unlike all his comrades. He seemed at once younger and older than he
really was. Small and fragile, he was at fifteen years of age afraid
of everything that alarms little children. Darkness caused him an
overpowering terror, and he could never meet one of the servants of the
school, who happened to have a big lump on the top of his head, without
bursting into tears. And yet at times, when we saw him close at hand, he
looked quite old. His parched skin, glued to his temples, nourished his
thin hair very inadequately. His forehead was polished like that of a
middle-aged man. As for his eyes, they had no expression, and strangers
often thought he was blind. His mouth alone gave character to his
face. His sensitive lips expressed in turn a child-like joy and strange
sufferings. The sound of his voice was clear and charming. When he
recited his lessons he gave the verses their full harmony and rhythm,
which made us laugh very much. During recreation he willingly joined
our games, and he was not awkward, but he played with such feverish
enthusiasm, and yet he was so absent-minded, that some of us felt an
insurmountable aversion towards him.
“He was not popular, and we would have made him our butt had he not
rather overawed us by something of savage pride and by his reputation as
a clever scholar, for though he was unequal in his work he was often at
the head of his class. It was said that he would often talk in his sleep
and that he would leave his bed in the dormitory while sound asleep.
This, however, we had not observed for ourselves as we were at the age
of sound sleep.
“For a long time he inspired me with more surprise than sympathy. Then
of a sudden we became friends during a walk which the whole class took
to the Abbey of Mont St. Michel. We tramped barefooted along the beach,
carrying our shoes and our bread at the end of a stick and singing at
the top of our voices. We passed the postern, and having thrown our
bundles at the foot of the ‘Michelettes,’ we sat down side by side on
one of those ancient iron cannons corroded by five centuries of rain and
fog.
“Looking dreamily from the ancient stones to the sky, and swinging his
bare feet, he said to me: ‘Had I but lived in the time of those wars and
been a knight, I would have captured these two old cannons; I would have
captured twenty, I would have captured a hundred! I would have captured
all the cannons of the English. I would have fought single-handed in
front of this gate. And the Archangel Michel would have stood guard over
my head like a white cloud.’
“These words and the slow chant in which he uttered them thrilled me. I
said to him, ‘I would have been your squire. I like you, Le Mansel;
will you be my friend?’ And I held my hand out to him and he took it
solemnly.
“At the master’s command we put on our shoes, and our little band
climbed the steep ascent that leads to the abbey. Midway, near a
spreading fig-tree, we saw the cottage where Tiphaine Raguel, widow of
Bertrand du Guesdin, lived in peril of the sea.
“This dwelling is so small that it is a wonder that it was ever
inhabited. To have lived there the worthy Tiphaine must have been a
queer old body, or, rather, a saint living only the spiritual life. Le
Mansel opened his arms as if to embrace this sacred hut; then, falling
on his knees, he kissed the stones, heedless of the laughter of his
comrades who, in their merriment, began to pelt him with pebbles. I will
not describe our walk among the dungeons, the cloisters, the halls and
the chapel. Le Mansel seemed oblivious to everything. Indeed, I should
not have recalled this incident except to show how our friendship began.
“In the dormitory the next morning I was awakened by a voice at my ear
which said:
“‘Tiphaine is not dead,’ I rubbed my eyes as I saw Le Mansel in his
shirt at my side. I requested him rather rudely to let me sleep, and I
thought no more of this singular communication.
“From that day on I understood the character of our fellow pupil much
better than before, and I discovered an inordinate pride which I had
never before suspected. It will not surprise you if I acknowledge that
at the age of fifteen I was but a poor psychologist. But Le Mansel’s
pride was too subtle to strike one at once. It had no concrete shape,
but seemed to embrace remote phantasms. And yet it influenced all his
feelings and gave to his ideas, uncouth and incoherent though they were,
something of unity.
“During the holidays that followed our walk to the Mont St. Michel, Le
Mansel invited me to spend a day at the home of his parents, who were
farmers and landowners at Saint Julien.
“My mother consented with some repugnance. Saint Julien is six
kilometres from the town. Having put on a white waistcoat and a smart
blue tie I started on my way there early one Sunday morning.
“Alexandre stood at the door waiting for me and smiling like a little
child. He took me by the hand and led me into the ‘parlour.’ The house,
half country, half town-like, was neither poor nor ill furnished. And
yet my heart was deeply oppressed when I entered, so great was the
silence and sadness that reigned.
