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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76493 ***
+
+
+
+                                _The New
+                                 Terror_
+
+
+[Illustration: “My cry was torn from me by the vision of Cordélia’s
+  form ... rising between us at the moment when our fingers were
+  pressing the triggers....”]
+
+
+
+
+                                  _The
+                               New Terror_
+
+                           _By_ GASTON LEROUX
+
+              AUTHOR OF “THE PHANTOM CLUE,” “WOLVES OF THE
+                        SEA,” “MISSING MEN,” ETC.
+
+                    _FRONTISPIECE BY GEORGE W. GAGE_
+
+
+                                NEW YORK
+                         _THE MACAULAY COMPANY_
+
+
+
+
+                  Published in England under the title
+                            THE BURGLED HEART
+               _Copyright, 1926, by The Macaulay Company_
+
+
+                _Printed in the United States of America_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE
+
+      I +My Betrothal to Cordélia+                                     9
+
+     II +The Portrait+                                                12
+
+    III +Vascoeuil and Hennequeville+                                 20
+
+     IV +The Wedding+                                                 29
+
+      V +An Unexpected Present+                                       39
+
+     VI +Patrick+                                                     47
+
+    VII +After the Wedding+                                           72
+
+   VIII +Dr. Thurel+                                                  77
+
+     IX +I Discover a Change in Cordélia+                             92
+
+      X +The Second Night+                                            98
+
+     XI +The Golden Chamber+                                         111
+
+    XII +The Thief+                                                  120
+
+   XIII +Happiness Consists in Realities not in Dreams+              128
+
+    XIV +Happy Days+                                                 138
+
+     XV +In Which My Anxiety About Cordélia’s Polygon is Revived+    141
+
+    XVI +The Appointment+                                            146
+
+   XVII +The Duel+                                                   164
+
+  XVIII +And Now+ ...                                                178
+
+    XIX +The Last Visit+—                                            185
+
+  +A Terrible Tale+                                                  189
+
+  +The Gold Axe+                                                     229
+
+
+
+
+                             THE NEW TERROR
+
+                                CHAPTER I
+
+                        MY BETROTHAL TO CORDÉLIA
+
+
+Our parents as good as betrothed us from our earliest infancy. When I
+was twelve and she was eight, our friends used to remark that we made
+a charming couple, and our mothers were lost in admiration of us. We
+would gladly have been married at once we were so fond of one another.
+We were first cousins, and were often brought together at holiday time.
+At that period Cordélia had already given me her heart, the budding
+heart of a little maid of eight.
+
+I was a tall, sturdy boy for my age with a fair, almost reddish-brown
+complexion, passionately devoted to every form of sport, but idle in
+the school-room. Life in the open air was the one thing that attracted
+me. Cordélia, who possessed an inclination for reading and the arts,
+acquired her taste for outdoor life from me. Her mother was Italian. My
+uncle had married her during a business trip to Turin. When Cordélia
+was eight years old she was a talented musician, but she surprised us
+still more by the facility with which she drew or painted anything
+which interested her or struck her fancy. As for myself, whatever came
+from her hands seemed to me in the nature of a marvel.
+
+I loved her all the more for her gifts and I bestowed on her unstinted
+admiration. It was I who taught her how to ride. She knew no fear.
+Sometimes she gave me a fright, but I could not choose but follow her,
+and she did with me as she pleased. I was never a dreamer. Once she
+said, “Let us dream,” and I pretended as I stood beside her to dream,
+meaning thereby that I kept silent. Then she eyed me with a queer
+expression and burst into laughter.
+
+“Kiss me,” she said.
+
+I tried to kiss her and she fled.
+
+We made merry in this way until I was nineteen. I had become a tall,
+strongly-built fellow with a freckled face. She considered me the
+handsomest of men. She always considered me the handsomest of men.
+She herself had become beautiful beyond words. The slenderness of the
+unruly young girl had given way to a form of ideal elegance and charm.
+She was neither fair nor dark. The color of her hair, which I called
+a fluffy radiance was all her own. Her eyes were green, flecked with
+gold, whose shades were ever changing. And then her graceful figure!
+She was as supple as a reed as the saying is, but by no means frail.
+
+We continued to amuse ourselves like children.
+
+Nevertheless one day we took each other by the hand and went thus
+together to our parents asking them to consent to our marriage without
+loss of time. We were filled with a wild desire to go for a wedding
+trip on horseback. Our parents, to our infinite sorrow, refused to
+listen to us. They postponed our trip on horseback for five years from
+then, and packed me off to America, which seemed to me a cruel and
+bitter mockery. And then I returned for my military service. And after
+that I was dispatched to America once more.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+                              THE PORTRAIT
+
+
+My father who was an iron manufacturer intended to take me into his
+works, but first of all he was bent on my undergoing a complete course
+of study in one of those Technical Institutes in the United States
+where one is supposed to learn everything that can be useful to a
+mechanic and an engineer, but where the practice of every form of sport
+is a particular and glorious feature. I may say that I was the pride of
+the Institute though I was the greatest dunce in it. Boxing, tennis,
+golf, riding, swimming, boating, into which I fiercely threw myself,
+diverted my thoughts from Cordélia without making me forget her.
+
+I counted the months which stood between me and the happiness that
+awaited me. Meanwhile my father and mother were carried off almost
+at the same time during an epidemic of influenza, as it was then
+called. I fulfilled their wishes by making no attempt to precipitate
+the course of events. They were of opinion that I ought not to marry
+until I reached my twenty-fourth year. I had no desire to thwart them,
+particularly now that they were in their graves.
+
+My uncle’s attitude towards me in the circumstances left nothing to be
+desired. He took upon himself the management of my business affairs. I
+was relieved from all trouble, notwithstanding that both my father and
+mother had left me a considerable fortune.
+
+He asked me if I wished to take up the succession to my father’s
+business. I answered that I would readily have done so had such been
+necessary, but since I was left with sufficient means to insure the
+happiness of Cordélia and myself, I had made up my mind to live, in my
+own way, upon my income.
+
+He assured me that I would soon become bored unless I engaged in some
+work. I answered that I had often felt bored when I was engaged in
+work but never when I was not working. My uncle’s ideas belonged to a
+different age which did not realize how full life is nowadays. I mean
+full of the movement which brings with it health and beauty. An athlete
+is never bored.
+
+For that matter, the argument that I am advancing on the subject of
+work is by no means necessarily that of a “sportsman.” I have heard a
+man of considerable intellectual power, an author—a novelist who worked
+his ten hours a day—declare that he had a horror of work because work
+swallowed up the best part of his time, leaving him no opportunity of
+seeing life which was a marvelous occupation and a spectacle tedious
+only to imbeciles. He looked upon work as an ignominious necessity to
+which mankind had been doomed for some transgression or other, and
+he considered that those mortals who by the favor of the gods were
+absolved from it, and yet clamored for it because time hung heavily
+upon their hands, were deserving of eternal punishment.
+
+For my part, I hold the same opinion and I add: If they are feeling
+bored, bless my soul, let them play football.
+
+At length I reached my twenty-fourth year, and I sailed in the mail
+steamer to Havre. I already pictured to myself Cordélia waiting for
+me on the pier. I had not seen her for eighteen months. We had never
+ceased to write to each other with the greatest freedom. And yet during
+the last period of my stay in America I seemed to perceive some change
+in her.
+
+True, her heart still remained mine but her mind had become unsettled;
+in other words I did not comprehend everything that she said in her
+letters. I have mentioned that Cordélia had always displayed an
+inclination for the arts and in particular for painting. Well, it was
+in connection with a small painting that she sent to me, a portrait of
+myself painted from memory, which I considered a splendid likeness,
+that she wrote extraordinary things which I scornfully called, without
+quite knowing why, a “deterioration,” for they appertained to a sphere
+of knowledge in which we were not accustomed to wander at my Technical
+Institute.
+
+I said to myself: Cordélia thinks too much. It is high time that I was
+home. You bet I’ll make her give up her books and painting and music,
+and then to horse! as in the good old days.
+
+But let me return to this portrait and in regard to it I will refer
+to my “notes.” I am not, to be sure, one of those persons who write
+their recollections from day to day. But I rejoice that I possess these
+memoranda, and I will explain how they came to be made almost without
+my noticing it, and why I happened to keep them.
+
+I am very methodical and have always kept a strict record of my
+expenditure. I still have my little account books. Thus in the evening
+after casting up my accounts for the day, I used to sit gazing at
+the figures before me and dreaming of Cordélia, and I seldom closed
+the book without setting down some thought about her, or adding some
+comment upon her last letter.
+
+These were often very simple remarks. For example, I find this entry
+under the date of the 25th April, 19——.
+
+“Thirty-five dollars ten cents.... Dearest Cordélia, we shall have
+heaps of beautiful children crowding round our knee.” Or else a few
+words even more simple still. Under the date of the 30th May of the
+same year I find:
+
+“Twenty-five dollars ten cents.... Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!”
+
+Here are my observations concerning the portrait:
+
+“To-day I received my portrait painted by Cordélia. It is a speaking
+likeness. It is complete in every respect, even to the scar which I
+still bear under the right eyebrow, caused by an unlucky fall against
+the corner of the stairs when I was eight. The wound bled copiously,
+and I call to mind Cordélia’s sorrow, for we had been playing together.
+I feel certain that when she portrayed this little scar she remembered
+that unfortunate mishap with some feeling. Dear, dear Cordélia!”
+
+A month later I wrote the following note:
+
+“What is happening? I have received a letter from Cordélia and can
+make nothing of it. She asks me to return the portrait. She considers
+the painting unworthy. I don’t quite follow whether she considers it
+unworthy of me or unworthy of her. Moreover she declares that while it
+resembles me it is not like me. What is the meaning of this fantastic
+language?”
+
+And still dwelling on the portrait which, however, I was careful not to
+return to her because I was delighted with it, I wrote:
+
+“Cordélia says in her letter that I ought to understand that a portrait
+should represent something more than the mere lineaments of a person;
+for instance, it should convey the expression of the soul and in so far
+as the soul is not expressed in a portrait, it expresses nothing at
+all!”
+
+Well, I was quite at a loss. I did not understand how she could
+materialize my soul which was a thing essentially unseen. Had she meant
+by her words that it is indispensable to put life into a portrait, I
+should agree with her, and all that is needed for the purpose is a
+certain touch of animation in the expression of the eyes, but to depict
+the soul!... I shall ask her to explain what she means.
+
+I pass over various comments expressing surprise at the tone of other
+letters from Cordélia which, moreover, were becoming very brief and few
+and far between. I am eager to arrive at Havre....
+
+And here I was at Havre again.
+
+Alas! Cordélia was not waiting for me on the pier.
+
+On the other hand an old man-servant of my uncle’s came to meet me on
+the _Titan_, which was a small steam-tug engaged in the pilot and post
+service, and I learnt that Cordélia and her father had set out two days
+before on “an urgent journey abroad.”
+
+Though I was physically hardened by my devotion to sport, I could
+not restrain my tears, for the news was so unforeseen and coincided
+so little with my expectations, that I felt a presentiment that some
+irretrievable calamity had befallen me.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER III
+
+                       VASCOEUIL AND HENNEQUEVILLE
+
+
+It was not that I entertained the slightest doubt of Cordélia’s love,
+but I fancied that my uncle was no longer favorable to our union, and
+had contrived the journey in order that I might understand for myself a
+position which he would have found hard to explain by word of mouth.
+
+“Have they gone away for any length of time?” I inquired in a trembling
+voice.
+
+Old Surdon, the man-servant, who was never a gossip, gave me to
+understand by a gesture that he knew nothing.
+
+“Where have they gone?”
+
+Another gesture in like manner to the first completed my discomfiture.
+Surdon, however, without undue haste drew a letter from the inside
+pocket of his coat.
+
+I snatched it from his hand, opened it, and read:
+
+  “+My dear Nephew+,
+
+  “We find ourselves suddenly compelled to leave for abroad. I have
+  to deal with a matter which, as you may readily imagine, is of the
+  utmost importance. We shall not remain away longer than we can
+  help, but I scarcely think that we shall be able to return for
+  a couple of months. We shall frequently write to you through an
+  indirect channel, because I am anxious that you alone should know
+  where we are. Be careful to keep the secret of our whereabouts to
+  yourself. Don’t worry about anything. Cordélia still loves you; and
+  you will be married before the end of the year. Look forward to
+  seeing us at Vascoeuil where I am sending my servants. Surdon will
+  be your servant.”
+
+While this letter and the remark, “You will be married before the
+end of the year,” reassured me as to my uncle’s purpose, it greatly
+perplexed me as to Cordélia. “Cordélia still loves you.” What was the
+necessity to add those words? Moreover, the letter filled me with
+a vague misgiving for a number of reasons. What was the meaning of
+this mysterious journey, and why should I receive tidings from him
+through an indirect source? Most of all, why should I be packed off to
+Vascoeuil?
+
+My uncle and Cordélia were in the habit of spending the summer at
+Hennequeville, where they owned “Clos Normand,” a splendid estate on
+the main road to Honfleur. It was a huge, entirely new structure, by
+which I mean that it was built some fifteen years before, and possessed
+the most important thing in the world—modern comfort. Vascoeuil, on
+the other hand, which we used to visit once during the year, at the
+beginning of the hunting season, was a large country house not devoid
+of a certain style and charm but antiquated and lacking in well-nigh
+everything that makes life easy.
+
+This manor house had always produced on me a peculiar impression, with
+its high, colorless walls, its tower at one of the extremities casting
+its reflection in the chill waters of the river, its great neglected
+courtyard, its dilapidated out-houses, and its ill-kept grounds whose
+moss-covered paths gave forth an odor of decay.
+
+The rooms in the house with their paintings from which the freshness
+had departed, and the faded mirrors, seemed to be haunted by shades
+which our annual visit disturbed. I have never been a believer of
+ghosts, but Vascoeuil invariably gave me an uncanny feeling.
+
+Strange to say, Cordélia rather liked the place and found “poetry”
+in it. When I began to analyze my feelings, the apprehension which
+Vascoeuil caused me seemed to be explained by the fact that I was a
+man of sound health and well-balanced mind, and everything round me
+which failed to correspond with these solid realities was unendurable.
+Vascoeuil was not a “healthy” place. That was enough to make me take a
+dislike to it.
+
+My dislike was still further increased when I found myself there with
+old Surdon and Mathilde, his wife, but without Cordélia.
+
+I have mentioned that Surdon was never a gossip, but Mathilde was in
+the habit of giving free play to her tongue. She had known us from our
+infancy and was very fond of us; and for years had spoken with delight
+of our future marriage. I had no sooner arrived than, taking her on
+one side, I asked her without beating about the bush to tell me the
+meaning of the whole thing.
+
+She heaved a sigh and turned on her heel. I ran after her and caught
+her by the skirt. She began to cry:
+
+“I swear, monsieur, that it’s nothing,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It
+was the master’s idea to live here. He did not ask our advice you may
+be sure.”
+
+“Well, if it pleases him, let him come here instead of running about
+all over Europe and taking Cordélia away from me. As for myself, I
+shall clear out.”
+
+“Where to?”
+
+“Hennequeville.”
+
+As soon as I uttered the word Mathilde betrayed the utmost excitement.
+
+“No, no. Your uncle wouldn’t be pleased if he heard you were at
+Hennequeville. He has taken it into his head that you mustn’t go there.”
+
+Mathilde was a native of Darnetal in the Rouen district. That meant
+that she was artful and obstinate. I saw that I should get nothing out
+of her. But I made up my mind to go to Hennequeville. I reached the
+place next day. It was about six o’clock in the evening when I got
+there.
+
+Heavens! how pleased I was to see the country and how delightful the
+grounds were! In truth, with the glossy and luxuriant verdure of the
+meadows, and the sweet-scented hedgerows in full bloom, there was
+nothing ghostly about Hennequeville. And yet when, at the turn of the
+road, I came in sight of the empty house, my heart was filled with
+anguish. Never before had it greeted me with such a vacant look. Its
+shuttered windows and locked doors made a strange impression on me.
+
+How remote it all seemed from Cordélia’s laughter and kisses and
+the welcome I used to receive when formerly I crossed the beloved
+threshold. There was no echo of the olden time. The house no longer
+knew me. I lay my head heavily on the garden gate and thus I remained
+for I know not how long, a prey to the gloomiest dejection.
+
+Darkness had fallen by now, and when I looked up I was not a little
+surprised to perceive a few steps away from me a dark form which I
+might have taken for my own shadow, its posture so exactly resembled my
+own. The shadow also heaved a sigh. I was struck dumb with fear.
+
+But my amazement did but increase when I heard this shadow give
+utterance aloud to feelings which I expressed to myself in a whisper.
+In words whose exact form I am unable to set down, but which admirably
+conveyed my thoughts, the dark form declared that it was impossible
+for a mind endowed with any sensibility to pass this beautiful domain
+without stopping long enough at least to regret that all that life of
+elegance and enjoyment for which it had been built, seemed to have
+departed from it forever.
+
+Whereupon somewhat taken aback I made answer, lying to myself,—for I
+say again that my prevision was the same as the shadow’s—that there was
+no reason why this house which was closed for the time being, should
+not be re-opened some day and be filled once more with joyous life and
+activity. But the shadow sighed once more, shook its head, uttered the
+one word “Never!” which sent a shudder through me, and gliding behind
+the wall vanished from sight.
+
+I left the place more cast down than when I arrived. My curious meeting
+with a stranger who seemed to be stirred by an emotion singularly akin
+to my own, unnerved me to a degree which at first I failed to realize;
+but as I was descending the hill which led me back to the Tongues
+valley, I thought I recognized in front of me the dark form of the
+man whose voice I had heard near me, and I started to run in order to
+overtake him.
+
+I came up with him outside an inn from whose partly-opened door a faint
+glimmer of light could be seen. It was sufficient, however, to enable
+me to perceive some of his features, for he turned round as I drew
+near. Apart from a certain handsomeness, I was at once struck with his
+eyes, or rather their brightness. They seemed to burn in the darkness.
+
+Only the eyes of certain albinos, or the eyes of cats who are able to
+distinguish things in the dark, unseen by human eyes, have produced a
+similar effect on me. The man emerged from the light and I saw his
+burning eyes as he stood in the road.
+
+I would have liked to speak to him but my courage failed me.
+
+I remained standing there as though dazed while he walked away. The
+fresh breeze from the sea fortunately swept my brow. Some one spoke to
+me. It was the innkeeper. I made my way into the inn and asked him if
+he knew the man who had just passed his door. He told me that he was a
+celebrated English painter, and people in the country round said of him
+that he was “a bit touched.”
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+                               THE WEDDING
+
+
+When I returned to Vascoeuil a letter lay waiting for me. It bore the
+Paris postmark, and the address was written in a handwriting unknown
+to me. On opening it I found a line from my uncle who had written a
+hurried scrawl from the Tyrol.
+
+The Tyrol! People do not go to the Tyrol for business purposes.
+
+What was his object in wandering about the Tyrol with Cordélia while I
+was kept waiting for them in this wretched house? He did not attempt to
+explain. He gave me an address to which I was to write to him.
+
+  “Write as often as you can; write every day. In the meantime I will
+  suggest something which will occupy your time until we return. I
+  want you to redecorate Vascoeuil with ‘every modern comfort.’ I
+  leave the matter entirely to you. Furnish it to your own taste.
+  It belongs to you and Cordélia. I intend to give it to you as
+  a wedding present. You will be married at Vascoeuil. I am well
+  aware that the property has never greatly appealed to you. Have it
+  renovated in such a way that you will like it. But don’t have any
+  alterations made in the grounds. That will be Cordélia’s affair.
+  She has ideas on the subject. We both send you our love.”
+
+Not a word came from Cordélia. Why did she not write to me? Did she no
+longer love me? Ever since my return from Hennequeville I asked myself
+the terrible question.
+
+I wrote to my uncle and gave full expression to my misgivings.
+
+I told him that it was impossible for me to apply myself to any task
+whatsoever unless I knew how I stood with regard to Cordélia, and she
+alone would be able to restore my peace of mind.
+
+A fortnight elapsed without any reply. I spent those two weeks like an
+idiot waiting for the postman. Surdon and his wife took pity on me and
+endeavored to “argue” with me, but I refused to listen to them. At last
+I received a letter. Again it bore the Paris postmark. How I leaped
+upon it!
+
+A letter from Cordélia! That is to say a line or two:
+
+  “Of course I still love you my dear Hector. I have never ceased to
+  love you. What an idea! And what nonsense! We shall meet soon, my
+  husband to be!”
+
+Well, it was a letter which by no means satisfied me. “I still love you
+my dear Hector,” seemed to me a sort of plaster to cure my pain. It was
+not what I wanted; and even “We shall meet soon, my husband to be” was
+cold comfort to me.
+
+I wrote to Cordélia and poured out all my woes. I wept like a child
+over the letter as I reminded her of our vows, and I assured her that
+I would rather die in despair than lead to the altar a Cordélia who no
+longer loved me as of yore.
+
+Then, oh then, a few days later, I received eight pages from
+Cordélia—eight long pages which made me weep for joy. I recognized
+in them my little playmate of the long ago, her vivacity, her
+impulsiveness, her delight in being with me, her adorable love of
+mischief. She seemed to have plunged anew into the past with an
+abandon which she wished me to share. She would have no difficulty in
+that!
+
+And then suddenly after indulging in these memories she spoke of the
+present with an assurance which at once restored my mental and physical
+health. She was looking forward to the simple duties of marriage.
+She spoke of our taking up our abode at Vascoeuil and entered into
+particulars which caused me straightway to fall in love with the place.
