The prominence given by the Press to the suicide of the Boulevard de
Villiers rendered the negotiations between the Stage and the Church all
the more difficult. The reporters had given the fullest details of the
event, and it was pointed out by the Abbé Mirabelle, the Archbishop's
second vicar, that to open the doors of the parish church to Chevalier,
as matters then stood, was to proclaim that excommunicated persons were
entitled to the prayers of the Church.
But for that matter, Monsieur Mirabelle himself, who in this affair
displayed great wisdom and circumspection, paved the way to a solution.
"You must fully understand," he observed to Madame Doulce, "that the
opinion of the newspapers cannot affect our decision. We are absolutely
indifferent to it, and we do not disturb ourselves in the slightest
degree, no matter what fifty public sheets may say about the unfortunate
young fellow. Whether the journalists have told the truth or distorted
it is their affair, not mine. I do not know and I do not wish to know
what they have written. But the fact of the suicide is notorious. You
cannot dispute it. It would now be advisable to investigate closely, and
by the light of science, the circumstances in which the deed was
committed. Do not be surprised by my thus invoking the aid of science.
Science has no better friend than religion. Now medical science may in
the present case be of great assistance to us. You will understand in a
moment. Mother Church ejects the suicide from her bosom only when his
act is an act of despair. The madmen who attempt their own lives are not
those who have lost all hope, and the Church does not deny them her
prayers; she prays for all who are unfortunate. Now, if it could be
proved that this poor boy had acted under the influence of a high fever
or of a mental disorder, if a medical man were in a position to certify
that the poor fellow was not in possession of his faculties when he slew
himself with his own hand, there would be no obstacle to the celebration
of a religious service."
Having hearkened to the words of Monsieur l'Abbé Mirabelle, Madame
Doulce hastened back to the theatre. The rehearsal of _La Grille_ was
over. She found Pradel in his office with a couple of young actresses,
one of whom was soliciting an engagement, the other, leave of absence.
He refused, in conformity with his principle never to grant a request
until he had first refused it. In this way he bestowed a value upon his
most trifling concessions. His glistening eyes and his patriarchal
beard, his manner, at once amorous and paternal, gave him a resemblance
to Lot, as we see him between his two daughters in the prints of the Old
Masters. Standing on the table was an amphora of gilt pasteboard which
fostered this illusion.
"It can't be done," he was telling each of them. "It really can't be
done, my child----Well, after all, look in to-morrow."
Having dismissed them, he inquired, as he signed some letters:
"Well, Madame Doulce, what news do you bring?"
Constantin Marc, appearing with Nanteuil, hastily exclaimed:
"What about my scenery, Monsieur Pradel?"
Thereupon he described for the twentieth time the landscape, upon which
the curtain ought to rise.
"In the foreground, an old park. The trunks of the great trees, on the
north side, are green with moss. The dampness of the soil must be felt."
And the manager replied:
"You may rest assured that everything that can be done will be done, and
that it will be most appropriate. Well, Madame Doulce, what news?"
"There is a glimmer of hope," she replied.
"At the back, in a slight mist," said the author, "the grey stones and
the slate roofs of the Abbaye-aux-Dames."
"Quite so. Pray be seated, Madame Doulce; you have my attention."
"I was most courteously received at the Archbishop's Palace," said
Madame Doulce.
"Monsieur Pradel, it is imperative that the walls of the Abbaye should
appear inscrutable, of great thickness, and yet subtilized by the mists
of coming night. A pale-gold sky----"
"Monsieur l'Abbé Mirabelle," resumed Madame Doulce, "is a priest of the
highest distinction----"
"Monsieur Marc, are you particularly keen on your pale-gold sky?"
inquired the stage manager. "Go on, Madame Doulce, go on, I am listening
to you."
"And exquisitely polite. He made a delicate allusion to the
indiscretions of the newspapers----"
At this moment Monsieur Marchegeay, the stage manager, burst into the
room. His green eyes were glittering, and his red moustache was dancing
like a flame. The words rolled off his tongue:
"They are at it again! Lydie, the little super, is screaming like a
stoat on the stairs. She says Delage tried to violate her. It's at least
the tenth time in a month that she has come out with that story. This
is an infernal nuisance!"
"Such conduct cannot be tolerated in a house like this," said Pradel.
"You'll have to fine Delage. Pray continue, Madame Doulce."
