Somebody orders all my acts, all my movements, all my thoughts. I am no
longer anything in myself, nothing except an enslaved and terrified
spectator of all the things which I do. I wish to go out; I cannot. He
does not wish to, and so I remain, trembling and distracted, in the
armchair in which he keeps me sitting. I merely wish to get up and to
rouse myself, so as to think that I am still master of myself: I cannot!
I am riveted to my chair, and my chair adheres to the ground in such a
manner that no force could move us.
Then suddenly, I must, I must go to the bottom of my garden to pick some
strawberries and eat them, and I go there. I pick the strawberries and I
eat them! Oh! my God! my God! Is there a God? If there be one, deliver
me! save me! succour me! Pardon! Pity! Mercy! Save me! Oh! what
sufferings! what torture! what horror!
_August 15th._ Certainly this is the way in which my poor cousin was
possessed and swayed, when she came to borrow five thousand francs of
me. She was under the power of a strange will which had entered into
her, like another soul, like another parasitic and ruling soul. Is the
world coming to an end?
But who is he, this invisible being that rules me? This unknowable
being, this rover of a supernatural race?
Invisible beings exist, then! How is it then that since the beginning of
the world they have never manifested themselves in such a manner
precisely as they do to me? I have never read anything which resembles
what goes on in my house. Oh! If I could only leave it, if I could only
go away and flee, so as never to return, I should be saved; but I
cannot.
_August 16th._ I managed to escape to-day for two hours, like a prisoner
who finds the door of his dungeon accidentally open. I suddenly felt
that I was free and that he was far away, and so I gave orders to put
the horses in as quickly as possible, and I drove to Rouen. Oh! How
delightful to be able to say to a man who obeyed you: "Go to Rouen!"
I made him pull up before the library, and I begged them to lend me Dr.
Herrmann Herestauss's treatise on the unknown inhabitants of the ancient
and modern world.
Then, as I was getting into my carriage, I intended to say: "To the
railway station!" but instead of this I shouted--I did not say, but I
shouted--in such a loud voice that all the passers-by turned round:
"Home!" and I fell back onto the cushion of my carriage, overcome by
mental agony. He had found me out and regained possession of me.
_August 17th._ Oh! What a night! what a night! And yet it seems to me
that I ought to rejoice. I read until one o'clock in the morning!
Herestauss, Doctor of Philosophy and Theogony, wrote the history and the
manifestation of all those invisible beings which hover around man, or
of whom he dreams. He describes their origin, their domains, their
power; but none of them resembles the one which haunts me. One might say
that man, ever since he has thought, has had a foreboding of, and feared
a new being, stronger than himself, his successor in this world, and
that, feeling him near, and not being able to foretell the nature of
that master, he has, in his terror, created the whole race of hidden
beings, of vague phantoms born of fear.
Having, therefore, read until one o'clock in the morning, I went and sat
down at the open window, in order to cool my forehead and my thoughts,
in the calm night air. It was very pleasant and warm! How I should have
enjoyed such a night formerly!
There was no moon, but the stars darted out their rays in the dark
heavens. Who inhabits those worlds? What forms, what living beings, what
animals are there yonder? What do those who are thinkers in those
distant worlds know more than we do? What can they do more than we can?
What do they see which we do not know? Will not one of them, some day or
other, traversing space, appear on our earth to conquer it, just as the
Norsemen formerly crossed the sea in order to subjugate nations more
feeble than themselves?
We are so weak, so unarmed, so ignorant, so small, we who live on this
particle of mud which turns round in a drop of water.
I fell asleep, dreaming thus in the cool night air, and then, having
slept for about three quarters of an hour, I opened my eyes without
moving, awakened by I know not what confused and strange sensation. At
first I saw nothing, and then suddenly it appeared to me as if a page of
a book which had remained open on my table, turned over of its own
accord. Not a breath of air had come in at my window, and I was
surprised and waited. In about four minutes, I saw, I saw, yes I saw
with my own eyes another page lift itself up and fall down on the
others, as if a finger had turned it over. My armchair was empty,
appeared empty, but I knew that he was there, he, and sitting in my
place, and that he was reading. With a furious bound, the bound of an
enraged wild beast that wishes to disembowel its tamer, I crossed my
room to seize him, to strangle him, to kill him!... But before I could
reach it, my chair fell over as if somebody had run away from me ... my
table rocked, my lamp fell and went out, and my window closed as if some
thief had been surprised and had fled out into the night, shutting it
behind him.
So he had run away: he had been afraid; he, afraid of me!
So ... so ... to-morrow ... or later ... some day or other ... I should
be able to hold him in my clutches and crush him against the ground! Do
not dogs occasionally bite and strangle their masters?
_August 18th._ I have been thinking the whole day long. Oh! yes, I will
obey him, follow his impulses, fulfill all his wishes, show myself
humble, submissive, a coward. He is the stronger; but an hour will
come...
_August 19th._ I know, ... I know ... I know all! I have just read the
following in the _Revue de Monde Scientifique_: "A curious piece of news
comes to us from Rio de Janeiro. Madness, an epidemic of madness, which
may be compared to that contagious madness which attacked the people of
Europe in the Middle Ages, is at this moment raging in the Province of
San-Paulo. The frightened inhabitants are leaving their houses,
deserting their villages, abandoning their land, saying that they are
pursued, possessed, governed like human cattle by invisible, though
tangible beings, a species of vampire, which feed on their life while
they are asleep, and who, besides, drink water and milk without
appearing to touch any other nourishment.