+She went on:
+
+“You will see how delightful Vascoeuil will look when, between us, we
+have had it refurbished to our tastes. You must take a trip to Paris
+and buy various things,”—here was a list of suggested purchases.—“I
+want you to have everything ready by the time we return, because father
+wishes us to be married at once. I shan’t be the one to stand in the
+way! Oh, while I think of it: Don’t have anything done to the grounds.
+You have never understood them. They have a beauty all their own, which
+I am longing to develop to the utmost. I shall transform them into a
+garden fit for Pelléas and Melisande. We will take our walks in them
+in days of depression, for however happy one may be, life has its days
+of depression which, however, are not without a charm of their own. In
+the meantime, how delightful it would be to go for our honeymoon on
+horseback as though we were both crazy. You will remember that when we
+were quite young we used to dream of making such a trip, and we laughed
+at those respectable people who went off by the ordinary train. But you
+will see that we shall take the train like everybody else. What does
+it matter so long as there is a gondola at the end of the journey? We
+will go to Venice. That was always understood. The Tyrol is horrible.
+Nothing but mountains. And I loathe mountains, particularly when they
+keep me apart from you!”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The eight pages continued in this strain. Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!
+How could I ever have doubted you and your dear little heart, your dear
+little heart!... Quick, to work! Come on bricklayers and painters and
+“the whole blooming lot of you” as my uncle would say.
+
+I stirred the men on to greater exertions by my good spirits and
+generosity. I myself looked like a bricklayer’s laborer, and Surdon
+gave way to silent laughter when he handed me a jug of cider which I
+emptied at a gulp in order to show the others that I could do full
+justice to the amber liquor.
+
+I did well to hurry on with the work. My uncle and Cordélia arrived
+home a week earlier than they had foretold. I expected them about the
+eighth of October, whereas they reached Vascoeuil on the last day of
+September. The work was not nearly finished.
+
+Cordélia found me on the top of a ladder busily engaged in papering
+her boudoir. I fell into her arms. She bore the shock quite well,
+exclaiming: “Heavens, how ugly!” I made a gesture which caused her to
+burst out laughing. I thought that she was speaking of me while she was
+referring to the wallpaper. That was enough to throw us into a state of
+merriment which brought my uncle on the scene.
+
+He gave us his blessing and kissed us; kissed us and gave us his
+blessing a second time; and recounted that he himself was married in
+that house, that Cordélia was born in it, that our children and our
+grand-children would be born in it. Whereupon Cordélia, who turned a
+deaf ear to him, exclaimed:
+
+“My goodness, how nice the paint smells here. I say, look here, father,
+I don’t want to be anything but a house-painter now. How does that
+strike you?”
+
+“I approve my dear. Oh, I quite approve. That’s a very healthy idea!”
+
+I was rather surprised to hear him speak like that. I was always under
+the impression that the health of a house-painter was subject to
+considerable risk, owing, I think, to the white lead in his materials,
+and I raised the objection to my uncle, whose only answer was to give
+me a friendly pat on the back.
+
+A few minutes later he said with his usual kindly smile:
+
+“You are still the best of all Hectors. I hope you’ll never be any
+different.”
+
+I don’t know why he should have given utterance to such a sentiment,
+because I have no intention of being any different. Nevertheless on
+thinking it over, I have since concluded that he found a simplicity in
+me which appealed to him, the unemotional and well-balanced temperament
+of a man who is not in the habit of creating difficulties where there
+are none, and he counselled me to remain as I was if I wished to insure
+our happiness.
+
+The three following weeks passed so quickly and pleasantly that they
+stand out in my memory as among the happiest weeks of my life. I
+dismissed from my mind every preoccupation having no connection with
+the diversions of the day, and these consisted, for Cordélia and me,
+of upsetting the entire household, hiding behind doors, chasing one
+another like school children and kissing until Cordélia, all flushed,
+gently pushed me away exclaiming: “Hector that will do ... leave some
+for to-morrow!”
+
+Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!
+
+When she first came home I thought that she was looking rather pale,
+overcome doubtless by the fatigues of the journey. Now she had
+regained her beautiful color. She was still as slender as before, but I
+discerned that none of the natural beauties of a woman were lacking in
+her. I hardly know how to express my meaning, but to my mind women were
+never more beautiful than they are nowadays; and I still adhere to my
+opinion. Mentally and physically she was perfect. I cannot say more.
+
+At last the great day arrived. It was a wonderful function and one
+that will long be remembered and talked about at Vascoeuil. Cordélia’s
+father, who was a great landed proprietor, had issued invitations to
+the entire district after the fashion of his own day. I mean that
+representatives of the families round about, the possessors of great
+names and great fortunes, were present and entertained with princely
+magnificence.
+
+My uncle would have liked the festivities to be kept up for three days,
+but he yielded to Cordélia’s entreaties, for she declared that if the
+guests remained after six o’clock we should take our departure. The
+wedding breakfast, in accordance with Cordélia’s wishes, was called
+lunch. And it was indeed a lunch!
+
+But all this was nothing in comparison with the feast which was given
+about a mile away at the farm of my uncle’s principal tenant. Tents
+had been erected in a large field, and the country people who were
+assembled therein let themselves go for all they were worth, like the
+guests at the gargantuan wedding feast of Gamache.
+
+Cordélia gracefully went the round of the tables without evincing the
+least repugnance for all this excessive gorging and I was very glad. I
+accompanied her like a little dog.
+
+“They’re not at all stuck up. We hope they’ll be happy,” we heard our
+guests exclaim on every hand.
+
+
+
+
+                                CHAPTER V
+
+                          AN UNEXPECTED PRESENT
+
+
+On returning to the house we found our guests in the drawing-room
+gazing enraptured at the wedding presents which were on view. Heaven
+knows that they were numerous enough!
+
+It was at this juncture that Surdon came in carrying, with some
+difficulty, a large flat package wrapped in canvas upon which a small
+square piece of cardboard was pinned bearing in writing the words:
+
+                     “_My offering for the wedding_”
+
+The card was not signed.
+
+Several guests had read the inscription, and were amused over the
+wedding “offering.” Our attention was attracted by their laughter,
+and when my uncle, Cordélia and myself drew near, they were already
+speaking of a wedding surprise, and eagerly expressing a wish to see
+the present.
+
+My uncle read the card, turned pale, lifted his eyes and looked at
+Cordélia, who also read it. A deep blush suffused her cheeks. But she
+displayed no confusion, and smiling said:
+
+“It’s from him. He often uses one word instead of another. Sometimes he
+does it on purpose as it amuses him. Besides, it’s his writing.”
+
+To me the incident was a complete riddle. My uncle’s pallor, Cordélia’s
+blushes, the words that passed between them—these things began to
+trouble me.
+
+“We might as well see what it is,” I said, pointing to the package.
+
+“What’s the use?” returned my uncle. “We’ll have a look at it later on.”
+
+Cordélia left us and went to an adjoining drawing-room.
+
+Then I was seized with a feeling of curiosity and opened the package
+myself. When the canvas which covered it was removed, I could not
+repress a cry of admiration, and the guests around me were breathless
+with wonder.
+
+It was a portrait—a portrait of Cordélia. And such a portrait!
+
+It was a picture of a marvelous radiance. It seemed to have been
+painted with the softest of lights. It was utterly impossible to
+conceive by what magic of coloring a human being who had nothing at
+his command save brushes and the pigments in metal tubes, was able to
+transmit to canvas so ideal a visual image.
+
+I had never before encountered anything which could lead me to suspect
+the existence of such an art. I had had an opportunity, like all those
+who assist at great public functions in Paris, and delight in such
+things, of visiting one or two exhibitions of paintings which affected
+to be original, and professed to revolutionize art. Those works
+expressed either an exaggerated symbolism or flights of the wildest
+fantasy—were a great hoax in fact. I say freely what I think and if
+any one takes offense the more’s the pity. As a general rule these
+paintings are enshrouded in an erudite obscurity from which shines a
+vague and eccentric glimmer of light.
+
+But the miracle of this portrait consisted in this: It was the picture
+itself which was painted in such a way that rays seemed to radiate from
+it of themselves, without the intervention of any sort of trick.
+
+The artist had succeeded in showing to the ordinary eye what it does
+not usually perceive, that is to say, the invisible light which the
+body radiates around itself....
+
+I can speak of these things now that I have acquired the most painful
+and terrible experience in this domain, but at that time I was
+conscious of it all without comprehending it, and it would have been
+difficult for me to express clearly my thoughts in a language of which
+I was ignorant.
+
+In short, in this effulgent portrait it was as though Cordélia’s soul
+came to greet you from the first with a divine smile which emanated
+from the entire expression of her face.
+
+And now I understood what she meant when she wrote: “A portrait should
+represent something more than the mere lineaments of a person; it
+should convey the expression of the soul.”
+
+She was obviously acquainted therefore with painting like that which
+that day had enraptured us, and also doubtless with the painter
+himself, who had sent this “offering” for the wedding.
+
+It was no longer possible for me to doubt it!
+
+I bent over the canvas to discover if the portrait was signed. I
+deciphered the one letter “P.”
+
+My uncle and Cordélia were not present to satisfy my curiosity. I went
+to look for them but could not find them. I was told that Cordélia had
+retired to her room in order to have a short rest.
+
+Our guests were beginning to take their leave. My uncle rejoined me.
+The pallor which had made such an impression on me was gone. On the
+other hand he was in high good humor and very talkative as he wished
+good-bye to his guests. He glanced at me from time to time and smiled
+broadly as how should say: “Be happy. All goes well.”
+
+What was the cause of his sudden perturbation during that memorable day?
+
+Yielding to a latent impulse which had been growing in me since the
+scene over the portrait, I returned to the drawing-room where the
+wedding presents were on show. The portrait was gone.
+
+I asked old Surdon what had become of the masterpiece. He made answer
+that by “Mademoiselle’s” orders—he could not get accustomed to call her
+“Madame”—he had himself taken it down into the cellar.
+
+When I expressed my astonishment, he assured me that it was the very
+place for the devil’s own painting.
+
+I stopped him as he was making off and said:
+
+“Do you know the man who painted the portrait?”
+
+“You have other things to do, monsieur, to-day, than to bother about
+such nonsense,” he returned, giving me a look and frowning.
+
+He wanted to slip away, but I held him back.
+
+“Look here, Surdon, I am going to ask you one question, but you will
+have to answer me if we are to remain good friends. When I went to
+Hennequeville I saw a man outside the garden gate looking up at the
+empty house. I was told that this man was an English painter whom
+people in the district regarded as slightly ‘touched.’ Is this the man
+who sent the portrait to your mistress to-day?”
+
+But Surdon stubbornly turned away, answering me in words which
+exasperated me:
+
+“I have already told you, monsieur, that the whole thing is nonsense.”
+
+I was raging within myself and did not know what to say.
+
+Surdon was right, however. That was a day on which nothing but my
+happiness ought to have occupied my mind, and here was I questioning
+a servant in secret upon incidents which, obviously, were not now
+serious, and from which, to all appearance, it was desired to spare me
+out of good feeling.
+
+I retired in a more or less ill temper to a secluded part of the park,
+which I never cared for because of my thinking it was a dreary place. I
+was surprised to find myself harboring thoughts which were unworthy of
+Cordélia and me. But, as has been said, man is a foolish animal.
+
+Just then my uncle came up to me. He was in traveling clothes. He had
+in fact decided to leave that same evening for Caen. He at once said
+that he had something to tell me in confidence; something, however, of
+no great importance to which he would certainly not have alluded but
+for Surdon, who had acquainted him of my curiosity with regard to the
+portrait of Cordélia.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+
+                                 PATRICK
+
+
+I felt somewhat disconcerted, but as occasionally happens in moments of
+trepidation, I managed to overcome the difficulty by a bold stroke.
+
+“I say, Uncle, you must excuse me,” I began, “but accident led me
+across the path of a man who was gazing gloomily at the house at
+Hennequeville, and I was told he was a painter. I thought, perhaps,
+that there was some connection between this painter and the portrait
+which came to-day, and also certain incidents which caused me, before
+our marriage, a great deal of pain.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“Your hurried departure to....”
+
+“Well, that’s true, and it was about this that I wanted to speak to
+you, so that the subject should never again be mentioned between us.
+You must know that Cordélia came back to the house one evening with a
+stranger whom she had discovered in a farmyard painting some wench
+feeding her fowls. She declared that he was a wonderful artist and she
+was very grateful to him for agreeing to accept her as a pupil.
+
+“The stranger used to laugh at her youthful enthusiasm and he conducted
+himself like a gentleman. He was an Englishman of good family, slightly
+eccentric, possessing views on most things which were peculiar to
+himself. I did not always follow what he meant, but his ideas cast a
+spell over Cordélia for the time being. I saw no reason why they should
+not work together either in the house or the country round. Patrick,
+for such is his christian name, and the only one by which he signs his
+paintings, lived in a cottage on the borders of Tongues forest.
+
+“I was at that time greatly taken up with business which compelled me
+to go frequently to Paris, and I failed to perceive the changes which
+were taking place in Cordélia.
+
+“It was Surdon and his wife who called my attention to the fact that
+she had lost her vivacity, no longer played at farming, or mounted her
+horse, but spent her whole time in painting or reading or dreaming,
+leaving the house only when the stranger made an appointment to go
+sketching in some part of the country, and returning thoughtful and
+silent.
+
+“I then took stock of Cordélia and was amazed to discover a new look
+on her face. She was now as grave as she used to be gay, and wore a
+curious absorbed expression as though lost in a reverie. I bitterly
+reproached myself for my carelessness and oversight. However, I said
+nothing, the better to keep a watch over her. I soon saw for myself
+that Cordélia was living only through the medium of this man Patrick’s
+thought.”
+
+“Oh, good Heavens! that’s just what I feared,” I gasped.
+
+“Don’t worry yourself,” went on my uncle, “for as you will see, the
+whole business is of no consequence. Do you know the sort of man
+Cordélia had to do with?”
+
+“A rogue,” I returned.
+
+“That’s just it. A sort of mountebank who tried to persuade her that
+the moon was made of green cheese, and told her a pack of silly tales
+about his psychic powers and such-like nonsense, which ended by turning
+her head.”
+
+“But did she still love me?” I inquired.
+
+“I believe she still loved you, only she didn’t want to be married!”
+
+“Oh, good Heavens!” I exclaimed.
+
+“I will tell you what happened, and you will see that the whole thing
+is of no consequence.”
+
+“Forgive me, Uncle, but I can plainly see that what you tell me is of
+the utmost consequence. I never dreamt that it was going to be of so
+much consequence!”
+
+“Look here, my boy, you make me ill. Are you a man or not? Aren’t
+you married to a girl whom you adore and who loves you now that her
+eyes have been opened? If to-morrow morning there is any question of
+this imposter of a Patrick may the devil take me! I’ll never shake
+you by the hand again. So listen to me, for we must have done with
+this business.... I discovered in a desk in the studio a regular
+correspondence carried on between Cordélia and Patrick in secret.”
+
+“Well, that’s about the limit!”
+
+“This correspondence,” continued my uncle, “is what these people call a
+correspondence between souls. And I can assure you, my dear Hector, it
+is not this psychic communion, to use their own words, that will make
+me a grandfather one of these days!... Almost at the same time I found
+in Cordélia’s room, in addition to this rubbish, a new bookcase crammed
+with works on magic. Yes, a library of occult science. An incredible
+number of books on the unseen world, on faces and souls. Can’t you
+picture a book on ‘faces and souls’? Oh and an illustrated work on
+stigmatism, mediums, thaumaturgy and what not....
+
+“To prove to you, my dear fellow, that the whole business is of no
+consequence, I must tell you that I had no need even to see Patrick
+to get rid of him. Everything came out in the most natural way from
+Cordélia, who was always a sensible girl, and herself realized the
+danger which she was incurring by listening to this charlatan. When she
+discovered me in the thick of all these books and Patrick’s letters
+before me, she threw her arms round my neck and cried: ‘Save me,
+Papa!’”
+
+“Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!” I could not help interjecting. “That’s
+like her old self. I recognize her there!”
+
+“‘Yes, I’ll save you from that madman, my Cordélia,’ I replied. ‘Hector
+will soon be home from America, and you shall be married.’ And it was
+then, my dear Hector, that she said: ‘But I can’t marry Hector. Patrick
+has forbidden me.’”
+
+“Ah, yes!” I said, gasping anew. “Ah yes!... This is too thick....
+Really this Patrick having the cheek to forbid her to marry me!”
+
+“Yes, she declared that she was morally bound to obey Patrick, as her
+mind belonged to him.”
+
+“Her mind belonged to him! Why hang it all, this beats everything. And
+what reply did you make, pray?”
+
+“I said to her: ‘Pack up your things, my dear, and we’ll make a trip
+to some part of Europe where there will be no danger of meeting this
+delightful gentleman, and above all, let’s have no more letter
+writing. We’ll talk about all this again in a couple of months’
+time’.... Well, we left here as you know and there was no need to wait
+a couple of months. At the end of six weeks this Patrick was forgotten,
+and Cordélia thought only of you. And now, my dear boy, say good-by.
+Cordélia is yours, and I hope that you won’t have any difficulty in
+keeping her. Bless my soul, do your best to make her happy!”
+
+Having said which, he clasped me in his arms almost stifling me, and
+left me, muttering between his teeth:
+
+“Stuff and nonsense. Stuff and nonsense.”
+
+When I got back to the house Mathilde, old Surdon’s wife, told me that
+her mistress was expecting me in her room. I entered, and my eyes fell
+on a dainty little champagne supper which lay ready for us, and it
+was none too soon, for Cordélia and I had eaten nothing or scarcely
+anything during the day, our attention being fully occupied in greeting
+our guests and returning their civilities.
+
+The table was set in the boudoir, and the door leading to Cordélia’s
+room was closed. I stood there like a great stupid. I dared not knock
+at the door, and I began to cough as I stared fatuously at the walls
+which I myself had papered.
+
+At that moment the door was softly opened and I heard Cordélia say once
+more in her laughing voice: “Gracious, how ugly! Gracious, how ugly!”
+
+I looked round and joined in the laugh, for this time I knew that she
+was not alluding to me.
+
+I was surprised to see her muffled up in a fur cloak.
+
+“Hallo, have you caught cold?” I exclaimed.
+
+“I haven’t caught cold,” she made answer. “I am cold. Don’t you find it
+bitterly cold?”
+
+I thought she was jesting, for as a matter of fact, the day had been
+unusually warm for the time of the year, and a pleasant wood fire was
+blazing in the boudoir which I could very well have dispensed with.
+
+“You know that those sables suit you to perfection, and it’s a little
+affectation on your part. Not that I have the faintest objection, but
+you’ll be suffocated in them.”
+
+She replied with a shiver and summoned Mathilde to put more wood on the
+fire.
+
+My heart sank within me, for I imagined that she must be really out of
+sorts.
+
+“I tell you there’s nothing the matter with me,” she said, taking
+things very simply, “I feel cold. It might happen to any one to feel
+cold. I won’t have you worrying yourself about me. I can’t pretend to
+be warm when I’m cold. What a tyrant you are!... I say, we’re beginning
+our married life well,” she went on in the funniest manner, as she
+kissed me before Mathilde, who did not seem to mind, accustomed as she
+was for so many years to see us kiss each other.
+
+It was Cordélia who told Mathilde to leave the room. Then she at once
+asked:
+
+“What has father been talking to you about? You and he have been
+wandering about the park, which you dislike, for more than
+half-an-hour. What did he tell you?”
+
+“He told me a lot of things of no consequence,” I returned. “Let’s have
+something to eat. Aren’t you hungry?”
+
+“Oh yes. But you know you may as well tell me what he said. It was I
+who sent him out to you. I wanted you to know all, dearest, before you
+came upstairs to me here. Believe me the whole thing is utter nonsense.
+Tell me that you forgive me.”
+
+“Do I forgive you!... Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!”
+
+As she carved the truffled galantine, she went on:
+
+“When I think of it now I see how silly I was, but he was such an odd
+person. Indeed he really seems to have fascinated me.”
+
+“Don’t let us speak of it,” I entreated. “Don’t let us speak of it.”
+
+“You ought to be glad to hear me speak so calmly of it. It shows that
+I am entirely cured. And I can assure you that I am quite as pleased
+as you are. One must not touch such things as occultism, hypnotism,
+and magic you know. One gets carried away and ceases to be master of
+oneself. It is a morbid condition to be in.... What do you think of
+this galantine? Come, pour me out some champagne.... And kiss me....
+What are you thinking about? Surely you’re not going to trouble about
+Patrick now. There! To mention his name makes me feel quite queer.”
+
+A shiver passed through her.
+
+“I’m certain, Hector, there’s a draught coming from somewhere.”
+
+“No, dearest, all the doors are closed.”
+
+“An ice-cold draught.”
+
+Her teeth chattered. I rose from the table filled with an indescribable
+uneasiness. And suddenly, as I looked at her, I saw her turn pale.
+
+“What is it? What’s the matter Cordélia dearest?”
+
+“I see now what’s the matter,” she returned, drawing her cloak more
+closely round her. “It’s the portrait.”
+
+“The portrait! What do you mean?”
+
+“The portrait which Patrick sent to me and I ordered to be taken down
+into the cellar.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Well, the portrait is cold.”
+
+Cordélia’s words were Greek to me and the look of blank amazement in
+my eyes bore witness, not only to my inability to comprehend her, but
+also to my uneasiness.
+
+“You don’t understand. You don’t understand,” declared Cordélia in
+a quavering voice. “That is what they call the externalization of
+sensibility. They assert that men of science have made conclusive
+experiments in this respect. For instance, the celebrated M. de
+Rochas has demonstrated scientifically that one can take a person’s
+sensibility from him and transport it to a glass of water and make that
+person suffer by plunging a pin into the glass of water.”