"Monsieur l'Abbé Mirabelle explained to me in the clearest manner that
suicide is an act of despair."
But Constantin Marc was inquiring of Pradel with interest, whether
Lydie, the little super, was pretty.
"You have seen her in _La Nuit du 23 octobre_; she plays the woman of
the people who, in the Plaine de Grenelle, is buying wafers of Madame
Ravaud."
"A very pretty girl, to my thinking," said Constantin Marc.
"Undoubtedly," responded Pradel. "But she would be still prettier if her
ankles weren't like stakes."
And Constantin Marc musingly replied.
"And Delage has outraged her. That fellow possesses the sense of love.
Love is a simple and primitive act. It's a struggle, it's hatred.
Violence is necessary to it. Love by mutual consent is merely a tedious
obligation."
And he cried, greatly excited.
"Delage is prodigious!"
"Don't get yourself into a fix," said Pradel.
"This same little Lydie entices my actors into her dressing-room, and
then all of a sudden she screams out that she is being outraged in order
to get hush-money out of them. It's her lover who has taught her the
trick, and takes the coin. You were saying, Madame Doulce----"
"After a long and interesting conversation," resumed Madame Doulce,
"Monsieur l'Abbé Mirabelle suggested a favourable solution. He gave me
to understand that, in order to remove all difficulties, it would be
sufficient for a physician to certify that Chevalier was not in full
possession of his faculties, and that he was not responsible for his
acts."
"But," observed Pradel, "Chevalier wasn't insane. He was in full
possession of his faculties."
"It's not for us to say," replied Madame Doulce. "What do we know about
it?"
"No," said Nanteuil, "he was not in full possession of his faculties."
Pradel shrugged his shoulders.
"After all, it's possible. Insanity and reason, it's a matter of
appreciation. To whom could we apply for a certificate?"
Madame Doulce and Pradel called to mind three physicians in succession;
but they were unable to find the address of the first; the second was
bad-tempered, and it was decided that the third was dead.
Nanteuil suggested that they should approach Dr. Trublet.
"That's an idea!" exclaimed Pradel. "Let us ask a certificate of Dr.
Socrates. What's to-day? Friday. It's his day for consultations. We
shall find him at home."
Dr. Trublet lived in an old house at the top of the Rue de Seine. Pradel
took Nanteuil with him, with the idea that Socrates would refuse nothing
to a pretty woman. Constantin Marc, who could not live, when in Paris,
save in the company of theatrical folk, accompanied them. The Chevalier
affair was beginning to amuse him. He found it theatrical, that is,
appropriate to theatrical performers. Although the hour for
consultations was over, the doctor's sitting-room was still full of
people in search of healing. Trublet dismissed them, and received his
theatrical friends in his private room. He was standing in front of a
table encumbered with books and papers. An adjustable arm-chair, infirm
and cynical, displayed itself by the window. The director of the Odéon
set forth the object of his call, and ended by saying:
"Chevalier's funeral service cannot be celebrated in the church unless
you certify that the unfortunate young man was not altogether sane."
Dr. Trublet declared that Chevalier might very well do without a
religious service.
"Adrienne Lecouvreur, who was of more account than Chevalier, did
without one. Mademoiselle Monime had no Mass said for her after her
death, and, as you are aware, she was denied 'the honour of rotting in a
nasty cemetery in the company of all the beggars of the quarter.' She
was none the worse off for that."
"You are not ignorant of the fact, Dr. Socrates," replied Pradel, "that
actors and actresses are the most religious of people. My company would
be deeply grieved if they could not be present at the celebration of a
Mass for their colleague. They have already secured the co-operation of
several lyric artists, and the music will be very fine."
"Now that's a reason," said Trublet "I do not gainsay it. Charles
Monselet, who was a witty fellow, was reflecting, only a few hours
before his death, on his musical Mass, 'I know a great many singers at
the Opéra,' he said, 'I shall have a _Pie Jésu aux truffes_.' But, as on
this occasion the Archbishop does not authorize a spiritual concert, it
would be more convenient to postpone it to some other occasion."
"As far as I am concerned," replied the director, "I have no religious
belief. But I consider that the Church and the Stage are two great
social powers, and that it is beneficial that they should be friends and
allies. For my own part, I never lose an opportunity of sealing the
alliance. This coming Lent, I shall have Durville read one of
Bourdaloue's sermons. I receive a State subsidy. I must observe the
Concordat. Moreover, whatever people may say, Catholicism is the most
acceptable form of religious indifference."
