"Yes."
"Do you remember that Dr. Parent sent you to sleep?"
"Yes."
"Oh! Very well then; he ordered you to come to me this morning to
borrow five thousand francs, and at this moment you are obeying that
suggestion."
She considered for a few moments, and then replied: "But as it is my
husband who wants them--"
For a whole hour I tried to convince her, but could not succeed, and
when she had gone I went to the doctor. He was just going out, and he
listened to me with a smile, and said: "Do you believe now?"
"Yes, I cannot help it."
"Let us go to your cousin's."
She was already resting on a couch, overcome with fatigue. The doctor
felt her pulse, looked at her for some time with one hand raised toward
her eyes, which she closed by degrees under the irresistible power of
this magnetic influence. When she was asleep, he said:
"Your husband does not require the five thousand francs any longer! You
must, therefore, forget that you asked your cousin to lend them to you,
and, if he speaks to you about it, you will not understand him."
Then he woke her up, and I took out a pocket-book and said: "Here is
what you asked me for this morning, my dear cousin." But she was so
surprised, that I did not venture to persist; nevertheless, I tried to
recall the circumstance to her, but she denied it vigorously, thought
that I was making fun of her, and in the end, very nearly lost her
temper.
There! I have just come back, and I have not been able to eat any
lunch, for this experiment has altogether upset me.
July 19. Many people to whom I have told the adventure have laughed at
me. I no longer know what to think. The wise man says: Perhaps?
July 21. I dined at Bougival, and then I spent the evening at a
boatmen's ball. Decidedly everything depends on place and surroundings.
It would be the height of folly to believe in the supernatural on the
Ile de la Grenouilliere.[1] But on the top of Mont Saint-Michel or in
India, we are terribly under the influence of our surroundings. I shall
return home next week.
July 30. I came back to my own house yesterday. Everything is going on
well.
August 2. Nothing fresh; it is splendid weather, and I spend my days in
watching the Seine flow past.
August 4. Quarrels among my servants. They declare that the glasses are
broken in the cupboards at night. The footman accuses the cook, she
accuses the needlewoman, and the latter accuses the other two. Who is
the culprit? It would take a clever person to tell.
August 6. This time, I am not mad. I have seen--I have seen--I have
seen!--I can doubt no longer--I have seen it!
I was walking at two o'clock among my rose-trees, in the full
sunlight--in the walk bordered by autumn roses which are beginning to
fall. As I stopped to look at a Geant de Bataille, which had three
splendid blooms, I distinctly saw the stalk of one of the roses bend
close to me, as if an invisible hand had bent it, and then break, as if
that hand had picked it! Then the flower raised itself, following the
curve which a hand would have described in carrying it toward a mouth,
and remained suspended in the transparent air, alone and motionless, a
terrible red spot, three yards from my eyes. In desperation I rushed at
it to take it! I found nothing; it had disappeared. Then I was seized
with furious rage against myself, for it is not wholesome for a
reasonable and serious man to have such hallucinations.
But was it a hallucination? I turned to look for the stalk, and I found
it immediately under the bush, freshly broken, between the two other
roses which remained on the branch. I returned home, then, with a much
disturbed mind; for I am certain now, certain as I am of the
alternation of day and night, that there exists close to me an
invisible being who lives on milk and on water, who can touch objects,
take them and change their places; who is, consequently, endowed with a
material nature, although imperceptible to sense, and who lives as I
do, under my roof--
August 7. I slept tranquilly. He drank the water out of my decanter,
but did not disturb my sleep.
I ask myself whether I am mad. As I was walking just now in the sun by
the riverside, doubts as to my own sanity arose in me; not vague doubts
such as I have had hitherto, but precise and absolute doubts. I have
seen mad people, and I have known some who were quite intelligent,
lucid, even clear-sighted in every concern of life, except on one
point. They could speak clearly, readily, profoundly on everything;
till their thoughts were caught in the breakers of their delusions and
went to pieces there, were dispersed and swamped in that furious and
terrible sea of fogs and squalls which is called MADNESS.
I certainly should think that I was mad, absolutely mad, if I were not
conscious that I knew my state, if I could not fathom it and analyze it
with the most complete lucidity. I should, in fact, be a reasonable man
laboring under a hallucination. Some unknown disturbance must have been
excited in my brain, one of those disturbances which physiologists of
the present day try to note and to fix precisely, and that disturbance
must have caused a profound gulf in my mind and in the order and logic
of my ideas. Similar phenomena occur in dreams, and lead us through the
most unlikely phantasmagoria, without causing us any surprise, because
our verifying apparatus and our sense of control have gone to sleep,
while our imaginative faculty wakes and works. Was it not possible that
one of the imperceptible keys of the cerebral finger-board had been
paralyzed in me? Some men lose the recollection of proper names, or of
verbs, or of numbers, or merely of dates, in consequence of an
accident. The localization of all the avenues of thought has been
accomplished nowadays; what, then, would there be surprising in the
fact that my faculty of controlling the unreality of certain
hallucinations should be destroyed for the time being?
