Collect your thoughts and remember that if the law of man is
inflexible, there still remains for you the mercy of God. This you can
merit by confessing your crime.”
These words stunned me like a blow from a hammer. I fell back with
extended arms, crying:
“Ah! what a terrible dream!”
And I fainted.
When I regained consciousness, the carriage was rolling slowly down
the street; another one preceded us. The two officers were always with
me. One of them on the way offered a pinch of snuff to his companion;
mechanically I reached out my hand toward the snuff-box, but he
withdrew it quickly.
My cheeks reddened with shame, and I turned away my head to conceal my
emotion.
“If you look outside,” said the man with the snuff-box, “we shall be
obliged to put handcuffs on you.”
“May the devil strangle you, you infernal scoundrel!” I said to myself.
And as the carriage now stopped, one of them got out, while the other
held me by the collar; then, seeing that his comrade was ready to
receive me, he pushed me rudely to him.
These infinite precautions to hold possession of my person boded no
good; but I was far from predicting the seriousness of the accusation
that hung over my head until an alarming circumstance opened my eyes
and threw me into despair.
They pushed me along a low alley, the pavement of which was unequal and
broken; along the wall there ran a yellowish ooze, exhaling a fetid
odor. I walked down this dark place with the two men behind me. A
little further there appeared the chiaroscuro of an interior courtyard.
I grew more and more terror-stricken as I advanced. It was no natural
feeling: it was a poignant anxiety, outside of nature--like a
nightmare. I recoiled instinctively at each step.
“Go on!” cried one of the policemen, laying his hand on my shoulder;
“go on!”
But what was my astonishment when, at the end of the passage, I saw the
courtyard that I had drawn the night before, with its walls furnished
with hooks, its rubbish-heap of old iron, its chicken-coops, and its
rabbit-hutch. Not a dormer window, high or low, not a broken pane, not
the slightest detail had been omitted.
I was thunderstruck by this strange revelation.
Near the well were the two judges, Van Spreckdal and Richter. At their
feet lay the old woman extended on her back, her long, thin, gray hair,
her blue face, her eyes wide open, and her tongue between her teeth.
It was a horrible spectacle!
“Well,” said Van Spreckdal, with solemn accents, “what have you to say?”
I did not reply.
“Do you remember having thrown this woman, Theresa Becker, into this
well, after having strangled her to rob her of her money?”
“No,” I cried, “no! I do not know this woman; I never saw her before.
May God help me!”
“That will do,” he replied in a dry voice. And without saying another
word he went out with his companion.
The officers now believed that they had best put handcuffs on me. They
took me back to the Raspelhaus, in a state of profound stupidity. I did
not know what to think; my conscience itself troubled me; I even asked
myself if I really had murdered the old woman!
In the eyes of the officers I was condemned.
I will not tell you of my emotions that night in the Raspelhaus, when,
seated on my straw bed with the window opposite me and the gallows in
perspective, I heard the watchmen cry in the silence of the night:
“Sleep, people of Nuremberg; the Lord watches over you. One o’clock!
Two o’clock! Three o’clock!”
Every one may form his own idea of such a night. There is a fine saying
that it is better to be hanged innocent than guilty. For the soul,
yes; but for the body, it makes no difference; on the contrary, it
kicks, it curses its lot, it tries to escape, knowing well enough that
its rôle ends with the rope. Add to this, that it repents not having
sufficiently enjoyed life and at having listened to the soul when it
preached abstinence.
“Ah! if I had only known!” it cried, “you would not have led me
around by a string with your big words, your beautiful phrases, and
your magnificent sentences! You would not have allured me with your
fine promises. I should have had many happy moments that are now lost
forever. Everything is over! You said to me: ‘Control your passions.’
Very well! I did control them. Here I am now. They are going to hang
me, and you--later they will speak of you as a sublime soul, a stoical
soul, a martyr to the errors of Justice. They will never think about
me!”
Such were the sad reflections of my poor body.
