St Bertrand de Comminges is a decayed town on the spurs of the
Pyrenees, not very far from Toulouse, and still nearer to
Bagnères-de-Luchon. It was the site of a bishopric until the
Revolution, and has a cathedral which is visited by a certain number of
tourists. In the spring of 1883 an Englishman arrived at this old-world
place—I can hardly dignify it with the name of city, for there are not
a thousand inhabitants. He was a Cambridge man, who had come specially
from Toulouse to see St Bertrand’s Church, and had left two friends,
who were less keen archaeologists than himself, in their hotel at
Toulouse, under promise to join him on the following morning. Half an
hour at the church would satisfy _them_, and all three could then
pursue their journey in the direction of Auch. But our Englishman had
come early on the day in question, and proposed to himself to fill a
note-book and to use several dozens of plates in the process of
describing and photographing every corner of the wonderful church that
dominates the little hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this
design satisfactorily, it was necessary to monopolize the verger of the
church for the day. The verger or sacristan (I prefer the latter
appellation, inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly sent for by the
somewhat brusque lady who keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge; and when
he came, the Englishman found him an unexpectedly interesting object of
study. It was not in the personal appearance of the little, dry,
wizened old man that the interest lay, for he was precisely like dozens
of other church-guardians in France, but in a curious furtive, or
rather hunted and oppressed, air which he had. He was perpetually half
glancing behind him; the muscles of his back and shoulders seemed to be
hunched in a continual nervous contraction, as if he were expecting
every moment to find himself in the clutch of an enemy. The Englishman
hardly knew whether to put him down as a man haunted by a fixed
delusion, or as one oppressed by a guilty conscience, or as an
unbearably henpecked husband. The probabilities, when reckoned up,
certainly pointed to the last idea; but, still, the impression conveyed
was that of a more formidable persecutor even than a termagant wife.
However, the Englishman (let us call him Dennistoun) was soon too deep
in his note-book and too busy with his camera to give more than an
occasional glance to the sacristan. Whenever he did look at him, he
found him at no great distance, either huddling himself back against
the wall or crouching in one of the gorgeous stalls. Dennistoun became
rather fidgety after a time. Mingled suspicions that he was keeping the
old man from his _déjeuner_, that he was regarded as likely to make
away with St Bertrand’s ivory crozier, or with the dusty stuffed
crocodile that hangs over the font, began to torment him.
“Won’t you go home?” he said at last; “I’m quite well able to finish my
notes alone; you can lock me in if you like. I shall want at least two
hours more here, and it must be cold for you, isn’t it?”
“Good heavens!” said the little man, whom the suggestion seemed to
throw into a state of unaccountable terror, “such a thing cannot be
thought of for a moment. Leave monsieur alone in the church? No, no;
two hours, three hours, all will be the same to me. I have breakfasted,
I am not at all cold, with many thanks to monsieur.”
“Very well, my little man,” quoth Dennistoun to himself: “you have been
warned, and you must take the consequences.”
Before the expiration of the two hours, the stalls, the enormous
dilapidated organ, the choir-screen of Bishop John de Mauléon, the
remnants of glass and tapestry, and the objects in the
treasure-chamber, had been well and truly examined; the sacristan still
keeping at Dennistoun’s heels, and every now and then whipping round as
if he had been stung, when one or other of the strange noises that
trouble a large empty building fell on his ear. Curious noises they
were sometimes.
“Once,” Dennistoun said to me, “I could have sworn I heard a thin
metallic voice laughing high up in the tower. I darted an inquiring
glance at my sacristan. He was white to the lips. ‘It is he—that is—it
is no one; the door is locked,’ was all he said, and we looked at each
other for a full minute.”
Another little incident puzzled Dennistoun a good deal. He was
examining a large dark picture that hangs behind the altar, one of a
series illustrating the miracles of St Bertrand. The composition of the
picture is well-nigh indecipherable, but there is a Latin legend below,
which runs thus:
_Qualiter S. Bertrandus liberavit hominem quem diabolus diu volebat
strangulare_. (How St Bertrand delivered a man whom the Devil long
sought to strangle.)
Dennistoun was turning to the sacristan with a smile and a jocular
remark of some sort on his lips, but he was confounded to see the old
man on his knees, gazing at the picture with the eye of a suppliant in
agony, his hands tightly clasped, and a rain of tears on his cheeks.
Dennistoun naturally pretended to have noticed nothing, but the
question would not go away from him, “Why should a daub of this kind
affect anyone so strongly?” He seemed to himself to be getting some
sort of clue to the reason of the strange look that had been puzzling
him all the day: the man must be a monomaniac; but what was his
monomania?