"Well then," objected Constantin Marc, "since you wish to show deference
to the Church, why do you foist upon her, by force or by subterfuge, a
coffin which she doesn't want?"
The doctor spoke in a similar strain, and ended by saying.
"My dear Pradel, don't you have anything more to do with the matter."
"Whereupon Nanteuil, her eyes blazing, her voice sibilant, cried:
"He must go to church, doctor; sign what is asked of you, write that he
was not in possession of his faculties, I entreat you."
There was not religion alone at the back of this desire. Blended with it
was an intimate feeling, an obscure background of old beliefs, of which
she herself was unaware. She hoped that if he were carried into the
church, and sprinkled with holy water, Chevalier would be appeased,
would become one of the peaceful dead, and would no longer torment her.
She feared, on the other hand, that if he were deprived of benediction
and prayers he would perpetually hover about her, accursed and
maleficent. And, more simply still, in her dread of seeing him again,
she was anxious that the priests should take good care to bury him, and
that everybody should attend the funeral, so that he should be all the
more thoroughly buried; as thoroughly buried, in short, as it was
possible to be. Her lips trembled and she wrung her hands.
Trublet, who had long graduated in human nature, watched her with
interest. He understood and took a special interest in the female of the
human machine. This particular specimen filled him with joy. His
snub-nosed face beamed with delight as he watched her.
"Don't be uneasy, child. There is always a way of coming to an
understanding with the Church. What you are asking me is not within my
powers; I am a lay doctor. But we have to-day, thank God, religious
physicians who send their patients to the ecclesiastical waters, and
whose special function is to attest miraculous cures. I know one who
lives in this part of the town; I'll give you his address. Go and see
him; the Bishop will refuse him nothing. He will arrange the matter for
you."
"Not at all," said Pradel. "You always attended poor Chevalier. It is
for you to give a certificate."
Romilly agreed:
"Of course, doctor. You are the physician to the theatre. We must wash
our dirty linen at home."
At the same time, Nanteuil turned upon Socrates a gaze of entreaty.
"But," objected Trublet, "what do you want me to say?"
"It's very simple," Pradel replied. "Say that he was to a certain extent
irresponsible."
"You are simply asking me to speak like a police surgeon. It's expecting
too much of me."
"You believe then, doctor, that Chevalier was fully and entirely morally
responsible?"
"Quite the contrary. I am of opinion that he was not in the least
responsible for his actions."
"Well, then?"
"But I also consider that, in this respect, he differed in nowise from
you, myself, and all other men. My judicial colleagues distinguish
between individual responsibilities. They have procedures by which they
recognize full responsibilities, and those which lack one or more
fractional parts. It is a remarkable fact, moreover, that in order to
get a poor wretch condemned they always find him fully responsible. May
we not therefore consider that their own responsibility is full--like
the moon?"
And Dr. Socrates proceeded to unfold before the astonished stage folk a
comprehensive theory of universal determinism. He went back to the
origins of life, and, like the Silenus of Virgil, who, smeared with the
juice of mulberries, sang to the shepherds of Sicily and the naiad
Aglaia of the origin of the world, he broke out into a flood of words:
"To call upon a poor wretch to answer for his actions! Why, even when
the solar system was still no more than a pale nebula, forming, in the
ether, a fragile halo, whose circumference was a thousand times greater
than the orbit of Neptune, we had all of us, for ages past, been fully
conditioned, determined and irrevocably destined, and your
responsibility, my dear child, my responsibility, Chevalier's, and that
of all men, had been, not mitigated, but abolished beforehand. All our
movements, the result of previous movements of matter, are subject to
the laws which govern the cosmic forces, and the human mechanism is
merely a particular instance of the universal mechanism."
Pointing to a locked cupboard, he proceeded.
"I have there, contained in bottles, that which would transform,
destroy, or excite to frenzy the will of fifty thousand men."
"Wouldn't be playing the game," objected Pradel.
"I agree, it wouldn't be playing the game. But these substances are not
essentially laboratory products. The laboratory combines, it does not
create anything. These substances are scattered throughout nature. In
their free state, they surround and enter into us, they determine our
will, they circumscribe our freedom of device, which is merely the
illusion engendered within us by the ignorance of our determinations."
"What on earth do you mean?" asked Pradel, taken aback.