Day broke; at first, dull and undecided, it threw an uncertain light
on my bull’s-eye window with its crossbars; then it blazed against
the wall at the back. Outside the street became lively. This was a
market-day; it was Friday. I heard the vegetable wagons pass and also
the country people with their baskets. Some chickens cackled in their
coops in passing and some butter sellers chattered together. The market
opposite opened, and they began to arrange the stalls.
Finally it was broad daylight and the vast murmur of the increasing
crowd, housekeepers who assembled with baskets on their arms, coming
and going, discussing and marketing, told me that it was eight o’clock.
With the light, my heart gained a little courage. Some of my black
thoughts disappeared. I desired to see what was going on outside.
Other prisoners before me had managed to climb up to the bull’s-eye;
they had dug some holes in the wall to mount more easily. I climbed
in my turn, and, when seated in the oval edge of the window, with my
legs bent and my head bowed, I could see the crowd, and all the life
and movement. Tears ran freely down my cheeks. I thought no longer of
suicide--I experienced a need to live and breathe, which was really
extraordinary.
“Ah!” I said, “to live what happiness! Let them harness me to a
wheelbarrow--let them put a ball and chain around my leg--nothing
matters if I may only live!”
The old market, with its roof shaped like an extinguisher, supported
on heavy pillars, made a superb picture: old women seated before their
panniers of vegetables, their cages of poultry and their baskets of
eggs; behind them the Jews, dealers in old clothes, their faces the
color of old boxwood; butchers with bare arms, cutting up meat on their
stalls; countrymen, with large hats on the backs of their heads, calm
and grave with their hands behind their backs and resting on their
sticks of hollywood, and tranquilly smoking their pipes. Then the
tumult and noise of the crowd--those screaming, shrill, grave, high,
and short words--those expressive gestures--those sudden attitudes that
show from a distance the progress of a discussion and depict so well
the character of the individual--in short, all this captivated my mind,
and notwithstanding my sad condition, I felt happy to be still of the
world.
Now, while I looked about in this manner, a man--a butcher--passed,
inclining forward and carrying an enormous quarter of beef on his
shoulders; his arms were bare, his elbows were raised upward and his
head was bent under them. His long hair, like that of Salvator’s
Sicambrian, hid his face from me; and yet, at the first glance, I
trembled.
“It is he!” I said.
All the blood in my body rushed to my heart. I got down from the window
trembling to the ends of my fingers, feeling my cheeks quiver, and the
pallor spread over my face, stammering in a choked voice:
“It is he! he is there--there--and I, I have to die to expiate his
crime. Oh, God! what shall I do? What shall I do?”
A sudden idea, an inspiration from Heaven, flashed across my mind. I
put my hand in the pocket of my coat--my box of crayons was there!
Then rushing to the wall, I began to trace the scene of the murder with
superhuman energy. No uncertainty, no hesitation! I knew the man! I had
seen him! He was there before me!
At ten o’clock the jailer came to my cell. His owl-like impassibility
gave place to admiration.
“Is it possible?” he cried, standing at the threshold.
“Go, bring me my judges,” I said to him, pursuing my work with an
increasing exultation.
Schlüssel answered:
“They are waiting for you in the trial-room.”
“I wish to make a revelation,” I cried, as I put the finishing touches
to the mysterious personage.
He lived; he was frightful to see. His full-faced figure, foreshortened
upon the wall, stood out from the white background with an astonishing
vitality.
The jailer went away.
A few minutes afterward the two judges appeared. They were stupefied.
I, trembling, with extended hand, said to them:
“There is the murderer!”
After a few minutes of silence, Van Spreckdal asked me:
“What is his name?”
“I don’t know; but he is at this moment in the market; he is cutting up
meat in the third stall to the left as you enter from Trabaus Street.”
“What do you think?” said he, leaning toward his colleague.
“Send for the man,” he replied in a grave tone.
Several officers retained in the corridor obeyed this order. The judges
stood, examining the sketch. As for me, I had dropped on my bed of
straw, my head between my knees, perfectly exhausted.