I thought of all this as I walked by the side of the water. The sun was
shining brightly on the river and made earth delightful, while it
filled me with love for life, for the swallows, whose swift agility is
always delightful in my eyes, for the plants by the riverside, whose
rustling is a pleasure to my ears.
By degrees, however, an inexplicable feeling of discomfort seized me.
It seemed to me as if some unknown force were numbing and stopping me,
were preventing me from going further and were calling me back. I felt
that painful wish to return which comes on you when you have left a
beloved invalid at home, and are seized by a presentiment that he is
worse.
I, therefore, returned despite of myself, feeling certain that I should
find some bad news awaiting me, a letter or a telegram. There was
nothing, however, and I was surprised and uneasy, more so than if I had
had another fantastic vision.
August 8. I spent a terrible evening, yesterday. He does not show
himself any more, but I feel that He is near me, watching me, looking
at me, penetrating me, dominating me, and more terrible to me when He
hides himself thus than if He were to manifest his constant and
invisible presence by supernatural phenomena. However, I slept.
August 9. Nothing, but I am afraid.
August 10. Nothing; but what will happen to-morrow?
August 11. Still nothing. I cannot stop at home with this fear hanging
over me and these thoughts in my mind; I shall go away.
August 12. Ten o'clock at night. All day long I have been trying to get
away, and have not been able. I contemplated a simple and easy act of
liberty, a carriage ride to Rouen--and I have not been able to do it.
What is the reason?
August 13. When one is attacked by certain maladies, the springs of our
physical being seem broken, our energies destroyed, our muscles
relaxed, our bones to be as soft as our flesh, and our blood as liquid
as water. I am experiencing the same in my moral being, in a strange
and distressing manner. I have no longer any strength, any courage, any
self-control, nor even any power to set my own will in motion. I have
no power left to WILL anything, but some one does it for me and I obey.
August 14. I am lost! Somebody possesses my soul and governs it!
Somebody orders all my acts, all my movements, all my thoughts. I am no
longer master of myself, nothing except an enslaved and terrified
spectator of the things which I do. I wish to go out; I cannot. HE does
not wish to; and so I remain, trembling and distracted in the armchair
in which he keeps me sitting. I merely wish to get up and to rouse
myself, so as to think that I am still master of myself: I cannot! I am
riveted to my chair, and my chair adheres to the floor in such a manner
that no force of mine can move us.
Then suddenly, I must, I MUST go to the foot of my garden to pick some
strawberries and eat them--and I go there. I pick the strawberries and
I eat them! Oh! my God! my God! Is there a God? If there be one,
deliver me! save me! succor me! Pardon! Pity! Mercy! Save me! Oh! what
sufferings! what torture! what horror!
August 15. Certainly this is the way in which my poor cousin was
possessed and swayed, when she came to borrow five thousand francs of
me. She was under the power of a strange will which had entered into
her, like another soul, a parasitic and ruling soul. Is the world
coming to an end?
But who is he, this invisible being that rules me, this unknowable
being, this rover of a supernatural race?
Invisible beings exist, then! how is it, then, that since the beginning
of the world they have never manifested themselves in such a manner as
they do to me? I have never read anything that resembles what goes on
in my house. Oh! If I could only leave it, if I could only go away and
flee, and never return, I should be saved; but I cannot.
August 16. I managed to escape to-day for two hours, like a prisoner
who finds the door of his dungeon accidentally open. I suddenly felt
that I was free and that He was far away, and so I gave orders to put
the horses in as quickly as possible, and I drove to Rouen. Oh! how
delightful to be able to say to my coachman: "Go to Rouen!"
I made him pull up before the library, and I begged them to lend me Dr.
Herrmann Herestauss's treatise on the unknown inhabitants of the
ancient and modern world.
Then, as I was getting into my carriage, I intended to say: "To the
railway station!" but instead of this I shouted--I did not speak; but I
shouted--in such a loud voice that all the passers-by turned round:
"Home!" and I fell back on to the cushion of my carriage, overcome by
mental agony. He had found me out and regained possession of me.
August 17. Oh! What a night! what a night! And yet it seems to me that
I ought to rejoice. I read until one o'clock in the morning!
