Your name is _not_ Cartouche; it is Theophrastus Longuet," said M.
Eliphas de la Nox with gentle firmness.
"The one does not prevent the other," said Theophrastus, who better
than anyone else knew what he was talking about, quite logically.
"I beg your pardon," said M. Eliphas de la Nox, with the same gentle
firmness. "You must not cherish this confusion of mind. _Once upon a
time_ your name was Cartouche, but _now_ it is Theophrastus Longuet.
Understand that: _you are_ Theophrastus Longuet. My friend, listen to
me carefully, as you would listen to a physician who was going to heal
you. For you are ill, my friend, very ill, exactly because you believe
you are Cartouche, when you are really Theophrastus Longuet. I appeal
to all the simplicity of your soul."
"That's all right," said Theophrastus. "I like simple things myself;
so I dislike very much, very much indeed, the way by which one comes
to see you, through a labyrinth of passages, with skeletons hanging
up in them. What's he doing in your house, by the way, that skeleton,
instead of resting quietly on Saint-Chaumont Hill? _I recognised
him at once._ They were dragging him to the charnel-house at the
Gallows of Montfaucon the very day of my marriage with my dear wife
Marie-Antoinette Neron, when we were having our wedding breakfast at
the Chopinettes. Beaulieu and Old Easy-Going were with us. At that
epoch, my dear M. Eliphas de Taillepot--"
"Eliphas de Taillebourg," corrected Adolphe in a somewhat shocked tone.
"At that epoch--my friend Adolphe, who's as serious as a donkey, will
tell you so--they no longer hung people at the Gallows of Montfaucon,
but they used to throw into the charnel-house of those gallows the
remains of people whom they hung elsewhere. That's how it was that
this poor Gastelard, whose skeleton I recognised just now, was dragged
to the charnel-house after having been hung in the Place de Grève.
Gastelard, my dear M. St. Elmo's-Fire--"
"De Saint-Elme," M. Lecamus corrected him again.
"My dear M. de Saint-Elme, Gastelard wasn't up to much, a poor beggar
full of imagination, who, having one day disguised himself as a King's
deputy, demanded his sword from a gentleman, showing him at the same
time an Order of Committal. The gentleman believed that he was being
duly arrested, and handed over his sword, the hilt of which was gold
and the most beautiful you ever saw. The story ended with Gastelard at
the end of a rope. But I'll be hanged, my dear M. de l'Equinox--"
"De la Nox," insisted Adolphe.
"De la Nose, my dear M. de la Nose, I'll be hanged if I ever expected
that I should one day find his skeleton in a house in Huchette Street!"
The Mage, motionless and silent, regarded Theophrastus and his talk
with an attention nothing could divert.
"I have never laughed anywhere so much as at Saint-Chaumont Hill,
between Chopinettes mill and Cock mill," said Theophrastus with the
same garrulous cheerfulness. "Chopinettes tavern was there; it had
taken the place of the tavern François Villon was so fond of, where
for centuries all the cullies and doxies of Paris used to come on
hanging-days to carouse. It was between Chopinettes mill, Cock mill and
the Gallows of Montfaucon that I buried my treasures; and if you have a
plan of old Paris, my dear M. Elephant de Taillepot de St. Elmo's Fire
de la Nose--"
Theophrastus had not quite come to the end of his host's name, when, of
a sudden, the darkness fled; and the room and all in it shone clear in
the brilliant light of day.
He looked round him with manifest satisfaction, at his wife, who was
muttering a prayer, at his friend Adolphe, who was on the verge of
tears, at the bookshelves, which practically walled the room, and at M.
Eliphas de la Nox, who smiled at him with gentle compassion. The Mage
had lost his supernatural air; his cloak of astral light had gone; and
if his features had still their sublime and ineffable pallor, he none
the less looked a man like anybody else.
"I like this a good deal better," said Theophrastus with a deep sigh of
relief.
The Mage raised his hand. "No: I will not give you a map of old Paris
to look at, though I have them of every age," he said. "You have
nothing to do with old Paris. You are Theophrastus Longuet; and we are
in the year 1911."
