could break down the barriers that nature had erected. I might feast
my soul upon the wondrous beauty, yet she must always remain ignorant
of the adoring eyes that day and night gazed upon her, and, even when
closed, beheld her in dreams. With a bitter cry of anguish I fled from
the room, and, flinging myself on my bed, sobbed myself to sleep like a
child.
VI
THE SPILLING OF THE CUP
I arose the next morning almost at daybreak, and rushed to my
microscope. I trembled as I sought the luminous world in miniature
that contained my all. Animula was there. I had left the gas-lamp,
surrounded by its moderators, burning when I went to bed the night
before. I found the sylph bathing, as it were, with an expression
of pleasure animating her features, in the brilliant light which
surrounded her. She tossed her lustrous golden hair over her shoulders
with innocent coquetry. She lay at full length in the transparent
medium, in which she supported herself with ease, and gambolled with
the enchanting grace that the nymph Salmacis might have exhibited when
she sought to conquer the modest Hermaphroditus. I tried an experiment
to satisfy myself if her powers of reflection were developed. I
lessened the lamplight considerably. By the dim light that remained,
I could see an expression of pain flit across her face. She looked
upward suddenly, and her brows contracted. I flooded the stage of the
microscope again with a full stream of light, and her whole expression
changed. She sprang forward like some substance deprived of all weight.
Her eyes sparkled and her lips moved. Ah! if science had only the
means of conducting and reduplicating sounds, as it does the rays of
light, what carols of happiness would then have entranced my ears! what
jubilant hymns to Adonais would have thrilled the illumined air!
I now comprehend how it was that the Count de Gabalis peopled his
mystic world with sylphs,--beautiful beings whose breath of life was
lambent fire, and who sported forever in regions of purest ether and
purest light. The Rosicrucian had anticipated the wonder that I had
practically realized.
How long this worship of my strange divinity went on thus I scarcely
know. I lost all note of time. All day from early dawn, and far into
the night, I was to be found peering through that wonderful lens. I saw
no one, went nowhere, and scarce allowed myself sufficient time for my
meals. My whole life was absorbed in contemplation as rapt as that of
any of the Romish saints. Every hour that I gazed upon the divine form
strengthened my passion,--a passion that was always overshadowed by the
maddening conviction that, although I could gaze on her at will, she
never, never could behold me!
At length I grew so pale and emaciated from want of rest and continual
brooding over my insane love and its cruel conditions, that I
determined to make some effort to wean myself from it. “Come,” I said,
“this is at best but a fantasy. Your imagination has bestowed on
Animula charms which in reality she does not possess. Seclusion from
female society has produced this morbid condition of mind. Compare her
with the beautiful women of your own world, and this false enchantment
will vanish.”
I looked over the newspapers by chance. There I beheld the
advertisement of a celebrated _danseuse_ who appeared nightly at
Niblo’s. The Signorina Caradolce had the reputation of being the most
beautiful as well as the most graceful woman in the world. I instantly
dressed and went to the theatre.
The curtain drew up. The usual semicircle of fairies in white muslin
were standing on the right toe around the enamelled flower-bank, of
green canvas, on which the belated prince was sleeping. Suddenly a
flute is heard. The fairies start. The trees open, the fairies all
stand on the left toe, and the queen enters. It was the Signorina. She
bounded forward amid thunders of applause, and, lighting on one foot,
remained poised in air. Heavens! was this the great enchantress that
had drawn monarchs at her chariot-wheels? Those heavy muscular limbs,
those thick ankles, those cavernous eyes, that stereotyped smile, those
crudely painted cheeks! Where were the vermeil blooms, the liquid
expressive eyes, the harmonious limbs of Animula?
The Signorina danced. What gross, discordant movements! The play of her
limbs was all false and artificial. Her bounds were painful athletic
efforts; her poses were angular and distressed the eye. I could bear
it no longer; with an exclamation of disgust that drew every eye
upon me, I rose from my seat in the very middle of the Signorina’s
_pas-de-fascination_, and abruptly quitted the house.
