THE GENIUS OF EVIL
The next evening, about nine o’clock, a man might be seen walking along
the Puits-Sarrasin road and making for the Osiéres forest-path.
It was Thibault, on his way to pay a last visit to the hut, and to see
if any remains of it had been left by the fire. A heap of smoking
cinders alone marked the place where it had stood; and as Thibault came
in sight of it, he saw the wolves, as if he had appointed them to meet
him there, forming an immense circle round the ruins, and looking upon
them with an expression of mournful anger. They seemed to understand
that by destroying this poor hut, made of earth and branches, the one
who, by the compact with the black wolf, had been given them for master,
had been made a victim. As Thibault entered the circle, all the wolves
gave simultaneously a long and sinister sounding howl, as if to make him
understand that they were ready to help in avenging him.
Thibault went and sat down on the spot where the hearth had stood; it
was recognisable from a few blackened stones still remaining, which were
otherwise uninjured, and by a higher heap of cinders just at that spot.
He stayed there some minutes, absorbed in his unhappy thoughts. But he
was not reflecting that the ruin which he saw around him was the
consequence and the punishment of his jealous and covetous desires,
which had gone on gathering strength. He felt neither repentance nor
regret. That which dominated all other feeling in him was his
satisfaction at the thought of being henceforth able to render to his
fellow-creatures evil for evil, his pride in having, thanks to his
terrible auxiliaries, the power to fight against those who persecuted
him.
And as the wolves continued their melancholy howling: “Yes, my friends,”
said Thibault, “yes, your howls answer to the cry of my heart.... My
fellow-creatures have destroyed my hut, they have cast to the winds the
ashes of the tools wherewith I earned my daily bread; their hatred
pursues me as it pursues you, I expect from them neither mercy nor pity.
We are their enemies as they are ours; and I will have neither mercy nor
compassion on them. Come then, let us go from this hut to the Castle,
and carry thither the desolation which they have brought home to me.”
And then the master of the wolves, like a chief of banditti followed by
his desperadoes, set off with his pack in quest of pillage and carnage.
This time it was neither red-deer, nor fallow-deer, nor any timid game
of which they were in pursuit. Sheltered by the darkness of the night
Thibault first directed his course to the Château of Vez, for there was
lodged his chief enemy. The Baron had three farms belonging to the
estate, stables filled with horses, and others filled with cows, and the
park was full of sheep. All these places were attacked the first night,
and on the morrow two horses, four cows, and ten sheep were found
killed.
The Baron was doubtful at first if this could be the work of the beasts
against which he waged so fierce a warfare; there seemed something
partaking rather of intelligence and revenge in it than of the mere
unreasoning attacks of a pack of wild animals. Still it seemed manifest
that the wolves must have been the aggressors, judging by the marks of
teeth on the carcases and the footprints left on the ground. Next night
the Baron set watchers to lie in wait, but Thibault and his wolves were
at work on the farther side of the forest. This time it was the stables
and parks of Soucy and of Vivières which were decimated, and the
following night those of Boursonnes and Yvors. The work of annihilation,
once begun, must be carried out with desperate determination, and the
master never left his wolves now; he slept with them in their dens, and
lived in the midst of them, stimulating their thirst for blood.
Many a woodman, many a heath-gatherer, came face to face in the thickets
with the menacing white teeth of a wolf, and was either carried off and
eaten, or just saved his life by the aid of his courage and his
bill-hook. Guided by a human intelligence, the wolves had become
organised and disciplined, and were far more formidable than a band of
discontented soldiery let loose in a conquered country.
The terror of them became general; no one dared go beyond the towns and
villages unarmed; horses and cattle were all fed inside the stables, and
the men themselves, their work done, waited for one another, so as not
to go about singly. The Bishop of Soissons ordered public prayer to be
made, asking God to send a thaw, for the unusual ferocity of the wolves
was attributed to the great quantity of snow that had fallen. But the
report also went about that the wolves were incited to their work, and
led about by a man; that this man was more indefatigable, more cruel and
insatiable than the wolves themselves; that in imitation of his
companions he ate raw flesh and quenched his thirst in blood. And the
people went further and said that this man was Thibault.
The Bishop pronounced sentence of excommunication against the former
shoe-maker. The Lord of Vez, however, had little faith in the thunders
of the Church being of much effect, unless supported by some
well-conducted hunting. He was somewhat cast down at so much blood being
spilt, and his pride was sorely hurt that his, the Grand Master’s, own
cattle should have suffered so heavily from the very wolves he was
especially appointed to destroy.