+
+I sprang from my chair utterly dismayed by the tone in which Cordélia
+uttered what I regarded as “devil’s tales.”
+
+“Are you going crazy, Cordélia? Surely you don’t believe in such
+preposterous stuff. Come.... Come.... Do say something.”
+
+“I feel cold,” she replied, in an increasingly quavering and far-away
+voice. “I feel cold. I am as cold as my portrait. I see that I shall
+be ill if the portrait is left in the cellar. Besides it was wrong of
+me to send it down there. _He_ must be displeased.”
+
+I realized with a feeling of intense sorrow that my Cordélia was not so
+completely cured of her strange malady as she imagined, and with tears
+in my eyes I exclaimed:
+
+“Where would you like me to put it? I don’t want to go against your
+wishes in such a trifling matter.”
+
+“Wherever you please, wherever you please, but don’t leave it in the
+cellar. And be careful not to knock it about.”
+
+“Of course not. I’ll go and fetch it,” I said, greatly perturbed.
+
+“You must forgive me, dearest, but it’s not my fault, is it? I’m very
+sorry he sent it to us.”
+
+“So am I.”
+
+I went downstairs. I was fuming. I called Surdon and gave him
+instructions to fetch the portrait and then I told him not to bother
+about it, for after what Cordélia had said, I feared lest he should
+subject it to rough usage.
+
+I myself descended into the cellar. I seized the wretched canvas and
+carried it to the drawing-room on the first floor, taking care in
+spite of myself not to knock it against the furniture or walls. Some
+people may say—some people are so clever!—that I behaved like a great
+simpleton, an ass. May be. But we shall see about that. We shall see
+about that.
+
+The fact is that Cordélia held such sway over my mind that I could not
+choose but accede to her wishes.
+
+Nevertheless after I deposited the portrait against the foot of a
+round table I flung wide open the French windows of the balcony which
+was not calculated to make it warm. The cool freshness of the night
+after a beautiful day, floated into the room. No blame could attach
+to me. I had treated the portrait with care and it was not now in the
+cellar. That was all that was asked of me, and if Cordélia was no
+longer feeling cold I should at once be able to cure her of her strange
+obsession.
+
+When I returned to her she was still shivering in her cloak, and she
+gave me a mournful look.
+
+“Why did you put the portrait in a draught?” she asked. “I was certain
+that you would play some trick. It’s too bad of you. I am still cold.
+Bring it here, and then I shall be quite easy in my mind.”
+
+“Certainly, that’s the best thing to be done,” I exclaimed, and I went
+off again, bitterly regretting my mistaken calculation. I should have
+done better to put the thing near the fire; and then, if Cordélia had
+taken it into her head that I had left it in the cold, out of spite,
+she would have been confounded once for all.
+
+When the portrait was brought into the boudoir, Cordélia, of course,
+declared that she was no longer cold. She removed her fur cloak, and I
+perceived that she was clad in a charming loosely-fitting robe. Oh what
+a delightful, sweet little thing she was!
+
+“My dearest, you can’t think how beautiful you are,” I cried. “That’s
+the honest truth, and no mere idle fancy, and when I kiss you I don’t
+feel as if I am kissing a portrait!”
+
+“I agree with you,” she said laughing merrily. “You are taking my
+breath away.”
+
+Truth to tell I held her somewhat tightly in my arms, for I was
+quivering with happiness. She had become entirely normal again, so much
+so that she recalled me to the realities of our supper. And we started
+afresh to eat with good appetite and a light heart. We drank out of the
+same glass like children. Nevertheless, warned by my experience with
+the portrait, I was careful to keep the conversation from straying to
+the past. Our plans for the future and our impending travel about the
+world engrossed our attention.
+
+“How happy we shall be!” she exclaimed.
+
+“Yes, my dear Cordélia, we shall be very happy. We must think of
+nothing else.”
+
+I had uttered a word too many.
+
+“What do you expect me to think about, my dear Hector?” she returned,
+as she regarded my air of embarrassment. “Oh, of course, you say that
+because of the portrait. I admit that I was greatly impressed by it,
+or rather by its being sent here, because I have never seen it, and I
+don’t want to see it,”—I had placed it in a corner with its face to
+the wall—“but the whole thing is over now—quite. Oh quite, I assure
+you. And when I think of it, now that I am all right again, I feel a
+little foolish of course.”
+
+Nothing could have given me greater pleasure than these last words. I
+did not lose the opportunity to score.
+
+“You admit, dear, that just now you were not very well. The exertions
+of the day, and the necessity to recover your strength—you were simply
+hungry—these things were the cause of the trouble and brought about
+that fit of shivering, you may be sure.”
+
+“Yes, I am inclined to think so.”
+
+I kissed her again for these last words, but I thought it as well to
+add with the greatest good humor.
+
+“Personally, I have no fear of the ‘externalization of sensibility.’”
+
+I had no sooner made the remark than Cordélia’s face grew serious once
+more.
+
+“We make a mistake, I think, to treat these matters lightly. I may
+have given way to fancies, but I repeat that the ‘externalization of
+sensibility’ has been scientifically proved. It is our modern material
+conception of things which has imprisoned the soul within the body, but
+in the Middle Ages....”
+
+Oh come, I say, I thought to myself. We are flying off at a tangent
+again. We are in the Middle Ages now!
+
+“In the Middle Ages the soul was easily liberated from the body.”
+
+“We are not in the Middle Ages now, my dearest.”
+
+“How wonderful were its wanderings outside its prison!”
+
+“Yes, yes, of course.... I say do try some of this fruit.”
+
+“Have you ever heard of persons being bewitched?”
+
+“Never, and I don’t want to know anything about them.”
+
+“What a great big silly you are, Hector! It is impossible to talk
+seriously with you. There are certain things you must know, unless you
+want to remain a blockhead.”
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+“The casting of spells is bound up in the history of France, and
+modern discoveries have proved to us that these things are not pure
+imagination. When a person wanted to cast a spell on any one, he made a
+small wax image which resembled as nearly as possible the person whom
+he wished to be rid of.”
+
+“Indeed, and what then?” I inquired, slyly putting my arm round her
+waist.
+
+“And then after, of course, externalizing the sensibility of this
+person to the wax image, he stuck a pin into the image and the person
+died.”
+
+“Are you certain that the person died?”
+
+“Am I certain! No, I am not certain about it.”
+
+“I’m glad of that,” I returned as I gazed into my Cordélia’s face with
+the tenderest expression.
+
+“But there are persons who are certain of it; persons who even maintain
+that many mysterious deaths in the Middle Ages can be accounted for
+only on this assumption.”
+
+I dared not ask who those persons were. I was greatly perturbed that
+the conversation should once more stray to a subject which was
+distasteful to me. Suddenly she stood up.
+
+“Show me the portrait,” she requested, “I want to have a look at it.”
+
+Not five minutes before she had assured me that she had no wish to see
+it!
+
+“Is it really necessary, my dear Cordélia?” I asked, not afraid to show
+a distrust which I hoped she might share.
+
+But unfortunately her thoughts were once more entirely centered on the
+portrait, and it was with a regret which I shall feel all my life that
+I saw her bend over the canvas and turn its face towards us.
+
+Though it remained in the shadow, the outline of the figure stood out
+clearly in its peculiar radiance.
+
+“Oh how beautiful it is!” whispered Cordélia.
+
+She stood for a few minutes still and silent, and then asked my opinion:
+
+“Don’t you think it is beautiful, Hector?”
+
+“Very beautiful,” I answered. “Very beautiful.”
+
+To be sure I had no wish to contradict her, and moreover I had
+expressed my real opinion. Truth to tell, I did not know how to keep my
+countenance. When a woman dabbles in high art the simplest gesture by
+a man may appear to her a piece of stupidity.... Still I ventured to
+press her hand softly to remind her of my presence. She turned her head
+towards me, and with a delightful and gentle look in her eyes, pointing
+to the canvas, said:
+
+“You can say what you like about the man who painted that portrait,
+my dear Hector, you can say that he is cracked, and, in fact, I quite
+think that he is a bit crazy, but you must admit that he is a great
+artist.”
+
+And as I made the mistake of not replying at once, she went on:
+
+“Oh, can’t you speak.... Besides he is the first artist to paint the
+‘aura.’”
+
+“Just so.”
+
+“What do you mean, ‘Just so’? Do you know what the ‘aura’ is?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then why did you say ‘Just so’? I will tell you what the ‘aura’ is:
+it is the cloud of light which emanates from each individual and is
+discernible by the trained consciousness.”
+
+“Indeed! So the consciousness must be trained?”
+
+Cordélia released herself from my arm which was round her waist, and
+gave me a stern look:
+
+“Don’t, my dear Hector, adopt an attitude of making game of what you
+don’t understand. You would do better to think of all the matter round
+us which radiates light. Why should not the human body shed a radiance?
+It is not only a trained consciousness which can perceive these
+light-rays, but they are visible to the open eyes of certain persons,
+I can tell you. Look at this portrait! Besides, the negative of a
+photograph can develop these light-rays for us even far from the body
+whence they emanate, and sometimes they retain their actual shape. That
+is the aura.”
+
+“Really the negative of a photograph?”
+
+“You are the only person to be ignorant of it.”
+
+“I am very sorry.”
+
+“This fluid substance,” she went on with intense seriousness,
+“represents our perceptions and something more than our perceptions,
+our intellectual life, which emanates from us and precedes us and is
+conscious of things long before our body is. It is this force which,
+when I am in the street, makes me think of a person whom I shall meet
+in another five minutes, because my aura is conscious of him before
+he is discernible by my physical vision. Do you follow me? Do you
+understand me?”
+
+“Yes,” I acquiesced, absolutely terrified by the turn which the
+conversation had taken, “I am beginning to understand.”
+
+“Well, it is none too soon! If you only knew how interesting in reality
+the whole thing is. It is indeed the new thought—the only one that will
+matter in a few years’ time. And this aura—your perceptions and my
+perceptions—is a force which can operate from a distance; and be made
+to operate from a distance; that is a well-known phenomenon. In this
+particular aspect it is called suggestion; and suggestion is a reality
+which is as indisputable as a mathematical formula—as two and two make
+four, for instance. By means of suggestion, auras have been seen at an
+incredible distance from the body, if not separated from it altogether,
+for that would involve death at least ... almost to forget the body.”
+
+And after uttering these last words in tones of rapt excitement which
+utterly overwhelmed me, she became once more plunged in thought.
+
+What was she thinking about? What was she thinking about?
+
+I sank into a chair and as I gazed at her a sense of hopelessness came
+over me. I saw her in profile as she stood erect facing the infernal
+picture. The light wrap which covered her shoulders had slipped off,
+and I beheld her bare young throat, the adorable outline of her arm
+as it hung with infinite grace by her side. My feeling of dejection
+gradually gave way to an admiration which longed to find expression.
+
+I drew myself up cautiously and stole towards her like a thief; and I
+closed my arms round her to seize her as though I already feared lest
+my dear beauteous treasure should be torn away from me.
+
+Taken aback, a slight cry escaped her and she turned round with a
+peculiar look in her eyes which I had never beheld in them before, and
+stared at me as if she no longer knew me.
+
+“Cordélia, I am your husband and I adore you,” I whispered.
+
+And I pressed my lips to hers, but the terror of it! I met lips which
+were as cold as stone, and I had no sooner placed a kiss upon them than
+she became a statue in my arms. I was holding to my heart an inanimate
+form; a form not devoid of life, but from which life had taken wing
+elsewhere.
+
+Cordélia had fallen on my shoulders in a cataleptic-like sleep. I
+called to her. I used the most endearing words. I implored her to speak
+to me. She did not hear me. So far from returning my kisses she was
+unconscious of them.
+
+“Cordélia! Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!” I cried. “Where are you? Where
+are you?”
+
+At last, after laying her on the sofa in her deadly immobility, I began
+to shout and summon assistance like a madman.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VII
+
+                            AFTER THE WEDDING
+
+
+Mathilde and Surdon came hurrying into the room and were not less
+terrified than I was to discover Cordélia in this statue-like
+condition. The only thing which we could be certain about was that she
+was not dead. I cannot remember all that we attempted, Mathilde and
+I, to “bring her back to her senses,” while Surdon went to fetch the
+nearest doctor.
+
+We carried Cordélia in her state of insensibility on to the balcony. We
+brought her back again. We tried the effects of cold and heat in turn.
+We placed hot bricks to her feet and cold compresses to her forehead.
+What alarmed us more than anything else was the complete rigidity in
+which she lay in our arms, and nothing that we could do succeeded in
+relaxing the tension.
+
+I employed a phrase just now with the full meaning of which I
+was unacquainted. I said that Cordélia fell on my shoulder in a
+cataleptic-like sleep. That was true, but I more or less learned for
+the first time the meaning of catalepsy from the village doctor whom
+Surdon brought back.
+
+And even then I failed to grasp the significance of what he was saying
+except that Cordélia was suffering from a nervous malady which had
+reached the critical point, and must have been brought about by great
+mental and physical strain and the unwonted excitement of a wedding
+day. He did not tell us anything new from this point of view, for it
+was in this sense that we regarded her illness. To what other cause
+could we, in our ignorance, attribute it save to excitement and fatigue?
+
+Unfortunately this blockhead of a doctor proved his inability to awaken
+Cordélia. After blowing on her eyes without effect he seemed greatly
+perplexed. He knew more about it than we did, perhaps, but he was as
+powerless as we were. To our stormings and complaints he could but
+reply: “She will wake up of her own accord just as she fell asleep.”
+And he counseled me to have patience.
+
+Have patience!... He was the limit!... I asked him in a voice strained
+with anxiety, how long this torpor could last. His only answer was to
+shake his head. He exasperated me.
+
+“But, look here, will it last one hour—two hours?”
+
+“One can never tell.... One can never tell.”
+
+“Still it can’t go on for a couple of days, I suppose?” I cried,
+incensed.
+
+“Well, there have been such cases, but generally speaking....”
+
+I could have struck him. And yet he was a worthy man who strove to
+comfort me, to persuade me that the case was not very serious, to lead
+me to hope that we were confronted with a phenomenon which, if due
+precautions were taken, might not recur, and, moreover, would yield to
+treatment. And at the finish he recommended me to consult a specialist
+in nervous diseases. Having said so much, he gave me the slip.
+
+I at once sent Surdon in the car to Rouen, whence he was to bring back
+Dr. Thurel, celebrated in the district for certain unusual cures which
+bordered on the miraculous.
+
+I turned Mathilde out of the room, for since the doctor’s remedies
+and her own nostrums were of no avail, she imagined that we were the
+victims of the devil, and she wearied me with her lamentations and
+exorcisms. I had the utmost difficulty in preventing her from going for
+the priest. What a honeymoon!
+
+Left alone before the sofa on which Cordélia’s statue-like form lay, I
+felt less affected by the pitiable spectacle of my beloved than by a
+sort of almost childish frenzy against the fate which had played this
+trick upon me. Heaven knows I deserved to be pitied! To have waited
+so long for this day and to pass it with a woman who had been turned
+to stone! By what fatality had Cordélia fallen asleep at the very
+moment when she was in my arms? It was indeed, to use my uncle’s words,
+“utterly silly.”
+
+In my intense selfishness, knowing now that Cordélia’s life was in no
+danger, I mourned rather for myself than for her. I was, so I thought,
+the victim.... Thus many men when they are balked of something on which
+they have set their hearts, or when the object of their desire escapes
+them, act like brutes. I am ashamed when I think of myself cursing
+Heaven in this room in which Cordélia and I were “at last alone.” I
+am bound to say, however, in my own favor, that by degrees this blind
+resentment which arose in me against things in general, gave way to a
+feeling of great compassion and sorrow for the beloved being who still
+slept.
+
+As the hours slipped away I was oppressed by an ever-increasing
+anguish. Now I kept watch over Cordélia as though she were dead,
+and I bowed in wonder before this great mystery, which was not less
+terrifying than the mystery of death itself. Poor, poor, poor Cordélia!
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+
+                               DR. THUREL
+
+
+The day was beginning to dawn when Surdon returned with Dr. Thurel.
+
+He had to seek the famous doctor at an official function. Not that he
+had, however, to drag him away by main force. The story which he told,
+straightway induced the doctor to leave, and he did not even take the
+trouble to return to his house and change his clothes.
+
+I shall always remember his arrival in the wan light of day with his
+white shirt-front, his long, pallid face, his colorless eyes whose
+expression of deep thought it was impossible to forget when once you
+had encountered it.
+
+From that day the image of Dr. Thurel has lingered in my memory. He
+brought with him so much that was new to me as I stood struggling on
+the threshold of this mysterious drama, and shed so much light on it.
+True, I was not at first dazzled, but I was at once “stirred” by the
+depths of my ignorance.
+
+While the facts themselves had merely aroused my wrath without making
+any impression on my mind, he was able in a few words to reveal a new
+world to me. He was a man who was constantly saying the most astounding
+things and yet they were always impregnated with good sense. One felt
+compelled to understand the meaning and to believe in him unless one
+wished to be taken for a fool.
+
+He gazed at Cordélia for some time, used the stethoscope, drew himself
+up and said:
+
+“This is not exactly a case of catalepsy. It is what is called hypnotic
+sleep with muscular rigidity. Have no fear. We shall get the better of
+it.”
+
+Thereupon he bent over her, blew on her eyes and made some curious
+gestures, but obtained no greater success than his country colleague.
+Nevertheless after each futile experiment he seemed quite satisfied.
+
+“That must be it. That must be it. Of course,” he muttered.
+
+Strange to say, whatever he did, and even the fact that his efforts
+were of no avail inspired me with perfect confidence. I felt sure
+that, thanks to him, we should soon be out of our misery.
+
+He requested me to step into the boudoir and questioned me at great
+length. He told me that, on the way, he had drawn out the servant, and
+the man had acquainted him of his mistress’s peculiar mental condition
+a few months before our marriage. He begged me to confide everything
+to him without reserve, and regard him not only as a doctor, but as a
+father confessor.
+
+Then I recounted the story of the English painter and the portrait and
+the various incidents relating to it, and how Cordélia had complained
+of being “as cold as the portrait.”
+
+He asked to be allowed to see the canvas, and after examining it,
+observed:
+
+“All the trouble comes from this picture. There is no doubt about that.
+Your wife, monsieur, is under the influence of this man Patrick, but we
+will rid her of it, you may be certain.”
+
+“But she hasn’t seen the man Patrick for several months.”
+
+“Very likely, but then there is the portrait. Patrick can do a great
+deal through the instrumentality of this portrait. He has renewed the
+link with her through it.”
+
+After that he told me facts about the externalization of sensibility
+compared with which Cordélia’s remarks were so much child’s play, and
+told them so simply and accompanied them by such logical explanations
+that they no longer astounded me.
+
+There could be no doubt that Dr. Thurel possessed the gift of
+persuasion.
+
+“So my wife’s sensibility was really in the portrait?” I said.
+
+“Yes, to some extent. The body may be in one place and its sensibility
+in another. A clairvoyant’s body, for instance, does not move, but his
+individual vision is at the spot which he is describing. In like manner
+your wife’s sensibility was transmitted to the portrait by means of
+thought.”
+
+“By means of thought?”
+
+“Her thought yielded to that of another person. But her sensibility was
+there, for thought holding absolute command over sensibility is able
+to produce on it the desired effect.... Dr. Charcot, the master of us
+all, made an experiment in this regard by applying a sheet of paper to
+the epidermis of a patient whom he had hypnotized, and indicated by
+suggestion that he had employed a blistering plaster. At once the usual
+effects of a blistering plaster were apparent, such as the swelling of
+the skin and so forth. I am quoting this experiment because it is the
+most typical case, and you will see for yourself the conclusion that
+may be drawn from it.”
+
+Suddenly he stopped, looked steadily at the portrait which had been
+left in the boudoir. Like every one else, he was enraptured by it. He
+lifted it and blew upon it.... He blew sharply upon the eyes.
+
+Then he replaced it in its position and walked on tiptoe towards the
+next room, the door of which had been left ajar, making a sign to me to
+remain where I stood. He looked into the room. Almost at once he turned
+around with the light of victory shining on his face.
+
+He came back to me still walking on tiptoe.
+
+“She’s waking up,” he said in an undertone. “Don’t say anything of all
+this to her. Pretend to think that she’s been in a natural sleep. I can
+do nothing more here for some hours. I shall go and have a rest. Never
+mind about me. Look after her. I must tell you this: If you kiss her,
+kiss her as a brother.”
+
+“What do you mean—as a brother?”
+
+“Well, be kind and gentle to her as a brother. I assure you....”
+
+But I did not wait to hear more. Already I stood in the doorway.
+Cordélia’s eyes were wide open and she seemed to be looking for me. And
+yet when her eyes alighted on me there was a look of astonishment in
+them as if she had not expected to see me there.
+
+“Hullo, there you are,” she breathed. “Where are we now?”
+
+“Why, at home, my dear Cordélia.”
+
+I saw her cheeks flush, her eyes smile, her lips bloom again.
+
+“Oh yes, of course,” she returned. “Oh my dear Hector, what a lovely
+night! But why didn’t you go to bed when you came in? You haven’t
+caught cold? There was a cool breeze by the riverside. What a couple
+of sillies we are? Who would have thought of a honeymoon in the
+moonlight? Well, what did I tell you about my park? Can you imagine a
+more beautiful bridal chamber?”
+
+I listened to her incomprehensible chatter with a feeling of
+consternation. Her first words: “What a lovely night!” struck a pang at
+my heart. It was indeed a lovely night! And what did she mean by her
+“beautiful bridal chamber?” And why, as she spoke, did she look round
+as if she beheld our room for the first time? From what sort of dream
+had she awakened? I had no opportunity to put these questions to her.