I hastened home to feast my eyes once more on the lovely form of
my sylph. I felt that henceforth to combat this passion would be
impossible. I applied my eye to the lens. Animula was there,--but
what could have happened? Some terrible change seemed to have taken
place during my absence. Some secret grief seemed to cloud the lovely
features of her I gazed upon. Her face had grown thin and haggard;
her limbs trailed heavily; the wondrous lustre of her golden hair had
faded. She was ill!--ill, and I could not assist her! I believe at that
moment I would have gladly forfeited all claims to my human birthright,
if I could only have been dwarfed to the size of an animalcule, and
permitted to console her from whom fate had forever divided me.
I racked my brain for the solution of this mystery. What was it that
afflicted the sylph? She seemed to suffer intense pain. Her features
contracted, and she even writhed, as if with some internal agony. The
wondrous forests appeared also to have lost half their beauty. Their
hues were dim and in some places faded away altogether. I watched
Animula for hours with a breaking heart, and she seemed absolutely to
wither away under my very eye. Suddenly I remembered that I had not
looked at the water-drop for several days. In fact, I hated to see it;
for it reminded me of the natural barrier between Animula and myself.
I hurriedly looked down on the stage of the microscope. The slide was
still there,--but, great heavens! the water-drop had vanished! The
awful truth burst upon me; it had evaporated; until it had become so
minute as to be invisible to the naked eye; I had been gazing on its
last atom, the one that contained Animula,--and she was dying!
I rushed again to the front of the lens, and looked through. Alas! the
last agony had seized her. The rainbow-hued forests had all melted
away, and Animula lay struggling feebly in what seemed to be a spot
of dim light. Ah! the sight was horrible; the limbs once so round and
lovely shrivelling up into nothings; the eyes,--those eyes that shone
like heaven--being quenched into black dust; the lustrous golden hair
now lank and discolored. The last throe came. I beheld that final
struggle of the blackening form--and I fainted.
When I awoke out of a trance of many hours, I found myself lying amid
the wreck of my instrument, myself as shattered in mind and body as it.
I crawled feebly to my bed, from which I did not rise for months.
They say now that I am mad; but they are mistaken. I am poor, for I
have neither the heart nor the will to work; all my money is spent, and
I live on charity. Young men’s associations that love a joke invite me
to lecture on Optics before them, for which they pay me and laugh at me
while I lecture. “Linley, the mad microscopist,” is the name I go by. I
suppose that I talk incoherently while I lecture. Who could talk sense
when his brain is haunted by such ghastly memories, while ever and anon
among the shapes of death I behold the radiant form of my lost Animula!
THE HORLA
By GUY DE MAUPASSANT
May 8th. What a lovely day! I have spent all the morning lying in the
grass in front of my house, under the enormous plantain tree which
covers it, and shades and shelters the whole of it. I like this part of
the country and I am fond of living here because I am attached to it by
deep roots, profound and delicate roots which attach a man to the soil
on which his ancestors were born and died, which attach him to what
people think and what they eat, to the usages as well as to the food,
local expression, the peculiar language of the peasants, to the smell
of the soil, of the villages and of the atmosphere itself.
I love my house in which I grew up. From my windows I can see the Seine
which flows by the side of my garden, on the other side of the road,
almost through my grounds, the great and wide Seine which goes to Rouen
and Havre, and which is covered with boats passing to and fro.
On the left, down yonder, lies Rouen, that large town with its blue
roofs, under its pointed Gothic towers. They are innumerable, delicate
or broad, dominated by the spire of the cathedral, and full of bells
which sound through the blue air on fine mornings, sending their sweet
and distant iron clang to me; their metallic sound which the breeze
wafts in my direction, now stronger and now weaker, according as the
wind is stronger or lighter.
What a delicious morning it was!
About eleven o’clock, a long line of boats drawn by a steam tug, as big
as a fly, and which scarcely puffed while emitting its thick smoke,
passed my gate.
After two English schooners, whose red flag fluttered toward the sky,
there came a magnificent Brazilian three-master; it was perfectly white
and wonderfully clean and shining. I saluted it, I hardly know why,
except that the sight of the vessel gave me great pleasure.
_May 12th._ I have had a slight feverish attack for the last few days,
and I feel ill, or rather I feel low-spirited.