Herestauss, Doctor of Philosophy and Theogony, wrote the history and
the manifestation of all those invisible beings which hover around man,
or of whom he dreams. He describes their origin, their domains, their
power; but none of them resembles the one which haunts me. One might
say that man, ever since he has thought, has had a foreboding and a
fear of a new being, stronger than himself, his successor in this
world, and that, feeling him near, and not being able to foretell the
nature of the unseen one, he has, in his terror, created the whole race
of hidden beings, vague phantoms born of fear.
Having, therefore, read until one o'clock in the morning, I went and
sat down at the open window, in order to cool my forehead and my
thoughts in the calm night air. It was very pleasant and warm! How I
should have enjoyed such a night formerly!
There was no moon, but the stars darted out their rays in the dark
heavens. Who inhabits those worlds? What forms, what living beings,
what animals are there yonder? Do those who are thinkers in those
distant worlds know more than we do? What can they do more than we?
What do they see which we do not? Will not one of them, some day or
other, traversing space, appear on our earth to conquer it, just as
formerly the Norsemen crossed the sea in order to subjugate nations
feebler than themselves?
We are so weak, so powerless, so ignorant, so small--we who live on
this particle of mud which revolves in liquid air.
I fell asleep, dreaming thus in the cool night air, and then, having
slept for about three quarters of an hour, I opened my eyes without
moving, awakened by an indescribably confused and strange sensation. At
first I saw nothing, and then suddenly it appeared to me as if a page
of the book, which had remained open on my table, turned over of its
own accord. Not a breath of air had come in at my window, and I was
surprised and waited. In about four minutes, I saw, I saw--yes I saw
with my own eyes--another page lift itself up and fall down on the
others, as if a finger had turned it over. My armchair was empty,
appeared empty, but I knew that He was there, He, and sitting in my
place, and that He was reading. With a furious bound, the bound of an
enraged wild beast that wishes to disembowel its tamer, I crossed my
room to seize him, to strangle him, to kill him! But before I could
reach it, my chair fell over as if somebody had run away from me. My
table rocked, my lamp fell and went out, and my window closed as if
some thief had been surprised and had fled out into the night, shutting
it behind him.
So He had run away; He had been afraid; He, afraid of me!
So to-morrow, or later--some day or other, I should be able to hold him
in my clutches and crush him against the ground! Do not dogs
occasionally bite and strangle their masters?
August 18. I have been thinking the whole day long. Oh! yes, I will
obey Him, follow His impulses, fulfill all His wishes, show myself
humble, submissive, a coward. He is the stronger; but an hour will come.
August 19. I know, I know, I know all! I have just read the following
in the "Revue du Monde Scientifique": "A curious piece of news comes to
us from Rio de Janeiro. Madness, an epidemic of madness, which may be
compared to that contagious madness which attacked the people of Europe
in the Middle Ages, is at this moment raging in the Province of
San-Paulo. The frightened inhabitants are leaving their houses,
deserting their villages, abandoning their land, saying that they are
pursued, possessed, governed like human cattle by invisible, though
tangible beings, by a species of vampire, which feeds on their life
while they are asleep, and which, besides, drinks water and milk
without appearing to touch any other nourishment.
"Professor Don Pedro Henriques, accompanied by several medical savants,
has gone to the Province of San-Paulo, in order to study the origin and
the manifestations of this surprising madness on the spot, and to
propose such measures to the Emperor as may appear to him to be most
fitted to restore the mad population to reason."
Ah! Ah! I remember now that fine Brazilian three-master which passed in
front of my windows as it was going up the Seine, on the eighth of last
May! I thought it looked so pretty, so white and bright! That Being was
on board of her, coming from there, where its race sprang from. And it
saw me! It saw my house, which was also white, and He sprang from the
ship on to the land. Oh! Good heavens!
Now I know, I can divine. The reign of man is over, and he has come. He
whom disquieted priests exorcised, whom sorcerers evoked on dark
nights, without seeing him appear, He to whom the imaginations of the
transient masters of the world lent all the monstrous or graceful forms
of gnomes, spirits, genii, fairies, and familiar spirits. After the
coarse conceptions of primitive fear, men more enlightened gave him a
truer form. Mesmer divined him, and ten years ago physicians accurately
discovered the nature of his power, even before He exercised it
himself. They played with that weapon of their new Lord, the sway of a
mysterious will over the human soul, which had become enslaved. They
called it mesmerism, hypnotism, suggestion, I know not what? I have
seen them diverting themselves like rash children with this horrible
power! Woe to us! Woe to man! He has come, the--the--what does He call
himself--the--I fancy that he is shouting out his name to me and I do
not hear him--the--yes--He is shouting it out--I am listening--I
cannot--repeat--it--Horla--I have heard--the Horla--it is He--the
Horla--He has come!--
Ah! the vulture has eaten the pigeon, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the
lion has devoured the sharp-horned buffalo; man has killed the lion
with an arrow, with a spear, with gunpowder; but the Horla will make of
man what man has made of the horse and of the ox: his chattel, his
slave, and his food, by the mere power of his will. Woe to us!
