but in a calm and tranquil state. He begged of me, when his brother
returned, to tell him certain things to say to his father and mother. He
begged me to say the Seven Psalms which had been given him as a penance
the preceding Sunday, which he had not yet recited; again he recommended
me to speak to his brother, and then he bade me adieu, saying, as he
left me, '_Jusques, jusques_' (_till, till_), which was the usual term
he made use of when at the end of our walk we bade each other good-bye,
to go home.
"He told me that at the time he was drowned, his brother, who was
writing a translation, regretted having let him go without accompanying
him, fearing some accident. He described to me so well where he was
drowned, and the tree in the avenue of Louvigni on which he had written
a few words, that two years afterwards, being there with the late
Chevalier de Getel, one of these who were with him at the time he was
drowned, I pointed out to him the very spot; and by counting the trees
in a particular direction which Desfontaines had specified to me, I went
straight up to the tree, and I found his writing. He (the Chevalier)
told me also that the article of the Seven Psalms was true, and that on
coming from confession that they had told each other their penance; and
since then his brother has told me that it was quite true that at that
hour he was writing his exercise, and he reproached himself for not
having accompanied his brother. As nearly a month passed by without my
being able to do what Desfontaines had told me in regard to his brother,
he appeared to me again twice before dinner at a country house whither I
had gone to dine a league from hence. I was very faint. I told them not
to mind me, that it was nothing, and that I should soon recover myself;
and I went to a corner of the garden. Desfontaines having appeared to
me, reproached me for not having yet spoken to his brother, and again
conversed with me for a quarter of an hour without answering any of my
questions.
"As I was going in the morning to Notre-Dame de la Victoire, he appeared
to me again, but for a shorter time, and pressed me always to speak to
his brother, and left me, saying still, '_Jusques, jusques_,' without
choosing to reply to my questions.
"It is a remarkable thing that I always felt a pain in that part of my
arm which he had held me by the first time, until I had spoken to his
brother. I was three days without being able to sleep, from the
astonishment and agitation I felt. At the end of the first conversation,
I told M. de Varonville, my neighbour and schoolfellow, that
Desfontaines had been drowned; that he himself had just appeared to me
and told me so. He went away and ran to the parents' house to know if it
was true; they had just received the news, but by a mistake he
understood that it was the eldest. He assured me that he had read the
letter of Desfontaines, and he believed it; but I maintained always that
it could not be, and that Desfontaines himself had appeared to me. He
returned, came back, and told me in tears that it was but too true."
XXXIV
THE MARQUIS DE RAMBOUILLET
"The Phantom World"
The Marquis de Rambouillet, eldest brother of the Duchess of Montauzier,
and the Marquis de Precy, eldest son of the family of Nantouillet, both
of them between twenty and thirty, were intimate friends, and went to
the wars, as in France do all men of quality. As they were conversing
one day together on the subject of the other world, they promised each
other that the first who died should come and bring the news to his
companion. At the end of three months the Marquis de Rambouillet set off
for Flanders, where the war was then being carried on; and de Precy,
detained by a high fever, remained at Paris. Six weeks afterwards de
Precy, at six in the morning, heard the curtains of his bed drawn, and
turning to see who it was, he perceived the Marquis de Rambouillet in
his buff vest and boots; he sprung out of bed to embrace him to show his
joy at his return, but Rambouillet, retreating a few steps, told him
that these caresses were no longer seasonable, for he only came to keep
his word with him; that he had been killed the day before on such an
occasion; that all that was said of the other world was certainly true;
that he must think of leading a different life; and that he had no time
to lose, as he would be killed the first action he was engaged in.
It is impossible to express the surprise of the Marquis de Precy at this
discourse; as he could not believe what he heard, he made several
efforts to embrace his friend, whom he thought desirous of deceiving
him, but he embraced only air; and Rambouillet, seeing that he was
incredulous, showed the wound he had received, which was in the side,
whence the blood still appeared to flow. After that the phantom
disappeared, and left de Precy in a state of alarm more easy to
comprehend than describe; he called at the same time his _valet de
chambre_, and awakened all the family with his cries. Several persons
ran to his room, and he related to them what he had just seen. Everyone
attributed this vision to the violence of the fever, which might have
deranged his imagination; they begged of him to go to bed again,
assuring him that he must have dreamt what he told them.
