has gone to the Province of San-Paulo, in order to study the origin
and the manifestations of this surprising madness on the spot, and to
propose such measures to the Emperor as may appear to him to be most
fitted to restore the mad population to reason.”
Ah! Ah! I remember now that fine Brazilian three-master which passed in
front of my windows as it was going up the Seine, on the 8th of last
May! I thought it looked so pretty, so white and bright! That Being was
on board of her, coming from there, where its race sprang from. And it
saw me! It saw my house which was also white, and it sprang from the
ship onto the land. Oh! Good heavens!
Now I know, I can divine. The reign of man is over, and he has come.
He whom disquieted priests exorcised, whom sorcerers evoked on dark
nights, without yet seeing him appear, to whom the presentiments of the
transient masters of the world lent all the monstrous or graceful forms
of gnomes, spirits, genii, fairies, and familiar spirits. After the
coarse conceptions of primitive fear, more clear-sighted men foresaw
it more clearly. Mesmer divined him, and ten years ago physicians
accurately discovered the nature of his power, even before he exercised
it himself. They played with that weapon of their new Lord, the sway of
a mysterious will over the human soul, which had become enslaved. They
called it magnetism, hypnotism, suggestion ... what do I know? I have
seen them amusing themselves like impudent children with this horrible
power! Woe to us! Woe to man! He has come, the ... the ... what does
he call himself ... the ... I fancy that he is shouting out his name
to me and I do not hear him ... the ... yes ... he is shouting it out
... I am listening ... I cannot ... repeat ... it ... Horla ... I have
heard ... the Horla ... it is he ... the Horla ... he has come!...
Ah! the vulture has eaten the pigeon, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the
lion has devoured the buffalo with sharp horns; man has killed the lion
with an arrow, with a sword, with gunpowder; but the Horla will make
of man what we have made of the horse and of the ox: his chattel, his
slave and his food, by the mere power of his will. Woe to us!
But, nevertheless, the animal sometimes revolts and kills the man who
has subjugated it.... I should also like ... I shall be able to ... but
I must know him, touch him, see him! Learned men say that beasts’ eyes,
as they differ from ours, do not distinguish like ours do.... And my
eye cannot distinguish this newcomer who is oppressing me.
Why? Oh! Now I remember the words of the monk at Mont Saint-Michel:
“Can 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!”
And I went on thinking: my eyes are so weak, so imperfect, that they
do not even distinguish hard bodies, if they are as transparent as
glass!... If a glass without tinfoil behind it were to bar my way, I
should run into it, just as a bird which has flown into a room breaks
its head against the window panes. A thousand things, moreover, deceive
him and lead him astray. How should it then be surprising that he
cannot perceive a fresh body which is traversed by the light?
A new being! Why not? It was assuredly bound to come! Why should we be
the last? We do not distinguish it, like all the others created before
us. The reason is, that its nature is more perfect, its body finer and
more finished than ours, that ours is so weak, so awkwardly conceived,
encumbered with organs that are always tired, always on the strain like
locks that are too complicated, which lives like a plant and like a
beast, nourishing itself with difficulty on air, herbs and flesh, an
animal machine which is a prey to maladies, to malformations, to decay;
broken-winded, badly regulated, simple and eccentric, ingeniously and
badly made, a coarse and a delicate work, the outline of a being which
might become intelligent and grand.
We are only a few, so few in this world, from the oyster up to man. Why
should there not be one more, when once that period is accomplished
which separates the successive apparitions from all the different
species?
Why not one more? Why not, also, other trees with immense, splendid
flowers, perfuming whole regions? Why not other elements besides
fire, air, earth and water? There are four, only four, those nursing
fathers of various beings! What a pity! Why are they not forty, four
hundred, four thousand! How poor everything is, how mean and wretched!
grudgingly given, dryly invented, clumsily made! Ah! the elephant and
the hippopotamus, what grace! And the camel, what elegance!
But, the butterfly you will say, a flying flower! I dream of one that
should be as large as a hundred worlds, with wings whose shape, beauty,
colors, and motion I cannot even express. But I see it ... it flutters
from star to star, refreshing them and perfuming them with the light
and harmonious breath of its flight!... And the people up there look at
it as it passes in an ecstasy of delight!...