It was nearly five o’clock; the short day was drawing in, and the
church began to fill with shadows, while the curious noises—the muffled
footfalls and distant talking voices that had been perceptible all
day—seemed, no doubt because of the fading light and the consequently
quickened sense of hearing, to become more frequent and insistent.
The sacristan began for the first time to show signs of hurry and
impatience. He heaved a sigh of relief when camera and note-book were
finally packed up and stowed away, and hurriedly beckoned Dennistoun to
the western door of the church, under the tower. It was time to ring
the Angelus. A few pulls at the reluctant rope, and the great bell
Bertrande, high in the tower, began to speak, and swung her voice up
among the pines and down to the valleys, loud with mountain-streams,
calling the dwellers on those lonely hills to remember and repeat the
salutation of the angel to her whom he called Blessed among women. With
that a profound quiet seemed to fall for the first time that day upon
the little town, and Dennistoun and the sacristan went out of the
church.
On the doorstep they fell into conversation.
“Monsieur seemed to interest himself in the old choir-books in the
sacristy.”
“Undoubtedly. I was going to ask you if there were a library in the
town.”
“No, monsieur; perhaps there used to be one belonging to the Chapter,
but it is now such a small place—” Here came a strange pause of
irresolution, as it seemed; then, with a sort of plunge, he went on:
“But if monsieur is _amateur des vieux livres_, I have at home
something that might interest him. It is not a hundred yards.”
At once all Dennistoun’s cherished dreams of finding priceless
manuscripts in untrodden corners of France flashed up, to die down
again the next moment. It was probably a stupid missal of Plantin’s
printing, about 1580. Where was the likelihood that a place so near
Toulouse would not have been ransacked long ago by collectors? However,
it would be foolish not to go; he would reproach himself for ever after
if he refused. So they set off. On the way the curious irresolution and
sudden determination of the sacristan recurred to Dennistoun, and he
wondered in a shamefaced way whether he was being decoyed into some
purlieu to be made away with as a supposed rich Englishman. He
contrived, therefore, to begin talking with his guide, and to drag in,
in a rather clumsy fashion, the fact that he expected two friends to
join him early the next morning. To his surprise, the announcement
seemed to relieve the sacristan at once of some of the anxiety that
oppressed him.
“That is well,” he said quite brightly—“that is very well. Monsieur
will travel in company with his friends; they will be always near him.
It is a good thing to travel thus in company—sometimes.”
The last word appeared to be added as an afterthought and to bring with
it a relapse into gloom for the poor little man.
They were soon at the house, which was one rather larger than its
neighbours, stone-built, with a shield carved over the door, the shield
of Alberic de Mauléon, a collateral descendant, Dennistoun tells me, of
Bishop John de Mauléon. This Alberic was a Canon of Comminges from 1680
to 1701. The upper windows of the mansion were boarded up, and the
whole place bore, as does the rest of Comminges, the aspect of decaying
age.
Arrived on his doorstep, the sacristan paused a moment.
“Perhaps,” he said, “perhaps, after all, monsieur has not the time?”
“Not at all—lots of time—nothing to do till tomorrow. Let us see what
it is you have got.”
The door was opened at this point, and a face looked out, a face far
younger than the sacristan’s, but bearing something of the same
distressing look: only here it seemed to be the mark, not so much of
fear for personal safety as of acute anxiety on behalf of another.
Plainly, the owner of the face was the sacristan’s daughter; and, but
for the expression I have described, she was a handsome girl enough.
She brightened up considerably on seeing her father accompanied by an
able-bodied stranger. A few remarks passed between father and daughter,
of which Dennistoun only caught these words, said by the sacristan, “He
was laughing in the church,” words which were answered only by a look
of terror from the girl.
But in another minute they were in the sitting-room of the house, a
small, high chamber with a stone floor, full of moving shadows cast by
a wood-fire that flickered on a great hearth. Something of the
character of an oratory was imparted to it by a tall crucifix, which
reached almost to the ceiling on one side; the figure was painted of
the natural colours, the cross was black. Under this stood a chest of
some age and solidity, and when a lamp had been brought, and chairs
set, the sacristan went to this chest, and produced therefrom, with
growing excitement and nervousness, as Dennistoun thought, a large
book, wrapped in a white cloth, on which cloth a cross was rudely
embroidered in red thread. Even before the wrapping had been removed,
Dennistoun began to be interested by the size and shape of the volume.