The Marquis, in despair, on seeing that they took him for a visionary,
related all the circumstances I have just recounted; but it was in vain
for him to protest that he had seen and heard his friend, being
wideawake; they persisted in the same idea until the arrival of the post
from Flanders, which brought the news of the death of the Marquis de
Rambouillet.
This first circumstance being found true, and in the same manner as de
Precy had said, those to whom he had related the adventure began to
think that there might be something in it, because Rambouillet having
been killed precisely on the eve of the day he had said it, it was
impossible de Precy should have known of it in a natural way. This event
having spread in Paris, they thought it was the effect of a disturbed
imagination, or a made-up story; and whatever might be said by the
persons who examined the thing seriously, there remained in people's
minds a suspicion, which time alone could disperse: this depended upon
what might happen to Marquis de Precy, who was threatened that he should
be slain in the first engagement; thus everyone regarded his fate as the
_dénouement_ of the piece; but he soon confirmed everything they had
doubted the truth of, for as soon as he recovered from his illness he
would go to the combat of St Antoine, although his father and mother,
who were afraid of the prophecy, said all they could to prevent him; he
was killed there, to the great regret of all his family.
XXXV
THE ALTHEIM REVENANT
"The Phantom World"
A monk of the Abbey of Toussaints relates that on the 9th of September
1625 a man named John Steinlin died at a place called Altheim, in the
diocese of Constance. Steinlin was a man in easy circumstances, and a
common-councilman of his town. Some days after his death he appeared
during the night to a tailor, named Simon Bauh, in the form of a man
surrounded by a sombre flame, like that of lighted sulphur, going and
coming in his own house, but without speaking. Bauh, who was disquieted
by this sight, resolved to ask him what he could do to serve him. He
found an opportunity to do so, the 17th of November in the same year,
1625; for, as he was reposing at night near his stove, a little after
eleven o'clock, he beheld this spectre environed by fire like sulphur,
who came into his room, going and coming, shutting and opening the
windows. The tailor asked him what he desired. He replied, in a hoarse
interrupted voice, that he could help very much, if he would; "but,"
added he, "do not promise me to do so, if you are not resolved to
execute your promises." "I will execute them, if they are not beyond my
power," replied he.
"I wish, then," replied the spirit, "that you would cause a mass to be
said, in the Chapel of the Virgin at Rotembourg; I made a vow to that
intent during my life, and I have not acquitted myself of it. Moreover,
you must have two masses said at Altheim, the one of the Defunct and the
other of the Virgin; and as I did not always pay my servants exactly, I
wish that a quarter of corn should be distributed to the poor." Simon
promised to satisfy him on all these points. The spectre held out his
hand, as if to ensure his promise; but Simon, fearing that some harm
might happen to himself, tendered him the board which came to hand, and
the spectre having touched it, left the print of his hand with the four
fingers and thumb, as if fire had been there, and had left a pretty deep
impression. After that he vanished with so much noise that it was heard
three houses off.