"That's all very well. But it's a question of my treasure, treasures
which belong to me," said Theophrastus stubbornly. "And I have every
right to look in a map of old Paris at the place where I formerly
buried my treasures, in order that I may see on a map of new Paris
where I shall have to hunt again. It's clear--"
The Mage interrupted him, saying to M. Lecamus, "I have often seen here
crises of Karma; but it has never been my privilege to study one of
such force."
"Oh, but so far you've seen nothing--nothing at all!" cried
Theophrastus.
The Mage reflected a moment; then he took Theophrastus to a map of
the Paris of to-day which hung on the wall of this great library, and
pointed out to him the exact spot on which had stood Chopinettes mill,
Cock mill, and the Gallows of Montfaucon. Then he laid his finger in
the middle of the triangle they formed, and said: "Here is where you
must hunt, my friend, to recover your treasures. But all this quarter
has been altered again and again; and I very much doubt whether your
treasures will still be found where you buried them. I have shown
you the spot on a modern map, to clear your mind of the matter. For,
my friend, _you must clear your mind_. You must not dwell on your
treasures. You must not live in the past. _It is a crime._ You must
live in the present, that is to say, _for the Future_. My friend,
you must drive out Cartouche, because Cartouche is no more. It is
Theophrastus Longuet _who is_."
The Mage pronounced these words in a tone of the most solemn
earnestness. Theophrastus smiled at him sadly, and said: "I'm very
much obliged to you for your interest in me; and I will not hide from
you the fact that I find you extremely sympathetic, in spite of your
skeletons and the odd words which crawl about your walls. You must be
very learned indeed, to judge from all these shelves full of books.
And you must be very good-hearted, for you have certainly treated me
with the greatest kindness; but I tell you--and sorry I am to say
it--that you can do nothing for me. For unfortunately, my dear sir,
you think that I'm ill; but I'm not ill at all. If I were ill, I've no
doubt that you'd cure me, but one doesn't cure a man who's not ill. You
say to me, you must drive out Cartouche. It's a grand thing to say,
splendid; but I don't believe it, my dear M. Elephant de Brandebourg de
St. Elmo's Fire de la Box."
But the Mage took his hand, and said with unchanged kindliness:
"None the less Cartouche must be _driven out, for if we do not
succeed in driving him out_, we shall have to _kill him_; and I will
not conceal from you, my dear M. Longuet, the fact that that is an
exceedingly difficult operation."
"When the Man of Light," says Theophrastus in his memoirs, "undertook
to relieve me of this obsession by Cartouche, which was not, alas!
a matter of imagination but a very real thing, I could only smile
pitifully at his vast conceit. But when I understood that he proposed
to drive him out by the sole miracle of the reason, I thought it was
time to serve the Mage up hot at Charenton lunatic asylum.
"But presently, when he had explained the matter more fully to me, and
I began to understand his theory and method, I found myself in full
agreement with him and ready to serve his purpose of driving Cartouche
out of me by the sole miracle of the reason. Indeed I came in the end
to appreciate the vast abyss which separated the Man of Light from my
friend Adolphe, the vast abyss which will always separate the Man of
Reason from the Learned Ape.
"First of all, he assured me that I had been Cartouche. He was assured
of it. And furthermore it was the most natural thing in the world.
He said he had scolded Adolphe for having presented my case to him
as exceptional, when my case was the case of everybody. Of course,
everybody has not been Cartouche. But everybody has been, before their
existence of to-day, a good many other people, among whom may very well
have been found persons every whit as bad as Cartouche.
"You understand the Man of Light: mine was an every-day case. Everybody
has lived before living and will live again. He told me that it was
'The Law of Karma.' _One is being born all the time; one never dies.
And when one dies, it is that one is being born again, and so on from
the beginning of beginnings!_
"It is understood that at each birth the personality differs from the
preceding and succeeding personalities, but each is only a modification
of the divine and spiritual ego. These different personalities are in
a way only the rings in the infinite chain of life which constitutes
throughout the ages our Immortal Individuality.