Whence do these mysterious influences come, which change our happiness
into discouragement, and our self-confidence into diffidence? One might
almost say that the air, the invisible air, is full of unknowable
Forces, whose mysterious presence we have to endure. I wake up in the
best spirits, with an inclination to sing in my throat. Why? I go down
by the side of the water, and suddenly, after walking a short distance,
I return home wretched, as if some misfortune were awaiting me there.
Why? Is it a cold shiver which, passing over my skin, has upset my
nerves and given me low spirits? Is it the form of the clouds, or the
color of the sky, or the color of the surrounding objects which is so
changeable, which have troubled my thoughts as they passed before my
eyes? Who can tell? Everything that surrounds us, everything that we
see without looking at it, everything that we touch without knowing it,
everything that we handle without feeling it, all that we meet without
clearly distinguishing it, has a rapid, surprising and inexplicable
effect upon us and upon our organs, and through them on our ideas and
on our heart itself.
How profound that mystery of the Invisible is! We cannot fathom it
with our miserable senses, with our eyes which are unable to perceive
what is either too small or too great, too near to, or too far from
us; neither the inhabitants of a star nor of a drop of water ... with
our ears that deceive us, for they transmit to us the vibrations of
the air in sonorous notes. They are fairies who work the miracle of
changing that movement into noise, and by that metamorphosis give birth
to music, which makes the mute agitation of nature musical ... with our
sense of smell which is smaller than that of a dog ... with our sense
of taste which can scarcely distinguish the age of a wine!
Oh! If we only had other organs which would work other miracles in our
favor, what a number of fresh things we might discover around us!
_May 16th._ I am ill, decidedly! I was so well last month! I am
feverish, horribly feverish, or rather I am in a state of feverish
enervation, which makes my mind suffer as much as my body. I have
without ceasing that horrible sensation of some danger threatening me,
that apprehension of some coming misfortune or of approaching death,
that presentiment which is, no doubt, an attack of some illness which
is still unknown, which germinates in the flesh and in the blood.
_May 18th._ I have just come from consulting my medical man, for I
could no longer get any sleep. He found that my pulse was high, my eyes
dilated, my nerves highly strung, but no alarming symptoms. I must have
a course of shower-baths and of bromide of potassium.
_May 25th._ No change! My state is really very peculiar. As the evening
comes on, an incomprehensible feeling of disquietude seizes me, just as
if night concealed some terrible menace toward me. I dine quickly, and
then try to read, but I do not understand the words, and can scarcely
distinguish the letters. Then I walk up and down my drawing-room,
oppressed by a feeling of confused and irresistible fear, the fear of
sleep and fear of my bed.
About ten o’clock I go up to my room. As soon as I have got in I double
lock, and bolt it: I am frightened--of what? Up till the present time
I have been frightened of nothing--I open my cupboards, and look under
my bed; I listen--I listen--to what? How strange it is that a simple
feeling of discomfort, impeded or heightened circulation, perhaps
the irritation of a nervous thread, a slight congestion, a small
disturbance in the imperfect and delicate functions of our living
machinery, can turn the most lighthearted of men into a melancholy one,
and make a coward of the bravest! Then, I go to bed, and I wait for
sleep as a man might wait for the executioner. I wait for its coming
with dread, and my heart beats and my legs tremble, while my whole
body shivers beneath the warmth of the bedclothes, until the moment
when I suddenly fall asleep, as one would throw oneself into a pool of
stagnant water in order to drown oneself. I do not feel coming over me,
as I used to do formerly, this perfidious sleep which is close to me
and watching me, which is going to seize me by the head, to close my
eyes and annihilate me.
I sleep--a long time--two or three hours perhaps--then a dream--no--a
nightmare lays hold on me. I feel that I am in bed and asleep--I
feel it and I know it--and I feel also that somebody is coming close
to me, is looking at me, touching me, is getting on to my bed, is
kneeling on my chest, is taking my neck between his hands and squeezing
it--squeezing it with all his might in order to strangle me.
I struggle, bound by that terrible powerlessness which paralyzes us in
our dreams; I try to cry out--but I cannot; I want to move--I cannot; I
try, with the most violent efforts and out of breath, to turn over and
throw off this being which is crushing and suffocating me--I cannot!