XXXVI
SERTORIUS AND HIS HIND
NORTH'S "Plutarch"
So soone as Sertorius arriued from Africa, he straight leauied men of
warre, and with them subdued the people of Spaine fronting upon his
marches, of which the more part did willingly submit themselues, upon
the bruit that ran of him to be merciful and courteous, and a valiant
man besides in present danger. Furthermore, he lacked no fine deuises
and subtilties to win their goodwills: as among others, the policy, and
deuise of the hind. There was a poore man of the countrey called Spanus,
who meeting by chance one day with a hind in his way that had newly
calued, flying from the hunters, he let the damme go, not being able to
take her; and running after her calfe tooke it, which was a young hind,
and of a strange haire, for she was all milk-white. It chanced so, that
Sertorius was at that time in those parts. So, this poore man presented
Sertorius with his young hind, which he gladly receiued, and which with
time he made so tame, that she would come to him when he called her, and
follow him whereeuer he went, being nothing the wilder for the daily
sight of such a number of armed souldiers together as they were, nor yet
afraid of the noise and tumult of the campe. Insomuch as Sertorius by
little and little made it a miracle, making the simple barbarous people
beleeue that it was a gift that Diana had sent him, by the which she
made him understand of many and sundrie things to come: knowing well
inough of himselfe, that the barbarous people were men easily deceiued,
and quickly caught by any subtill superstition, besides that by art also
he brought them to beleeue it as a thing verie true. For when he had any
secret intelligence giuen him, that the enemies would inuade some part
of the countries and prouinces subject vnto him, or that they had taken
any of his forts from him by any intelligence or sudden attempt, he
straight told them that his hind spake to him as he slept, and had
warned him both to arme his men, and put himselfe in strength. In like
manner if he had heard any newes that one of his lieutenants had wonne a
battell, or that he had any aduantage of his enemies, he would hide the
messenger, and bring his hind abroad with a garland and coller of
nosegayes: and then say, it was a token of some good newes comming
towards him, perswading them withall to be of good cheare; and so did
sacrifice to the gods, to giue them thankes for the good tidings he
should heare before it were long. Thus by putting this superstition into
their heades, he made them the more tractable and obedient to his will,
in so much as they thought they were not now gouerned any more by a
stranger wiser than themselues, but were steadfastly perswaded that they
were rather led by some certaine god.----
Now was Sertorius very heauie, that no man could tell him what was
become of his white hind: for thereby all his subtilltie and finenesse
to keepe the barbarous people in obedience was taken away, and then
specially when they stood in need of most comfort. But by good hap,
certaine of his souldiers that had lost themselves in the night, met
with the hind in their way, and knowing her by her colour, tooke her and
brought her backe againe. Sertorius hearing of her, promised them a good
reward, so that they would tell no liuing creature that they brought her
againe, and thereupon made her to be secretly kept. Then within a few
dayes after, he came abroad among them, and with a pleasant countenance
told the noble men and chiefe captaines of these barbarous people, how
the gods had reuealed it to him in his dreame, that he should shortly
haue a maruellous good thing happen to him: and with these words sate
downe in his chaire to giue audience. Whereupon they that kept the hind
not farre from thence, did secretly let her go. The hind being loose,
when she had spied Sertorius, ranne straight to his chaire with great
joy, and put her head betwixt his legges, and layed her mouth in his
right hand, as she before was wont to do. Sertorius also made very much
of her, and of purpose appeared maruellous glad, shewing much tender
affection to the hind, as it seemed the water stood in his eyes for joy.
The barbarous people that stood there by and beheld the same, at the
first were much amazed therewith, but afterwards when they had better
bethought themselues, for ioy they clapped their hands together, and
waited upon Sertorius to his lodging with great and ioyfull shouts,
saying, and steadfastly beleeuing, that he was a heavenly creature, and
beloued of the gods.
XXXVII
ERICHTHO
By E.W. GODWIN. (From Lucan.)
When Sextus sought Erichtho he chose his time in the depth of the night,
when the sun is at its lowermost distance from the upper sky. He took
for companions the associates of his crimes. Wandering among broken
graves and crumbling sepulchres, they discovered her, sitting sublime on
a ragged rock, where Mount Hæmus stretches its roots to the Pharsalic
field. She was mumbling charms of the Magi and the magical gods. For she
feared that the war might yet be transferred to other than the Emathian
fields. The sorceress was busy therefore enchanting the soil of
Philippi, and scattering on its surface the juice of potent herbs, that
it might be heaped with carcasses of the dead, and saturated with their
blood, that Macedon, and not Italy, might receive the bodies of departed
kings and the bones of the noble, and might be amply peopled with the
shades of men. Her choicest labour was as to the earth where should be
deposited the prostrate Pompey, or the limbs of the mighty Cæsar.
Sextus approached, and bespoke her thus: "Oh, glory of Hæmonia, that
hast the power to divulge the fates of men, or canst turn aside fate
itself from its prescribed course, I pray thee to exercise thy gift in
disclosing events to come. Not the meanest of the Roman race am I, the
offspring of an illustrious chieftain, lord of the world in the one
case, or in the other the destined heir to my father's calamity. I stand
on a tremendous and giddy height: snatch me from this posture of doubt;
let me not blindly rush on, and blindly fall; extort this secret from
the gods, or force the dead to confess what they know."