"Professor Dom Pedro Henriques, accompanied by several medical savants,
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 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,
colours, 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
overexcited 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 look 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!
V
THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS[B]
WILLIAM F. HARVEY
When I was a little boy I once went with my father to call on Adrian
Borlsover. I played on the floor with a black spaniel while my father
appealed for a subscription. Just before we left my father said, "Mr.
Borlsover, may my son here shake hands with you? It will be a thing to
look back upon with pride when he grows to be a man."
I came up to the bed on which the old man was lying and put my hand in
his, awed by the still beauty of his face. He spoke to me kindly, and
hoped that I should always try to please my father. Then he placed his
right hand on my head and asked for a blessing to rest upon me. "Amen!"
said my father, and I followed him out of the room, feeling as if I
wanted to cry. But my father was in excellent spirits.
"That old gentleman, Jim," said he, "is the most wonderful man in the
whole town. For ten years he has been quite blind."
"But I saw his eyes," I said. "They were ever so black and shiny; they
weren't shut up like Nora's puppies. Can't he see at all?"
And so I learnt for the first time that a man might have eyes that
looked dark and beautiful and shining without being able to see.
"Just like Mrs. Tomlinson has big ears," I said, "and can't hear at all
except when Mr. Tomlinson shouts."
"Jim," said my father, "it's not right to talk about a lady's ears.
Remember what Mr. Borlsover said about pleasing me and being a good
boy."
That was the only time I saw Adrian Borlsover. I soon forgot about him
and the hand which he laid in blessing on my head. But for a week I
prayed that those dark tender eyes might see.
"His spaniel may have puppies," I said in my prayers, "and he will never
be able to know how funny they look with their eyes all closed up.
Please let old Mr. Borlsover see."
* * * * *
Adrian Borlsover, as my father had said, was a wonderful man. He came of
an eccentric family. Borlsovers' sons, for some reason, always seemed to
marry very ordinary women, which perhaps accounted for the fact that no
Borlsover had been a genius, and only one Borlsover had been mad. But
they were great champions of little causes, generous patrons of odd
sciences, founders of querulous sects, trustworthy guides to the bypath
meadows of erudition.
Adrian was an authority on the fertilization of orchids. He had held at
one time the family living at Borlsover Conyers, until a congenital
weakness of the lungs obliged him to seek a less rigorous climate in the
sunny south coast watering-place where I had seen him. Occasionally he
would relieve one or other of the local clergy. My father described him
as a fine preacher, who gave long and inspiring sermons from what many
men would have considered unprofitable texts. "An excellent proof," he
would add, "of the truth of the doctrine of direct verbal inspiration."
Adrian Borlsover was exceedingly clever with his hands. His penmanship
was exquisite. He illustrated all his scientific papers, made his own
woodcuts, and carved the reredos that is at present the chief feature of
interest in the church at Borlsover Conyers. He had an exceedingly
clever knack in cutting silhouettes for young ladies and paper pigs and
cows for little children, and made more than one complicated wind
instrument of his own devising.
When he was fifty years old Adrian Borlsover lost his sight. In a
wonderfully short time he had adapted himself to the new conditions of
life. He quickly learned to read Braille. So marvellous indeed was his
sense of touch that he was still able to maintain his interest in
botany. The mere passing of his long supple fingers over a flower was
sufficient means for its identification, though occasionally he would
use his lips. I have found several letters of his among my father's
correspondence. In no case was there anything to show that he was
afflicted with blindness, and this in spite of the fact that he
exercised undue economy in the spacing of lines. Toward the close of his
life the old man was credited with powers of touch that seemed almost
uncanny: it has been said that he could tell at once the colour of a
ribbon placed between his fingers. My father would neither confirm nor
deny the story.
I
Adrian Borlsover was a bachelor. His elder brother George had married
late in life, leaving one son, Eustace, who lived in the gloomy Georgian
mansion at Borlsover Conyers, where he could work undisturbed in
collecting material for his great book on heredity.
Like his uncle, he was a remarkable man. The Borlsovers had always been
born naturalists, but Eustace possessed in a special degree the power of
systematizing his knowledge. He had received his university education in
Germany, and then, after post-graduate work in Vienna and Naples, had
travelled for four years in South America and the East, getting together
a huge store of material for a new study into the processes of
variation.
He lived alone at Borlsover Conyers with Saunders his secretary, a man
who bore a somewhat dubious reputation in the district, but whose
powers as a mathematician, combined with his business abilities, were
invaluable to Eustace.
Uncle and nephew saw little of each other. The visits of Eustace were
confined to a week in the summer or autumn: long weeks, that dragged
almost as slowly as the bath-chair in which the old man was drawn along
the sunny sea front. In their way the two men were fond of each other,
though their intimacy would doubtless have been greater had they shared
the same religious views. Adrian held to the old-fashioned evangelical
dogmas of his early manhood; his nephew for many years had been thinking
of embracing Buddhism. Both men possessed, too, the reticence the
Borlsovers had always shown, and which their enemies sometimes called
hypocrisy. With Adrian it was a reticence as to the things he had left
undone; but with Eustace it seemed that the curtain which he was so
careful to leave undrawn hid something more than a half-empty chamber.
* * * * *