What is the matter with me? It is he, the Horla who haunts me, and who
makes me think of these foolish things! He is within me, he is becoming
my soul; I shall kill him!
_August 19th._ I shall kill him. I have seen him! Yesterday I sat down
at my table and pretended to write very assiduously. I knew quite well
that he would come prowling round me, quite close to me, so close that
I might perhaps be able to touch him, to seize him. And then! ... then
I should have the strength of desperation; I should have my hands, my
knees, my chest, my forehead, my teeth to strangle him, to crush him,
to bite him, to tear him to pieces. And I watched for him with all my
over-excited organs.
I had lighted my two lamps and the eight wax candles on my mantelpiece,
as if by this light I could have discovered him.
My bed, my old oak bed with its columns, was opposite to me; on my
right was the fireplace; on my left the door which was carefully
closed, after I had left it open for some time, in order to attract
him; behind me was a very high wardrobe with a looking-glass in it,
which served me to make my toilet every day, and in which I was in the
habit of looking at myself from head to foot every time I passed it.
So I pretended to be writing in order to deceive him, for he also was
watching me, and suddenly I felt, I was certain that he was reading
over my shoulder, that he was there, almost touching my ear.
I got up so quickly, with my hands extended, that I almost fell. Eh!
well?... It was as bright as at midday, but I did not see myself in
the glass!... It was empty, clear, profound, full of light! But my
figure was not reflected in it ... and I, I was opposite to it! I saw
the large, clear glass from top to bottom, and I looked at it with
unsteady eyes; and I did not dare to advance; I did not venture to make
a movement, nevertheless, feeling perfectly that he was there, but that
he would escape me again, he whose imperceptible body had absorbed my
reflection.
How frightened I was! And then suddenly I began to see myself through a
mist in the depths of the looking-glass, in a mist as it were through
a sheet of water; and it seemed to me as if this water were flowing
slowly from left to right, and making my figure clearer every moment.
It was like the end of an eclipse. Whatever it was that hid me, did not
appear to possess any clearly defined outlines, but a sort of opaque
transparency, which gradually grew clearer.
At last I was able to distinguish myself completely, as I do every day
when I looked at myself.
I had seen it! And the horror of it remained with me and makes me
shudder even now.
_August 20th._ How could I kill it, as I could not get hold of it?
Poison? But it would see me mix it with the water; and then, would our
poisons have any effect on its impalpable body? No ... no ... no doubt
about the matter.... Then?... then?...
_August 21st._ I sent for a blacksmith from Rouen, and ordered iron
shutters of him for my room, such as some private hotels in Paris have
on the ground floor, for fear of thieves, and he is going to make me a
similar door as well. I have made myself out as a coward, but I do not
care about that!...
_September 10th._ Rouen, Hotel Continental. It is done; ... it is done
... but is he dead? My mind is thoroughly upset by what I have seen.
Well, then, yesterday the locksmith having put on the iron shutters and
door, I left everything open until midnight, although it was getting
cold.
Suddenly I felt that he was there, and joy, mad joy, took possession of
me. I got up softly, and I walked to the right and left for some time,
so that he might not guess anything; then I took off my boots and put
on my slippers carelessly; then I fastened the iron shutters and going
back to the door quickly I double-locked it with a padlock, putting the
key into my pocket.
Suddenly I noticed that he was moving restlessly round me, that in his
turn he was frightened and was ordering me to let him out. I nearly
yielded, though I did not yet, but putting my back to the door I half
opened it, just enough to allow me to go out backward, and as I am very
tall, my head touched the lintel. I was sure that he had not been able
to escape, and I shut him up quite alone, quite alone. What happiness!
I had him fast. Then I ran downstairs; in the drawing-room, which was
under my bedroom, I took the two lamps and I poured all the oil onto
the carpet, the furniture, everywhere; then I set fire to it and made
my escape, after having carefully double-locked the door.
I went and hid myself at the bottom of the garden in a clump of laurel
bushes. How long it was! how long it was! Everything was dark, silent,
motionless, not a breath of air and not a star, but heavy banks of
clouds which one could not see, but which weighed, oh! so heavily on my
soul.
