The walls of the cell were bare and white washed. A narrow grated
window, placed so high that one could not reach it, lighted this
sinister little room. The mad inmate, seated on a straw chair, looked at
us with a fixed, vacant and haunted expression. He was very thin, with
hollow cheeks and hair almost white, which one guessed might have turned
gray in a few months. His clothes appeared to be too large for his
shrunken limbs, his sunken chest and empty paunch. One felt that this
man's mind was destroyed, eaten by his thoughts, by one thought, just as
a fruit is eaten by a worm. His craze, his idea was there in his brain,
insistent, harassing, destructive. It wasted his frame little by little.
It--the invisible, impalpable, intangible, immaterial idea--was mining
his health, drinking his blood, snuffing out his life.
What a mystery was this man, being killed by an ideal! He aroused
sorrow, fear and pity, this madman. What strange, tremendous and
deadly thoughts dwelt within this forehead which they creased with deep
wrinkles which were never still?
“He has terrible attacks of rage,” said the doctor to me. “His is one of
the most peculiar cases I have ever seen. He has seizures of erotic and
macaberesque madness. He is a sort of necrophile. He has kept a journal
in which he sets forth his disease with the utmost clearness. In it you
can, as it were, put your finger on it. If it would interest you, you
may go over this document.”
I followed the doctor into his office, where he handed me this wretched
man's diary, saying: “Read it and tell me what you think of it.” I read
as follows:
“Until the age of thirty-two I lived peacefully, without knowing love.
Life appeared very simple, very pleasant and very easy. I was rich. I
enjoyed so many things that I had no passion for anything in particular.
It was good to be alive! I awoke happy every morning and did those
things that pleased me during the day and went to bed at night
contented, in the expectation of a peaceful tomorrow and a future
without anxiety.
“I had had a few flirtations without my heart being touched by any true
passion or wounded by any of the sensations of true love. It is good to
live like that. It is better to love, but it is terrible. And yet those
who love in the ordinary way must experience ardent happiness, though
less than mine possibly, for love came to me in a remarkable manner.
“As I was wealthy, I bought all kinds of old furniture and old
curiosities, and I often thought of the unknown hands that had touched
these objects, of the eyes that had admired them, of the hearts that
had loved them; for one does love things! I sometimes remained hours and
hours looking at a little watch of the last century. It was so tiny, so
pretty with its enamel and gold chasing. And it kept time as on the day
when a woman first bought it, enraptured at owning this dainty trinket.
It had not ceased to vibrate, to live its mechanical life, and it had
kept up its regular tick-tock since the last century. Who had first worn
it on her bosom amid the warmth of her clothing, the heart of the watch
beating beside the heart of the woman? What hand had held it in its warm
fingers, had turned it over and then wiped the enamelled shepherds on
the case to remove the slight moisture from her fingers? What eyes had
watched the hands on its ornamental face for the expected, the beloved,
the sacred hour?
“How I wished I had known her, seen her, the woman who had selected this
exquisite and rare object! She is dead! I am possessed with a longing
for women of former days. I love, from afar, all those who have loved.
The story of those dead and gone loves fills my heart with regrets. Oh,
the beauty, the smiles, the youthful caresses, the hopes! Should not all
that be eternal?
“How I have wept whole nights-thinking of those poor women of former
days, so beautiful, so loving, so sweet, whose arms were extended in an
embrace, and who now are dead! A kiss is immortal! It goes from lips to
lips, from century to century, from age to age. Men receive them, give
them and die.
“The past attracts me, the present terrifies me because the future means
death. I regret all that has gone by. I mourn all who have lived; I
should like to check time, to stop the clock. But time goes, it goes,
it passes, it takes from me each second a little of myself for the
annihilation of to-morrow. And I shall never live again.
“Farewell, ye women of yesterday. I love you!
“But I am not to be pitied. I found her, the one I was waiting for, and
through her I enjoyed inestimable pleasure.
“I was sauntering in Paris on a bright, sunny morning, with a happy
heart and a high step, looking in at the shop windows with the vague
interest of an idler. All at once I noticed in the shop of a dealer in
antiques a piece of Italian furniture of the seventeenth century. It was
very handsome, very rare. I set it down as being the work of a Venetian
artist named Vitelli, who was celebrated in his day.
“I went on my way.
“Why did the remembrance of that piece of furniture haunt me with such
insistence that I retraced my steps? I again stopped before the shop, in
order to take another look at it, and I felt that it tempted me.
“What a singular thing temptation is! One gazes at an object, and,
little by little, it charms you, it disturbs you, it fills your thoughts
as a woman's face might do. The enchantment of it penetrates your being,
a strange enchantment of form, color and appearance of an inanimate
object. And one loves it, one desires it, one wishes to have it. A
longing to own it takes possession of you, gently at first, as though it
were timid, but growing, becoming intense, irresistible.
“And the dealers seem to guess, from your ardent gaze, your secret and
increasing longing.
“I bought this piece of furniture and had it sent home at once. I placed
it in my room.
“Oh, I am sorry for those who do not know the honeymoon of the collector
with the antique he has just purchased. One looks at it tenderly and
passes one's hand over it as if it were human flesh; one comes back
to it every moment, one is always thinking of it, wherever ore goes,
whatever one does. The dear recollection of it pursues you in the
street, in society, everywhere; and when you return home at night,
before taking off your gloves or your hat; you go and look at it with
the tenderness of a lover.
“Truly, for eight days I worshipped this piece of furniture. I opened
its doors and pulled out the drawers every few moments. I handled it
with rapture, with all the intense joy of possession.