And then, suddenly, I wake up, shaken and bathed in perspiration; I
light a candle and find that I am alone, and after that crisis, which
occurs every night, I at length fall asleep and slumber tranquilly
till morning.
_June 2d._ My state has grown worse. What is the matter with me? The
bromide does me no good, and the shower-baths have no effect whatever.
Sometimes, in order to tire myself out, though I am fatigued enough
already, I go for a walk in the forest of Roumare. I used to think at
first that the fresh light and soft air, impregnated with the odor of
herbs and leaves, would instill new blood into my veins and impart
fresh energy to my heart. I turned into a broad ride in the wood, and
then I turned toward La Bouille, through a narrow path, between two
rows of exceedingly tall trees, which placed a thick, green, almost
black roof between the sky and me.
A sudden shiver ran through me, not a cold shiver, but a shiver of
agony, and so I hastened my steps, uneasy at being alone in the wood,
frightened stupidly and without reason, at the profound solitude.
Suddenly it seemed to me as if I were being followed, that somebody was
walking at my heels, close, quite close to me, near enough to touch me.
I turned round suddenly, but I was alone. I saw nothing behind me
except the straight, broad ride, empty and bordered by high trees,
horribly empty; on the other side it also extended until it was lost in
the distance, and looked just the same, terrible.
I closed my eyes. Why? And then I began to turn round on one heel very
quickly, just like a top. I nearly fell down, and opened my eyes; the
trees were dancing round me and the earth heaved; I was obliged to sit
down. Then, ah! I no longer remembered how I had come! What a strange
idea! What a strange, strange idea! I did not the least know. I started
off to the right, and got back into the avenue which had led me into
the middle of the forest.
_June 3d._ I have had a terrible night. I shall go away for a few
weeks, for no doubt a journey will set me up again.
_July 2d._ I have come back, quite cured, and have had a most
delightful trip into the bargain. I have been to Mont Saint-Michel,
which I had not seen before.
What a sight, when one arrives as I did, at Avranches toward the end
of the day! The town stands on a hill, and I was taken into the public
garden at the extremity of the town. I uttered a cry of astonishment.
An extraordinary large bay lay extended before me, as far as my eyes
could reach, between two hills which were lost to sight in the mist;
and in the middle of this immense yellow bay, under a clear, golden
sky, a peculiar hill rose up, sombre and pointed in the midst of the
sand. The sun had just disappeared, and under the still flaming sky the
outline of that fantastic rock stood out, which bears on its summit a
fantastic monument.
At daybreak I went to it. The tide was low as it had been the night
before, and I saw that wonderful abbey rise up before me as I
approached it. After several hours’ walking, I reached the enormous
mass of rocks which supports the little town, dominated by the great
church. Having climbed the steep and narrow street, I entered the most
wonderful Gothic building that has ever been built to God on earth, as
large as a town, full of low rooms which seem buried beneath vaulted
roofs, and lofty galleries supported by delicate columns.
I entered this gigantic granite jewel which is as light as a bit of
lace, covered with towers, with slender belfries to which spiral
staircases ascend, and which raise their strange heads that bristle
with chimeras, with devils, with fantastic animals, with monstrous
flowers, and which are joined together by finely carved arches, to the
blue sky by day, and to the black sky by night.
When I had reached the summit, I said to the monk who accompanied me:
“Father, how happy you must be here!” And he replied: “It is very
windy, Monsieur”; and so we began to talk while watching the rising
tide, which ran over the sand and covered it with a steel cuirass.
And then the monk told me stories, all the old stories belonging to the
place, legends, nothing but legends.
One of them struck me forcibly. The country people, those belonging
to the Mornet, declare that at night one can hear talking going on in
the sand, and then that one hears two goats bleat, one with a strong,
the other with a weak voice. Incredulous people declare that it is
nothing but the cry of the sea birds, which occasionally resembles
bleatings, and occasionally human lamentations; but belated fishermen
swear that they have met an old shepherd, whose head, which is covered
by his cloak, they can never see, wandering on the downs, between two
tides, round the little town placed so far out of the world, and who
is guiding and walking before them, a he-goat with a man’s face, and
a she-goat with a woman’s face, and both of them with white hair;
and talking incessantly, quarrelling in a strange language, and then
suddenly ceasing to talk in order to bleat with all their might.