But, nevertheless, sometimes the animal rebels and kills the man who
has subjugated it. I should also like--I shall be able to--but I must
know Him, touch Him, see Him! Learned men say that eyes of animals, as
they differ from ours, do not distinguish as ours do. And my eye cannot
distinguish this newcomer who is oppressing me.
Why? Oh! Now I remember the words of the monk at Mont Saint-Michel:
"Can we see the hundred-thousandth part of what exists? Listen; there
is the wind which is the strongest force in nature; it knocks men down,
blows down buildings, uproots trees, raises the sea into mountains of
water, destroys cliffs, and casts great ships on to the breakers; it
kills, it whistles, it sighs, it roars,--have you ever seen it, and can
you see it? It exists for all that, however!"
And I went on thinking: my eyes are so weak, so imperfect, that they do
not even distinguish hard bodies, if they are as transparent as glass!
If a glass without quicksilver behind it were to bar my way, I should
run into it, just like a bird which has flown into a room breaks its
head against the windowpanes. A thousand things, moreover, deceive a
man and lead him astray. How then is it surprising that he cannot
perceive a new body which is penetrated and pervaded by the light?
A new being! Why not? It was assuredly bound to come! Why should we be
the last? We do not distinguish it, like all the others created before
us? The reason is, that its nature is more delicate, its body finer and
more finished than ours. Our makeup is so weak, so awkwardly conceived;
our body is encumbered with organs that are always tired, always being
strained like locks that are too complicated; it lives like a plant and
like an animal nourishing itself with difficulty on air, herbs, and
flesh; it is a brute machine which is a prey to maladies, to
malformations, to decay; it is broken-winded, badly regulated, simple
and eccentric, ingeniously yet badly made, a coarse and yet a delicate
mechanism, in brief, the outline of a being which might become
intelligent and great.
There are only a few--so few--stages of development in this world, from
the oyster up to man. Why should there not be one more, when once that
period is accomplished which separates the successive products one from
the other?
Why not one more? Why not, also, other trees with immense, splendid
flowers, perfuming whole regions? Why not other elements beside fire,
air, earth, and water? There are four, only four, nursing fathers of
various beings! What a pity! Why should not there be forty, four
hundred, four thousand! How poor everything is, how mean and
wretched--grudgingly given, poorly invented, clumsily made! Ah! the
elephant and the hippopotamus, what power! And the camel, what
suppleness!
But the butterfly, you will say, a flying flower! I dream of one that
should be as large as a hundred worlds, with wings whose shape, beauty,
colors, and motion I cannot even express. But I see it--it flutters
from star to star, refreshing them and perfuming them with the light
and harmonious breath of its flight! And the people up there gaze at it
as it passes in an ecstasy of delight!
What is the matter with me? It is He, the Horla who haunts me, and who
makes me think of these foolish things! He is within me, He is becoming
my soul; I shall kill him!
August 20. I shall kill Him. I have seen Him! Yesterday I sat down at
my table and pretended to write very assiduously. I knew quite well
that He would come prowling round me, quite close to me, so close that
I might perhaps be able to touch him, to seize him. And then--then I
should have the strength of desperation; I should have my hands, my
knees, my chest, my forehead, my teeth to strangle him, to crush him,
to bite him, to tear him to pieces. And I watched for him with all my
overexcited nerves.
I had lighted my two lamps and the eight wax candles on my mantelpiece,
as if, by this light I should discover Him.
My bed, my old oak bed with its columns, was opposite to me; on my
right was the fireplace; on my left the door, which was carefully
closed, after I had left it open for some time, in order to attract
Him; behind me was a very high wardrobe with a looking-glass in it,
which served me to dress by every day, and in which I was in the habit
of inspecting myself from head to foot every time I passed it.
So I pretended to be writing in order to deceive Him, for He also was
watching me, and suddenly I felt, I was certain, that He was reading
over my shoulder, that He was there, almost touching my ear.
I got up so quickly, with my hands extended, that I almost fell.
Horror! It was as bright as at midday, but I did not see myself in the
glass! It was empty, clear, profound, full of light! But my figure was
not reflected in it--and I, I was opposite to it! I saw the large,
clear glass from top to bottom, and I looked at it with unsteady eyes.