At the same time, he could not but feel a secret delight, at the thought
of the triumphant view-halloos in store for him, and of the fame which
he could not fail to win among all sportsmen of repute. His passion for
the chase, excited by the way in which his adversaries the wolves had so
openly entered upon the struggle, became absolutely overpowering; he
allowed neither respite nor repose; he took no sleep himself and ate his
meals in the saddle. All night long he scoured the country in company
with l’Eveillé and Engoulevent, who, in consideration of his marriage
had been raised to the rank of pricker; and the dawn had no sooner
appeared before he was again in the saddle, ready to start and chase the
wolf until it was too dark to distinguish the hounds. But alas! all his
knowledge of the art of Venery, all his courage, all his perseverance,
were lost labour. He occasionally brought down some wretched cub, some
miserable beast eaten with mange, some imprudent glutton which had so
gorged itself with carnage that its breath would not hold out after an
hour or two’s run; but the larger, well-grown wolves, with their thick
dark coats, their muscles like steel springs and their long slender
feet--not one of these lost a hair in the war that was being made upon
them. Thanks to Thibault they met their enemies in arms on nearly equal
ground.
As the Baron of Vez remained for ever with his dogs, so did Thibault
with his wolves; after a night of sack and pillage, he kept the pack
awake on the watch to help the one that the Baron had started. This wolf
again, following Thibault’s instructions, had recourse at first to
stratagem. It doubled, crossed its tracks, waded in the streams, leaped
up into the bending trees so as to make it more difficult still for
huntsmen and hounds to follow the scent, and finally when it felt its
powers failing, it adopted bolder measures and went straight ahead. Then
the other wolves and their master intervened; at the least sign of
hesitation on the part of the hounds, they managed so cleverly to put
them on the wrong scent, that it required an experienced eye to detect
that the dogs were not all following up the same track, and nothing less
than the Baron’s profound knowledge could decide which was the right
one. Even he sometimes was mistaken.
Again, the wolves in their turn followed the huntsmen; it was a pack
hunting a pack; only the one hunted in silence, which made it far the
more formidable of the two. Did a tired hound fall behind, or another
get separated from the main body, it was seized and killed in an
instant, and Engoulevent, whom we have had occasion to mention several
times before and who had taken poor Marcotte’s place, having hastened
one day to the help of one of his hounds that was uttering cries of
distress, was himself attacked and only owed his life to the swiftness
of his horse.
It was not long before the Baron’s pack was decimated; his best hounds
were nearly dead with fatigue, and his more second-rate ones had
perished by the wolves’ teeth. The stable was in no better condition
than the kennel; Bayard was foundered, Tancred had sprained a tendon
leaping over a ditch, and a strained fetlock had placed Valourous on the
list of invalids. Sultan, luckier than his three companions had fallen
honourably on the field of battle, having succumbed to a sixteen hours’
run under the weight of his gigantic master, who never for a moment lost
courage notwithstanding the fact that the dead bodies of his finest and
most faithful servitors lay heaped around him.
The Baron, following the example of the noble-hearted Romans who
exhausted the resources of military art against the Carthaginians who
were for ever re-appearing as enemies, the Baron, I repeat, changed his
tactics and tried what battues could accomplish. He called on all
available men among the peasants, and beat up the game throughout the
forest with such a formidable number of men, that not so much as a hare
was left in its form near any spot which they had passed.
But Thibault made it his business to find out beforehand where these
battues were going to take place, and if he ascertained that the beaters
were on the side of the forest towards Viviers or Soucy, he and his
wolves made an excursion to Boursonnes or Yvors; and if the Baron and
his men were busy near Haramont or Longpré, the people of Corcy and
Vertefeuille were made painfully aware of Thibault and his wolves.
In vain the Lord of Vez drew his cordon at night round the suspected
enclosures, so as to begin the attack with daylight; never once did his
men succeed in starting a wolf, for not once did Thibault make a mistake
in his calculations. If by chance he had not been well informed, and was
uncertain in what direction the Baron and his men were going, he called
all his wolves together, sending express couriers after them as the
night set in; he then led them unobserved down the wooded lane leading
to Lessart-l’Abbesse, which at that time ran between the forest of
Compiègne and the forest of Villers-Cotterets, and so was able to pass
from one to the other. This state of things went on for several months.
Both the Baron and Thibault carried out the task each had set before
himself, with equally passionate energy; the latter, like his adversary,
seemed to have required some supernatural power, whereby he was able to
resist fatigue and excitement; and this was the more remarkable seeing
that during the short intervals of respite accorded by the Lord of Vez,
the Wolf-leader was by no means at peace in himself.