+Her head drooped again on the pillow, her eyes closed, and this time
+she fell into a calm, natural sleep. A soft regular breathing escaped
+from her lips, and she wore a smile which ought to have delighted, but
+which perturbed me. For, after all, what was she smiling at? I was
+afraid in my dazed condition to ask myself _whom_ was she smiling at.
+She had awakened out of her first torpor but to fall into another,
+without giving me time to kiss her even as a brother. What was this
+walk along the riverside? What was this bridal chamber of which I
+knew nothing? I was once more alone, alone with her, and I could not
+restrain my tears, while she continued to smile in her sleep. It was
+more than I could bear.
+
+And so the hours went by. At last it was morning.
+
+I set my forehead against the window-pane and watched as in a sort of
+dream the life of the country outside awakening around me. For that
+matter the entire episode seemed to me a dream, an optical illusion.
+
+Was the night through which I had just passed, this incredible wedding
+night, a reality? Had I indeed emerged from it and were my eyes now
+looking out upon everyday things? Were not those carts which rolled
+along the roads, phantom carts? I was in the last stage of exhaustion,
+and yet I was conscious that it would be impossible for me to seek
+forgetfulness in the sleep which was essential to my physical and
+mental health. My suffering mind was never more restless.
+
+And my thoughts were revolving, endlessly revolving, round the
+extraordinary language uttered by Cordélia in the interval between the
+two sleeps. “Why didn’t you go to bed when you came in?” Well, I said
+to myself with a feeling of dull resentment against my wavering and
+insensate imagination, well, what is there in all this to cause so much
+painful excitement. Cordélia dreamt that she was wandering with you in
+the park during the night. Why make such a fuss about it?
+
+Of course, of course. I wished Dr. Thurel was awake. I longed to talk
+to him. I longed to talk to him.
+
+He had been given a room in the left wing of the château. From where I
+stood I could perceive the windows with their closed wooden shutters.
+Truth to tell, I stared at nothing else.
+
+Cordélia on the bed behind me was sleeping her peaceful sleep and
+still smiling. I turned away from her. No, and again no! I failed to
+understand how she could smile, even in her sleep, when I was so much
+to be pitied.
+
+And then I saw the shutters in the doctor’s room being opened. I
+slipped out of the room. I crossed the courtyard. I knocked at his
+door.
+
+“It’s I, Doctor.”
+
+“Well?” he questioned as I entered.
+
+“Well, she is still asleep. She is sleeping in the most peaceful manner
+as if nothing had happened.”
+
+“That was to be expected, and all is for the best.”
+
+“She said a few things before she fell asleep.”
+
+“What did she say? Tell me what she said.”
+
+I repeated her words, and observing that the doctor was in deep
+thought, added:
+
+“Apparently she was recalling a dream that she had when she was in her
+trance.”
+
+“A dream! You think it was a dream? It may have been. But....”
+
+“But what?”
+
+“Why, there’s another theory which the undoubted fact that your wife
+was under the influence of suggestion renders quite plausible.”
+
+“What theory?”
+
+“Well, we are plainly confronted with the phenomenon which we call the
+externalization....”
+
+“I know, I know.... The externalization of sensibility.”
+
+“One moment. The phenomenon of the externalization of sensibility finds
+its counterpart here in another phenomenon: the externalization of
+motive power.”
+
+“What then?”
+
+“Why then her active individuality, her vital force, her aura, as the
+magicians call it, might really have left her last night, and taken
+that walk, and it would have been no dream.”
+
+“It’s amazing.”
+
+“Not at all.”
+
+“Still, if she actually left us, how do you account for her talk about
+having a walk with me? I personally did not leave here either in body
+or mind.”
+
+“I have already explained,” returned the doctor, “that we are not
+dealing in this case”—these were his own words “in this case” spoken
+with the composure of an expert which did but increase my agitation—“we
+are not dealing with a cataleptic condition, properly so called, for,
+in that event, she would not have remembered what she had been doing,
+but of a rigid hypnotic condition from which the subject sometimes
+awakes with vague recollections.... Here obviously there were vague
+recollections.”
+
+“You mean,” I exclaimed, “that she thinks she remembers going out with
+me, but that, in reality, to use your own language, she went for a walk
+with another person. It’s ridiculous ... utterly ridiculous.”
+
+“Or she went alone.... Calm yourself.”
+
+It was all very well for him to say, “Calm yourself.” I refused to be
+pacified.
+
+“All this, Doctor, seems to me appalling. You don’t mean to say that a
+person can do such things while the body is asleep, and not dream of
+them?”
+
+“My dear fellow, have you still to learn that an ignorant person in a
+condition of somnambulism can become a scholar, can spend his nights
+furnishing his polygon with multifarious learning, and even acquire
+foreign languages? That is what can be done while one is asleep.”
+
+“What do you mean by his polygon?”
+
+“We will deal with that another time, young man. It would lead us too
+far from the subject we are discussing.”
+
+“Meanwhile there is one thing that I do understand,” I returned. “My
+wife is suffering from some terrible mental disorder.”
+
+“But, my dear fellow, there is no reason to lose hope,” returned the
+doctor in a confident voice. “An illness of the mind can be cured by
+the mind. Have confidence in my treatment, and take me to your wife.”
+
+Cordélia had just risen. I found her clad in a kimono, her hair falling
+loosely over her shoulders, standing in front of the glass making
+faces. As soon as she saw me she threw herself into my arms and cried
+in a mocking voice:
+
+“Oh, my poor husband!”
+
+Then all of a sudden she asked:
+
+“Who is in the next room?”
+
+No movement of any kind could be heard. Dr. Thurel had seated himself
+in the boudoir without a sound, and I had closed the door behind me. I
+was so greatly surprised that I made no answer.
+
+“Is it one of your friends?” she asked. “Why don’t you introduce him to
+me?”
+
+She forgot the place and her incomplete toilette—everything. She made
+for the door with a firm tread, opened it softly, caught sight of
+the strange-looking old gentleman in evening dress, seemed in no way
+disconcerted, smiled, and went up to him with outstretched hand.
+
+“This is Dr. Thurel,” I said. “He is, in fact, a friend—one of my best
+and most reliable friends.”
+
+“Indeed, I have often heard of you,” she returned. “Oh, doctor, how
+pleased I am to meet you.”
+
+She sat down beside him. He still held her hand. And now he kept his
+eyes fixed on hers, and her gaze seemed riveted on him.
+
+“Leave us,” he whispered peremptorily, “I want to talk to her.”
+
+I left them together, and I descended into the garden, impelled by an
+irritability which made my teeth chatter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ten minutes elapsed, which seemed so long drawn out that I could have
+shouted aloud. At length Dr. Thurel appeared. He was beaming.
+
+“Cheer up,” said the old gentleman, “I think I have rid her mind of
+any thought of the other person. All the same he had exerted a magical
+power of attraction over her. Good-bye, my dear fellow.”
+
+“If that is so,” I cried excitedly, “how shall I ever be able to
+express my gratitude to you?”
+
+“Stuff! Look here, give me the portrait. I will place it in my private
+collection.”
+
+I gave him the portrait and, Heaven only knows, with a glad heart!
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IX
+
+                     I DISCOVER A CHANGE IN CORDÉLIA
+
+
+I must admit that, at first, I thought I should have but to rejoice,
+for as the worthy doctor had led me to anticipate, Cordélia displayed,
+after his departure, a perfectly free and normal mind.
+
+It was as though nothing out of the way had happened. When she came
+downstairs clad in a gossamer robe, and clung to my arm with a
+grace and trustfulness which enchanted me, old Surdon and Mathilde
+complimented her on her appearance, and conveyed to me by certain signs
+that all was as well as well could be.
+
+Surdon wanted to saddle Thunder and Monarch, or to get out the gig so
+that we might go for a long drive before lunch, but Cordélia would
+not hear of it. She expressed a wish to stroll through the fields, to
+wander on my arm along the country lanes.
+
+“We don’t want to ride or drive to-day,” she said, leading me away and
+gently pressing my hand. “We don’t need anything or anybody. Let us
+think only of ourselves. I have so many things to say to you now that I
+am your wife.”
+
+These last words were spoken in a serious and intense voice which I
+failed to recognize; and I could not help giving a start when I looked
+at her.
+
+As she uttered them, she lifted her eyes to me and they seemed to
+contain an expression which, like her voice, was new to me. I read
+in them, beyond the shadow of a doubt, an emotional tenderness and
+gratitude which startled me without my knowing exactly why. At all
+events, I could not at the moment analyze what was passing within me.
+But one thing was certain: I felt distinctly uneasy. I fully expected,
+indeed, to see a look in my dear Cordélia’s eyes like that one day; to
+see this impulse, this quivering emotion of thankfulness towards the
+man who had become everything to her, but I did not expect to see that
+look after the dreadful time through which we had just passed.
+
+In a word, I was unspeakably surprised. Our walk, our conversation at
+lunch, the sweet surrender with which, leaning upon my shoulder, she
+confided to me her plans for the future—all this did nothing to remove
+from my mind the curious impression that I was confronted with a new
+Cordélia who was no longer the young girl of the day before. I turned
+pale at the thought of it.
+
+She noticed it and in her turn betrayed a certain anxiety at my
+agitation.
+
+“But dearest what is the matter? Are you not feeling well? You don’t
+say anything.”
+
+I kissed her hair and whispered tritely:
+
+“I love you.”
+
+My heart was pounding as though it would burst. She could hear it.
+
+“I really believe that you do love me,” she said, “and, besides, your
+heart tells me so. Listen to my heart which will tell you, too, how it
+loves you.”
+
+She took my head between her two little hands, and placed it on her
+young, heaving bosom with the quiet gesture of a woman who is giving
+herself up to the husband to whom she belongs.
+
+I was speechless.
+
+She went on as she stroked my hair:
+
+“What a night! What a beautiful night! Oh how well you understand me!
+You are wonderful, my Hector.”
+
+I am unable to say whether I really seemed wonderful to her, but I drew
+myself up roughly. My face underwent a fierce contortion. She looked at
+me with disquiet.
+
+“What is it? What’s the matter?”
+
+“Nothing.... Nothing. It’s over—a slight attack of neuralgia.”
+
+“Ah my love, you are tired. You had no sleep.”
+
+“Yes, you’re right. I had no sleep.”
+
+“You ought to have gone to bed. I told you so when we came back from
+our walk in the park.”
+
+“Ah yes.... Our walk in the park.... Of course, of course.”
+
+“But what is the matter with you?”
+
+“Nothing I tell you.... A slight headache.”
+
+“Well, be sensible. You must go to bed, dearest.”
+
+I had to give way. She came with me to the door of my room. I let
+myself be led by her little hands. Strange to say I made no effort to
+keep her. She left the room, and I threw myself on the bed as an animal
+lies down. And soon, in order to cease thinking about things which
+seemed either appalling or ridiculous, I fell asleep.
+
+The light was waning when I woke up feeling greatly refreshed. I have
+always been able to sleep soundly. A shower bath helped to restore my
+self-possession. My uncle had returned during my nap. He had come from
+Caen, and was leaving that same evening for Paris. I discovered from
+his first words that he knew nothing of the incidents of the previous
+night. Surdon and Mathilde, perceiving that “all was well as well could
+be,” had not considered it necessary to enlighten him. I could not but
+approve of their discretion.
+
+My uncle had been for a short walk with Cordélia, and when she
+returned her face was beaming with happiness.
+
+“Have you had a good sleep, dearest?” she asked as she threw herself
+into my arms. “Has that awful headache gone?”
+
+I kissed her ardently in return.
+
+My uncle wore a smile as he contemplated the pleasant spectacle. He
+endeavored to take me aside to express his gratification.
+
+“Well, what did I say? There you are, the happiest of men and she is
+the happiest of women. She told me so. I congratulate you—you rascal!”
+
+I could have struck him. I could have struck him. He gave me no
+opportunity. He embraced us and went off muttering repeatedly:
+
+“What a handsome couple they make!”
+
+
+
+
+                                CHAPTER X
+
+                            THE SECOND NIGHT
+
+
+I have taken particular care to trace in detail the various stages
+of this extraordinary story in order that the reader who would fain
+judge us, notwithstanding the jury’s verdict, may know as much about
+the facts as I do, and be in a position to fix the responsibility
+definitely as between me and the man who was the greatest thief
+that ever lived. If the reader will follow me step by step he will
+understand me, and it will be open to any candid person of average
+intelligence to measure the extent of the calamity which befell me.
+
+I now come to the second night, which will throw a light upon the
+events which occurred at Vascoeuil and those which were to follow;
+a light which others may regard as supernatural, but which I am
+compelled, unfortunately, to proclaim as entirely natural after what I
+know and saw with my own eyes.
+
+At least that is what I maintain to-day, but considering that I was
+sailing on an unknown sea, it will be realized how far I had to go
+before I recognized the truth.
+
+Cordélia wished to wind up the day, as on the previous evening, by a
+little homely supper in her boudoir, and, to be sure, I should have
+been the last person to think of raising any objection. Anything that
+could bring me closer to her gave me the constantly renewed hope that I
+might succeed in driving away, once for all, the delusions which kept
+us apart. I use the word delusions advisedly, because that is how I
+regarded the matter on that second evening when I sat down beside her
+at dinner.
+
+And how could it have been otherwise? How could I fail to cling to
+this word when I take into consideration the abyss over which my
+poor distracted mind hung suspended for a moment in the course of
+this startling day. Just think. Remember the altogether unforeseen
+attitude of a Cordélia filled with gratitude and affection. Delusions!
+Delusions! I appealed to you, O delusions, in defense of her, and, as
+the lesser of my enemies, to her unhealthy imagination, at once ardent
+and poetic—for the whole thing was but the aberration of a highly
+sensitive mind. I tried to convince myself of it.
+
+And thus I no longer wished to remember anything but Dr. Thurel’s
+reassuring words: “I have rid her mind of any thought of the other
+person. She is cured.”
+
+Upon my word, when I think of her as I beheld her on that second
+evening seated at our little domestic fête, helping me as though I were
+a spoiled child, anticipating my every wish, stirring the fire lest I
+should catch cold, assuming the superior and tyrannical graces of a
+nurse which caused us to burst out laughing, I cannot but cry: “There
+she was as God made her, and as He gave her to me—my dear, dear, dear
+Cordélia!”
+
+Before she met the thief, she was sweet and fresh and girlish and
+perfectly natural, slightly inclined to be mischievous and self-willed,
+but born to make a husband happy who would have made her happy. And,
+take it from me, it is not necessary to be clever or brilliant to make
+a woman happy. It is a question of being an ordinarily decent man; at
+least I still think so, and I have yet to meet the person who can prove
+the contrary. I know what I mean. One must also be in love with her.
+Who ever loved her more than I did? And did she love any one more than
+she loved me? Did she love the thief? Lord above, let those persons who
+know everything tell me if the dove which is transfixed in its flight
+loves the hawk whom it encounters on its way from the nest....
+
+But let us return to our little supper.
+
+I forget on what subject Cordélia was good-humoredly making fun of me.
+I have always possessed an equable temper. I can allow myself to be
+teased without taking offense, just as a pet dog will permit his ears
+to be pulled by those to whom he is attached. Thus Cordélia could throw
+herself into the game to her heart’s content.
+
+But suddenly I sprang to my feet with a look of ferocity on my face,
+a very excellent look of ferocity, and walked up to her, grinding
+my teeth, as if I had sworn to gobble her up alive. She started to
+run round the table, laughing boisterously. I for my part, while I
+continued to give chase, strove to keep my countenance and to assume a
+more ferocious air than ever. At length she pretended to be frightened
+as I was pretending to be in a rage; and when I mention that in our
+race round the room the light wrap which she wore rose higher, caught
+on to a piece of furniture and even became torn, revealing a glimpse of
+some new loveliness, it will be gathered that the game had become an
+extremely attractive one; so much so that I thought the best thing I
+could do was to finish it by capturing the fugitive and holding her in
+my arms.
+
+She had taken refuge in a recess of the window, and it was there that I
+dived after her. I caught her, but straightway I was impressed by the
+fact that she had stopped laughing. I lowered my eyes to her face, but
+it was no longer the face of a young girl. She gazed at me with a look
+of grave distress yet, I must say, full of love. I felt her young heart
+beat against mine. I held her closer, calling her the most endearing
+names.
+
+“Oh dearest,” she breathed. “Have you seen the park? Look at the park.
+How beautiful it is!”
+
+She was not now looking at me. Her eyes were turned to the park
+which gleamed ghost-like in the moonlight. The night was a dream of
+brightness and opalescent light. The tall trees whose leaves had
+already fallen, stood erect like huge silver chandeliers, their
+wondrous shadows lengthened, as though by the brush of an artist, on
+the luminous grassy slopes and gravel paths. In the distance the unseen
+mystery of the park into which I had never set foot, stirred under the
+motionless, effulgent, impassive moon.
+
+I tried to turn Cordélia’s eyes away from the ill-omened sight, and
+bring her back to our own interests. She thrust me aside with her
+little hands and returned to the window, pressing her forehead against
+the pane. I may be asked: “Why did you not compel her to leave the
+window and the perilous spectacle of the park in the moonlight?” Let
+those who are unable to understand that more power sometimes lies in a
+young girl’s little finger than in an elephant’s foot, cease to read
+me!
+
+This is the answer that I have to make:
+
+Men of science, or those who call themselves men of science, have
+not yet, perhaps, given a name to this “psychic” force, but if they
+were to take the trouble to study and weigh its power mathematically,
+and dignify it with a Latin or Greek name, there would be less
+astonishment, perhaps, that the aura of a marriageable girl yielded
+to the suggestion of a sham-necromancer than to realize that a
+mass of flesh and blood weighing about thirteen stone, for that is
+approximately my figure, could offer no more resistance to the little
+hand of the maid in question than could the sigh of a new-born babe.
+Indeed, here we have in all its wonder the phenomenon of levitation.
+And from what I saw, it is the mind only that has any weight!
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was perhaps lacking in mind that evening. It does not become any
+one to reproach me. In life one must do the best one can. And I was
+powerless against Cordélia’s determination to remain at the window.
+It was then that she visibly lived over again her experiences of the
+night before, and as I listened to her, I began to suffer infinite
+pain. It will at once be seen why—at least I hope so.
+
+Her hand had furtively sought mine and she drew me beside her in the
+shining moonlight. Her head was resting on my shoulder and, seen from
+below, we must have borne some resemblance to those saints linked
+together on stained-glass windows which adorn and illumine the chancel
+of a church. I set down this thought because it occurred to me at
+the time, which shows that in my mind’s eye I realized that we were
+somewhat absurd, but, through that very fact, it indicates also that I
+was absolutely bereft of any power of resistance.
+
+Poor dear Cordélia was able to do anything, anything she pleased with
+me!
+
+“Shall we take a stroll in the park as we did yesterday, dearest?”
+
+“Come, Cordélia, I say....”
+
+“Let’s take this path,”—we did not stir from the window—“Let’s go along
+by the poplars.”
+
+Here she uttered some curious sentences about the song of the poplars
+when the wind whispers among the branches.
+
+“Let’s go by the river side,”—more strange sentences in the form of
+stanzas about the floating heart of the water lily and the tiny cradles
+of the fairies sailing over the stream. “This is the path which will
+lead us to the marriage-chamber.”
+
+“What marriage-chamber?” I could not help asking.
+
+“You know as well as I do, dearest. The chamber which has been prepared
+for us, all in gold.”
+
+And thereupon she gave me a description of the marriage-chamber all in
+gold. I cannot recount the exact words which Cordélia used in speaking
+of this chamber. From that moment onward, indeed, her language seemed
+to lose sight of earth and even mundane things, to become a kind of
+music befitting the understanding of angels or poets who are never
+unduly troubled to discover the significance of unconventional words.
+However that might be with the fanciful melody which flowed from my
+beloved’s lips, my natural common sense restored the dream-palace in
+which, in Cordélia’s imagination, I had been wandering for some time to
+its proper proportions. I gathered that this chamber all in gold, was
+neither more nor less than a small glade in the wood, shaped like an
+arbor, sheltered by lovely trees on whose branches some foliage still
+lingered while beneath them, on the earth, lay a rich, dense carpet of
+leaves, yellowed by autumn.
+
+The beginning of my cruel experience on this occasion was that
+these flights of fancy, which accompanied our promenade in the
+golden chamber, were intoned in English. Cordélia and I knew English
+perfectly, but we did not speak it when we were together. My pained
+surprise reached its culminating point when Cordélia, with the utmost
+seriousness, asked me to recite as, it would appear, I had recited in
+the golden chamber the night before, a few lines from “Lara” and “The
+Corsair.” I must have opened my eyes in dumb amazement, for Cordélia
+became more and more importunate:
+
+“Come, come, dearest, don’t wait to be pressed. Don’t waste time. It’s
+so fine, so pathetic, so splendid. And then you can wind up with
+Childe Harold’s farewell. You know the lines:
+
+    Adieu, adieu! my native shore
+    Fades o’er the waters blue:
+    *       *       *       *       *
+    Come hither, hither, my little page:
+    *       *       *       *       *
+    My Native Land—Good Night!
+
+“And while you are reciting I will place my head on your shoulder, as I
+did yesterday, so as to hear your delightful voice.”
+
+While she was speaking she laid her head on my shoulder, but I raised
+it in my trembling hands and forced her to look into my eyes which
+doubtless were disturbing to see, for she suddenly grew restless.
+
+“What’s the matter with you?”
+
+“A very simple matter, Cordélia. I have never known by heart a line of
+Byron or any other poet, and I have never read ‘Lara,’ ‘The Corsair,’
+or ‘Childe Harold.’”
+
+“What do you say?”
+
+“I say that it was not I who was with you in the golden chamber.”