“Too large for a missal,” he thought, “and not the shape of an
antiphoner; perhaps it may be something good, after all.” The next
moment the book was open, and Dennistoun felt that he had at last lit
upon something better than good. Before him lay a large folio, bound,
perhaps, late in the seventeenth century, with the arms of Canon
Alberic de Mauléon stamped in gold on the sides. There may have been a
hundred and fifty leaves of paper in the book, and on almost every one
of them was fastened a leaf from an illuminated manuscript. Such a
collection Dennistoun had hardly dreamed of in his wildest moments.
Here were ten leaves from a copy of Genesis, illustrated with pictures,
which could not be later than A.D. 700. Further on was a complete set
of pictures from a Psalter, of English execution, of the very finest
kind that the thirteenth century could produce; and, perhaps best of
all, there were twenty leaves of uncial writing in Latin, which, as a
few words seen here and there told him at once, must belong to some
very early unknown patristic treatise. Could it possibly be a fragment
of the copy of Papias “On the Words of Our Lord”, which was known to
have existed as late as the twelfth century at Nîmes?[1] In any case,
his mind was made up; that book must return to Cambridge with him, even
if he had to draw the whole of his balance from the bank and stay at
St. Bertrand till the money came. He glanced up at the sacristan to see
if his face yielded any hint that the book was for sale. The sacristan
was pale, and his lips were working.
[1] We now know that these leaves did contain a considerable fragment
of that work, if not of that actual copy of it.
“If monsieur will turn on to the end,” he said.
So monsieur turned on, meeting new treasures at every rise of a leaf;
and at the end of the book he came upon two sheets of paper, of much
more recent date than anything he had yet seen, which puzzled him
considerably. They must be contemporary, he decided, with the
unprincipled Canon Alberic, who had doubtless plundered the Chapter
library of St Bertrand to form this priceless scrap-book. On the first
of the paper sheets was a plan, carefully drawn and instantly
recognizable by a person who knew the ground, of the south aisle and
cloisters of St Bertrand’s. There were curious signs looking like
planetary symbols, and a few Hebrew words in the corners; and in the
north-west angle of the cloister was a cross drawn in gold paint. Below
the plan were some lines of writing in Latin, which ran thus:
Responsa 12mi Dec. 1694. Interrogatum est: Inveniamne? Responsum est:
Invenies. Fiamne dives? Fies. Vivamne invidendus? Vives. Moriarne in
lecto meo? Ita. (Answers of the 12th of December, 1694. It was asked:
Shall I find it? Answer: Thou shalt. Shall I become rich? Thou wilt.
Shall I live an object of envy? Thou wilt. Shall I die in my bed? Thou
wilt.)
“A good specimen of the treasure-hunter’s record—quite reminds one of
Mr Minor-Canon Quatremain in _Old St Paul’s_,” was Dennistoun’s
comment, and he turned the leaf.
What he then saw impressed him, as he has often told me, more than he
could have conceived any drawing or picture capable of impressing him.
And, though the drawing he saw is no longer in existence, there is a
photograph of it (which I possess) which fully bears out that
statement. The picture in question was a sepia drawing at the end of
the seventeenth century, representing, one would say at first sight, a
Biblical scene; for the architecture (the picture represented an
interior) and the figures had that semi-classical flavour about them
which the artists of two hundred years ago thought appropriate to
illustrations of the Bible. On the right was a King on his throne, the
throne elevated on twelve steps, a canopy overhead, soldiers on either
side—evidently King Solomon. He was bending forward with outstretched
sceptre, in attitude of command; his face expressed horror and disgust,
yet there was in it also the mark of imperious command and confident
power. The left half of the picture was the strangest, however. The
interest plainly centred there. On the pavement before the throne were
grouped four soldiers, surrounding a crouching figure which must be
described in a moment. A fifth soldier lay dead on the pavement, his
neck distorted, and his eye-balls starting from his head. The four
surrounding guards were looking at the King. In their faces, the
sentiment of horror was intensified; they seemed, in fact, only
restrained from flight by their implicit trust in their master. All
this terror was plainly excited by the being that crouched in their
midst. I entirely despair of conveying by any words the impression
which this figure makes upon anyone who looks at it. I recollect once
showing the photograph of the drawing to a lecturer on morphology—a
person of, I was going to say, abnormally sane and unimaginative habits
of mind. He absolutely refused to be alone for the rest of that
evening, and he told me afterwards that for many nights he had not
dared to put out his light before going to sleep. However, the main
traits of the figure I can at least indicate. At first you saw only a
mass of coarse, matted black hair; presently it was seen that this
covered a body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the
muscles standing out like wires. The hands were of a dusky pallor,
covered, like the body, with long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned.