“Do you believe it?” I asked the monk. “I scarcely know,” he replied,
and I continued: “If there are other beings besides ourselves on this
earth, how comes it that we have not known it for so long a time, or
why have you not seen them? How is it that I have not seen them?” He
replied: “Do we see the hundred thousandth part of what exists? Look
here; there is the wind, which is the strongest force in nature, which
knocks down men, and blows down buildings, uproots trees, raises the
sea into mountains of water; destroys cliffs and casts great ships onto
the breakers; the wind which kills, which whistles, which sighs, which
roars--have you ever seen it, and can you see it? It exists for all
that, however.”
I was silent before this simple reasoning. The man was a philosopher,
or perhaps a fool; I could not say which exactly, so I held my tongue.
What he had said, had often been in my own thoughts.
_July 3d._ I have slept badly; certainly there is some feverish
influence here, for my coachman is suffering in the same way as I am.
When I went back home yesterday, I noticed his singular paleness, and I
asked him: “What is the matter with you, Jean?” “The matter is that I
never get any rest, and my nights devour my days. Since your departure,
monsieur, there has been a spell over me.”
However, the other servants are all well, but I am very frightened of
having another attack, myself.
_July 4th._ I am decidedly taken again; for my old nightmares have
returned. Last night I felt somebody leaning on me who was sucking my
life from between my lips with his mouth. Yes, he was sucking it out of
my neck, like a leech would have done. Then he got up, satiated, and I
woke up, so beaten, crushed and annihilated that I could not move. If
this continues for a few days, I shall certainly go away again.
_July 5th._ Have I lost my reason? What has happened? What I saw last
night is so strange that my head wanders when I think of it!
As I do now every evening, I had locked my door, and then, being
thirsty, I drank half a glass of water, and I accidentally noticed that
the water bottle was full up to the cut-glass stopper.
Then I went to bed and fell into one of my terrible sleeps, from which
I was aroused in about two hours by a still more terrible shock.
Picture to yourself a sleeping man who is being murdered and who wakes
up with a knife in his chest, and who is rattling in his throat,
covered with blood, and who can no longer breathe, and is going to die,
and does not understand anything at all about it--there it is.
Having recovered my senses, I was thirsty again, so I lit a candle
and went to the table on which my water bottle was. I lifted it up
and tilted it over my glass, but nothing came out. It was empty! It
was completely empty! At first I could not understand it at all, and
then suddenly I was seized by such a terrible feeling that I had to
sit down, or rather I fell into a chair! Then I sprang up with a bound
to look about me, and then I sat down again, overcome by astonishment
and fear, in front of the transparent crystal bottle! I looked at it
with fixed eyes, trying to conjecture, and my hands trembled! Somebody
had drunk the water, but who? I? I without any doubt. It could surely
only be I? In that case I was a somnambulist, I lived, without knowing
it, that double mysterious life which makes us doubt whether there are
not two beings in us, or whether a strange, unknowable and invisible
being does not at such moments, when our soul is in a state of torpor,
animate our captive body which obeys this other being, as it does us
ourselves, and more than it does ourselves.
Oh! Who will understand my horrible agony? Who will understand the
emotion of a man who is sound in mind, wide awake, full of sound sense,
and who looks in horror at the remains of a little water that has
disappeared while he was asleep, through the glass of a water bottle?
And I remained there until it was daylight, without venturing to go to
bed again.
_July 6th._ I am going mad. Again all the contents of my water bottle
have been drunk during the night--or rather, I have drunk it!
But is it I? Is it I? Who could it be? Who? Oh! God! Am I going mad?
Who will save me?
_July 10th._ I have just been through some surprising ordeals.
Decidedly I am mad! And yet!--
On July 6th, before going to bed, I put some wine, milk, water,
bread and strawberries on my table. Somebody drank--I drank--all the
water and a little of the milk, but neither the wine, bread nor the
strawberries were touched.
On the seventh of July I renewed the same experiment, with the same
results, and on July 8th, I left out the water and the milk and nothing
was touched.