“But one evening I surmised, while I was feeling the thickness of one of
the panels, that there must be a secret drawer in it: My heart began to
beat, and I spent the night trying to discover this secret cavity.
“I succeeded on the following day by driving a knife into a slit in
the wood. A panel slid back and I saw, spread out on a piece of black
velvet, a magnificent tress of hair.
“Yes, a woman's hair, an immense coil of fair hair, almost red, which
must have been cut off close to the head, tied with a golden cord.
“I stood amazed, trembling, confused. An almost imperceptible perfume,
so ancient that it seemed to be the spirit of a perfume, issued from
this mysterious drawer and this remarkable relic.
“I lifted it gently, almost reverently, and took it out of its hiding
place. It at once unwound in a golden shower that reached to the floor,
dense but light; soft and gleaming like the tail of a comet.
“A strange emotion filled me. What was this? When, how, why had this
hair been shut up in this drawer? What adventure, what tragedy did this
souvenir conceal? Who had cut it off? A lover on a day of farewell, a
husband on a day of revenge, or the one whose head it had graced on the
day of despair?
“Was it as she was about to take the veil that they had cast thither
that love dowry as a pledge to the world of the living? Was it when they
were going to nail down the coffin of the beautiful young corpse that
the one who had adored her had cut off her tresses, the only thing that
he could retain of her, the only living part of her body that would not
suffer decay, the only thing he could still love, and caress, and kiss
in his paroxysms of grief?
“Was it not strange that this tress should have remained as it was in
life, when not an atom of the body on which it grew was in existence?
“It fell over my fingers, tickled the skin with a singular caress, the
caress of a dead woman. It affected me so that I felt as though I should
weep.
“I held it in my hands for a long time, then it seemed as if it
disturbed me, as though something of the soul had remained in it. And
I put it back on the velvet, rusty from age, and pushed in the drawer,
closed the doors of the antique cabinet and went out for a walk to
meditate.
“I walked along, filled with sadness and also with unrest, that unrest
that one feels when in love. I felt as though I must have lived before,
as though I must have known this woman.
“And Villon's lines came to my mind like a sob:
Tell me where, and in what place
Is Flora, the beautiful Roman,
Hipparchia and Thais
Who was her cousin-german?
Echo answers in the breeze
O'er river and lake that blows,
Their beauty was above all praise,
But where are last year's snows?
The queen, white as lilies,
Who sang as sing the birds,
Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
Ermengarde, princess of Maine,
And Joan, the good Lorraine,
Burned by the English at Rouen,
Where are they, Virgin Queen?
And where are last year's snows?
“When I got home again I felt an irresistible longing to see my singular
treasure, and I took it out and, as I touched it, I felt a shiver go all
through me.
“For some days, however, I was in my ordinary condition, although the
thought of that tress of hair was always present to my mind.
“Whenever I came into the house I had to see it and take it in my hands.
I turned the key of the cabinet with the same hesitation that one opens
the door leading to one's beloved, for in my hands and my heart I felt
a confused, singular, constant sensual longing to plunge my hands in the
enchanting golden flood of those dead tresses.
“Then, after I had finished caressing it and had locked the cabinet I
felt as if it were a living thing, shut up in there, imprisoned; and I
longed to see it again. I felt again the imperious desire to take it in
my hands, to touch it, to even feel uncomfortable at the cold, slippery,
irritating, bewildering contact.
“I lived thus for a month or two, I forget how long. It obsessed me,
haunted me. I was happy and tormented by turns, as when one falls in
love, and after the first vows have been exchanged.
“I shut myself in the room with it to feel it on my skin, to bury my
lips in it, to kiss it. I wound it round my face, covered my eyes with
the golden flood so as to see the day gleam through its gold.
“I loved it! Yes, I loved it. I could not be without it nor pass an hour
without looking at it.
“And I waited--I waited--for what? I do not know--For her!
“One night I woke up suddenly, feeling as though I were not alone in my
room.
“I was alone, nevertheless, but I could not go to sleep again, and, as
I was tossing about feverishly, I got up to look at the golden tress.
It seemed softer than usual, more life-like. Do the dead come back? I
almost lost consciousness as I kissed it. I took it back with me to bed
and pressed it to my lips as if it were my sweetheart.
“Do the dead come back? She came back. Yes, I saw her; I held her in my
arms, just as she was in life, tall, fair and round. She came back every
evening--the dead woman, the beautiful, adorable, mysterious unknown.
“My happiness was so great that I could not conceal it. No lover ever
tasted such intense, terrible enjoyment. I loved her so well that
I could not be separated from her. I took her with me always and
everywhere. I walked about the town with her as if she were my wife, and
took her to the theatre, always to a private box. But they saw her--they
guessed--they arrested me. They put me in prison like a criminal. They
took her. Oh, misery!”
Here the manuscript stopped. And as I suddenly raised my astonished eyes
to the doctor a terrific cry, a howl of impotent rage and of exasperated
longing resounded through the asylum.
“Listen,” said the doctor. “We have to douse the obscene madman with
water five times a day. Sergeant Bertrand was the only one who was in
love with the dead.”
Filled with astonishment, horror and pity, I stammered out:
“But--that tress--did it really exist?”
The doctor rose, opened a cabinet full of phials and instruments and
tossed over a long tress of fair hair which flew toward me like a golden
bird.
I shivered at feeling its soft, light touch on my hands. And I sat
there, my heart beating with disgust and desire, disgust as at the
contact of anything accessory to a crime and desire as at the temptation
of some infamous and mysterious thing.
The doctor said as he shrugged his shoulders:
“The mind of man is capable of anything.”