It was not that the terrible deeds in which he was an active agent, and
at which he presided, filled him exactly with horror, for he thought
them justifiable; he threw the responsibility of them, he said, on to
those who had forced him to commit them; but there were moments of
failing spirit, for which he could not account, when he went about in
the midst of his ferocious companions, feeling gloomy, morose and heavy
hearted. Again the image of Agnelette would rise before him, seeming to
him like the personification of his own past life, honest and laborious,
peaceful and innocent. And more than that, he felt he loved her more
than he had ever thought it possible for him to love anybody. At times
he would weep at the thought of all his lost happiness, at others he was
seized with a wild fit of jealousy against the one to whom she now
belonged,--she, who at one time, might if he had liked, have been his.
One day, the Baron in order to prepare some fresh means of destruction,
had been forced for the while to leave the wolves in peace. Thibault,
who was in one of the moods we have just described, wandered forth from
the den where he lived in company with the wolves. It was a splendid
summer’s night, and he began to rove about the woodlands, where the moon
was lighting up the trunks of the trees, dreaming of the time when he
trod the mossy carpet underfoot free from trouble and anxiety, until at
last the only happiness which was now left him, forgetfulness of the
present, stole over his senses. Lost in this sweet dream of his earlier
life, he was all of a sudden aroused by a cry of distress from somewhere
near at hand. He was now so accustomed to such sounds, that, ordinarily,
he would have paid no attention to it, but his heart was for the moment
softened by the recollection of Agnelette, and he felt more disposed
than usual to pity; as it happened also he was near the place where he
had first seen the gentle child, and this helped to awaken his kinder
nature.
He ran to the spot whence the cry had come, and as he leaped from the
underwood into the deep forest-lane near Ham, he saw a woman struggling
with an immense wolf which had thrown her on the ground. Thibault could
not have said why he was so agitated at this sight, nor why his heart
beat more violently than usual; he rushed forward and seizing the animal
by the throat hurled it away from its victim, and then lifting the woman
in his arms, he carried her to the side of the lane and laid her on the
slope. Here a ray of moonlight, breaking through the clouds, fell on the
face of the woman he had saved, and Thibault saw that it was Agnelette.
Near to the spot was the spring in which Thibault had once gazed at
himself, and had seen the first red hair; he ran to it, took up water in
his hands, and threw it into the woman’s face. Agnelette opened her
eyes, gave a cry of terror, and tried to rise and flee.
“What!” cried the Wolf-leader, as if he were still Thibault the
shoe-maker, “you do not know me again, Agnelette?”
“Ah! yes indeed, I know you, Thibault; and it is because I know who you
are,” cried the young woman, “that I am afraid!”
Then throwing herself on her knees, and clasping her hands: “Oh do not
kill me, Thibault!” she cried, “do not kill me! it would be such
dreadful trouble for the poor old grandmother! Thibault, do not kill
me!”
The Wolf-leader stood overcome with consternation; up to this hour he
had not fully realised the hideous renown which he had gained; but the
terror which the sight of him inspired in the woman who had loved him
and whom he still loved, filled him with a horror of himself.
“I, kill you, Agnelette!” he said, “just when I have snatched you from
death! Oh! how you must hate and despise me for such a thought to enter
your head.”
“I do not hate you, Thibault,” said the young woman, “but I hear such
things about you, that I feel afraid of you.”
“And do they say nothing of the infidelity which has led Thibault to
commit such crimes?”
“I do not understand you,” said Agnelette looking at Thibault with her
large eyes, blue as the heavens.
“What!” exclaimed Thibault, “you do not understand that I loved
you--that I adored you Agnelette, and that the loss of you sent me out
of my mind?”
“If you loved me, if you adored me, Thibault, what prevented you from
marrying me?”
“The spirit of evil,” muttered Thibault.
“I too loved you,” continued the young woman, “and I suffered cruelly
waiting for you.”
Thibault heaved a sigh.
“You loved me, Agnelette?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied the young woman with her soft voice and gentle eyes.
“But now, all is over,” said Thibault, “and you love me no more.”
“Thibault,” answered Agnelette, “I no longer love you, because it is no
longer right to love you; but one cannot always forget one’s first love
as one would wish.”
“Agnelette!” cried Thibault, trembling all over, “be careful what you
say!”
“Why should I be careful what I say, since it is the truth,” said the
girl with an innocent shake of the head. “The day you told me that you
wished to make me your wife, I believed you, Thibault; for why should I
think that you would lie to me when I had just done you a service? Then,
later I met you, but I did not go in search of you; you came to me, you
spoke words of love to me, you were the first to refer to the promise
that you had made me. And it was not my fault either, Thibault, that I
was afraid of that ring which you wore, which was large enough for you
and yet, oh, it was horrible! not big enough for one of my fingers.”