"I mean that our will is an illusion caused by our ignorance of the
causes which compel us to exert our will. That which wills within us is
not ourselves, but myriads of cells of prodigious activity, of which we
know nothing, which are unaware of us, which are ignorant of one
another, but which nevertheless constitute us. By means of their
restlessness they produce innumerable currents which we call our
passions, our thoughts, our joys, our sufferings, our desires, our
fears, and our will. We believe that we are our own masters, while a
mere drop of alcohol stimulates, and then benumbs the very elements by
which we feel and will."
Constantin Marc interrupted the physician:
"Excuse me! Since you are speaking of the action of alcohol, I should
like your advice on the subject. I am in the habit of drinking a small
glass of Armagnac brandy after each meal. That's not too much, is it?"
"It's a great deal too much. Alcohol is a poison. If you have a bottle
of brandy at home, fling it out of the window."
Pradel was pondering. He considered that in suppressing will and
responsibility in all human things Dr. Socrates was doing him a personal
injury.
"You may say what you like. Will and responsibility are not illusions.
They are tangible and powerful realities. I know how the terms of my
contract bind me, and I impose my will on others."
And he added with some bitterness:
"I believe in the will, in moral responsibility, in the distinction
between good and evil. Doubtless these are, according to you, stupid
ideas."
"They are indeed stupid ideas," replied the physician, "but they are
very suitable to us, since we are mere animals. We are for ever
forgetting this. They are stupid, venerable, wholesome ideas. Men have
felt that, without these ideas, they would all go mad. They had only the
choice between stupidity and madness. Very reasonably they chose
stupidity. Such is the foundation of moral ideas."
"What a paradox!" exclaimed Romilly.
The physician calmly proceeded:
"The distinction between good and evil in human societies has never
emerged from the grossest empiricism. It was constituted in a wholly
practical spirit and as a simple convenience. We do not trouble
ourselves about it where cut-glass or a tree is concerned. We practise
moral indifference with regard to animals. We practise it in the case of
savage races. This enables us to exterminate them without remorse.
That's what is known as the colonial policy. Nor do we find that
believers exact a high degree of morality from their god. In the present
state of society, they would not willingly admit that he was lecherous
or compromised himself with women; but they do think it fitting that he
should be vindictive and cruel. Morality is a mutual agreement to keep
what we possess: land, houses, furniture, women, and our lives. It does
not imply, in the case of those who bow to it, any particular
intelligence or character. It is instinctive and ferocious. Written law
follows it closely, and is in more or less harmonious agreement with it.
Hence we see that great-hearted men, or men of brilliant genius, have
almost all been accused of impiety, and, like Socrates, the son of
Phenaretes, and Benoît Malon, have been smitten by the tribunals of
their country. And it may be stated that a man who has not, at the very
least, been sentenced to imprisonment does little credit to the land of
his fathers."
"There are exceptions," remarked Pradel.
"Few," replied Dr. Trublet.
But Nanteuil, pursuing her idea, remarked.
"My little Socrates, you can very well certify that he was insane. It is
the truth. He was not sane, I know it only too well."
"No doubt he was mad, my dear child. But it is a question of determining
whether he was madder than other men. The entire history of humanity,
replete with tortures, ecstasies, and massacres, is the history of
raving, demented creatures."
"Doctor," inquired Constantin Marc, "are you by chance one of those who
do not admire War? It is nevertheless a magnificent thing, when you come
to think of it. The animals merely eat one another. Men have conceived
the idea of beautiful massacres. They have learnt to kill one another in
glittering cuirasses, in helmets topped with plumes, or maned with
scarlet. By the use of artillery, and the art of fortification, they
have introduced chemistry and mathematics among the necessary means of
destruction. War is a sublime invention. And, since the extermination of
human beings appears to us the only object of life, the wisdom of man
resides in this, that he has made this extermination a delight and a
splendour. After all, doctor, you cannot deny that murder is a law of
nature, and that it is consequently divine."
To which Dr. Socrates replied:
"We are only miserable animals, and yet we are our own providence and
our own gods. The lower animals, whose immemorial reign preceded our own
upon this planet, have transformed it by their genius and their courage.
The insects have traced roads, excavated the soil, hollowed the trunks
of trees and rocks, built dwellings, founded cities, metamorphosed the
soil, the air, and the waters. The labour of the humblest of these, that
of the madrepores, has created islands and continents. Every material
change produces a moral change, since morals depend upon environment.