The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils,
and were fixed upon the throned King with a look of beast-like hate.
Imagine one of the awful bird-catching spiders of South America
translated into human form, and endowed with intelligence just less
than human, and you will have some faint conception of the terror
inspired by the appalling effigy. One remark is universally made by
those to whom I have shown the picture: “It was drawn from the life.”
As soon as the first shock of his irresistible fright had subsided,
Dennistoun stole a look at his hosts. The sacristan’s hands were
pressed upon his eyes; his daughter, looking up at the cross on the
wall, was telling her beads feverishly.
At last the question was asked, “Is this book for sale?”
There was the same hesitation, the same plunge of determination that he
had noticed before, and then came the welcome answer, “If monsieur
pleases.”
“How much do you ask for it?”
“I will take two hundred and fifty francs.”
This was confounding. Even a collector’s conscience is sometimes
stirred, and Dennistoun’s conscience was tenderer than a collector’s.
“My good man!” he said again and again, “your book is worth far more
than two hundred and fifty francs, I assure you—far more.”
But the answer did not vary: “I will take two hundred and fifty francs,
not more.”
There was really no possibility of refusing such a chance. The money
was paid, the receipt signed, a glass of wine drunk over the
transaction, and then the sacristan seemed to become a new man. He
stood upright, he ceased to throw those suspicious glances behind him,
he actually laughed or tried to laugh. Dennistoun rose to go.
“I shall have the honour of accompanying monsieur to his hotel?” said
the sacristan.
“Oh no, thanks! it isn’t a hundred yards. I know the way perfectly, and
there is a moon.”
The offer was pressed three or four times, and refused as often.
“Then, monsieur will summon me if—if he finds occasion; he will keep
the middle of the road, the sides are so rough.”
“Certainly, certainly,” said Dennistoun, who was impatient to examine
his prize by himself; and he stepped out into the passage with his book
under his arm.
Here he was met by the daughter; she, it appeared, was anxious to do a
little business on her own account; perhaps, like Gehazi, to “take
somewhat” from the foreigner whom her father had spared.
“A silver crucifix and chain for the neck; monsieur would perhaps be
good enough to accept it?”
Well, really, Dennistoun hadn’t much use for these things. What did
mademoiselle want for it?
“Nothing—nothing in the world. Monsieur is more than welcome to it.”
The tone in which this and much more was said was unmistakably genuine,
so that Dennistoun was reduced to profuse thanks, and submitted to have
the chain put round his neck. It really seemed as if he had rendered
the father and daughter some service which they hardly knew how to
repay. As he set off with his book they stood at the door looking after
him, and they were still looking when he waved them a last good night
from the steps of the Chapeau Rouge.
Dinner was over, and Dennistoun was in his bedroom, shut up alone with
his acquisition. The landlady had manifested a particular interest in
him since he had told her that he had paid a visit to the sacristan and
bought an old book from him. He thought, too, that he had heard a
hurried dialogue between her and the said sacristan in the passage
outside the _salle à manger_; some words to the effect that “Pierre and
Bertrand would be sleeping in the house” had closed the conversation.
All this time a growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over
him—nervous reaction, perhaps, after the delight of his discovery.
Whatever it was, it resulted in a conviction that there was someone
behind him, and that he was far more comfortable with his back to the
wall. All this, of course, weighed light in the balance as against the
obvious value of the collection he had acquired. And now, as I said, he
was alone in his bedroom, taking stock of Canon Alberic’s treasures, in
which every moment revealed something more charming.
“Bless Canon Alberic!” said Dennistoun, who had an inveterate habit of
talking to himself. “I wonder where he is now? Dear me! I wish that
landlady would learn to laugh in a more cheering manner; it makes one
feel as if there was someone dead in the house. Half a pipe more, did
you say? I think perhaps you are right. I wonder what that crucifix is
that the young woman insisted on giving me? Last century, I suppose.
Yes, probably. It is rather a nuisance of a thing to have round one’s
neck—just too heavy. Most likely her father has been wearing it for
years. I think I might give it a clean up before I put it away.”
He had taken the crucifix off, and laid it on the table, when his
attention was caught by an object lying on the red cloth just by his
left elbow. Two or three ideas of what it might be flitted through his
brain with their own incalculable quickness.
“A penwiper? No, no such thing in the house. A rat? No, too black. A
large spider? I trust to goodness not—no. Good God! a hand like the
hand in that picture!”