“Would you like me not to wear this ring any more?” said Thibault.
“Would you like me to throw it away?” And he began trying to pull it off
his finger, but as it had been too small to go on Agnelette’s finger, so
now it was too small to be taken off Thibault’s. In vain he struggled
with it, and tried to move it with his teeth; the ring seemed rivetted
to his finger for all eternity.
Thibault saw that it was no use trying to get rid of it; it was a token
of compact between himself and the black wolf, and with a sigh he let
his arms fall hopelessly to his sides.
“That day,” went on Agnelette, “I ran away; I know that I was wrong to
do so, but I was no longer mistress of myself after seeing that ring and
more still....” She lifted her eyes as she spoke, looking timidly up at
Thibault’s hair. Thibault was bare-headed, and, by the light of the moon
Agnelette could see that it was no longer a single hair that shone red
as the flames of hell, but that half the hair on Thibault’s head was now
of this devil’s colour.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, drawing back, “Thibault! Thibault! What has
happened to you since I last saw you?”
“Agnelette!” cried Thibault throwing himself down with his face to the
ground, and holding his head between his hands, “I could not tell any
human creature, not even a priest what has happened to me since then;
but to Agnelette, all I can say is: Agnelette! Agnelette! have pity on
me, for I have been most unhappy!”
Agnelette went up to him and took his hands in hers.
“You did love me then? You did love me?” he cried.
“What can I do, Thibault!” said the girl with the same sweetness and
innocence as before. “I took you at your word, and every time I heard
someone knocking at our hut door, I thought it was you come to say to
the old grandmother, ‘Mother, I love Agnelette, Agnelette loves me; will
you give her to me for my wife?’”
“Then when I went and opened the door, and found that it was not you, I
used to go into a corner and cry.”
“And now, Agnelette, now?”
“Now,” she answered. “Now, Thibault, it may seem strange, but in spite
of all the terrible tales that are told about you, I have not been
really frightened; I was sure that you could not wish any harm to me,
and I was walking boldly through the forest, when that dreadful beast
from which you saved me, suddenly sprang upon me.”
“But how is it that you are near your old home? do you not live with
your husband?”
“We lived together for a while at Vez, but there was no room there for
the grandmother; and so I said to my husband, ‘the grandmother must be
thought of first; I must go back to her; when you wish to see me you
will come.’”
“And he consented to that arrangement?”
“Not at first, but I pointed out to him that the grandmother is seventy
years of age; that if she were only to live another two or three years,
God grant it may be more! it would only be two or three years of some
extra trouble for us, whereas, in all probability we had long years of
life before us. Then he understood that it was right to give to those
that had least.”
But all the while that Agnelette was giving this explanation, Thibault
could think of nothing but that the love she once had for him was not
yet dead.
“So,” said Thibault, “you loved me? and so, Agnelette you could love me
again...?”
“That is impossible now because I belong to another.”
“Agnelette, Agnelette! only say that you love me!”
“No, Thibault, if I loved you, I should do everything in the world to
hide it from you.”
“And why?” cried Thibault. “Why? you do not know my power. I know that I
have only a wish or two left, but with your help, by combining these
wishes together, I could make you as rich as a queen.... We could leave
the country, leave France, Europe; there are large countries, of which
you do not even know the names, Agnelette, called America and India.
They are paradises, with blue skies, tall trees and birds of every kind.
Agnelette, say that you will come with me; nobody will know that we have
gone off together, nobody will know where we are, nobody will know that
we love one another, nobody will know even that we are alive.”
“Fly with you, Thibault!” said Agnelette, looking at the wolf-leader as
if she had but half understood what he said, “do you forget that I no
longer belong to myself? do you not know that I am married?”
“What does that matter,” said Thibault, “if it is I whom you love, and
if we can live happily together!”
“Oh! Thibault! Thibault! what are you saying!”
“Listen,” went on Thibault, “I am going to speak to you in the name of
this world and the next. Do you wish to save me, Agnelette, body and
soul? If so, do not resist my pleading, have pity on me, come with me;
let us go somewhere together, where we shall no longer hear these
howlings, or breathe this atmosphere of reeking flesh; and, if it scares
you to think of being a rich, grand lady, somewhere then where I can
again be Thibault the workman, Thibault, poor but beloved, and,
therefore, Thibault happy in his hard work, some place where Agnelette
will have no other husband but me.”
“Ah! Thibault! I was ready to become your wife, and you scorned me!”
“Do not remember my sins, Agnelette, which have been so cruelly
punished.”