“Near the window, whose curtains were slightly raised as if to satisfy
some timid curiosity, I saw a woman who seemed old, though I cannot be
sure that she was as old as she appeared to be. She was thin and yellow,
and her eyes, under their red lids glowed in their black sockets. Though
it was summer her body and her head were shrouded in some black woollen
material. But that which made her look most ghastly was a band of metal
which encircled her forehead like a diadem.
“‘This is mama,’ Le Mansel said to me, ‘she has a headache.’
“Madam Le Mansel greeted me in a plaintive voice, and doubtless
observing my astonished glance at her forehead, said, smiling:
“‘What I wear on my forehead, young sir, is not a crown; it is a
magnetic band to cure my headache.’ I did my best to reply when Le
Mansel dragged me away to the garden, where we found a bald little man
who flitted along the paths like a ghost. He was so thin and so light
that there seemed some danger of his being blown away by the wind. His
timid manner and lus long and lean neck, when he bent forward, and his
head, no larger than a man’s fist, his shy side-glances and his
skipping gait, his short arms uplifted like a pair of flippers, gave him
undeniably a great resemblance to a plucked chicken.
“My friend, Le Mansel, explained that this was his father, but that they
were obliged to let him stay in the yard as he really only lived in the
company of his chickens, and he had in their society quite forgotten to
talk to human beings. As he spoke his father suddenly disappeared, and
very soon an ecstatic clucking filled the air. He was with his chickens.
“Le Mansel and I strolled several times around the garden and he told me
that at dinner, presently, I should see his grandmother, but that I was
to take no notice of what she said, as she was sometimes a little out
of her mind. Then he drew me aside into a pretty arbour and whispered,
blushing:
“‘I have written some verses about Tiphaine Raguel. I’ll repeat them to
you some other time. You’ll see, you’ll see.’
“The dinner-bell rang and we went into the dining-room. M. Le Mansel
came in with at basket full of eggs.
“‘Eighteen this morning,’ he said, and his voice sounded like a cluck.
“A most delicious omelette was served. I was seated between Madame Le
Mansel, who was moaning under her crown, and her mother, an old Normandy
woman with round cheeks, who, having lost all her teeth, smiled with her
eyes. She seemed very attractive to me. While we were eating roast-duck
and chicken _à la crème_ the good lady told us some very amusing
stories, and, in spite of what her grandson had said, I did not observe
that her mind was in the slightest degree affected. On the contrary, she
seemed to be the life of the house.
“After dinner we adjourned to a little sitting-room whose walnut
furniture was covered with yellow Utrecht velvet. An ornamental clock
between two candelabra decorated the mantelpiece, and on the top of its
black plinth, and protected and covered by a glass globe, was a red egg.
I do not know why, once having observed it, I should have examined it so
attentively. Children have such unaccountable curiosity. However, I must
say that the egg was of a most wonderful and magnificent colour. It had
no resemblance whatever to those Easter eggs dyed in the juice of
the beetroot, so much admired by the urchins who stare in at the
fruit-shops. It was of the colour of royal purple. And with the
indiscretion of my age I could not resist saying as much.
“M. Le Mansel’s reply was a kind of crow which expressed his admiration.
“‘That egg, young sir,’ he added, ‘has not been dyed as you seem to
think. It was laid by a Cingalese hen in my poultry-yard just as you see
it there. It is a phenomenal egg.’
“‘You must not forget to say,’ Madame Le Mansel added in a plaintive
voice, ‘that this egg was laid the very day our Alexandre was born.’
“‘That’s a fact,’ M. Le Mansel assented.
“In the meantime the old grandmother looked at me with sarcastic eyes,
and pressed her loose lips together and made a sign that I was not to
believe what I heard.
“‘Humph!’ she whispered, ‘chickens often sit on what they don’t lay, and
if some malicious neighbour slips into their nest a----’
“Her grandson interrupted her fiercely. He was pale, and his hands
shook.
“‘Don’t listen to her,’ he cried to me. ‘You know what I told you. Don’t
listen!’
“‘It’s a fact!’ M. Le Mansel repeated, his round eye fixed in a side
glance at the red egg.