The transformation to which man in his turn has subjected the earth is
undoubtedly more profound and more harmonious than the transformation
wrought by other animals. Why should not humanity succeed in changing
nature to the extent of making it pacific? Why should not humanity,
miserably puny though it is and will be, succeed, some day, in
suppressing, or at least in controlling the struggle for life? Why
indeed should not humanity abolish the law of murder? We may expect a
great deal from chemistry. Yet I do not guarantee anything. It is
possible that our race will persist in melancholy, delirium, mania,
dementia, and stupor until its lamentable end amid ice and darkness.
This world is perhaps irremediably wicked. At all events, I shall have
got plenty of amusement out of it. It affords those who are in it an
interesting spectacle, and I am beginning to think that Chevalier was
madder than the rest in that he voluntarily left his seat."
Nanteuil took a pen from the desk, and held it out, dipped in ink, to
the doctor.
He began to write:
"Having been called on several occasions to attend----"
He interrupted himself to ask Chevalier's Christian name.
"Aimé," replied Nanteuil.
"Aimé Chevalier, I have noticed in his system certain disorders of
sensibility, vision and motor control, ordinary indications of----"
He went to fetch a book from a shelf of his library.
"It's a thousand chances that I shall find something to confirm my
diagnosis in the lectures of Professor Ball on mental diseases."
He turned over the leaves of the book.
"Just see, my dear Romilly, this is what I find to begin with; in the
eighteenth lecture, page 389: 'Many madmen are to be met with among
actors.' This remark of Professor Ball's reminds me that the celebrated
Cabanis one day asked Dr. Esprit Blanche whether the stage was not a
cause of madness."
"Really?" asked Romilly uneasily.
"Not a doubt of it," replied Trublet. "But listen to what Professor Ball
says on the same page. 'It is an incontestable fact that medical men are
excessively predisposed to mental aberration.' Nothing is truer. Among
medical men, those who are more especially predestined to insanity are
the alienists. It is often difficult to determine which of the two is
the crazier, the madman or his doctor. People say too that men of genius
are prone to insanity. That is certainly the case. Still, a man is not a
reasoning being merely because he is an idiot."
After glancing a little further through the pages of Professor Ball's
lectures, he resumed his writing:
"Ordinary indications of maniacal excitement, and, if it be taken into
consideration that the subject was of a neuropathic temperament, there
is reason to believe that his constitution predisposed him to insanity,
which, according to the highest authorities, is merely an exaggeration
of the habitual temperament of the individual, and hence it is not
possible to credit him with full moral responsibility."
He signed the sheet and handed it to Pradel, saying:
"Here's something that is innocuous and too devoid of meaning to contain
the slightest falsehood."
Pradel rose and said:
"Believe me, my dear doctors we should not have asked you to tell a
lie."
"Why not? I am a medical man. I keep a lie-shop. I relieve, I console.
How is it possible to relieve and console without lying?"
Then, with a sympathetic glance at Nanteuil; he added:
"Only women and physicians know how necessary untruthfulness is, and how
beneficial to man."
And, as Pradel, Constantin Mate, and Romilly were taking their leave, he
said:
"Pray go out by the dining-room. I've just received a small cask of old
Armagnac. You'll tell me what you think of it!"
Nanteuil had remained behind in the doctor's consulting room.
"My little Socrates, I have spent an awful night. I saw him."
"During your sleep?"
"No, when wide awake."
"You are sure you were not sleeping?"
"Quite sure."
He was on the point of asking her if the apparition had spoken to her.
But he left the question unspoken, fearing lest he might suggest to so
sensitive a subject those hallucinations of the sense of hearing, which,
by reason of their imperious nature, he dreaded far more than visual
hallucinations. He was familiar with the docility of the sick in obeying
orders given them by voices. Abandoning the idea of questioning Félicie,
he resolved, at all hazards, to remove any scruples of conscience which
might be troubling her. At the same time, having observed that,
generally speaking, the sense of moral responsibility is weak in women,
he made no great effort in that direction, and contented himself with
remarking lightly:
"My dear child, you must not consider yourself responsible for the death
of that poor fellow. A suicide inspired by passion is the inevitable
termination of a pathological condition. Every individual who commits
suicide had to commit suicide. You are merely the incidental cause of an
accident, which is, of course, deplorable, but the importance of which
should not be exaggerated."