Soon steps were heard echoing under the archway. Those who have never
awaited the hour of deliverance and counted the minutes, which seem
like centuries--those who have never experienced the sharp emotions of
outrage, terror, hope, and doubt--can have no conception of the inward
chills that I experienced at that moment. I should have distinguished
the step of the murderer, walking between the guards, among a thousand
others. They approached. The judges themselves seemed moved. I raised
up my head, my heart feeling as if an iron hand had clutched it, and
I fixed my eyes upon the closed door. It opened. The man entered. His
cheeks were red and swollen, the muscles in his large contracted jaws
twitched as far as his ears, and his little restless eyes, yellow like
a wolf’s, gleamed beneath his heavy yellowish red eyebrows.
Van Spreckdal showed him the sketch in silence.
Then that murderous man, with the large shoulders, having looked, grew
pale--then, giving a roar which thrilled us all with terror, he waved
his enormous arms, and jumped backward to overthrow the guards. There
was a terrible struggle in the corridor; you could hear nothing but the
panting breath of the butcher, his muttered imprecations, and the short
words and the shuffling feet of the guard, upon the flagstones.
This lasted only about a minute.
Finally the assassin re-entered, with his head hanging down, his eyes
bloodshot, and his hands fastened behind his back. He looked again at
the picture of the murderer; he seemed to reflect, and then, in a low
voice, as if talking to himself:
“Who could have seen me,” he said, “at midnight?”
I was saved!
* * * * *
Many years have passed since that terrible adventure. Thank Heaven! I
make silhouettes no longer, nor portraits of burgomasters. Through hard
work and perseverance, I have conquered my place in the world, and I
earn my living honorably by painting works of art--the sole end, in my
opinion, to which a true artist should aspire. But the memory of that
nocturnal sketch has always remained in my mind. Sometimes, in the
midst of work, the thought of it recurs. Then I lay down my palette and
dream for hours.
How could a crime committed by a man that I did not know--at a place
that I had never seen--have been reproduced by my pencil, in all its
smallest details?
Was it chance? No! And moreover, what is chance but the effect of a
cause of which we are ignorant?
Was Schiller right when he said: “The immortal soul does not
participate in the weaknesses of matter; during the sleep of the body,
it spreads its radiant wings and travels, God knows where! What it then
does, no one can say, but inspiration sometimes betrays the secret of
its nocturnal wanderings.”
Who knows? Nature is more audacious in her realities than man in his
most fantastic imagining.
THE DESERTED HOUSE
By ERNEST T. W. HOFFMANN
You know already that I spent the greater part of last summer in
X----, began Theodore. The many old friends and acquaintances I found
there, the free, jovial life, the manifold artistic and intellectual
interests--all these combined to keep me in that city. I was happy
as never before, and found rich nourishment for my old fondness for
wandering alone through the streets, stopping to enjoy every picture
in the shop windows, every placard on the walls, or watching the
passers-by and choosing some one or the other of them to cast his
horoscope secretly to myself.
There is one broad avenue leading to the ---- Gate and lined with
handsome buildings of all descriptions, which is the meeting place
of the rich and fashionable world. The shops which occupy the ground
floor of the tall palaces are devoted to the trade in articles of
luxury, and the apartments above are the dwellings of people of wealth
and position. The aristocratic hotels are to be found in this avenue,
the palaces of the foreign ambassadors are there, and you can easily
imagine that such a street would be the centre of the city’s life and
gaiety.
I had wandered through the avenue several times, when one day my
attention was caught by a house which contrasted strangely with the
others surrounding it. Picture to yourselves a low building but four
windows broad, crowded in between two tall, handsome structures. Its
one upper story was a little higher than the tops of the ground-floor
windows of its neighbors, its roof was dilapidated, its windows patched
with paper, its discolored walls spoke of years of neglect. You can
imagine how strange such a house must have looked in this street of
wealth and fashion. Looking at it more attentively I perceived that
the windows of the upper story were tightly closed and curtained, and
that a wall had been built to hide the windows of the ground floor. The
entrance gate, a little to one side, served also as a doorway for the
building, but I could find no sign of latch, lock, or even a bell on
this gate. I was convinced that the house must be unoccupied, for at
whatever hour of the day I happened to be passing I had never seen the
faintest signs of life about it.