I did not dare advance; I did not venture to make a movement; feeling
certain, nevertheless, that He was there, but that He would escape me
again, He whose imperceptible body had absorbed my reflection.
How frightened I was! And then suddenly I began to see myself through a
mist in the depths of the looking-glass, in a mist as it were, or
through a veil of water; and it seemed to me as if this water were
flowing slowly from left to right, and making my figure clearer every
moment. It was like the end of an eclipse. Whatever hid me did not
appear to possess any clearly defined outlines, but was a sort of
opaque transparency, which gradually grew clearer.
At last I was able to distinguish myself completely, as I do every day
when I look at myself.
I had seen Him! And the horror of it remained with me, and makes me
shudder even now.
August 21. How could I kill Him, since I could not get hold of Him?
Poison? But He would see me mix it with the water; and then, would our
poisons have any effect on His impalpable body? No--no--no doubt about
the matter. Then?--then?
August 22. I sent for a blacksmith from Rouen and ordered iron shutters
of him for my room, such as some private hotels in Paris have on the
ground floor, for fear of thieves, and he is going to make me a similar
door as well. I have made myself out a coward, but I do not care about
that!
September 10. Rouen, Hotel Continental. It is done; it is done--but is
He dead? My mind is thoroughly upset by what I have seen.
Well then, yesterday, the locksmith having put on the iron shutters and
door, I left everything open until midnight, although it was getting
cold.
Suddenly I felt that He was there, and joy, mad joy took possession of
me. I got up softly, and I walked to the right and left for some time,
so that He might not guess anything; then I took off my boots and put
on my slippers carelessly; then I fastened the iron shutters and going
back to the door quickly I double-locked it with a padlock, putting the
key into my pocket.
Suddenly I noticed that He was moving restlessly round me, that in his
turn He was frightened and was ordering me to let Him out. I nearly
yielded, though I did not quite, but putting my back to the door, I
half opened it, just enough to allow me to go out backward, and as I am
very tall, my head touched the lintel. I was sure that He had not been
able to escape, and I shut Him up quite alone, quite alone. What
happiness! I had Him fast. Then I ran downstairs into the drawing-room
which was under my bedroom. I took the two lamps and poured all the oil
on to the carpet, the furniture, everywhere; then I set fire to it and
made my escape, after having carefully double locked the door.
I went and hid myself at the bottom of the garden, in a clump of laurel
bushes. How long it was! how long it was! Everything was dark, silent,
motionless, not a breath of air and not a star, but heavy banks of
clouds which one could not see, but which weighed, oh! so heavily on my
soul.
I looked at my house and waited. How long it was! I already began to
think that the fire had gone out of its own accord, or that He had
extinguished it, when one of the lower windows gave way under the
violence of the flames, and a long, soft, caressing sheet of red flame
mounted up the white wall, and kissed it as high as the roof. The light
fell on to the trees, the branches, and the leaves, and a shiver of
fear pervaded them also! The birds awoke; a dog began to howl, and it
seemed to me as if the day were breaking! Almost immediately two other
windows flew into fragments, and I saw that the whole of the lower part
of my house was nothing but a terrible furnace. But a cry, a horrible,
shrill, heart-rending cry, a woman's cry, sounded through the night,
and two garret windows were opened! I had forgotten the servants! I saw
the terror-struck faces, and the frantic waving of their arms!
Then, overwhelmed with horror, I ran off to the village, shouting:
"Help! help! fire! fire!" Meeting some people who were already coming
on to the scene, I went back with them to see!
By this time the house was nothing but a horrible and magnificent
funeral pile, a monstrous pyre which lit up the whole country, a pyre
where men were burning, and where He was burning also, He, He, my
prisoner, that new Being, the new Master, the Horla!
Suddenly the whole roof fell in between the walls, and a volcano of
flames darted up to the sky. Through all the windows which opened on to
that furnace, I saw the flames darting, and I reflected that He was
there, in that kiln, dead.
Dead? Perhaps? His body? Was not his body, which was transparent,
indestructible by such means as would kill ours?
If He were not dead? Perhaps time alone has power over that Invisible
and Redoubtable Being. Why this transparent, unrecognizable body, this
body belonging to a spirit, if it also had to fear ills, infirmities,
and premature destruction?
Premature destruction? All human terror springs from that! After man
the Horla. After him who can die every day, at any hour, at any moment,
by any accident, He came, He who was only to die at his own proper hour
and minute, because He had touched the limits of his existence!
No--no--there is no doubt about it--He is not dead. Then--then--I
suppose I must kill MYSELF!
[1] Frog-island.