+
+“Be quiet, you poor dear, be quiet.”
+
+“I say that it was not on my shoulder that you laid your head.”
+
+I came to a stop. Her appearance filled me with dismay. Her eyes were
+staring at me with a strange light as if she saw me for the first time.
+
+She gasped a dull moan of despair, and a cry escaped her lips like the
+cry of a soul at the point of death striving to cleave to earth:
+
+“Save me, Hector, save me!”
+
+She uttered that cry and uttered it to me proving that she belonged to
+me, to me alone, and had never belonged to any one but me. The thief
+might say what he liked, he was but a thief. It was all very well to
+assume an arrogant attitude at the Assize Court; and the world was able
+to grasp his meaning when he said that her heart belonged to him. He
+had burgled it. The shame of it!
+
+I replied to Cordélia’s poignant cry of “Save me, Hector, save me!”
+with a transport of supreme delight. Yes, my love would indubitably
+rescue her from those frightful delusions. It would be no difficult
+task for my arms to wrench her this time from the accursed window. She
+weighed but a feather in my grasp. Her head, with its hair in disarray,
+lay adorably on my shoulder. The look of mingled fear and love depicted
+on her face immensely stimulated my strength. I really believed that I
+was at length able to dominate this frail and quivering anguish, and I
+pressed my lips to hers.
+
+And straightway it seemed as if I had killed her, and was kissing a
+dead woman ... I held in my arms, as on the night before, a marble
+statue.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XI
+
+                           THE GOLDEN CHAMBER
+
+
+I did not now summon any assistance. I was seized with a cold grim fury
+of despair which called for no witnesses. I carried Cordélia into the
+next room and laid her on the bed, and gazed at her in impotent rage.
+
+I called to mind every word that Dr. Thurel had said in describing the
+condition of bodily immobility in which I now beheld her, and I had not
+a doubt from what I heard from Cordélia’s own lips that her mind, which
+a little before had given animation to that now lifeless form, had left
+it for some other place.
+
+What other place? Was it hard to guess? Was she not at the very moment
+when she escaped from me making at full flight for the bridal-chamber
+of which I knew nothing?—the bridal-chamber to which, it seemed, an
+influence that was independent of her will and mine lured her with a
+force which I had vainly striven to shatter with a kiss?
+
+Or rather did it not seem that I had but to press Cordélia’s lips with
+my own to cause a repetition of the catastrophe of the night before?
+
+I remembered then, in the growing irritation of my mind, Dr. Thurel’s
+amazing words: “If you kiss her, kiss her as a brother.” What did that
+mean? I shook with horror and the most terrible resentment. Was I to
+understand that every time my lips united with Cordélia’s I should
+stand in fear of this awful phenomenon and that she would never be
+anything to me but a wife of stone?
+
+At the thought that so infernal a suggestion was within the bounds of
+possibility, a tremendous wrath made the blood surge in my veins, and I
+felt capable of murdering the man who was responsible—the villain who
+was making me suffer agonies to say nothing of the hideous ridicule
+which would attach to so grotesque a marital position as mine. I was
+perfectly aware of that fact also, and I did not fail to derive from it
+a capacity for revenge which in the end swept me off my feet.
+
+In any case I could not consent to remain any longer an impassive and
+inactive spectator of a scene which offered me but the image of an
+inert body; and I made my way in haste towards the spot where I knew
+that Cordélia’s mind was wandering in thought with the mind of another
+person.
+
+A few minutes later in the dead silence, under the hostile moon which
+looked down, perhaps, upon things invisible to my own eyes, I passed
+along the line of tall trees which screened the edge of the park into
+which I had never entered.
+
+As soon as I had traversed this screen I found myself in a wood so
+densely entangled that I was at a loss at first which way to go; and I
+began to think of Cordélia’s words when she described it; a forest full
+of snares for those who did not know it and hospitable only to lovers
+of woods and solitude.
+
+I was certainly no lover of these woods, and in spite of all my
+efforts, I did not succeed in ploughing my way through it, and I made
+scarcely any progress. The branches laid hold of me on every side and
+held me back with their thousand small arms, or transfixed me, by
+stealth, with their thorns. The bridal-chamber which lay within its
+recesses was well guarded!
+
+Hardly knowing what she did, however, Cordélia had sufficiently
+enlightened me. Nevertheless I knew that before she betook herself, in
+mind, to the place, she must have visited it more than once in body,
+or else, as I imagined like a simpleton, she would not have described
+it to me so fully. That was another opinion which I have since been
+constrained to abandon.
+
+And yet how did she get through? I suddenly remembered that the
+bridal-chamber stood beside the river. Cordélia’s actual words were:
+
+“In the bridal-chamber there is the great mirror of the river set in a
+frame of gold and the rays of the moon make the surface of the water
+like a silver sheet. You see yourself in it from head to foot. Owing to
+this you are never alone. When you think that you are one, you are two,
+and when you think that you are two, you are four. You have to keep
+your eyes open!”
+
+“If I follow the river’s bank,” I said to myself, “I shall be certain
+to reach the bridal-chamber,” and I made for this bank through the
+avenue of poplars.
+
+At first I congratulated myself on my idea, and my path for some way
+was properly marked out. My pace, however, began to slacken when I
+left the poplars behind me; and soon I had considerable obstacles to
+surmount in order to follow the stream. Every trace of a path had
+disappeared, and I was forced to hold on to the willows to prevent
+myself from falling into the water.
+
+The Andelle, at Vascoeuil, is not a very imposing river. It cannot be
+used for towing, and its banks are visited only by an occasional angler
+who wishes to savor the delights of solitude among the reeds.
+
+Such as it was, it flowed that night with so much quiet grace between
+its pleasant banks, reflecting so coquettishly its clumps of reeds and
+rushes, like little silvery chignons, in the midst of this wild nature
+where all was beauty and delight—the moon smiled strangely at me from
+the river—that despite the mortal horror which stirred me, I was
+impressed by its charm, and I interrupted my course, for a moment, to
+exclaim from my heart “I understand you, O Cordélia!”
+
+What was it that I understood? In truth, was I about to become affected
+by it? Was this park, under the moon, so amazing a sight that my mind
+would remain for ever impressed, preferring this wild retreat for my
+honeymoon, to the luxurious modern nest which I had built at so great a
+cost?
+
+Still, let us pull ourselves together.
+
+Besides, where was the bridal-chamber? Suddenly I caught sight of it
+in the distance, or rather I half-saw it. It was the sort of rotunda
+which, in the light of day or the twilight, would resemble a red-gold
+arbor fashioned by the miracle of autumn on the bank of the murmuring
+stream.
+
+With infinite caution I drew nearer. I stole through the grass and
+sprigs like a Red Indian on the war path. I no longer felt the sting of
+thorns. I held my breath.
+
+And all this—all this—in order to take by surprise, two minds which
+had made an appointment to meet in a clearing!
+
+I cannot say if the reader realizes the enormity of my proceedings.
+For my part, I performed these actions in a manner at once entirely
+unconscious and yet entirely natural. It must be understood from this
+that I did not apply my reason, but yielded to a spontaneous impulse
+which flung me in the wake of Cordélia’s runaway mind; and while I
+experienced the influence of Dr. Thurel’s fantastic though scientific
+explanations, I acted altogether like an ordinary, deceived husband,
+bent on avoiding the least imprudence which might warn the culprits and
+prevent me from obtaining the proof of my misfortune.
+
+In what shape would the proof become manifest? I certainly could not
+tell, nor did I even ask myself the question, but I so little doubted
+that I was about to learn the truth through one of those psychic
+phenomena with which Dr. Thurel had crammed my brain, that when at last
+I stealthily made my way on all fours into the bridal-chamber, I was
+completely bewildered to behold merely an empty space; that is to say
+an atmosphere as pure and clear as crystal, pierced by the brilliant
+rays of the moon which had transformed the chamber all in gold into a
+chamber all in silver!
+
+It was none the less beautiful, but truth to tell, the scene and
+the charm of this sylvan bower were just then the least of my
+preoccupations. An empty space and silence! I rose from my stooping
+posture and stood awhile breathing hard before this void.
+
+An empty space and silence! And perhaps _they_ were there. But I was
+unable, with the eyes of the flesh, to see them!
+
+I looked about me in sheer amazement. I walked round creeping between
+the shadow of the trees like a shadow myself searching for two shadows!
+
+Suddenly I burst out laughing. I felt that I was committing a monstrous
+piece of folly.
+
+But then, if I was acting with such sheer lunacy, why did my laughter
+break in the middle? Why did it come to a stop all of a sudden in my
+parched throat, when a gleam of light and a slight shade quivered above
+an old moss-covered stone bench within the arbor? Why did I go towards
+the bench, leaning forward with clenched fists? What did I intend to
+do with my big fists, the fists of a heavy-weight boxer? Challenge the
+light? Knock out a moonbeam? Oh the irony of it all! Why do some people
+see while others are blind? I felt that if I could see I should be less
+afraid, for now I was afraid.... Well I was afraid of what I was about
+to see, for though I could not yet see, I could hear!
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XII
+
+                                THE THIEF
+
+
+I heard a kind of whisper, a kind of soft whisper. It was still some
+distance away, but it indubitably came from a human being who was
+drawing nearer, but drawing nearer without making any other sound; and
+it was this which filled me with affright.
+
+I expected to hear the twigs and dead leaves crack under the feet of
+the persons who were coming, but there was nothing, no sound in the
+dead silence of the night but this human murmur which seemed to be
+wafted on the air not far from me, and was approaching closer and
+closer.
+
+I gave no further thought to the stone bench which I had left. The
+voice, soft and clear, was growing more and more distinct, so distinct
+that I seemed to hear a few words which sent a shiver through me from
+head to foot, and made me draw back and conceal myself in the wood.
+
+I withdrew in haste, in great haste, for the voice was drawing still
+nearer. It now seemed borne along by the water, and I turned my head
+towards the river. A word, a terrible word—I could distinguish only
+this one word—reached my ear from the river. It was the one English
+word _love_.
+
+I was standing at no great distance from the bank of the river.
+Suddenly I saw the reeds bend and the hearts of innumerable
+water-lilies on the silver surface of the water give way to a small
+skiff which glided to the bank facing the bridal-chamber.
+
+A man was seated in this light skiff and I at once recognized him by
+the curious beating of my heart and his strange sad-looking eyes,
+eyes like those of a cat, which seemed to light up his pale face.
+I recognized him, too, from other details. He was clad in the same
+loose clothes, the same sports jacket open at the neck worn by him on
+the evening when I encountered him for the first time. And, he was
+bare-headed, as on that evening, and his hair was well brushed back,
+disclosing the high white forehead which he had pressed against the
+garden gate.
+
+My first impulse was to make a rush at him. I had every reason to
+settle my account with him once for all. His presence in my park, on
+my property, fully entitled me to take the law into my own hands. It
+was the finishing touch to his audacity and his felonious love-making.
+It explained quite clearly why my poor dear Cordélia was the victim
+of these perverse and uncanny influences. Dr. Thurel’s intervention
+had been fruitless, because the instigator of the mischief was near
+at hand, prowling round us, prowling round _her_. During the last two
+days the scoundrel must have remained hidden in this obscure retreat,
+or have left it only to approach Cordélia like a thief; to ensnare,
+surprise and recapture her by fixing a gaze upon her which would enable
+him to overcome her mind, and carry her away with him to his lair.
+
+Alas! Why did I not that very night make an end of the man who had
+burgled Cordélia’s heart? For he was there right enough in flesh and
+blood; and Heaven knows that I could have made good use of my fists
+despite his great eyes, like the eyes of a mournful cat.
+
+Now this is what happened: He dropped his sculls and stood up in the
+skiff, and I was about to throw myself on him when I heard him utter
+this sentence in English: “My love I am yours with all my heart,” and
+then leaning over the boat he went on: “There is nothing I would not do
+for you.”
+
+To whom was he speaking, since he was alone in the skiff?
+
+“Come, come, now,” I said to myself, “You know quite well to whom this
+man is speaking these soft words of love and their meaning is obvious.
+To whom is he saying ‘My love’? No need to look far. She is seated
+beside him. He is leaning over her, whispering in her ear words that
+she comprehends as well as you do.... _For she is there_! Cannot you
+see her? Cannot you see her? And yet you know that she is seated in the
+skiff.”
+
+Well, no, I was unable to see her. In truth I did my utmost to see her,
+for I was conscious that he saw her, but I did not possess his vision.
+Yet there was no doubt that she was there ... I had only to look at
+him. And to listen to him.
+
+He affected an attitude as he drew himself up, and then with his airs
+and graces sat down beside her. To me he was grotesque, hideous. I
+sincerely pitied Cordélia for having to listen to such an unmitigated
+bore. At one moment he was spouting poetry to her. What a comedian!
+
+Suddenly he sat down again, leaned on one side and threw out his arm as
+though to place it round her waist. It was more than I could bear. I
+resolved to put an end to this grim farce, when a new scene riveted me
+to the spot. _I could now see her!_
+
+I must explain what I saw and endeavor to make myself understood. I am
+setting down the facts for public information and to relieve my mind,
+and also to lay bare the terrible truth. Thus I confine myself to what
+I saw, and I do not wish any person to go beyond my own interpretation
+of my testimony, nor do I wish any person to stop short of it.
+
+I would urge the reader to be not less courageous than I was in
+venturing on this startling voyage into the abyss of psychical research
+in which the best hope for the future of mankind lies.
+
+Let this terrifying love story serve at least one purpose. Let the
+world learn once for all how mortifying it is to remain a heavy-weight,
+hermetically closed in a mass of flesh, when faced by the mind which in
+its wanderings is unsubstantial and intangible or at least as elusive
+as a handful of water.
+
+The man stood up in the skiff, his head still a little on one side and
+his arm round a waist which I was unable to see. For I saw him only
+in the skiff; saw him making the gesture of a ladies’ man which had
+infuriated me. But though I saw but one person in the skiff, I could
+distinguish both of them in the mirror of the water.
+
+In the slight swirl caused by the swing of the boat I discerned in the
+moonlight the reflection of the pair of them standing up.
+
+Was it an optical illusion? Was it the result of defective vision? Were
+my senses playing me false? At the present time, after having gathered
+together and placed in compact form my recollections, I am bound to
+say: No it was no optical illusion. I saw. I saw. I saw the reflection
+of the skiff in the water, and below it, also in the water, Patrick and
+Cordélia leaning against one another.
+
+I am convinced of the fact, for though I turned my eyes, after seeing
+the double vision on the water, to the boat, to confirm the reality,
+and saw only Patrick alone with his arm thrust out and his head a
+little on one side, on the other hand, when I looked again at the water
+I beheld the double presentment once more.
+
+I lay stress upon these details because they obviously represent a
+phenomenon which unites in a peculiarly interesting manner physical
+science with psychic science. I offer it as a subject for investigation
+to those men of science who are engaged in their laboratories in
+endeavoring to probe the secrets of every aspect of Force.
+
+It would seem that my eyes passed through Cordélia’s aura, as it stood
+in the atmosphere, without being in the least aware of it, while,
+on the other hand, I could perceive the outlines—somewhat faint,
+I confess, but unmistakable for all that—by fixing my gaze on that
+part of the water which had taken the picture, just as photographic
+negatives were taken of pictures of Katie King during the time that
+one of the most renowned scientists of the last century was making his
+experiments in psychical phenomena—I mean Professor Sir William Crookes.
+
+It will be readily understood that these interesting scientific
+considerations, which I set down here by the way, occurred to my mind
+subsequently, and that, at the time, I was much more absorbed in the
+phenomenon itself than in attempting to discover an explanation of
+it. I was unable, unfortunately, to suppress a cry of fury when I
+beheld in the mirror of the river the great thief press a kiss upon
+my beloved’s forehead. The picture at once vanished, that is to say,
+nothing remained on the surface of the water but Patrick’s reflection.
+Cordélia’s silhouette had disappeared, while I heard the villain
+exclaim: “Remember! Remember!”
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIII
+
+              HAPPINESS CONSISTS IN REALITIES NOT IN DREAMS
+
+
+When I reached the bank, Patrick and the skiff were hidden from view
+behind the reeds which had closed in upon him. A few hundred yards
+farther on the river made a bend and left the park. I had no hope of
+overtaking my man, and after shouting a few offensive remarks at him,
+to which he made no response, I returned to the château as quickly as I
+could.
+
+I ran and woke up Surdon telling him that the Englishman was in the
+park and ordering him to get his gun out. He grasped the situation at
+once.
+
+“Don’t kill him if you can help it,” I cried, “but send a few shots
+through him so as to make him feel sick of the place.”
+
+“You can rely on me,” replied Surdon, adding: “That explains
+everything.”
+
+“Yes, Surdon, it explains everything.”
+
+After that I went up to Cordélia’s room. She had just wakened. I was in
+no way surprised.
+
+“Do you know where you’ve been?” I asked, but she could make no reply.
+On this occasion she remembered nothing; at all events she did not seem
+to remember anything.
+
+I then described what I had just witnessed. Events were taking such a
+turn that we should have to face them together if we ever hoped to gain
+the mastery over them. And moreover I realized quite clearly that I
+should be powerless without Cordélia’s assistance. She was either on my
+side or on _his_. If she was with me, she was bound to help me to wage
+war on him and I did not doubt her.
+
+I was sure of her. My intervention on the bank was so involuntary that
+I had no time to perceive, from the mirror of the river, Cordélia’s
+particular attitude towards him, but I was only too firmly convinced,
+since Dr. Thurel’s visit, that she was under the spell of prolonged
+magnetization, in other words, her astral body was held captive, so
+that I could not find fault with her for not spurning the arm which
+clasped her waist with too much affection, or for yielding to a kiss
+which she was unable to avert.
+
+When she learned of the thief’s audacity in setting foot into our
+property and of his being, doubtless, still in the neighborhood, she
+threw her arms round my neck and cried:
+
+“Take me away. Take me a long, long way from here. He is capable of
+anything. He is capable of keeping me with him for good.”
+
+Dear, dear, dear Cordélia! I did not wait to be asked a second time,
+and a hand-bag was soon packed. Moreover I left word for Surdon to join
+us in Paris the following day with our luggage; and we went off in the
+small car, which I drove myself.
+
+I soon congratulated myself on introducing my beloved to the
+distractions of Paris. She was so delighted that she forgot the strain
+of the terrible forty-eight hours through which we had passed. She
+entered into the spirit of everything. A walk in the Avenue des Acacias
+in the Bois de Boulogne helped her to forget the amazing promenade
+in the park in the moonlight; at least I preferred to think so. We
+lunched at a smart restaurant in the country, and we emerged from it
+laughing at the least thing like children carried away by their first
+glass of wine.
+
+Cordélia for the first time tried to smoke, and she discovered an
+Egyptian brand of cigarettes which she liked so well that she consumed
+a goodly number of them. The result was that when we returned to the
+Palace Hotel she had to lie down and take a short rest. I left her
+in the custody of Surdon. When I went out I could not repress an
+exclamation, for I recognized, standing at the hotel entrance, Dr.
+Thurel.
+
+He was not less surprised than I was. He at once asked after Cordélia,
+and was so greatly interested in my story of what happened on the
+second night of my honeymoon, that he took me off with him to his flat.
+Here, he got me to repeat the facts in detail, taking notes the while,
+and then he said:
+
+“The thing is quite logical. As long as your wife was under the direct
+influence of the man who was close by, anything that I was able to do
+to release her was bound, of course, to be reduced to naught as soon
+as I left you. That is precisely what did happen, but it shows also
+that your wife is subject to this influence only when the hypnotizer is
+comparatively near. There are patients who are in worse case than she
+is,” went on the doctor thoughtfully, “and you certainly must not lose
+hope. You did well to bring her away from Vascoeuil. You must travel
+about the world. The case will respond to treatment. Everything depends
+on you.”
+
+He repeated this last sentence with emphasis, and I could not help
+giving vent to my impatience and ill-humor.
+
+“Everything depends on me!” I cried. “That is easy enough to say. But
+what influence, if you please, can I exert if every time my lips touch
+hers she falls into a trance? You must be fair and admit that I am at
+least as much to be pitied as she is.”
+
+“I have advised you to kiss her as a brother.”
+
+“Do you really believe that a brother’s influence will be enough to rid
+her of that man?”
+
+“No, I don’t say that, but I believe that it is absolutely necessary,
+if you wish to risk a kiss, to remove your wife’s recollection from
+that man’s power of suggestion through time and space. Travel about,
+and have patience until you both feel yourselves the master of her ‘O’
+and have nothing more to fear from her ‘polygon.’”
+
+I held my head in my hands. For the second time this geometrical term
+occurred when Dr. Thurel was speaking. What was this “polygon” and what
+did he mean by the “O” of which it was incumbent upon me to obtain the
+mastery?
+
+The doctor vouchsafed the explanation that these were figures of
+psychical speech employed by Dr. Grasset in his work entitled
+“Spiritualism in relation to Science” in order to explain fully certain
+characteristics. I should like, in my turn, to enable the reader to
+understand them as the kindly old gentleman explained them to me. I
+should not attempt to do so if it were not that he had the goodness to
+lend me certain books to read; so that I might become acquainted with
+a science which would prove useful to me in Cordélia’s condition of
+mind—books which I strove to assimilate from love of her without her
+knowledge.
+
+It would seem, then, that there is a superior psychicism, that is
+to say, there are psychic acts which are deliberate and carried out
+by the free will of a person, and preceded by thought which Dr.
+Grasset symbolizes by the letter O, and an inferior psychicism which
+is quasi-automatic and symbolized by the nervous centers which are
+connected together in the shape of a polygon.