To whom the Thessalian crone replied: "If you asked to change the fate
of an individual, though it were to restore an old man, decrepit with
age, to vigorous youth, I could comply; but to break the eternal chain
of causes and consequences exceeds even our power. You seek, however,
only a foreknowledge of events to come, and you shall be gratified.
Meanwhile it were best, where slaughter has afforded so ample a field,
to select the body of one newly deceased, and whose flexible organs
shall be yet capable of speech, not with lineaments already hardened in
the sun."
Saying thus, Erichtho proceeded (having first with her art made the
night itself more dark, and involved her head in a pitchy cloud), to
explore the field, and examine one by one the bodies of the unburied
dead. As she approached, the wolves fled before her, and the birds of
prey, unwillingly sheathing their talons, abandoned their repast, while
the Thessalian witch, searching into the vital parts of the frames
before her, at length fixed on one whose lungs were uninjured, and whose
organs of speech had sustained no wound. The fate of many hung in doubt,
till she had made her selection. Had the revival of whole armies been
her will, armies would have stood up obedient to her bidding. She passed
a hook beneath the jaw of the selected one, and, fastening it to a cord,
dragged him along over rocks and stones, till she reached a cave,
overhung by a projecting ridge. A gloomy fissure in the ground was
there, of a depth almost reaching to the infernal gods, where the
yew-tree spread thick its horizontal branches, at all times excluding
the light of the sun. Fearful and withering shade was there, and noisome
slime cherished by the livelong night. The air was heavy and flagging as
that of the Tænarian promontory; and hither the god of hell permits his
ghosts to extend their wanderings. It is doubtful whether the sorceress
called up the dead to attend her here, or herself descended to the
abodes of Pluto. She put on a fearful and variegated robe; she covered
her face with her dishevelled hair, and bound her brow with a wreath of
vipers.
Meanwhile she observed Sextus afraid, with his eyes fixed on the ground,
and his companions trembling; and thus she reproached them. "Lay aside,"
she said, "your vainly-conceived terrors! You shall behold only a living
and a human figure, whose accents you may listen to with perfect
security. If this alarms you, what would you say if you should have seen
the Stygian lakes, and the shores burning with sulphur unconsumed, if
the Furies stood before you, and Cerberus with his mane of vipers, and
the Giants chained in eternal adamant? Yet all these you might have
witnessed unharmed; for all these would quail at the terror of my brow."
She spoke, and next plied the dead body with her arts. She supples his
wounds, and infuses fresh blood into his veins: she frees his scars from
the clotted gore, and penetrates them with froth from the moon. She
mixes whatever nature has engendered in its most fearful caprices, foam
from the jaws of a mad dog, the entrails of the lynx, the backbone of
the hyena, and the marrow of a stag that had dieted on serpents, the
sinews of the remora, and the eyes of a dragon, the eggs of the eagle,
the flying serpent of Arabia, the viper that guards the pearl in the Red
Sea, the slough of the hooded snake, and the ashes that remain when the
phoenix has been consumed. To these she adds all venom that has a
name, the foliage of herbs over which she has sung her charms, and on
which she had voided her rheum as they grew.
At length she chants her incantation to the Stygian Gods, in a voice
compounded of all discords, and altogether alien to human organs. It
resembles at once the barking of a dog and the howl of a wolf; it
consists of the hooting of the screech-owl, the yelling of a ravenous
wild beast, and the fearful hiss of a serpent. It borrows somewhat from
the roar of tempestuous waves, the hollow rushing of the winds among the
branches of the forest, and the tremendous crash of deafening thunder.
"Ye Furies," she cries, "and dreadful Styx, ye sufferings of the damned,
and Chaos, for ever eager to destroy the fair harmony of worlds, and
thou, Pluto, condemned, to an eternity of ungrateful existence, Hell,
and Elysium, of which no Thessalian witch shall partake, Proserpine, for
ever cut off from thy health-giving mother, and horrid Hecate, Cerberus
curst with incessant hunger, ye Destinies, and Charon endlessly
murmuring at the task I impose of bringing back the dead again to the
land of the living, hear me!--if I call on you with a voice sufficiently
impious and abominable, if I have never sung this chaunt, unsated with
human gore, if I have frequently laid on your altars the fruit of the
pregnant mother, bathing its contents with the reeking brain, if I have
placed on a dish before you the head and entrails of an infant on the
point to be born----
"I ask not of you a ghost, already a tenant of the Tartarean abodes, and
long familiarised to the shades below, but one who has recently quitted
the light of day, and who yet hovers over the mouth of hell; let him
hear these incantations, and immediately after descend to his destined
place! Let him articulate suitable omens to the son of his general,
having so late been himself a soldier of the great Pompey! Do this, as
you love the very sound and rumour of a civil war!"