“My further connection with Alexandre Le Mansel contains nothing worth
relating. My friend often spoke of his verses to Tiphaine, but he never
showed them to me. Indeed, I very soon lost sight of him. My mother sent
me to Paris to finish my studies. I took my degree in two faculties,
and then I studied medicine. During the time that I was preparing my
doctor’s thesis I received a letter from my mother, who told me that
poor Alexandre had been very ailing, and that after a serious attack he
had become timid and excessively suspicious; that, however, he was quite
harmless, and in spite of the disordered state of his health and reason
he showed an extraordinary aptitude for mathematics. There was nothing
in these tidings to surprise me. Often, as I studied the diseases of the
nervous centres, my mind reverted to my poor friend at Saint Julien,
and in spite of myself I foresaw for him the general paralysis which
inevitably threatened the offspring of a mother racked by chronic
nervous headaches and a rheumatic, addle-brained father.
“The sequel, however, did not, apparently, prove me to be in the right.
Alexandre Le Mansel, as I heard from Avranches, regained his normal
health, and as he grew towards manhood gave active proof of the
brilliancy of his intellect. He worked with ardour at his mathematical
studies, and he even sent to the Academy of Sciences solutions of
several problems hitherto unsolved, which were found to be as elegant as
they were accurate. Absorbed in his work, he rarely found time to write
to me. His letters were affectionate, clear, and to the point, and
nothing could be found in them to arouse the mistrust of the most
suspicious neurologist. However, very soon after this our correspondence
ceased, and I heard nothing more of him for the next ten years.
“Last year I was greatly surprised when my servant brought me the card
of Alexandre Le Mansel, and said that the gentleman was waiting for me
in the ante-room.
“I was in my study consulting with a colleague on a matter of some
importance. However, I begged him to excuse me for a moment while I
hurried to greet my old friend. I found he had grown very old, bald,
haggard, and terribly emaciated. I took him by the arm and led him into
the _salon_.
“‘I am glad to see you again,’ he said, ‘and I have much to tell you. I
am exposed to the most unheard-of persecutions. But I have courage, and
I shall struggle bravely, and I shall triumph over my enemies.’
“These words disquieted me, as they would have disquieted in my place
any other nerve specialist. I recognised a symptom of the disease which,
by the fatal laws of heredity, menaced my friend, and which had appeared
to be checked.
“‘My dear friend,’ I said, ‘we will talk about that presently. Wait here
a moment. I just want to finish something. In the meantime take a book
and amuse yourself.’
“You know I have a great number of books, and my drawing-room contains
about six thousand volumes in three mahogany book-cases. Why, then,
should my unfortunate friend choose the very one likely to do him harm,
and open it at that fatal page? I conferred some twenty minutes longer
with my colleague, and having taken leave of him I returned to the room
where I had left Le Mansel. I found the unfortunate man in the most
fearful condition. He struck a book that lay open before him and, which
I at once recognised as a translation of the _Historia Augusta_. He
recited at the top of his voice this sentence of Lampridius:
“‘On the day of the birth of Alexander Severus, a chicken, belonging
to the father of the newly-born, laid a red egg--augury of the imperial
purple to which the child was destined.’
“His excitement increased to fury. He foamed at the mouth. He cried:
‘The egg, the egg of the day of my birth. I am an Emperor. I know that
you want to kill me. Keep away, you wretch!’ He strode down the room,
then, returning, came towards me with open arms. ‘My friend,’ he said,
‘my old comrade, what do you wish me to bestow on you? An Emperor--an
Emperor.... My father was right.... the red egg. I must be an Emperor!
Scoundrel, why did you hide this book from me? This is a crime of high
treason; it shall be punished! ‘I shall be Emperor! Emperor! Yes, it is
my duty.... Forward.... forward!”
“He was gone. In vain I tried to detain him. He escaped me. You know the
rest. All the newspapers have described how, after leaving me, he bought
a revolver and blew out the brains of the sentry who tried to prevent
his forcing his way into the Elysée.
“And thus it happens that a sentence written by a Latin historian of the
fourth century was the cause, fifteen hundred years after, of the death
in our country of a wretched private soldier. Who will ever disentangle
the web of cause and effect?
“Who can venture to say, as he accomplishes some simple act: ‘I know
what I am doing.’ My dear friend, this is all I have to tell. The rest
is of no interest except in medical statistics. Le Mansel, shut up in
an insane asylum, remained for fifteen days a prey to the most violent
mania. Whereupon he fell into a state of complete imbecility, during
which he became so greedy that he even devoured the wax with which they
polished the floor. Three months later he was suffocated while trying to
swallow a sponge.”
The doctor ceased and lighted a cigarette. After a moment of silence, I
said to him, “You have told me a terrible story, doctor.”
“It is terrible,” he replied, “but it is true. I should be glad of a
little brandy.”