Thinking that he had said enough on this score, he applied himself
immediately to dispersing the terrors which surrounded her. He sought to
convince her by simple arguments that she was beholding images which had
no reality, mere reflections of her own thoughts. In order to
illustrate his demonstration, he told her a story of a reassuring
nature.
"An English physician," he told her, "was attending a lady, like
yourself, highly intelligent, who, like yourself, was in the habit of
seeing cats under her furniture, and was visited by phantoms. He
convinced her that these apparitions corresponded to nothing in reality.
She believed him, and worried herself no longer. One fine day, after a
long period of retirement, she reappeared in society, and on entering a
drawing-room she saw the lady of the house who, pointing to an
arm-chair, begged her to be seated. She also saw, seated in this chair,
a crafty-looking old gentleman. She argued to herself that one of the
two persons was necessarily a creature of the imagination, and, deciding
that the gentleman had no real existence, she sat down on the arm-chair.
On touching the bottom, she drew a long breath. From that day onward,
she never again set eyes on any further phantoms, either of man or of
beast. When smothering the crafty-looking old gentleman, she had
smothered them all--fundamentally."
Félicie shook her head, saying:
"That does not apply to this case."
She meant to say that her own phantom was not a grotesque old man, on
whom one could sit, but a jealous dead man who did not pay her visits
without some object. But she feared to speak of these things; and,
letting her hands fall upon her knees, she held her peace.
Seeing her thus, dejected and crushed, he pointed out that these
disorders of the vision were neither rare nor very serious, and that
they soon vanished without leaving any traces.
"I myself," he said, "once had a vision."
"You?"
"Yes, I had a vision, some twenty years ago. It was in Egypt."
He noticed that she was looking at him inquiringly, so he began the
story of his hallucination, having switched on all the electric lights,
in order to disperse the phantoms of darkness.
"In the days when I was practising in Cairo, I was accustomed, in the
February of each year, to go up the Nile as far as Luxor, and thence I
proceeded, in company with some friends, to visit the tombs and temples
in the desert. These trips across the sands are made on donkey-back. The
last time I went to Luxor I hired a young donkey-boy, whose white donkey
Rameses was stronger than the others. This donkey-boy, whose name was
Selim, was also stronger, slenderer, and better looking than the other
donkey-boys. He was fifteen years old. His shy, gentle eyes shone from
behind a magnificent veil of long black lashes; his brown face was a
pure clear-cut oval. He tramped barefoot through the desert with a step
which made one think of those dances of warriors of which the Bible
speaks. His every movement was graceful; his young animal-like gaiety
was charming. As he prodded Rameses' back with the point of his stick,
he would chatter to me in a limited vocabulary in which English, French
and Arabic were intermingled; he enjoyed telling me of the travellers
whom he had escorted and who, he believed, were all princes or
princesses; but if I asked him about his relations or his companions he
remained silent, and assumed an air of indifference and boredom. When
cadging for a promise of substantial baksheesh, the nasal twang of his
voice assumed caressing inflexions. He thought out subtle stratagems and
expended whole treasuries of prayers in order to obtain a cigarette.
Noticing that I liked to see the donkey-boys treat their beasts with
kindness, he used, in my presence, to kiss Rameses on the nostrils, and
when we halted he would waltz with him. He often displayed real
ingenuity in getting what he wanted. But he was far too short-sighted
ever to show the slightest gratitude for what he had obtained. Greedy of
piastres, he coveted still more eagerly such small glittering articles
as one cannot keep covered--gold scarf-pins, rings, sleeve-links, or
nickel cigar-lighters; and when he saw a gold chain his face would
light up with a gleam of pleasure.
"The following summer was the hardest time of my life. An epidemic of
cholera had broken out in Lower Egypt. I was running about the town all
day long in a scorching atmosphere. Cairo summers are overpowering to
Europeans. We were going through the hottest weeks I had ever known. I
heard one day that Selim, brought before the native court of Cairo, had
been sentenced to death. He had murdered the daughter of some fellaheen,
a little girl nine years old, in order to rob her of her ear-rings, and
had thrown her into a cistern. The rings, stained with blood, had been
found under a big stone in the Valley of the Kings. They were the crude
jewels which the Nubian nomads hammer out of shillings or two-franc
pieces, I was told that Selim would certainly be hanged, because the
little girl's mother refused the tendered blood-money. Now, the Khedive
does not enjoy the prerogative of mercy, and the murderer, according to
Moslem law, can redeem his life only if the parents of the victim
consent to receive from him a sum of money as compensation. I was too
busy to give thought to the matter. I could readily imagine that Selim,
cunning but thoughtless, caressing yet unfeeling, had played with the
little girl, torn off her ear-rings, killed her, and hidden her body.