You all, the good comrades of my youth, know that I have been prone to
consider myself a sort of clairvoyant, claiming to have glimpses of
a strange world of wonders, a world which you, with your hard common
sense, would attempt to deny or laugh away. I confess that I have often
lost myself in mysteries which after all turned out to be no mysteries
at all. And it looked at first as if this was to happen to me in the
matter of the deserted house, that strange house which drew my steps
and my thoughts to itself with a power that surprised me. But the
point of my story will prove to you that I am right in asserting that I
know more than you do. Listen now to what I am about to tell you.
One day, at the hour in which the fashionable world is accustomed to
promenade up and down the avenue, I stood as usual before the deserted
house, lost in thought. Suddenly I felt, without looking up, that some
one had stopped beside me, fixing his eyes on me. It was Count P----,
who told me that the old house contained nothing more mysterious than a
cake bakery belonging to the pastry cook whose handsome shop adjoined
the old structure. The windows of the ground floor were walled up to
give protection to the ovens, and the heavy curtains of the upper story
were to keep the sunlight from the wares laid out there. When the
Count informed me of this I felt as if a bucket of cold water had been
suddenly thrown over me. But I could not believe in this story of the
cake and candy factory. Through some strange freak of the imagination I
felt as a child feels when some fairy tale has been told it to conceal
the truth it suspects. I scolded myself for a silly fool; the house
remained unaltered in its appearance, and the visions faded in my
brain, until one day a chance incident woke them to life again.
I was wandering through the avenue as usual, and as I passed the
deserted house I could not resist a hasty glance at its close-curtained
upper windows. But as I looked at it, the curtain on the last window
near the pastry shop began to move. A hand, an arm, came out from
between its folds. I took my opera glass from my pocket and saw a
beautifully formed woman’s hand, on the little finger of which a large
diamond sparkled in unusual brilliancy; a rich bracelet glittered on
the white, rounded arm. The hand set a tall, oddly-formed crystal
bottle on the window ledge and disappeared again behind the curtain.
I stopped as if frozen to stone; a weirdly pleasurable sensation,
mingled with awe, streamed through my being with the warmth of an
electric current. I stared up at the mysterious window and a sigh
of longing arose from the very depths of my heart. When I came to
myself again, I was angered to find that I was surrounded by a crowd
which stood gazing up at the window with curious faces. I stole away
inconspicuously, and the demon of all things prosaic whispered to me
that what I had just seen was the rich pastry cook’s wife, in her
Sunday adornment, placing an empty bottle, used for rose-water or the
like, on the window sill. Nothing very weird about this.
Suddenly a most sensible thought came to me. I turned and entered the
shining, mirror-walled shop of the pastry cook. Blowing the steaming
foam from my cup of chocolate, I remarked: “You have a very useful
addition to your establishment next door.” The man leaned over his
counter and looked at me with a questioning smile, as if he did not
understand me. I repeated that in my opinion he had been very clever
to set his bakery in the neighboring house, although the deserted
appearance of the building was a strange sight in its contrasting
surroundings. “Why, sir,” began the pastry cook, “who told you that the
house next door belongs to us? Unfortunately every attempt on our part
to acquire it has been in vain, and I fancy it is all the better so,
for there is something queer about the place.”
You can imagine, dear friends, how interested I became upon hearing
these words, and that I begged the man to tell me more about the house.