+
+This polygon must be regarded either in its physiological
+condition—absent-mindedness, sleep, dreams—or its extra-physical
+condition—artificially induced hypnotism—or its pathological
+condition—somnambulism, ambulatory automatism and so forth.
+
+When the O is no longer concerned with the polygon, the latter
+does more or less what it pleases, and thus one can do with it
+almost what one wills. For this reason it suffices for the O to
+be absent-minded—for instance I am thinking of one thing while I
+continue with my polygon to pour from a jug into a glass which is
+already full—and it suffices also for the mind of another to take
+possession for the time being of the O. In that case the polygon can be
+transmitted to a remote distance.
+
+All this seemed to me as clear as noonday, so lucidly did the doctor
+explain it, and I exclaimed:
+
+“You can rely on me, Doctor. I will keep a watch over Cordélia’s
+polygon! And it won’t be my fault if it slips away from me!”
+
+“Meanwhile take the train,” returned the worthy doctor. “And be quick
+about it. You might possibly meet that man here as you met me. This
+Palace Hotel is not a place where one can prevent one’s self from being
+seen. And besides, no city in the world is so small as Paris!”
+
+I hastened to the station and inquired about sleeping-cars, and that
+same evening we caught the train for Rome. We took Surdon with us.
+
+When two days later we beheld the walls of Servius Tullius, Cordélia
+uttered shouts of joy. On alighting from the train she had a mind to
+make for the Forum, but by hurrying her a little I soon managed—the
+thing was to acquire some influence over her—to make her forget for
+the time being all those old things, and give her a taste of more
+modern pleasures such as are found in the thorough comfort of the best
+hotel in Rome. We lunched in the Italian manner at the Castello di
+Constantino, where we were served on the terrace from which the eye
+took in a landscape of rare loveliness, though it was somewhat marred
+by the sight of ruins which are supposed to be impressive but which,
+for my part, I have always found tedious.
+
+We had, however, to visit some of the ancient monuments. The Colosseum
+greatly attracted Cordélia, who told me mournful stories about the
+martyrdom of the early Christians. I hastened to take her away to less
+dismal scenes. A promenade at the fashionable hour in the gardens of
+Pincio, iced-drinks in a café in the Corso, and in the evening, after
+dinner, the tarantella danced by pretty girls in the grand hall of the
+hotel, threw us into the vortex of life in Rome.
+
+Cordélia took an immense pleasure in these elegant displays of Italian
+manners. I was myself greatly stirred to see her eyes shining with
+happiness. She never seemed to me more beautiful. When we returned to
+our rooms I held her close and told her so, but I acted cautiously,
+and at the same time with a feeling of great anxiety. Had I become
+sufficient master of her O to be no longer in fear of the whims of her
+polygon? The thought that if I kissed her she might at once fall into
+a trance, in my arms, brought beads of perspiration trickling down my
+forehead.
+
+“Good gracious, how hot you are, Hector!” she cried as with an adorable
+gesture she wiped my forehead with her handkerchief.
+
+I no longer knew what I was doing. Her lips smiled at me. The fragrance
+that clung to her carried me away, and, in truth, I forgot all my good
+resolutions and kissed her passionately.
+
+Marvel of marvels, she did not fall into a sleep!
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XIV
+
+                               HAPPY DAYS
+
+
+Dear, dear, dear Cordélia! What splendid weeks were ours and how
+completely we forgot the doleful Patrick! I am bound to say that I
+neglected nothing to bring about this result. I proceeded to overwhelm
+my Cordélia with every attention that a husband in love could offer to
+his young wife in order to divert her thoughts.
+
+Entertainment followed entertainment, and I wanted my beloved to be the
+best-dressed and the most beautiful woman of them all. We made a few
+acquaintances. By the good offices of a Secretary to an Embassy who was
+a friend of mine, the most exclusive drawing-rooms were open to us, and
+Cordélia was the queen of them. She no longer worried me about visits
+to ancient ruins. I acted in such a way that her whole time was taken
+up by our life of amusement. The museums were forgotten. I had very
+good reason to be suspicious of pictures!
+
+When she was weary of Rome we set out for Naples where new joys awaited
+us. The wonderful bay with its most beautiful seashore was a witness to
+our love. We went to Capri Sorrento and Castellammare. The boatmen sang
+as they plied their oars. I burned those little works which are called
+“guides,” for I had observed that when Cordélia was carrying them with
+her wherever she went, she spoke of nothing but the dead, which was
+anything but cheerful.
+
+My holocaust spared us many a story about Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and
+the rest of them. That was something to the good. We could not, of
+course, escape Pompeii, which, however, is not a tiresome promenade.
+Always a great concourse of people is wandering about the ruins;
+tourists dressed in such a way that one feels inclined to laugh, and
+they alone are worth the trouble....
+
+Dear, dear, dear Cordélia! She was all mine in those happy hours when
+we thought only of rejoicing at the beauty of the day, and of our
+love, without concerning ourselves with what had existed before our
+time and would exist after we were gone. Was not that the essential
+condition of happiness? We must not let ourselves give way to too much
+thought. No, no, we must not let ourselves think too much.
+
+Observe how happy we had both become since we began to think as
+little as possible. In point of fact, though we were always together,
+facing each other, we had no occasion to ask the question: “What are
+you thinking of?” It is during fits of abstraction, when the mind is
+preoccupied, that the “polygon” is up to its tricks. The best method of
+preventing one’s thoughts from wandering is to refuse to think at all.
+I know what I am talking about.
+
+But the mind must be occupied. After Naples we retraced our steps to
+Florence, and finally we reached Venice which I had reserved for the
+last. A disastrous town! But let us not anticipate events.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XV
+
+         IN WHICH MY ANXIETY ABOUT CORDÉLIA’S POLYGON IS REVIVED
+
+
+Surdon had engaged a suite of rooms for us at the Hotel Danieli on
+the Riva degli Schiavoni. It was in this hotel, it seems, that Alfred
+de Musset fell ill and learned the treachery of his lady love, George
+Sand. Cordélia heard the story of this lamentable event on the second
+day after our arrival, and it seemed unduly to depress her. I hated the
+bungler and his story and wanted to leave the hotel. But Cordélia had
+taken a fancy to it, and I had to give way to her.
+
+One day I found her with a book in her hand. It was de Musset’s
+correspondence with this George Sand. I read a few lines and threw the
+book out of the window, went over to my beloved and embraced her, and
+told her that it was a crime to spoil our perfect happiness by opening
+the door to disagreeable thoughts about two persons who did not know
+how to love.
+
+Was I not right?
+
+“Oh, my dear, now you are preventing me from reading,” she made answer.
+“Think, Hector, you have already refused to let me visit the museums.”
+
+“Heaven forbid, Cordélia, that I should refuse you anything whatever,”
+I exclaimed. “I am your slave as you know. If you are really keen on
+seeing some pictures, we’ll go this afternoon to your museum. Would you
+like me to countermand our trip to the Lido?”
+
+“That would be too much,” she returned, smiling. “We’ll go to the Lido
+for dinner and supper. All the same I shall be glad if you will show a
+little more eagerness to see the ‘wonders of art.’”
+
+“Lord above, what string are you harping on now?” I exclaimed. “Did we
+not go, as was proper to the Doge’s Palace and see the dungeon in which
+Marino Faliero was imprisoned?”
+
+“Oh, Hector, it amused you to slip our cards into the secret letter-box
+which was used at one time for anonymous accusations to the Council of
+Ten. And you call that seeing the ‘wonders of art!’”
+
+“Yes, and I denounced the proprietor of our hotel, accusing him of
+trying to poison us! You had a good laugh at the time, you must admit.”
+
+She was not laughing now. What new shadow was passing over her brow?
+She seemed carried away by a depression of spirits which rendered her
+more beautiful still, but which filled me with alarm, because it was
+akin to sadness. And, indeed, her eyes were bedewed with tears. I threw
+myself at her feet.
+
+“I have hurt your feelings,” I exclaimed.
+
+“No, let me cry,” she returned in a broken and far away voice. “Tears
+that we owe to the emotion caused by beautiful things are sweet tears.
+I remember those happy moments when we left our gondola and entered the
+church of Santa Maria della Salute. Just think of the lagoon, the grand
+canal—all that marvel of walls and towers and opalescent water.”
+
+“A walk in the Salute!” I cried, making no effort to conceal my
+amazement. “We were never together in the Salute, dear.”
+
+“Oh you don’t mean it,” she protested. “We went through the church
+thoroughly.”
+
+Thereupon she took a great deal of trouble to describe it to me. And
+then suddenly, observing my bewilderment, she came to a stop, and
+declined to say another word about her visit to the Salute. She went as
+red as a cherry; and I left her in a state of profound uneasiness.
+
+I felt the need of being alone to ponder over what had come to pass.
+While we were at Venice we had not parted from each other. I left her
+sometimes in her room, but I remained in the hotel. She could not,
+therefore, have visited the Salute.
+
+I hurriedly made my way there, and I was dumbfounded to discover that
+her description of the church was accurate.
+
+I was intensely alarmed, for I could no longer doubt that Cordélia’s
+polygon was beginning to play its tricks again. While she was supposed
+to be asleep her polygon was wandering about the Salute! I recalled to
+mind Dr. Thurel’s words:
+
+“Just as cases are quoted in which the subject discovers in a dream,
+memories placed therein without his cognizance by his polygon while
+awake—the O being then in a state of abstraction—so there are numerous
+instances in which the subject while awake discovers memories placed
+therein, without his cognizance, by the polygon which has been at work
+while he was asleep—the O being lulled to sleep or under the influence
+of suggestion.”
+
+When I landed from the gondola and found myself again on the Riva degli
+Schiavoni I could not help exclaiming:
+
+“The misery of it! It’s that confounded polygon again. Still we in
+Venice are a long way from Patrick.”
+
+I had no sooner uttered these words than a voice behind me exclaimed:
+
+“You make a mistake, monsieur. Patrick is here!”
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XVI
+
+                             THE APPOINTMENT
+
+
+It was Surdon who had spoken. He seemed not less perturbed than I was.
+I took him in hand with an excitement which may easily be imagined.
+
+“Patrick here!” I cried. “How do you know that?”
+
+“I’ve seen him.”
+
+“When?”
+
+“This morning.”
+
+“And since this morning couldn’t you....”
+
+“I’ve followed him, monsieur, and I can assure you that I haven’t
+wasted my time.”
+
+“Out with it! Tell me what you know. The whole thing is awful.”
+
+“Yes, monsieur, awful.”
+
+“I shall kill him.”
+
+“Of course, that would be the best thing to do, for there’s no question
+that he isn’t chasing you.”—The worthy Surdon dared not make any
+allusion to “madame”—“This Patrick assumed that you would be passing
+through Venice. He’s been expecting you here for the last three weeks.
+And since you came here he has pretty well lost his head.”
+
+“Oh, come, he has done that before, Surdon. But tell me everything you
+know down to the least detail.”
+
+“Well, it’s like this. I was brushing your clothes this morning when I
+happened to put my nose out of a window, and caught sight of a man in
+a gondola staring with such persistence at our windows that I stopped
+my work. He did not see me. To come to the point—his eyes were fixed on
+madame’s room.”
+
+“Was madame out?” I inquired breathlessly.
+
+“No, monsieur, she was getting ready to go out, and you were waiting
+for her in the hall. Just then I recognized Patrick, and I continued to
+watch his game.”
+
+“Do you know if madame saw him?”
+
+“I don’t know. I can’t be positive. The gondola stopped for a moment,
+then having changed its course turned down towards the lagoon. I
+rushed out of the hotel just as you were leaving it with madame, and
+had the luck to reach the bend of the Riva degli Schiavoni as Patrick’s
+gondola rounded the point. I took a gondola and followed him. My
+intention was to find out where he was staying. For hours he dragged
+me about to impossible and apparently uninteresting places. Finally he
+landed at the Grand Hotel where I was told that he had taken a room
+with the windows on the ground floor—I mean on a level with the water
+of the Grand Canal opposite Santa Maria della Salute.”—At the mention
+of this church I gave another start.—“The servant who waits upon him
+had no objection to give me certain particulars which, for that matter,
+show Patrick as the laughing-stock of the staff at the Grand Hotel....
+
+“It seems, monsieur, that during the last four days he has regularly
+shut himself up in his room between five and seven o’clock after
+ordering a light meal for two persons to be served on a small round
+table.”
+
+“A meal for two persons between five and seven o’clock!” I exclaimed,
+feeling a shiver pass through me from head to foot.
+
+“Just so, monsieur. The servant has to lay two places, and the beauty
+of it is that no one has ever seen our man enter his room with another
+person, while he is always seen to come out alone. And yet this
+servant hasn’t the least doubt that two persons sit down to this small
+round table and partake of the meal which has been served. It’s a
+mystery which amuses every one, though Patrick doesn’t appear to be
+aware of it, for he never speaks to a soul. He is generally looked
+upon as eccentric and even slightly mad. Most sensible people are of
+opinion that he is playing a part with himself and living upon past
+recollections.... Good Lord, how pale you are! Perhaps I made a mistake
+to tell you all this. It would have been better to keep it from you
+that he was here.”
+
+“No, Surdon, you were quite right. You are a sharp and faithful
+servant. But, tell me, when did you leave the Grand Hotel?”
+
+“Just now, monsieur.”
+
+“What about Patrick?”
+
+“I left him shut up in his room as usual at this time.”
+
+I looked at my watch which shook in my hand.
+
+“That’s true,” I said. “This is the hour for his meal. Wait for me in
+this gondola, Surdon. I shall be back soon.”
+
+I hastened to the hotel in a state of agitation which bordered on
+frenzy. I was unnerved, be it understood, less by the evidence which
+Surdon brought me of Patrick’s renewed efforts to secure control of
+Cordélia’s O, than by the apparent willingness with which my beloved
+consented to allow her polygon to be influenced by this most dangerous
+of tempters. The mere thought of it made me shake with fever, but could
+I doubt the truth when I recalled what had passed that very day between
+Cordélia and me? She had spoken in the most natural terms of her visit
+to the church of Santa Maria della Salute, and then perceiving, from my
+look of amazement, that her polygon had chattered too freely, she at
+once enjoined it to be silent, blushing to the roots of her hair.
+
+Not long before when she observed something abnormal passing between
+us, she threw her arms round my neck and cried: “Save me, Hector, save
+me!” but now she seemed to display only a certain embarrassment for
+having allowed the secret of a psychic condition to be discovered which
+ought to have been kept from me; the secret of another existence which
+she considered perhaps that I was unworthy to share, and which, in any
+case, no longer gave her a fright seeing that her O, after reflection,
+made no such request as: “Take me away!”
+
+Was it not another who now took her away wherever he wished, if not
+with her complete assent—for in my delirium I strove to be just—at
+least with very little opposition from her? The pity of it! No, she
+made very little resistance, or else she would have warned me and cried
+aloud: “He has come back, the thief—the man who stole my love!”
+
+Her O and her polygon were now in league to conceal this ignominy from
+me. For after all, the nervous fluid, to use Dr. Thurel’s words, is
+not strongly united to the body in certain subjects—and obviously
+Cordélia was among these—yet it is impossible to lure it far from
+its visible focus, the body, without producing a certain amount of
+suffering which in Cordélia’s case formerly caused her to resist, while
+now she accepted it. Cordélia was failing me, for she was now accepting
+her suffering. It was a dreadful thought, a thought beyond all bearing.
+
+These tragic considerations did not enter my mind, as may be imagined,
+only as the result of inferences which I drew from the scene with
+Cordélia that morning, but from my memory of various other little
+scenes of this kind which had impressed me less, because they were of
+less importance, but which now acquired their full significance, and
+that, too, from the first hour of our arrival in Venice.
+
+Still, it was the terrible thought that during the last few days she
+had asked me to let her take a short rest before dressing for dinner,
+that made me mount the stairs four at a time, for the request, perhaps,
+concealed a subterfuge intended to keep me away during the great
+secret of the polygonal promenade.
+
+Everything that Surdon had told me about Patrick’s curious behavior at
+the Grand Hotel at that hour, merely strengthened the infernal idea
+which led to my accusing Cordélia of a veritable crime, the crime of
+premeditation, whereas it may have been simply a coincidence; but
+jealousy invariably goes to extremes and never feels satisfied unless
+it has multiplied its torments by some new supposition.
+
+When out of breath I reached our rooms, however, I clung for a while to
+a last hope, the hope of discovering Cordélia standing before the glass
+putting the finishing touches to her evening toilet; but unfortunately
+the door of her room was locked and it was in vain that I shook it with
+all my strength.
+
+“Cordélia! Cordélia!” I shouted, but there was no reply. I bent down
+and looked through the keyhole, and I saw her lying at full length
+on a sofa near the window in the rigid posture which had so greatly
+perturbed me at Vascoeuil.
+
+I could not restrain a yell of fury and, clenching my fists and
+grinding my teeth, I ran to join Surdon in the gondola.
+
+“As quickly as you can to the Grand Hotel,” I ordered.
+
+The gondola took us there in a few minutes. As we drew near, Surdon
+pointed to a window which was lit up on the right of the principal
+entrance, for at this time of the year it grew dark early.
+
+“There you are,” he said.
+
+I at once propelled the gondola forward so that we hugged the foot of
+the wall and became merged in its shadow. We did not make the least
+sound.
+
+When the gondola stopped under the window, I stood up and managed
+without difficulty to hold on to a small cornice, resting my elbow on
+the stone embrasure of the window. The latter was partly opened. I
+could thus both see and hear.
+
+My excitement had reached its height, and I shall not attempt to
+describe it. Moreover, it is not difficult to conceive what passed
+through my mind from that moment, and the feelings with which I was
+stirred by the spectacle which I alone could understand, and from which
+I alone was to suffer.
+
+The two covers on the small round table which occupied the center of
+the room were close together; the two chairs were side by side. In one
+of them Patrick was seated, leaning over the other in an attitude of
+sentimental tenderness, while his face, like the face of a mournful
+cat, wore an expression of peace, not to say bliss, which made me long
+to rush into the room and box his ears. But I restrained myself.
+
+A chandelier which shed a soft light on persons and things stood on
+the table. Why do I say “persons”? I observed only Patrick, and as to
+Cordélia, I failed to perceive her in spite of my concentrated will
+and strained attention. I would have given, at that moment, everything
+that I possessed to be able to see with the same facility as Patrick,
+who was assuredly caressing the exquisite outlines of Cordélia’s astral
+figure.
+
+O those eyes like the eyes of a mournful cat, calm and content, while
+I was seething with excitement at the window!
+
+How was it that I had the power to control my impulse?... I wanted to
+know more.... And now I listened, for as he stretched out his hand to
+take an apple from the fruit-dish and place it on Cordélia’s plate, he
+began to speak:
+
+“A union of minds begets sympathy, and from this sympathy is born real
+love, compared with which the other is but the blind instrument of
+nature in the fulfilment of its essential functions.”
+
+I shall remember that sentence for the rest of my life.
+
+“The bond which unites us, O Cordélia”—he used the words “O Cordélia”
+and I felt as if my heart were being pierced with a sword—“the bond
+which unites us recognizes no impediment; nothing can restrain it,
+nothing can shatter it; it can penetrate walls, traverse space, set
+time at defiance. It partakes of the divine essence,” and so on and so
+forth.
+
+I could not repeat everything that he said in this strain while peeling
+a pear which he shared with her—I mean the half of which he laid on
+the plate beside his own.
+
+I must confess that his gestures perplexed me more than his
+speechifying. To me it was unendurable that he should lean over the
+next chair, and I experienced an uncanny feeling as I saw him lift a
+glass of wine to his lips which he had previously placed in space on
+his right on a level with a mouth, which had, perhaps also drunk from
+it.
+
+“The wretches are drinking out of the same glass,” I muttered between
+my teeth. “Don’t mind me!”
+
+I was in such “good training” by the psychic phenomena of which I
+had been the victim since my wedding-day, and also by the scientific
+explanations to which I had listened, and by that which I still saw,
+that nothing could surprise me, and the impossibility for an astral
+body to swallow the material substance of a meal did not occur to me
+at first. It was not until I had seen for myself that the wine was
+entirely drunk by Patrick, and the food on Cordélia’s plate conveyed
+in the end to his plate, that I gave up this absurdly fantastic idea,
+which shows once more that the mind deflected from its accustomed
+groove easily loses all sense of proportion, and is ready to open the
+door to every form of self-deception; and my delusion at that cruel
+moment when others beside myself might likewise have lost their common
+sense, was to believe in the reality of this fallacy—of this farce
+which was being played between Patrick and Cordélia’s astral body when
+under his influence. The real truth was that they provided themselves
+with the vision and delight of a little dinner for two in this room,
+but the person who was in fact eating it could only be Patrick.
+
+And as he drank wine for two, which seemed to me to be tokay, he looked
+less like a mournful cat, and began to talk nonsense which was not
+without a touch of humor.
+
+As it happened he spoke of the material limits which his magnetic power
+encountered.
+
+“It is a pity,” he said, “that I cannot attract your body here as I
+can attract your sensibility, but that is a miracle, for all we know,
+which psychic science, which is still in its infancy, may achieve
+in the near future. See what has already been done in the matter of
+table turning. The day when those idiots—I am referring to official
+experts—cease to laugh at these phenomena, we shall not be far from
+discovering the method which will enable the unseen mind to control
+visible matter. On that day we shall learn something that Newton did
+not know, namely, that gravitation is a variable quantity in space.[1]
+
+  [1] Einstein has since merely repeated the words used by Cordélia’s
+  admirer and given a mathematical formula to his theory. Author’s
+  Note.