I looked at my house and waited. How long it was! I already began to
think that the fire had gone out of its own accord, or that he had
extinguished it, when one of the lower windows gave way under the
violence of the flames, and a long, soft, caressing sheet of red flame
mounted up the white wall and kissed it as high as the roof. The light
fell onto the trees, the branches, and the leaves, and a shiver of
fear pervaded them also! The birds awoke; a dog began to howl, and it
seemed to me as if the day were breaking! Almost immediately two other
windows flew into fragments, and I saw that the whole of the lower part
of my house was nothing but a terrible furnace. But a cry, a horrible,
shrill, heartrending cry, a woman’s cry, sounded through the night, and
two garret windows were opened! I had forgotten the servants! I saw the
terrorstruck faces, and their frantically waving arms!...
Then, overwhelmed with horror, I set off to run to the village,
shouting: “Help! help! fire! fire!” I met some people who were already
coming onto the scene, and I went back with them to see!
By this time the house was nothing but a horrible and magnificent
funeral pile, a monstrous funeral pile which lit up the whole country,
a funeral pile where men were burning, and where he was burning also,
He, He, my prisoner, that new Being, the new master, the Horla!
Suddenly the whole roof fell in between the walls, and a volcano of
flames darted up to the sky. Through all the windows which opened onto
that furnace I saw the flames darting, and I thought that he was there,
in that kiln, dead.
Dead? perhaps?... His body? Was not his body, which was transparent,
indestructible by such means as would kill ours?
If he was not dead?... Perhaps time alone has power over that Invisible
and Redoubtable Being. Why this transparent, unrecognizable body, this
body belonging to a spirit, if it also had to fear ills, infirmities
and premature destruction?
Premature destruction? All human terror springs from that! After man
the Horla. After him who can die every day, at any hour, at any moment,
by any accident, he came who was only to die at his own proper hour and
minute, because he had touched the limits of his existence!
No ... no ... without any doubt ... he is not dead. Then ... then ... I
suppose I must kill myself!
[EDITOR’S NOTE. Students of this great genius among short story
writers contend that there is an autobiographical touch to “The
Horla.” De Maupassant had a haunting presentiment of going mad.]
THE MUMMY’S FOOT
By THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
I had entered, in an idle mood, the shop of one of those curiosity
venders who are called _marchands de bric-à-brac_ in that Parisian
_argot_ which is so perfectly unintelligble elsewhere in France.
You have doubtless glanced occasionally through the windows of some of
these shops, which have become so numerous now that it is fashionable
to buy antiquated furniture, and that every petty stock broker thinks
he must have his _chambre au moyen âge_.
There is one thing there which clings alike to the shop of the dealer
in old iron, the ware-room of the tapestry maker, the laboratory of
the chemist, and the studio of the painter: in all those gloomy dens
where a furtive daylight filters in through the window-shutters the
most manifestly ancient thing is dust. The cobwebs are more authentic
than the guimp laces, and the old pear-tree furniture on exhibition is
actually younger than the mahogany which arrived but yesterday from
America.
The warehouse of my bric-à-brac dealer was a veritable Capharnaum.
All ages and all nations seemed to have made their rendezvous there.
An Etruscan lamp of red clay stood upon a Boule cabinet, with ebony
panels, brightly striped by lines of inlaid brass; a duchess of the
court of Louis XV. nonchalantly extended her fawn-like feet under a
massive table of the time of Louis XIII., with heavy spiral supports of
oak, and carven designs of chimeras and foliage intermingled.
Upon the denticulated shelves of several sideboards glittered immense
Japanese dishes with red and blue designs relieved by gilded hatching,
side by side with enamelled works by Bernard Palissy, representing
serpents, frogs, and lizards in relief.
From disembowelled cabinets escaped cascades of silver-lustrous Chinese
silks and waves of tinsels which an oblique sunbeam shot through with
luminous beads; while portraits of every era, in frames more or less
tarnished, smiled through their yellow varnish.
The striped breastplate of a damascened suit of Milanese armor
glittered in one corner; loves and nymphs of porcelain, Chinese
grotesques, vases of _céladon_ and crackle-ware, Saxon and old Sèvres
cups encumbered the shelves and nooks of the apartment.
The dealer followed me closely through the tortuous way contrived
between the piles of furniture, warding off with his hand the hazardous
sweep of my coat-skirts, watching my elbows with the uneasy attention
of an antiquarian and a usurer.