The affair soon passed out of my mind. The epidemic was spreading from
Old Cairo to the European quarters. I was visiting from thirty to forty
sick persons daily, practising venous injections in every case. I was
suffering from liver trouble, anæmia was playing havoc with me, and I
was dropping with fatigue. In order to husband my strength, I took a
little rest at noon. I was accustomed, after luncheon, to lie down in
the inner courtyard of my house, and there for an hour I bathed myself
in the African shade, as dense and cool as water. One day, as I was
lying there on a divan in my courtyard, just as I was lighting a
cigarette, I saw Selim approaching. With his beautiful bronze arm he
lifted the door-curtain, and came towards me in his blue robe. He did
not speak, but smiled with his shy and innocent smile, and the deep red
of his lips disclosed his dazzling teeth. His eyes, beneath the blue
shadow of his eyelashes, shone with covetousness while gazing at my
watch which lay on the table.
"I thought he had escaped. And this surprised me, not because captives
are strictly watched in Oriental prisons, where men, women, horses and
dogs are herded in imperfectly closed courtyards, and guarded by a
soldier armed with a stick. But Moslems are never tempted to flee from
their fate. Selim knelt down with an appealing grace, and approached
his lips to my hand, to kiss it according to ancient custom. I was not
asleep, and I had proof of it. I also had proof that the apparition had
been before me only for a short time. When Selim had vanished I noticed
that my cigarette, which was alight, was not yet tipped with ash."
"Was he dead when you saw him?" asked Nanteuil.
"Not a bit of it," replied the doctor, "I heard a few days later that
Selim, in his jail, wove little baskets, or played for hours at a time
with a chaplet of glass balls, and that he would smilingly beg a piastre
of European visitors, who were surprised by the caressing softness of
his eyes. Moslem justice is slow. He was hanged six months later. No
one, not even he himself, was greatly concerned about it. I was in
Europe at the time."
"And since then he has never reappeared?"
"Never."
Nanteuil looked at him, disappointed.
"I thought he had come when he was dead. But since he was in prison you
certainly could not have seen him in your house. You only thought you
saw him."
The physician, understanding what was in Félicie's mind, quickly replied:
"My dear little Nanteuil, believe what I tell you. The phantoms of the
dead have no more reality than the phantoms of the living."
Without attending to what he was saying, she asked him if it was really
because he suffered from his liver that he had a vision. He replied that
he believed that the bad state of his digestive organs, general fatigue,
and a tendency to congestion, had all predisposed him to behold an
apparition.
"There was; I believe," he added, "a more immediate cause. Stretched
out on my divan, my head was very low. I raised it to light a cigarette,
and let it fall back immediately. This attitude is particularly
favourable to hallucinations. It is sometimes enough to lie down with
one's head thrown back to see and to hear imaginary shapes and sounds.
That is why I advise you, my child, to sleep with a bolster and a fat
pillow."
She began to laugh.
"As mamma does--majestically!"
Then, flitting off to another idea:
"Tell me; Socrates, how comes it that you saw this sordid individual
rather than another? You had hired a donkey from him, and you were no
longer thinking of him. And yet he came. Say what you like, it's queer."
"You ask me why it was he rather than another? It would be very hard for
me to tell you. Our visions, bound up with our innermost thoughts,
often present their images to us; sometimes there is no connection
between them, and they show us an unexpected figure."
He once more exhorted her not to allow herself to be frightened by
phantoms.
"The dead do not return. When one of them appears to you, rest assured
that what you see is a thing imagined by your brain."
"Can you," she inquired; "guarantee that there is nothing after death?"
"My child, there is nothing after death that could frighten you."
She rose, picked up her little bag and her part, and held out her hand
to the doctor, saying:
"As for you, you don't believe in anything, do you, old Socrates?"
He detained her for a moment in the waiting-room, warned her to take
good care of herself, to lead a quiet, restful life, and to take
sufficient rest.
"Do you suppose that is easy in our profession? To-morrow I have a
rehearsal in the green-room, and one on the stage, and I have to try on
a gown, while to-night I am acting. For more than a year now I've been
leading that sort of life."