"And then the Man of Light told me that when one has grasped this
immense truth, one should not be astonished that some of the events of
_to-day_ recall some of the events of _long-ago_. But in order to live
according to the law of wisdom one should live in the present and never
look backward. I had looked backward too much. My spirit, badly guided
by M. Lecamus, had during the last few weeks been wholly occupied with
the _long-ago_; and undoubtedly, if that had gone on, I should soon
have been reduced to a state dangerously near to that of madness. I
ought to be no more astonished at having had another state of soul two
hundred years ago than I ought to be astonished at having had another
state of soul twenty years ago. Was it that the Theophrastus of
to-day had any connection with the Theophrastus of twenty years ago?
Certainly not. The Theophrastus of to-day ignored that young man; he
even disapproved of him. Would it not be stupid indeed to devote all my
faculties to reviving the Theophrastus of twenty years ago? Therefore
the great mistake I had made had been only to live for Cartouche,
because I had chanced to remember that I had once been Cartouche.
"I tell you that I found the words of M. Elephant de la Box indeed
refreshing. They did me a world of good.
"He also told me other things which I shall remember if I live to be a
thousand years old. He told me that what are called 'Vocations' in the
men of to-day are only latent revelations of their past lives; that
what is called 'Facility' is only a retrospective sympathy for objects
with which they are better acquainted than with anything else, because
they made a more careful study of them before this actual life; and
that is the only explanation of it.
"Thereupon he pressed me to his bosom, as a father embraces his child;
he breathed upon my eyes and brow his healing breath; and he asked me
if I was now persuaded of this truth, and realised that to live happily
it was necessary to bear in mind our condition of perpetual change,
and that by doing so we should learn to live in the Present and to
understand that the whole of time belonged to us.
"I wept with joy, and my dear wife wept with joy, and Adolphe wept with
joy. I assured the Man of Light that I understood and believed, that
I was no longer astonished that I had been Cartouche, though I was
somewhat distressed by the fact, but that it was, after all, so natural
that I should never again give it a moment's thought. I cried:
"'Be at ease! Let us all be at ease! Let us live in _the Present_!
_Cartouche is driven out!_'
"Thereupon Marceline asked what time it was; and Adolphe answered
that it was eleven o'clock. I pulled out my onion and saw that it was
half-past eleven. Then, since my watch keeps perfect time, I declared
that it was half-past eleven.
"'No. I beg your pardon, but it's eleven o'clock,' said Adolphe.
"'You can cut off my finger if it isn't half-past eleven!" I cried; for
I was sure of my watch.
"But the Man of Light looked at his watch and assured me that it was
only eleven o'clock. My friend Adolphe was right; and I was sorry
for it--on account of my finger. I am an honourable man and an honest
manufacturer. I have always kept my word; and no bill of mine has ever
been dishonoured. I did not hesitate. Could I have done otherwise?
"'Very well,' I said to Adolphe. 'I owe you a finger.'
"And seizing a small stone tomahawk, which lay on the desk of the Man
of Light and was evidently used as a paper-weight, I raised it in the
air, and was bringing it down on the little finger of my left hand
which I had stuck well out on the corner of the desk--I had the right
to give Adolphe the little finger of my left hand; for I had only said
to him, 'You can cut off my finger,' without stipulating which finger;
and I chose the finger the loss of which would inconvenience me the
least. My little finger then would infallibly have been cut off, had
not the Man of Light caught my wrist in a grip of steel and held it
firmly.
"He bade me put down the tomahawk. I answered that I would not put down
the tomahawk till I had cut off my finger which belonged to Adolphe.
"Adolphe exclaimed that my finger was of no use to him, and I could
keep it. Marceline joined her entreaties to his, and begged me to keep
my finger, since Adolphe made me a present of it. But I answered him
that there was no reason for him to make me presents at this season
of the year; and I answered her that she knew nothing at all about
business.
"Then M. Eliphraste de l'Equinox pointed out that I was not observing
the conditions of the contract: I had said, 'You can cut off my
finger'; consequently it was the privilege of Adolphe to cut off my
finger.
"I admired this exact logic, which indeed never failed him; and I put
down my tomahawk.
"I was wrong to put down my tomahawk in that house in Huchette Street;
for they flung themselves upon me, and the Man of Light cried:
"'_Come on! It's too late! The only thing to do is to kill him!_'"