It was a singular face, that of the merchant; an immense skull,
polished like a knee, and surrounded by a thin aureole of white hair,
which brought out the clear salmon tint of his complexion all the
more strikingly, lent him a false aspect of patriarchal _bonhomie_,
counteracted, however, by the scintillation of two little yellow eyes
which trembled in their orbits like two louis d’or upon quicksilver.
The curve of his nose presented an aquiline silhouette, which suggested
the Oriental or Jewish type. His hands--thin, slender, full of nerves
which projected like strings upon the finger-board of a violin, and
armed with claws like those on the terminations of bats’ wings--shook
with senile trembling; but those convulsively agitated hands became
firmer than steel pincers or lobsters’ claws when they lifted any
precious article--an onyx cup, a Venetian glass, or a dish of Bohemian
crystal. This strange old man had an aspect so thoroughly rabbinical
and cabalistic that he would have been burnt on the mere testimony of
his face three centuries ago.
“Will you not buy something from me to-day, sir? Here is a Malay kreese
with a blade undulating like flame. Look at those grooves contrived
for the blood to run along, those teeth set backward so as to tear
out the entrails in withdrawing the weapon. It is a fine character of
ferocious arm, and will look well in your collection. This two-handed
sword is very beautiful. It is the work of Josepe de la Hera; and this
_colichemarde_, with its fenestrated guard--what a superb specimen of
handicraft!”
“No; I have quite enough weapons and instruments of carnage. I want a
small figure, something which will suit me as a paper-weight, for I
cannot endure those trumpery bronzes which the stationers sell, and
which may be found on everybody’s desk.”
The old gnome foraged among his ancient wares, and finally arranged
before me some antique bronzes, so-called at least; fragments of
malachite, little Hindoo or Chinese idols, a kind of poussah-toys in
jade-stone, representing the incarnations of Brahma or Vishnoo, and
wonderfully appropriate to the very undivine office of holding papers
and letters in place.
I was hesitating between a porcelain dragon, all constellated with
warts, its mouth formidable with bristling tusks and ranges of
teeth, and an abominable little Mexican fetich, representing the god
Vitziliputzili _au naturel_, when I caught sight of a charming foot,
which I at first took for a fragment of some antique Venus.
It had those beautiful ruddy and tawny tints that lend to Florentine
bronze that warm living look so much preferable to the gray-green
aspect of common bronzes, which might easily be mistaken for statues in
a state of putrefaction. Satiny gleams played over its rounded forms,
doubtless polished by the amorous kisses of twenty centuries, for it
seemed a Corinthian bronze, a work of the best era of art, perhaps
molded by Lysippus himself.
“That foot will be my choice,” I said to the merchant, who regarded me
with an ironical and saturnine air, and held out the object desired
that I might examine it more fully.
I was surprised at its lightness. It was not a foot of metal, but in
sooth a foot of flesh, an embalmed foot, a mummy’s foot. On examining
it still more closely the very grain of the skin, and the almost
imperceptible lines impressed upon it by the texture of the bandages,
became perceptible. The toes were slender and delicate, and terminated
by perfectly formed nails, pure and transparent as agates. The great
toe, slightly separated from the rest, afforded a happy contrast, in
the antique style, to the position of the other toes, and lent it
an aërial lightness--the grace of a bird’s foot. The sole, scarcely
streaked by a few almost imperceptible cross lines, afforded evidence
that it had never touched the bare ground, and had only come in contact
with the finest matting of Nile rushes and the softest carpets of
panther skin.
“Ha, ha, you want the foot of the Princess Hermonthis!” exclaimed the
merchant, with a strange giggle, fixing his owlish eyes upon me. “Ha,
ha, ha! For a paper-weight! An original idea!--an artistic idea! Old
Pharaoh would certainly have been surprised had some one told him
that the foot of his adored daughter would be used for a paper-weight
after he had had a mountain of granite hollowed out as a receptacle
for the triple coffin, painted and gilded, covered with hieroglyphics
and beautiful paintings of the Judgment of Souls,” continued the queer
little merchant, half audibly, as though talking to himself.
“How much will you charge me for this mummy fragment?”