+
+“That reminds me of a rather amusing story that old Surdon used to
+tell, my dear Cordélia”—how it hurt me to hear him say “My dear
+Cordélia!”—“He said ‘I can make this table jump out of the window when
+and as I please. One day two friends were taking their coffee on it. I
+commanded the table to move. It remained motionless. When they left I
+lectured the table. Do you know what it said in reply? “They are such
+fools!”’”
+
+Whereupon Patrick began to laugh, and I seemed to hear Cordélia laugh
+as well. Their gaiety disturbed me more than their gloom of a few
+minutes before. Suddenly they stopped laughing, and began to converse
+in complete silence.
+
+I was absolutely convinced of it.
+
+They were talking and understanding each other. It is generally
+recognized that subjects and mediums and persons who have it in them
+to control the mind can converse among themselves without the aid of
+sounds, by the mere power of suggestion, and communion. When Patrick
+spoke from the throat it was done over and above his psychic power,
+from habit, and possibly to give himself the illusion to which,
+whatever he may have said, he seemed to set store, of Cordélia’s
+bodily presence beside him in his room, but the use of his voice was
+unnecessary. He was now speaking to her with the voice of the mind.
+
+And there could be no doubt that Cordélia was answering him, for it
+must not be assumed that I was witnessing, in this extraordinary and
+loathsome seance, a monologue. Far from it. But when Patrick used his
+ordinary voice there were pauses which were undoubtedly furnished with
+Cordélia’s answers. Patrick’s remarks which followed were a sufficient
+proof of it.
+
+I was more or less aware of what was passing, but now they were
+conversing in silence. What were they saying? Why was Patrick bending
+over her with his right arm resting on the back of her chair?... I
+could perceive a tremulous movement of his arm....
+
+Suddenly he raised his head and said aloud: “It is unfair of me to
+reproach heaven for not giving you to me body and soul, because your
+soul is mine and I have the best part of your body.” And then he took
+his glass in his left hand without moving his right hand which still
+shook as it lay on the back of Cordélia’s chair, and exclaimed: “I have
+tasted your lips, O Cordélia. I have tasted your life. I drink to our
+longing for everlasting love!”
+
+He had no sooner poured the glass of wine down his throat than I sprang
+into the room.
+
+It seemed that I was literally foaming with rage. He himself said so
+afterwards, and it was, in truth, quite possible, for my patience which
+my restless and insidious curiosity had held in check, was exhausted,
+and I was overcome with fury.
+
+I rushed up to _them_ and cried:
+
+“I’m thirsty too. Aren’t you going to invite me?”
+
+He stood up and thrust himself in my path as though to shield her.
+
+“How clumsy you are! You have wounded her,” he murmured, stooping to
+pick up a knife which, when I darted to the table had fallen to the
+floor.
+
+“What do you mean—‘wounded her?’” I said excitedly.
+
+“Calm yourself, monsieur,” he returned with characteristic English
+coolness. “Indeed, it’s nothing, though it might have been serious. Let
+this be a lesson to you. Another time, don’t forget to knock at the
+door or the window.” He spoke in a tone which set me beside myself.
+
+“It shall never happen again,” I said hoarsely, casting a glance in the
+direction of Cordélia’s chair.
+
+“Oh, you may finish what you were saying,” he interrupted with a
+gesture of encouragement. “We are alone. She is no longer here.”
+
+“Well, monsieur, what I wish to say is simply this—there are two of us
+here, which is one too many.”
+
+“That’s my opinion, monsieur,” he acquiesced, “but it’s not I who am in
+the way.”
+
+“We shall see about that—to-morrow!”
+
+“Just as you please.”
+
+I had nothing more to say to him that day, and I turned towards the
+window, but he opened the door for me, and we bowed to each other with
+perfect propriety.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVII
+
+                                THE DUEL
+
+
+When I read over again the preceding pages I find nothing in them to
+eliminate, for they truthfully set down the intolerable situation in
+which I found myself after Surdon informed me of Patrick’s presence in
+Venice. In my belief I had good reason for suspecting that my beloved’s
+ego had yielded without any great resistance to the whims of culpable
+hypnotic suggestion. And when I conjure up the vision of the meeting in
+the little room in the Grand Hotel, I see myself again as I was then,
+that is to say, less distracted by rage against Patrick than tortured
+by Cordélia’s apparent acquiescence.
+
+Fool that I was! Ought I not in my ignorance of the tremendous nature
+of psychic mystery, or in my mistrust of it as an entirely new
+initiate, to have warned Cordélia of all that appeared suspect and
+impossible to understand in it? And yet I took a bitter pleasure in my
+misery!
+
+In short, my blood was fired by those fatuous words: “It wouldn’t have
+happened if she hadn’t wanted it to happen.” And it was with these
+words on my lips and this injustice to her in my heart, that I hastened
+back to the Hotel Danieli.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cordélia, whom I found still lying on the sofa, had just awakened from
+her sleep, and was wrapping a piece of linen round her finger, an
+incident to which in my agitation I attached no importance. The chamber
+maid was offering her a thread of cotton. I requested her to leave us.
+
+At the sound of my voice Cordélia gave a start and raised her head, and
+I perceived that she was deadly pale.
+
+“Patrick is here and you know it,” I cried savagely. “Why didn’t you
+tell me?”
+
+She contemplated my wrath first with dumb amazement, and then with
+dismay. She seemed no longer to know me. I had ceased to be her
+Hector. She wisely remained silent. What could she say to a raging lion
+who neither heard nor understood reason?
+
+Then I went on wildly:
+
+“You deny yourself nothing. Trips in gondolas, art galleries,
+churches—the Santa Maria della Salute!”
+
+At these last words she murmured:
+
+“Oh, good gracious, so it was true! I thought it was only a dream.”
+
+Her words ought to have enlightened me and taught me that she was still
+the victim of the endless machinations of that man. But I had set out
+to make us both suffer, and I was not to be stopped mid-way.
+
+“You meet every day between five and seven o’clock.”
+
+“What do you say?”
+
+And Cordélia lifted herself, and opened her eyes wide with wonder, as
+if she began to discover from the sound of my voice now that she was
+awake, the impressions which had been transmitted to her polygon while
+she was asleep.
+
+“I say that you take advantage of my confidence. While I thought that
+you were resting here, you were off having a meal with Patrick in his
+room in the Grand Hotel.”
+
+She uttered a cry and covered her face with her hands.
+
+“Oh don’t deny it. I saw you. I heard you.”
+
+“What did you hear? Did I tell him that I loved him?” she asked in a
+voice strained with anxiety.
+
+“I didn’t hear you say that,” I returned, surprised at the tone in
+which she asked the question, “but you know quite well that I cannot
+hear your ‘silent voice.’”
+
+“If I didn’t say that I said nothing,” she declared gazing at me with
+staring eyes. “All else is beyond me.”
+
+So saying she lay back on the sofa, her whole body shaken by a fit of
+sobbing.
+
+I fell on my knees. The horror of my conduct and at the same time
+Cordélia’s innocence, became manifest to me. Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!
+
+I hated myself. I strove to assuage her grief. I took her hand, and
+then I saw that the strip of linen round her finger was quite red.
+
+“Your finger is bleeding, Cordélia. Have you cut it?”
+
+“I suppose I knocked it against a piece of furniture when I woke up,”
+she said between her tears.
+
+“It’s not imagination,” I said with a tremor, unwinding the linen,
+for Dr. Thurel’s explanation of the meaning of the externalization
+of sensibility flashed through my mind. “No, it was not imagination,
+unfortunately, and here we have the sad proof of it. When you, in mind,
+were at the Grand Hotel, I burst into the room with such violence as
+to disturb everything, and a knife which was on the table fell to the
+floor and Patrick exclaimed: ‘She is wounded!’”
+
+This time Cordélia rose to her feet so white-faced, that she might have
+been taken for her own ghost.
+
+“How could you think that I did not love you?” she breathed. “It’s my
+heart’s blood that is flowing from the wound which you inflicted on me
+in Patrick’s room. Do you understand what I mean?”[2]
+
+  [2] The following note was discovered among Hector’s papers:
+
+  In regard to pains and wounds transmitted to a subject from a
+  distance as in the peculiar case of the glass of water mentioned
+  by Dr. Rochas, see also instances quoted by Dr. Chazalin in his
+  work on “Materializations.” Cases have been known where violent
+  blows have been transmitted from a distance to subjects in profound
+  trance, in plain daylight, with the result that these subjects have
+  borne marks of the hand and scratches and bruises on the face.
+  Author’s note.
+
+I was still on my knees, and when I heard those glorious words I
+clasped her in my trembling arms and implored her to forgive me, but
+her mind was possessed with some other thought, and I realized that it
+was this thought which was the cause of her pallor.
+
+“What did you say to each other afterwards?” she asked.
+
+I was at a loss for an answer and could but stammer a falsehood.
+
+“Swear to me, that there will be no fighting.”
+
+I was constrained to swear that there should be no fighting, but she
+was unconvinced.
+
+“You have sworn falsely. That’s too bad of you. Never mind. I don’t
+want you to fight each other. You mustn’t fight each other. I shall go
+with you everywhere.”
+
+I could have wished that she had said: “I don’t want you to fight him.”
+
+She so managed that it was impossible for me to leave the hotel, and as
+I was bent on getting rid of my adversary, once for all, I was obliged
+to send Surdon to him, without her knowledge, in order to let him know
+what was happening, and to request him to take upon himself the burden
+of providing weapons, seconds and so forth. I asked that the duel
+should take place at dawn, for I intended to slip away while Cordélia
+was in her morning sleep which would not fail to be a heavy one after
+the excitement through which she had passed.
+
+Surdon came back to tell me that there was no need for me to trouble
+about anything except to appear at daybreak at the Comte de C——’s
+house, which stood at the far end of what are called the “public
+gardens.”
+
+Cordélia had regained her composure. We strolled to the Piazzetta, and
+even went as far as the Café de Florian, where we drank port to the
+music of the guitar. The scene around us was one of great gaiety. I
+did my utmost to appear cheerful also, but Cordélia remained gloomily
+wrapped in thought. When we returned to the hotel she declared that she
+would not go to bed.
+
+“I don’t believe you. You didn’t speak the truth. If I go to bed you’ll
+seize the opportunity to leave the hotel and fight a duel. I don’t want
+you to fight each other.”
+
+I shrugged my shoulders to indicate that it was a matter of
+indifference to me, but I was intensely annoyed. I had a wonderful
+and legitimate opportunity of getting rid of the author of my
+misfortunes—we were to fight with pistols, and I was certain of
+bringing my man down—and now Cordélia’s obstinacy bid fair to
+compromise everything. Fortunately I was able to send Surdon again to
+tell Patrick what was happening, for I saw no way out of the difficulty
+unless he consented to send Cordélia into a hypnotic trance so that I
+might be able to get away and fight him. I would never have believed
+that one day I should be making an appeal of this character to the man
+whose psychic powers were the cause of my troubles. But let that pass.
+The whole incident shows once more that whatever conception we may
+form of the world, and the relation which subsists between spirit and
+matter, we are but an atom of dust dancing in a momentary ray of the
+sun.
+
+Surdon came back with a message from the Englishman that he was not
+less anxious than I was for the duel to take place, and he would carry
+out my wishes.
+
+I passed a grievous night, a night which seemed interminable. The
+torture of it! If I had but known what was about to happen! If I had
+but known! With what dread I should have counted the minutes as they
+all too quickly sped past!
+
+Cordélia kept her word. Say and do what I might, she would not go to
+bed. She lay on the sofa reading, or pretending to read. And I—I stood
+watching her.
+
+I was waiting with impatience for the event which my adversary had
+promised to bring about. It occurred shortly after five o’clock in the
+morning. Her eyes closed, her book fell from her hands to the floor,
+and her body assumed the rigid posture which I recognized only too well.
+
+I locked the door of the room, put the key in my pocket, and then
+called Surdon. At six o’clock we arrived at the Comte de C——’s house.
+
+Patrick had not yet come, but the doctor and the seconds were already
+there. Two seconds were allotted to me. I made their acquaintance and
+was entirely satisfied. The Comte de C——, who belonged to the old
+Venetian nobility, was away, but he was, it seems, greatly interested
+in art and artists, and had placed his house at Patrick’s disposal.
+
+The public gardens in Venice are well known. They occupy one of the
+few islets in the old city which have not been encroached upon by
+the builder. Nevertheless the Comte de C——’s mansion stood there and
+possessed a private entrance to the gardens after the manner of private
+houses in the Monceau Gardens in Paris. Here the Comte de C—— alone
+enjoyed this privilege, so that at that hour, when the gardens were
+closed, it was as though we were in the Comte’s own private property.
+
+Meantime Patrick made his appearance, unarmed, as I swore at the Assize
+Court. The revolvers were in the cases which the seconds brought with
+them, and which they obtained the evening before at a gunsmith’s.
+Patrick had no knowledge of the weapons; at least so he declared, and I
+believe him. Moreover we drew lots and agreed that the revolvers which
+the seconds had brought with them should be used.
+
+We were now in the great central walk of the gardens. I have heard that
+in spring it is a lovely spot, an enchantment, with beds of roses which
+are nothing short of marvelous; but it was the fall of the year, and I
+beheld in the wan light of early morning a somewhat dreary place, well
+suited to be the scene of a terrible tragedy.
+
+And, indeed, the thing happened with incredible rapidity. The
+twenty-five paces which were to separate us were marked out. We were to
+exchange four shots. But I am a crack shot with a revolver, and I felt
+certain of bringing my man down at the first attempt. I had made up my
+mind to it, and I had no scruple of remorse. I felt that there was no
+happiness for me with Cordélia in this world as long as Patrick was
+alive. Let him go to the devil!
+
+I was perfectly cool when the words rang out: “Fire! One ... two ...
+three!” We fired almost simultaneously as the second in charge of the
+duel shouted: “Two!” Patrick, however, fired in the air uttering a
+despairing cry. I had already fired my shot on a level with his heart,
+and yet I must confess that I was conscious that he had not uttered
+that cry because he was struck by my bullet. Indeed he was not hit. To
+this cry another cry of unutterable anguish went up. It sprang from my
+throat, and my heart, and yet I was not hit either. The only person
+whose cry of agony we did not hear, was the person who was smitten. And
+I swear before God and man that my cry was torn from me by the vision
+of Cordélia’s form which suddenly arose between us at the moment when
+our fingers were pressing the trigger; but Patrick had the time to
+raise his weapon, while I fired mine.
+
+The image vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. I swear that
+Cordélia’s astral body, which until then—save in the mirror of the
+water, and here I must ask myself whether I was not the sport of the
+water and my imagination—had remained unseen by my physical vision,
+now appeared before me quite distinctly. This phenomenon, moreover, so
+fully supported the many other well-known instances where the spirit of
+a person has appeared to beloved relatives at the very moment when it
+throws off, for ever, its mortal covering, that I grasped the meaning
+of Patrick’s cry of dismay, for he too had seen.
+
+“Unhappy man!” he cried. “Unhappy man, what have you done!”
+
+My hair must have stood on end with horror and both of us were
+conscious only of a feeling of unspeakable dread.
+
+Without concerning ourselves with the seconds, or making the least
+explanation, we left the entire business of the duel and hurriedly
+flung ourselves into a gondola. Not a word was spoken on the way.
+Moreover I felt that I should go mad.
+
+On reaching the hotel we made a rush for Cordélia’s room. Everything
+seemed quiet, and precisely as I had left it. I was filled with a
+great hope; and yet my hand shook so much that I was unable to put the
+key in the lock. It was Patrick who opened the door.
+
+We darted into the room. Cordélia was still lying on the sofa, but her
+face already wore an unearthly look, and drops of blood stained her
+dressing-gown near her throat. She had been killed by a bullet through
+the heart.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVIII
+
+                               AND NOW ...
+
+
+And now this pierced heart which the greatest thief that ever lived had
+burgled from its bodily prison is all mine. I can kneel in peace before
+the urn in which I have reverently enclosed it. No one can rob me of it
+now.
+
+It was when it was still swayed by all the emotions of life, it was
+when its ardent beating animated an adored wife, that a villain strove
+to make a splendid victim of it, and to take it by force from my very
+arms; but now when it is no more than a little dust and a great memory,
+no one will contend with me for it.
+
+During the terrible proceedings at the Assize Court, where the case was
+regarded as the most extraordinary that had come before the ordinary
+judicial bench within the memory of man, I clearly perceived that
+the man who stole Cordélia’s heart no longer cared about her who had
+been his victim. Not once in the course of the trial, which excited,
+without satisfying, the world’s curiosity—not once did the thief cast
+a glance on the table in which lay the material evidence—this sacred
+relic which had come from the hands of the “experts”; while I, alas,
+could not remove my sorrow-stricken eyes from it.
+
+O heart of Cordélia, I alone loved thee! My rival was never anything
+but an artist.... But I, O Cordélia, I was never anything but a poor
+man in love, and I am still but a poor man in love before your dead
+heart as I was before your living heart.... The little that I may have
+of you I am taking away. With a trembling hand I have removed your
+beloved heart from its legal receptacle to this funeral urn. It will
+never, I think, be stolen from me again.
+
+I no longer feel the shadow of the thief over me. And yet in spite of
+my perfect assurance of peace I have had another lock placed on the
+door of the retreat to which I have withdrawn from my fellow-men.
+
+I have endeavored in this seclusion to fulfil the chief duty which
+I owe to myself and others. I have set down here the various
+circumstances which, to my knowledge, preceded, paved the way for,
+and accompanied the terrible tragedy. I have told in plain language
+how these things came to pass, even though they may seem entirely
+improbable. If the reader will follow me step by step and believe me,
+he will understand.
+
+It was because the Assize Court did not believe me that they failed to
+understand. And yet I did not spare myself. I took on my own shoulders
+the responsibility for the whole fatal incident. Why did they not
+proceed against me? I say that it was I who killed her.... The misery
+of it! I may rejoice to-day that Cordélia’s heart will not again be
+stolen from me, because it is dead. And it was I who killed it. I shout
+it aloud and I repeat: Do not doubt it since I myself no longer doubt
+it.
+
+The preliminary investigation took some time, and was postponed by the
+illness which came upon me as a result of the tragedy. When I was in
+a position to give evidence I found that the authorities were on the
+wrong scent as was to be expected.
+
+Surdon, for instance, was arrested on the plea that he possessed a
+revolver from which one bullet had been discharged. It was alleged that
+he had made his way into his mistress’s room while she was asleep in
+order to steal her jewelry.
+
+This was so much obtuseness and stupidity, and how could it be
+otherwise? The judges were confronted with the case of a woman killed
+by a bullet through the heart in a room every part of which was closed,
+the windows being shut on the inside and the door locked.
+
+The most amazing thing was that a minute search failed to reveal the
+bullet. It had passed through the body, but it could not be found
+either in the sofa or walls. I myself knew where the bullet was. It was
+somewhere in the public gardens in Venice.
+
+The police were obliged to release Surdon, but they afterwards arrested
+Patrick and kept him in custody until the trial at the Assize Court. A
+post-mortem examination was held, and the expert’s report showed that
+death was caused not by a shot from a revolver, but by a shot from
+a pistol of the same bore as that of the pistols which Patrick had
+procured for use at the duel.
+
+As the magisterial enquiries proved that Patrick was prowling round
+the Hotel Danieli during the night preceding and the morning of the
+duel, nothing more was needed to enable the authorities to accuse
+him of having entered Cordélia’s room at the hotel by means of some
+master key, or some key that he managed to obtain beforehand from
+an accommodating servant whom he had bribed to assist him in his
+nefarious purpose. He had shot Cordélia out of jealousy to prevent her
+from belonging to another if he were killed in the duel.... It was
+simple.... How very simple it was!... Poor human nature!
+
+The trouble was that a pistol shot causes a concussion, and no one in
+the hotel had heard the least sound.
+
+In vain Patrick denied the charge, recounting stories about the power
+of suggestion and the communion of minds which made the Court laugh.
+The reason for his presence near the Hotel Danieli on this particular
+night was that I had requested him to send Cordélia to sleep so
+that she should not interfere with our plan to fight each other, and
+Cordélia could only be influenced by suggestion within a limited
+distance.
+
+When I corroborated his statement, and gave it as my opinion that
+Cordélia had been killed in the Hotel Danieli by a shot fired by me in
+the public gardens in Venice, the judges ceased to smile and evinced
+considerable wrath. I was looked upon as a madman by some, and a fool
+by others, and these people were greatly incensed with me for not
+joining them in crushing Patrick. Cordélia’s father could not forgive
+me for it, and left me to myself with contempt.
+
+The press agencies reported the result as far as Patrick was concerned
+in a few lines. The material proofs were too slight to justify a
+conviction, and the jury acquitted him in spite of the efforts of the
+public prosecutor.
+
+Had the European political situation been less troubled, and had the
+trial not taken place in a foreign country, the facts would not have
+failed to create a tremendous sensation, as they deserved, for they
+brought the judicial bench face to face with the greatest conceivable
+drama, namely that which is enacted between the seen and the unseen
+worlds.
+
+Those dullards were utterly nonplused. I can still picture to myself
+their look of confusion when Dr. Thurel, who was called as a witness
+for the defense, explained that it was not absolutely impossible, from
+the scientific standpoint, for Cordélia to have been killed by a bullet
+which struck her astral body in the public gardens in Venice. That is
+what Dr. Thurel called death by astral traumatism....
+
+There is a Latin phrase which expresses it, a phrase which was in use
+in the Middle Ages, but I cannot call it to mind.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XIX
+
+                             THE LAST VISIT
+
+
+O Cordélia, you died by my hand! If I still live, be assured that it is
+by way of atonement. How often have I conjured up your image before the
+mortal remains of your heart! How often have I called to you! But you
+have never come to me!
+
+For many days I was unable to add a word to these lines, and I
+remained, as it were, paralyzed by the inscrutable mystery of life and
+death, when one day the door of my cell was opened, and a man came in.