Saying this, behold, the ghost of the dead man stood erect before her,
trembling at the view of his own unanimated limbs, and loth to enter
again the confines of his wonted prison. He shrinks to invest himself
with the gored bosom, and the fibres from which death had separated him.
Unhappy wretch, to whom death had not given the privilege to die!
Erichtho, impatient at the unlooked-for delay, lashes the unmoving
corpse with one of her serpents. She calls anew on the powers of hell,
and threatens to pronounce the dreadful name, which cannot be
articulated without consequences never to be thought of, nor without the
direst necessity to be ventured upon.
At length the congealed blood becomes liquid and warm; it oozes from the
wounds, and creeps steadily along the veins and the members; the fibres
are called into action beneath the gelid breast, and the nerves once
more become instinct with life. Life and death are there at once. The
arteries beat; the muscles are braced; the body raises itself, not by
degrees, but at a single impulse, and stands erect. The eyelids unclose.
The countenance is not that of a living subject, but of the dead. The
paleness of the complexion, the rigidity of the lines, remain; and he
looks about with an unmeaning stare, but utters no sound. He waits on
the potent enchantress.
"Speak!" said she, "and ample shall be your reward. You shall not again
be subject to the art of the magician. I will commit your members to
such a sepulchre; I will burn your form with such wood, and will chaunt
such a charm over your funeral pyre, that all incantations shall
thereafter assail you in vain. Be it enough, that you have once been
brought back to life! Tripods, and the voice of oracles deal in
ambiguous responses; but the voice of the dead is perspicuous and
certain to him who receives it with an unshrinking spirit. Spare not!
Give names to things; give places a clear designation, speak with a full
and articulate voice."
Saying this, she added a further spell, qualified to give to him who was
to answer, a distinct knowledge of that respecting which he was about to
be consulted. He accordingly delivers the responses demanded of him;
and, that done, earnestly requires of the witch to be dismissed. Herbs
and magic rites are necessary, that the corpse may be again unanimated,
and the spirit never more be liable to be recalled to the realms of day.
The sorceress constructs the funeral pile; the dead man places himself
upon it; Erichtho applies the torch, and the charm is ended for ever.
III
OMENS AND PHANTASMS
XXXVIII
PATROKLOS
HOMER'S _Iliad_ (E.H. Blakeney's translation[13])
Then there came unto him the ghost of poor Patroklos, in all things like
unto the very man, in stature, and fair eyes, and voice; and he was
arrayed in vesture such as in life he wore. He stood above the hero's
head and challenged him:--
"Thou sleepest, Achilles, unmindful of me. Not in my lifetime wert thou
neglectful, but in death. Bury me with all speed; let me pass the gates
of Hades. Far off the souls, wraiths of the dead, keep me back, nor
suffer me yet to join them beyond the river; forlorn I wander up and
down the wide-doored house of Hades. And now give me thy hand, I
entreat; for never more shall I return from Hades, when once ye have
given me my meed of fire. Nay, never more shall we sit, at least in
life, apart from our comrades, taking counsel together; but upon me
hateful doom hath gaped--doom which was my portion even at birth. Aye
and to thee thyself also, Achilles, thou peer of the gods, it is fated
to perish beneath the wall of the wealthy Trojans. Another thing I will
tell thee, and will straitly charge thee, if peradventure thou wilt
hearken: lay not my bones apart from thine, Achilles, but side by side;
for we were brought up together in thy house, when Menoitios brought me,
a child, from Opöeis to thy father's house because of woeful bloodshed
on the day when I slew the son of Amphidamas, myself a child,
unwittingly, but in wrath over our games. Then did Peleus, the knight,
take me into his home and rear me kindly and name me thy squire. So let
one urn also hide the bones of us both."
And swift-footed Achilles answered him and said:--