“I do not know anything very definite, sir,” he said. “All that we
know for a certainty is that the house belongs to the Countess S----,
who lives on her estates and has not been to the city for years. This
house, so they tell me, stood in its present shape before any of the
handsome buildings were raised which are now the pride of our avenue,
and in all these years there has been nothing done to it except to keep
it from actual decay. Two living creatures alone dwell there, an aged
misanthrope of a steward and his melancholy dog, which occasionally
howls at the moon from the back courtyard. According to the general
story the deserted house is haunted. In very truth my brother, who is
the owner of this shop, and myself have often, when our business kept
us awake during the silence of the night, heard strange sounds from
the other side of the walls. There was a rumbling and a scraping that
frightened us both. And not very long ago we heard one night a strange
singing which I could not describe to you. It was evidently the voice
of an old woman, but the tones were so sharp and clear, and ran up to
the top of the scale in cadences and long trills, the like of which I
have never heard before, although I have heard many singers in many
lands. It seemed to be a French song, but I am not quite sure of that,
for I could not listen long to the mad, ghostly singing, it made the
hair stand erect on my head. And at times, after the street noises are
quiet, we can hear deep sighs, and sometimes a mad laugh, which seem
to come out of the earth. But if you lay your ear to the wall in our
back room, you can hear that the noises come from the house next door.”
He led me into the back room and pointed through the window. “And do
you see that iron chimney coming out of the wall there? It smokes so
heavily sometimes, even in summer when there are no fires used, that
my brother has often quarrelled with the old steward about it, fearing
danger. But the old man excuses himself by saying that he was cooking
his food. Heaven knows what the queer creature may eat, for often, when
the pipe is smoking heavily, a strange and queer smell can be smelled
all over the house.”
The glass doors of the shop creaked in opening. The pastry cook hurried
into the front room, and when he had nodded to the figure now entering
he threw a meaning glance at me. I understood him perfectly. Who else
could this strange guest be, but the steward who had charge of the
mysterious house! Imagine a thin little man with a face the color of
a mummy, with a sharp nose, tight-set lips, green cat’s eyes, and a
crazy smile; his hair dressed in the old-fashioned style with a high
toupet and a bag at the back, and heavily powdered. He wore a faded
old brown coat which was carefully brushed, gray stockings, and broad,
flat-toed shoes with buckles. And imagine further, that in spite of
his meagreness this little person is robustly built, with huge fists
and long, strong fingers, and that he walks to the shop counter with
a strong, firm step, smiling his imbecile smile, and whining out: “A
couple of candied oranges--a couple of macaroons--a couple of sugared
chestnuts----”
The pastry cook smiled at me and then spoke to the old man. “You do
not seem to be quite well. Yes, yes, old age, old age! It takes the
strength from our limbs.” The old man’s expression did not change,
but his voice went up: “Old age?--Old age?--Lose strength?--Grow
weak?--Oho!” And with this he clapped his hands together until the
joints cracked, and sprang high up into the air until the entire shop
trembled and the glass vessels on the walls and counters rattled and
shook. But in the same moment a hideous screaming was heard; the old
man had stepped on his black dog, which, creeping in behind him, had
laid itself at his feet on the floor. “Devilish beast--dog of hell!”
groaned the old man in his former miserable tone, opening his bag and
giving the dog a large macaroon. The dog, which had burst out into a
cry of distress that was truly human, was quiet at once, sat down on
its haunches, and gnawed at the macaroon like a squirrel. When it
had finished its tidbit, the old man had also finished the packing up
and putting away of his purchases. “Good night, honored neighbor,” he
spoke, taking the hand of the pastry cook and pressing it until the
latter cried aloud in pain. “The weak old man wishes you a good night,
most honorable Sir Neighbor,” he repeated, and then walked from the
shop, followed closely by his black dog. The old man did not seem to
have noticed me at all. I was quite dumbfounded in my astonishment.
“There, you see,” began the pastry cook. “This is the way he acts
when he comes in here, two or three times a month, it is. But I can
get nothing out of him except the fact that he was a former valet of
Count S----, that he is now in charge of this house here, and that
every day--for many years now--he expects the arrival of his master’s
family.” The hour was now come when fashion demanded that the elegant
world of the city should assemble in this attractive shop. The doors
opened incessantly, the place was thronged, and I could ask no further
questions.