In another infinitesimal flash he had taken it in. Pale, dusky skin,
covering nothing but bones and tendons of appalling strength; coarse
black hairs, longer than ever grew on a human hand; nails rising from
the ends of the fingers and curving sharply down and forward, grey,
horny and wrinkled.
He flew out of his chair with deadly, inconceivable terror clutching at
his heart. The shape, whose left hand rested on the table, was rising
to a standing posture behind his seat, its right hand crooked above his
scalp. There was black and tattered drapery about it; the coarse hair
covered it as in the drawing. The lower jaw was thin—what can I call
it?—shallow, like a beast’s; teeth showed behind the black lips; there
was no nose; the eyes, of a fiery yellow, against which the pupils
showed black and intense, and the exulting hate and thirst to destroy
life which shone there, were the most horrifying features in the whole
vision. There was intelligence of a kind in them—intelligence beyond
that of a beast, below that of a man.
The feelings which this horror stirred in Dennistoun were the intensest
physical fear and the most profound mental loathing. What did he do?
What could he do? He has never been quite certain what words he said,
but he knows that he spoke, that he grasped blindly at the silver
crucifix, that he was conscious of a movement towards him on the part
of the demon, and that he screamed with the voice of an animal in
hideous pain.
Pierre and Bertrand, the two sturdy little serving-men, who rushed in,
saw nothing, but felt themselves thrust aside by something that passed
out between them, and found Dennistoun in a swoon. They sat up with him
that night, and his two friends were at St Bertrand by nine o’clock
next morning. He himself, though still shaken and nervous, was almost
himself by that time, and his story found credence with them, though
not until they had seen the drawing and talked with the sacristan.
Almost at dawn the little man had come to the inn on some pretence, and
had listened with the deepest interest to the story retailed by the
landlady. He showed no surprise.
“It is he—it is he! I have seen him myself,” was his only comment; and
to all questionings but one reply was vouchsafed: “Deux fois je l’ai
vu; mille fois je l’ai senti.” He would tell them nothing of the
provenance of the book, nor any details of his experiences. “I shall
soon sleep, and my rest will be sweet. Why should you trouble me?” he
said.[2]
[2] He died that summer; his daughter married, and settled at St
Papoul. She never understood the circumstances of her father’s
“obsession”.
We shall never know what he or Canon Alberic de Mauléon suffered. At
the back of that fateful drawing were some lines of writing which may
be supposed to throw light on the situation:
Contradictio Salomonis cum demonio nocturno.
Albericus de Mauléone delineavit.
V. Deus in adiutorium. Ps. Qui habitat.
Sancte Bertrande, demoniorum effugator, intercede pro me miserrimo.
Primum uidi nocte 12(mi) Dec. 1694: uidebo mox ultimum. Peccaui et
passus sum, plura adhuc passurus. Dec. 29, 1701.[3]
[3] _i.e._, The Dispute of Solomon with a demon of the night. Drawn by
Alberic de Mauléon. _Versicle_. O Lord, make haste to help me.
_Psalm_. Whoso dwelleth xci.
Saint Bertrand, who puttest devils to flight, pray for me most
unhappy. I saw it first on the night of Dec. 12, 1694: soon I shall
see it for the last time. I have sinned and suffered, and have more
to suffer yet. Dec. 29, 1701.
The “Gallia Christiana” gives the date of the Canon’s death as
December 31, 1701, “in bed, of a sudden seizure”. Details of this
kind are not common in the great work of the Sammarthani.
I have never quite understood what was Dennistoun’s view of the events
I have narrated. He quoted to me once a text from Ecclesiasticus: “Some
spirits there be that are created for vengeance, and in their fury lay
on sore strokes.” On another occasion he said: “Isaiah was a very
sensible man; doesn’t he say something about night monsters living in
the ruins of Babylon? These things are rather beyond us at present.”
Another confidence of his impressed me rather, and I sympathized with
it. We had been, last year, to Comminges, to see Canon Alberic’s tomb.
It is a great marble erection with an effigy of the Canon in a large
wig and soutane, and an elaborate eulogy of his learning below. I saw
Dennistoun talking for some time with the Vicar of St Bertrand’s, and
as we drove away he said to me: “I hope it isn’t wrong: you know I am a
Presbyterian—but I—I believe there will be ‘saying of Mass and singing
of dirges’ for Alberic de Mauléon’s rest.” Then he added, with a touch
of the Northern British in his tone, “I had no notion they came so
dear.”
The book is in the Wentworth Collection at Cambridge. The drawing was
photographed and then burnt by Dennistoun on the day when he left
Comminges on the occasion of his first visit.