“Thibault, another has done what you were not willing to do. He took the
poor young girl; he burdened himself with the poor old blind woman; he
gave a name to the one and bread to the other; he had no ambition beyond
that of gaining my love; he desired no dowry beyond my marriage vow; can
you think of asking me to return evil for good? Do you dare to suggest
that I should leave the one who has given me such proof of his love for
the one who has given me proof only of his indifference?”
“But what matter still, Agnelette, since you do not love him and since
you do love me?”
“Thibault, do not turn and twist my words to make them appear to say
what they do not. I said that I still preserved my friendship for you, I
never said that I did not love my husband. I should like to see you
happy, my friend; above all I should like to see you abjure your evil
ways and repent of your sins; and last of all, I wish that God may have
mercy upon you, and that you may be delivered from that spirit of evil,
of which you spoke just now. For this I pray night and morning on my
knees; but even that I may be able to pray for you, I must keep myself
pure; if the voice that supplicates for mercy is to rise to God’s
throne, it must be an innocent one; above all, I must scrupulously keep
the oath which I swore at His altar.”
On hearing these decisive words from Agnelette, Thibault again became
fierce and morose.
“Do you not know, Agnelette, that it is very imprudent of you to speak
to me here like that?”
“And why, Thibault?” asked the young woman.
“We are alone here together; it is dark, and not a man of the open would
dare to come into the forest at this hour; and know, the King is not
more master in his kingdom than I am here?”
“I do not understand you, Thibault?”
“I mean that having prayed, implored, and conjured, I can now threaten.”
“You, threaten?”
“What I mean is,” continued Thibault, paying no heed to Agnelette’s
words, “that every word you speak does not excite my love for you more
than it rouses my hatred towards him; in short, I mean that it is
imprudent of the lamb to irritate the wolf when the lamb is in the power
of the wolf.”
“I told you, Thibault, before, that I started to walk through the forest
without any feeling of fear at meeting you. As I was coming to, I felt a
momentary terror, remembering involuntarily what I had heard said about
you; but at this moment, Thibault, you will try in vain to make me turn
pale.”
Thibault flung both hands up to his head.
“Do not talk like that,” he said, “you cannot think what the devil is
whispering to me, and what an effort I have to make to resist his
voice.”
“You may kill me if you like,” replied Agnelette, “but I will not be
guilty of the cowardice which you ask of me; you may kill me, but I
shall remain faithful to my husband; you may kill me, but I shall pray
to God to help him as I die.”
“Do not speak his name, Agnelette; do not make me think about that man.”
“You can threaten me as much as you like, Thibault, for I am in your
hands; but, happily, he is far from you, and you have no power over
him.”
“And who told you that, Agnelette? do you not know that, thanks to the
diabolical power I possess and which I can hardly fight against, I am
able to strike as well far as near?”
“And if I should become a widow, Thibault, do you imagine that I should
be vile enough to accept your hand when it was stained with the blood of
the one whose name I bear?”
“Agnelette,” said Thibault falling on his knees, “Agnelette, save me
from committing a further crime.”
“It is you, not I, who will be responsible for the crime. I can give you
my life, Thibault, but not my honour.”
“Oh,” roared Thibault, “love flies from the heart when hatred enters;
take care, Agnelette! take heed to your husband! The devil is in me, and
he will soon speak through my mouth. Instead of the consolation which I
had hoped from your love, and which your love refuses, I will have
vengeance. Stay my hand, Agnelette, there is yet time, stay it from
cursing, from destroying; if not, understand that it is not I, but you,
who strike him dead! Agnelette, you know now.... Agnelette, you do not
stop me from speaking? Let it be so then, and let the curse fall on all
three of us, you and him and me! Agnelette, I wish your husband to die,
and he will die!”
Agnelette uttered a terrible cry; then, as if her reason reasserted
itself, protesting against this murder at a distance which seemed
impossible to her, she exclaimed:
“No, no; you only say that to terrify me, but my prayers will prevail
against your maledictions.”
“Go then, and learn how heaven answers your prayers. Only, if you wish
to see your husband again alive, Agnelette, you had better make haste,
or you will but stumble against his dead body.”
Overcome by the tone of conviction with which these last words were
pronounced, and yielding to an irresistible feeling of terror,
Agnelette, without responding to Thibault, who stood on the further side
of the lane with his hand held out and pointing towards Préciamont, set
off running in the direction which it seemed to indicate, and soon
disappeared into the night as she turned out of sight at the corner of
the road. As she passed from his view, Thibault uttered a howl, which
might have been taken for the howling of a whole pack of wolves, and
plunging into the thicket, “Ah! now,” he cried aloud to himself, “I am
indeed a lost and accursed soul!”