“Ah, the highest price I can get, for it is a superb piece. If I had
the match of it you could not have it for less than five hundred
francs. The daughter of a Pharaoh! Nothing is more rare.”
“Assuredly that is not a common article, but still, how much do you
want? In the first place let me warn you that all my wealth consists of
just five louis. I can buy anything that costs five louis, but nothing
dearer. You might search my vest pockets and most secret drawers
without even finding one poor five-franc piece more.”
“Five louis for the foot of the Princess Hermonthis! That is very
little, very little indeed. ’Tis an authentic foot,” muttered the
merchant, shaking his head, and imparting a peculiar rotary motion to
his eyes. “Well, take it, and I will give you the bandages into the
bargain,” he added, wrapping the foot in an ancient damask rag. “Very
fine! Real damask--Indian damask which has never been re-dyed. It is
strong, and yet it is soft,” he mumbled, stroking the frayed tissue
with his fingers, through the trade-acquired habit which moved him to
praise even an object of such little value that he himself deemed it
only worth the giving away.
He poured the gold coins into a sort of mediæval alms-purse hanging at
his belt, repeating:
“The foot of the Princess Hermonthis to be used for a paper-weight!”
Then turning his phosphorescent eyes upon me, he exclaimed in a voice
strident as the crying of a cat which has swallowed a fish-bone:
“Old Pharaoh will not be well pleased. He loved his daughter, the dear
man!”
“You speak as if you were a contemporary of his. You are old enough,
goodness knows! but you do not date back to the Pyramids of Egypt,” I
answered, laughingly, from the threshold.
I went home, delighted with my acquisition.
With the idea of putting it to profitable use as soon as possible, I
placed the foot of the divine Princess Hermonthis upon a heap of papers
scribbled over with verses, in themselves an undecipherable mosaic work
of erasures; articles freshly begun; letters forgotten, and posted
in the table drawer in stead of the letter-box, an error to which
absent-minded people are peculiarly liable. The effect was charming,
_bizarre_, and romantic.
Well satisfied with this embellishment, I went out with the gravity
and pride becoming one who feels that he has the ineffable advantage
over all the passers-by whom he elbows, of possessing a piece of the
Princess Hermonthis, daughter of Pharaoh.
I looked upon all who did not possess, like myself, a paper-weight so
authentically Egyptian as very ridiculous people, and it seemed to me
that the proper occupation of every sensible man should consist in the
mere fact of having a mummy’s foot upon his desk.
Happily I met some friends, whose presence distracted me in my
infatuation with this new acquisition. I went to dinner with them, for
I could not very well have dined with myself.
When I came back that evening, with my brain slightly confused by a
few glasses of wine, a vague whiff of Oriental perfume delicately
titillated my olfactory nerves. The heat of the room had warmed the
natron, bitumen, and myrrh in which the _paraschistes_, who cut open
the bodies of the dead, had bathed the corpse of the princess. It was
a perfume at once sweet and penetrating, a perfume that four thousand
years had not been able to dissipate.
The Dream of Egypt was Eternity. Her odors have the solidity of granite
and endure as long.
I soon drank deeply from the black cup of sleep. For a few hours all
remained opaque to me. Oblivion and nothingness inundated me with their
sombre waves.
Yet light gradually dawned upon the darkness of my mind. Dreams
commenced to touch me softly in their silent flight.
The eyes of my soul were opened, and I beheld my chamber as it actually
was. I might have believed myself awake but for a vague consciousness
which assured me that I slept, and that something fantastic was about
to take place.
The odor of the myrrh had augmented in intensity, and I felt a slight
headache, which I very naturally attributed to several glasses of
champagne that we had drunk to the unknown gods and our future
fortunes. I peered through my room with a feeling of expectation which
I saw nothing to justify. Every article of furniture was in its proper
place. The lamp, softly shaded by its globe of ground crystal, burned
upon its bracket; the water-color sketches shone under their Bohemian
glass; the curtains hung down languidly; everything wore an aspect of
tranquil slumber.
After a few moments, however, all this calm interior appeared to
become disturbed. The woodwork cracked stealthily, the ash-covered log
suddenly emitted a jet of blue flame, and the disks of the pateras
seemed like great metallic eyes, watching, like myself, for the things
which were about to happen.