+It was Patrick. He was but the shadow of his former self.
+
+I thrust myself before the urn which contained my beloved’s heart. He
+understood me and gave a bitter smile.
+
+“Have no fear,” he said, “I leave it to you. What is her earthly heart
+to me? I possess her heart which is in Heaven.”
+
+I rose to my feet staggering like a drunken man under his words which
+filled me with an agony of jealousy.
+
+“What do you mean?” I asked hoarsely. “Do you still see Cordélia?”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“Calm yourself, I do not see her,” he made answer. “She is too remote
+from us, and I have never believed in spirits of the dead revisiting
+this world. When I say that I possess her heart which is in Heaven, I
+mean that I did possess it. Death has deprived me of it,” he went on in
+somber, intense tones, “but death will restore it to me.”
+
+“No more of that,” I exclaimed. “What has all this to do with me?”
+
+“Well, if you look upon it in that light I don’t know why I am here.”
+
+“Nor I.”
+
+“I came to you, monsieur,” he said in a voice of wonderful dignity,
+“to ask you if you have any message for her, for she loved you
+sincerely—you too!”
+
+“She loved me only,” I asserted, yet strangely perturbed by his manner
+and words.
+
+He sighed and shook his head once more.
+
+“You thought so, but that was impossible,” he objected gently,
+“otherwise she would still be of this world.”
+
+“So it was you who killed her, or at least were responsible for her
+death? I always thought so!”
+
+“It was you and I. It was both of us,” he declared in a tone of great
+dejection. “Yes, I, on my side, was to blame. I was too eager in my
+frenzy, in my longing for her spirit, in the love which consumed me
+for her ego, to separate her mind from her body, but you—you were too
+eager to separate her body from her mind. We were marching toward an
+inevitable catastrophe.”
+
+His words struck me like a sword, and I did not interrupt him.
+
+“It shows,” he went on, turning toward the door, “that we can only give
+happiness to a being of this world if we bring to her a well-balanced
+mind which we were unable to do. Had Cordélia met a little of you and
+a little of me, in one and the same man, she would have been happy; at
+least I like to think so. But where she is now her spirit needs only
+her mind. I am going to her!... Farewell, monsieur!”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+I read this morning in the newspapers the announcement of Patrick’s
+death. It shall not be said that I allowed him to pursue Cordélia at
+his will. I hear her calling me: “Save me, Hector! Save me!”
+
+I, too, intend to become a pure spirit, and the sooner to achieve my
+purpose, I shall make the same journey as Cordélia, and by the same
+route. Though Patrick set out first he will arrive too late. He will
+be deceived. The heart of Cordélia points the way that lies before me.
+The bullet will enter my heart at the same spot at which it pierced
+Cordélia’s heart. I shall breathe the same sigh which will lead me to
+the same point in space where she awaits me.... I am persuaded of it!...
+
+Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!
+
+
+
+
+                             A TERRIBLE TALE
+
+
+Captain Michel had but one arm, which he found useful when he lit his
+pipe. He was an old sea dog whose acquaintance, with that of four
+other old salts, I made one evening on the open front of a café in the
+Vieille Darse, Toulon, where I was taking an appetizer. And in this way
+we fell into the habit of foregathering over a glass within a stone’s
+throw of the rippling waves and the swinging dingeys, about the hour
+when the sun sinks behind Tamaris.
+
+The four old marines were known as Zinzin, Dorat—Captain
+Dorat—Bagatelle, and Chanlieu—that old fellow Chanlieu. They had, of
+course, sailed every sea and met with a thousand adventures; and now
+that they were retired on their pensions, they spent their time telling
+each other terrible tales.
+
+Captain Michel alone never indulged in any reminiscences. And as he
+seemed in no way surprised by anything he heard, his old comrades in
+the end grew exasperated with him.
+
+“Look here, Captain Michel, hasn’t anything out of the way ever
+happened to you?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” the captain made answer, taking his pipe from his mouth.
+“Yes, something happened to me once—just once.”
+
+“Well, let’s have it.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because it’s too awful. You might not be able to stand it. I’ve often
+tried to tell the story but people have slipped away before I finished
+it.”
+
+The four sea dogs vied with each other in the loudness of their
+guffaws, declaring that Captain Michel was trying to find some excuse,
+because in reality, nothing extraordinary had ever happened to him.
+
+The old fellow stared at them a moment, and then suddenly accepting
+the situation, laid his pipe on the table. This unusual gesture was in
+itself startling!
+
+“Messieurs, I’ll tell you how I lost my arm,” he began.
+
+“In those days—some twenty years ago—I owned a small villa, in the
+suburb of Le Mourillon, which had been left to me, for my family were
+long settled in these parts and I myself was born here.
+
+“It suited me to take a little rest after a long voyage and before
+setting sail again. For that matter, I rather liked the place, and
+lived quite peaceably among sea-faring men and colonials who troubled
+me very little, and whom I rarely saw, occupied as they were as a rule
+in opium-smoking with their lady friends, or with other business which
+did not concern me. Of course there is no accounting for tastes, but as
+long as they didn’t interfere with me, I was satisfied....
+
+“It so happened that one night they did interfere with my habit of
+going to sleep. I was awakened with a start by an extraordinary uproar,
+the meaning of which I couldn’t possibly make out. I had left my window
+open as usual. I listened in a state of bewilderment to a tremendous
+din, which was a cross between the rumbling of thunder and the roll
+of a drum, but such a drum! It was as though a couple of hundred
+drumsticks were being madly beaten, not on ordinary drum-skin, but on a
+wooden drum.
+
+“The disturbance came from the villa opposite, which had been empty for
+some five years, and on which I had noticed, the previous evening, a
+board bearing the announcement: ‘To be sold.’
+
+“I let my gaze stray from the window of my bedroom, on the first floor,
+beyond the small garden in which the house stood, and my eye took in
+every door and window, even the doors and windows on the ground floor.
+They were still closed as I had seen them during the day; but I caught
+sight of gleams of light through the chinks in the shutters on the
+ground floor. Who and what were these people? How had they found their
+way into this solitary house at the far end of Le Mourillon? What
+sort of company was it that had obtained admission into this deserted
+dwelling, and why were they kicking up such a shindy?
+
+“The extraordinary din, like the thunderous beating of a wooden drum,
+continued. It went on for another hour, and then as dawn was breaking,
+the front door opened, and there appeared in the doorway the most
+radiant creature that I have ever beheld. She was clad in a low-necked
+dress, and held with perfect grace a lamp whose beams fell over the
+shoulders of a goddess. I distinctly heard her say in the echoing
+night, while a kind and quiet smile flickered across her face:
+
+“‘Good-bye, dear friend, till next year.’
+
+“To whom was she speaking? It was impossible for me to tell for I could
+see no one standing beside her. She remained at the entrance holding
+the lamp for some minutes, until the garden gate opened by itself and
+closed by itself. Then the front door of the house was shut in its
+turn, and I saw nothing more.
+
+“It seemed to me that I was either losing my head or was the sport of a
+dream, for I knew that it was out of the question for any one to pass
+through the garden without my perceiving him.
+
+“I was still planted at the window, incapable of the least movement or
+thought, when the door of the house opened a second time, and the same
+vision of beauty appeared still carrying a lamp and still alone.
+
+“‘Hush,’ she said, ‘don’t make a noise, any of you. We mustn’t disturb
+our neighbor opposite. I’ll come with you.’
+
+“And silently and alone she crossed the garden and stopped at the gate
+on which the full rays of the lamp shone; so much so, indeed, that I
+clearly saw the knob of the gate turn of its own accord without any
+hand being placed upon it. And the gate opened once again by itself in
+the presence of this woman who, moreover, did not evince any surprise.
+Need I explain that from where I was posted, I could see both in front
+and behind the gate; in other words, that I saw it sideways?
+
+“This ‘splendid apparition’ made a charming movement of her head toward
+the empty darkness which the glare of the lamp made visible; then she
+smiled and said:
+
+“‘Well, good-bye until next year. My husband is very pleased. Not a
+single one of you failed to answer the call. Good-bye, messieurs.’
+
+“And I heard several voices in unison:
+
+“‘Good-bye, madame, good-bye, dear madame, until next year.’
+
+“And as the mysterious hostess was preparing to close the door herself,
+I heard a voice:
+
+“‘Oh, please, don’t trouble.’
+
+“And the door was once more closed.
+
+“The next moment the air was filled with a curious sound; it was like
+the chirping of a flock of birds, and it seemed as if this beautiful
+woman had opened the cage of a whole brood of house sparrows.
+
+“She quietly walked back to the house. The lights on the ground floor
+were then out, but I noticed a glimmer in the windows of the first
+floor.
+
+“When she reached the house she said:
+
+“‘Are you upstairs, Gérard?’
+
+“I could not hear the answer, but the front door was again closed, and
+a few minutes later the light on the first floor went out.
+
+“I was still standing at my window at eight o’clock in the morning,
+staring in blank amazement at the house and garden which had revealed
+such strange happenings in darkness, and which now in the full light
+of day assumed their familiar aspect. The garden was a waste, and the
+house itself seemed as desolate as it was the day before.
+
+“So much so, indeed, that when I told my old charwoman who had just
+come, of the queer events which I had witnessed, she tapped my forehead
+with her dirty forefinger and muttered that I had smoked one pipe too
+many. Now I have never been a smoker of opium, and her answer gave me
+a good opportunity of sacking the old sloven whom I had for some time
+wanted to get rid of, and who came for a couple of hours each day to
+‘clean up’ the place for me. For that matter I did not need any one, as
+I was setting sail again next day.
+
+“I barely had time to put my things together, make a few purchases, say
+farewell to my friends, and catch the train for Havre. I had fixed up
+an appointment with the Transatlantic company which would keep me away
+from Toulon for some eleven or twelve months.
+
+“In due course I returned to Toulon, but though I had refrained from
+mentioning my adventure to a soul, I still continued to think of it.
+The vision of the lady of the lamp obsessed me wherever I went, and
+the last words which she uttered to her unseen friends still rang in my
+ears:
+
+“‘Well, good-bye until next year.’
+
+“And I never ceased to think of the meeting. I, too, was determined to
+be there and to discover, at whatever cost, the solution of a mystery
+which was intensely perplexing to a sensible man like myself, who did
+not believe in ghosts or phantom vessels.
+
+“Unfortunately I was soon to learn that neither heaven nor hell was
+concerned in the terrible story.
+
+“It was six o’clock in the evening when I set foot again in my house
+at Toulon; and it was two days before the anniversary of the wonderful
+night.
+
+“The first thing that I did on going inside was to run up to my room
+and open the window. It was summer and broad daylight, and my eyes at
+once fell upon a lady of great beauty who was placidly walking about
+gathering flowers in the garden of the house opposite. At the noise
+made by the opening window she looked up.
+
+“It was the lady of the lamp. I recognized her, and she seemed not less
+beautiful by day than by night. Her skin was as white as the teeth of
+an African nigger, her eyes bluer than the waters at Tamaris, her hair
+as soft and fair as the finest flax.
+
+“Why should I not make the confession? When I beheld this woman of whom
+I had been dreaming for a year, a strange feeling came over me. She
+was no illusion of a diseased imagination. She stood before me in the
+flesh; and every window of the house was open and flower-bedecked by
+her hands. There was nothing fantastic in all this.
+
+“She caught sight of me and at once displayed some degree of annoyance.
+She walked a few steps farther in the center path of the garden, and
+then shrugging her shoulders as though she were disconcerted said:
+
+“‘Let’s go in, Gérard. I’m beginning to feel the coolness of the night.’
+
+“I let my gaze stray round the garden. I could perceive no one. To whom
+was she speaking?... Nobody there!
+
+“Then was she mad? It scarcely seemed so.
+
+“I watched her return to the house. She passed into it, the door was
+closed, and she at once shut the windows.
+
+“I did not see or hear anything worth noticing that night. Next morning
+at ten o’clock I observed my neighbor leaving the garden attired as if
+for a walk. She locked the gate after her and set out in the direction
+of Toulon.
+
+“I started off in my turn. Pointing to the fashionably dressed figure
+in front of me I asked the first tradesman whom I met if he knew the
+lady’s name.
+
+“‘Why, of course. She’s your neighbor. She is living with her husband
+at the Villa Makoko. They moved in about a year ago, just as you went
+away. They are regular boors. They never speak to anybody, unless it’s
+absolutely necessary, but every one in Le Mourillon, as you know,
+goes his own way, and is never surprised at anything. The captain for
+one....’
+
+“‘What captain?’
+
+“‘Captain Gérard. It seems he is an ex-captain of marines. Well, no
+one ever sees him.... Sometimes when food has to be delivered at the
+house, and the lady is not in, some person shouts out an order from
+behind the door to leave the stuff on the step, and waits until you are
+a good distance away before taking it in.’
+
+“You can imagine that I was growing more and more puzzled. I went to
+Toulon in order to ask the agent who let the villa a few questions
+about these people. He, likewise, had never seen the husband, but he
+told me that his name was Gérard Beauvisage.
+
+“When I heard the name I uttered a cry: ‘Gérard Beauvisage! Why I know
+him!’
+
+“I had an old friend of that name whom I had not seen for twenty-five
+years. He was an officer in the marines and had left Toulon for Tonkin
+about that period. How could I doubt that it was he? At all events, I
+had a straightforward reason for calling on him, that very evening,
+though he was expecting a visit from his friends, for it was the
+anniversary of the famous night. I made up my mind to renew my old
+friendship with him.
+
+“When I got back to Le Mourillon I espied in front of me, in the sunk
+road leading to the Villa Makoko, the figure of my neighbor. I did not
+hesitate, but hastened to overtake her.
+
+“‘Have I the honor of speaking to Madame Beauvisage, the wife of
+Captain Gérard Beauvisage?’ I asked with a bow.
+
+“She colored and tried to pass on without answering me.
+
+“‘Madame, I am your neighbor, Captain Michel Alban,’ I persisted.
+
+“‘Oh, please forgive me, monsieur,’ she returned, ‘my husband has often
+spoken of you ... Captain Michel Alban....’
+
+“She seemed terribly ill at ease, and yet in her confusion she was more
+beautiful than ever, if that were possible. In spite of her obvious
+desire to elude me I went on:
+
+“‘How comes it that Captain Beauvisage has returned to France without
+letting his old friend know? I shall be particularly obliged if you
+will tell Gérard that I’m coming to shake hands with him this very
+evening.’
+
+“And observing that she was hastening her steps, I bowed, but as I was
+speaking she turned round, betraying an agitation which was more and
+more difficult to comprehend.
+
+“‘Impossible to-night.... I promise to tell Gérard of our meeting.
+That’s the most I can do. Gérard doesn’t wish to see any one—any one.
+He lives alone.... We live alone.... And we took the house because we
+were told that the next house was occupied only for a few days once or
+twice a year by some one who is never seen!...’
+
+“And she added in a voice tinged with sadness:
+
+“‘You must forgive Gérard, monsieur. We do not receive any one—any one.
+Good day, monsieur.’
+
+“‘Madame, the Captain and you receive friends occasionally,’ I returned
+with some impatience. ‘For instance, to-night you are expecting friends
+with whom you made an appointment a year ago.’
+
+“She flushed scarlet.
+
+“‘Oh, but that’s an exceptional case ... that’s an absolutely
+exceptional case.... They are our very particular friends.’
+
+“Having said which she made her escape, but at once stopped her
+retreat and turned back.
+
+“‘Whatever you do, don’t call to-night,’ she entreated, and disappeared
+into the garden.
+
+“I returned to my house and began to keep watch on my neighbors. They
+did not show themselves, and long before it was dark I saw the shutters
+being closed and lights gleaming through the openings, such as I had
+seen on that amazing night a year ago. But I did not hear the same
+extraordinary din like the thunderous beating of a wooden drum.
+
+“At seven o’clock I began to dress for I called to mind the low-necked
+robe worn by the lady of the lamp. Madame Beauvisage’s last words had
+but strengthened my determination. The captain was seeing some of his
+friends that evening; he dared not refuse me admission. After dressing
+it crossed my mind, before I went downstairs, to put my revolver in my
+pocket, but in the end I left it in its place, considering that to take
+it would be an act of stupidity.
+
+“The stupidity lay in not taking it with me.
+
+“On reaching the entrance to the Villa Makoko I turned the handle of
+the gate on the off chance—the handle which last year I had seen turn
+by itself. And to my intense surprise the door opened. Therefore my
+neighbors were expecting visitors. I walked up to the house and knocked
+at the door.
+
+“‘Come in!’ a voice cried.
+
+“I recognized Gérard’s voice. I walked gaily into the house. I passed
+first through the hall, and then as the door of a small drawing-room
+stood open, and the room was lit up, I entered it.
+
+“‘Gérard it’s me,’ I exclaimed, ‘your old pal Michel Alban.’
+
+“‘Oh, really, so you made up your mind to come, my dear old Michel! I
+told my wife only just now that you would come and I should be glad
+to see you.... But you are the only one, apart from our particular
+friends.... Do you know, my dear Michel, you haven’t altered much....’
+
+“It would be impossible for me to describe my stupefaction. I heard
+Gérard, but I could not see him. His voice rang in my ears, but no one
+was near me, no one was in the drawing-room. The Voice went on:
+
+“‘Sit down, won’t you? My wife will soon be here, for she will remember
+that she left me on the mantelpiece!’
+
+“I looked up, and then discovered above me ... above me resting on a
+high mantelpiece—a bust.
+
+“It was this bust which had been speaking. It resembled Gérard. It was
+Gérard’s body. It had been placed there as people are wont to place
+busts on mantelpieces. It was a bust like those carved by sculptors,
+that is to say, it was without arms.
+
+“‘I can’t shake hands with you, my dear Michel,’ the voice went on,
+‘for as you see I have no hands, but if you raise yourself on tiptoe
+you will be able to take me in your arms and place me on the table. My
+wife put me up here in a moment of temper, because she said I was in
+the way when she swept the room. She’s a funny thing is my wife.’
+
+“And the bust burst out laughing.
+
+“It seemed to me that I was the victim of an optical illusion as
+happens in those entertainments where you behold living heads and
+shoulders suspended in mid-air, the result of tricks with mirrors; but
+after setting down my friend on the table, as he requested, I had to
+admit that this head and body without arms or legs was indeed all that
+remained of the excellent officer whom I had known in days gone by.
+His body was resting on a small wheeled platform, such as are used by
+cripples without legs, but Gérard did not possess even the stumps of
+legs which can be seen in the case of most cripples. To think that my
+old friend was nothing but a bust!
+
+“Small hooks took the place of arms, and language fails me to describe
+how, leaning for support on a hook here, or on another there, he set to
+work to hop, skip and jump and perform a hundred swift movements which
+shot him from the table to a chair, from a chair to the floor, and then
+suddenly made him appear on the table once more, where he indulged in
+the gayest chatter.
+
+“Myself, I was in a state of consternation. I was rendered speechless.
+I watched this freak perform his antics and say with a chuckle which
+alarmed me:
+
+“‘I have greatly changed I daresay. You must admit, my dear Michel,
+that you hardly recognize me. You did quite right to call this evening.
+We shall see some sport. We have a few very special friends, and, you
+know, apart from them I don’t care to meet any one—merely as a matter
+of pride. We don’t even keep a servant. Wait for me here. I must get
+into my smoking jacket.’
+
+“He went off, and almost at once the lady of the lamp appeared. She
+wore the same low-necked dress of the year before. As soon as her eyes
+fell upon me, she seemed strangely perturbed, and said in a strained
+voice:
+
+“‘Oh, so you are here! You’ve made a mistake, Captain Michel. I gave
+your message to my husband, but I forbade you to call this evening.
+I may tell you that when he learnt that you were in this place, he
+asked me to invite you this evening, but I did no such thing because,’
+she went on, ill at ease, ‘I had good reasons. We have certain very
+particular friends who are rather a worry—they are very fond of
+noise—uproar. You must have heard them last year,’ she added, giving me
+a look out of the corner of her eye. ‘Well, promise me to leave early.’
+
+“‘I promise to leave early, madame,’ I returned, and yet a vague
+misgiving took possession of me at this conversation, the meaning of
+which I was far from understanding. ‘I promise you faithfully, but can
+you tell me how it is that I find my old friend in such a state? What
+terrible accident happened to him?’
+
+“‘None at all, monsieur, none.’
+
+“‘What do you mean, “none at all”? Don’t you know anything about the
+accident which deprived him of arms and legs? Yet he must have met with
+it since your marriage.’
+
+“‘No, monsieur, no. I married the captain as he is now.... But excuse
+me, our guests will be here presently, and I must help my husband to
+put on his smoking jacket.’
+
+“She left me to myself, dazed by the one stupefying thought: ‘She
+married the captain as he is now!’ and almost at once I heard sounds in
+the hall, the curious sounds which had accompanied the lady of the lamp
+to the garden gate and baffled me last year. This noise was followed
+by the appearance, on their wheeled platforms, of four cripples without
+arms or legs who stared at me in wonder. They were all attired in
+perfectly-fitting evening dress with snow-white shirt fronts.
+
+“One wore gold-rimmed pince-nez, another, an old man, spectacles, the
+third a single eyeglass, and the fourth was content to gaze at me out
+of his own proud, shrewd eyes with an expression of boredom. All four,
+however, saluted me with their little hooks, and asked after Captain
+Beauvisage. I told them that he was dressing, and Madame Beauvisage was
+quite well. When I took the liberty of speaking of Madame Beauvisage,
+I caught an exchange of glances between them which seemed to embody a
+certain raillery.
+
+“‘Haw, haw, I presume you are a great friend of our good old captain,’
+drawled the cripple with the monocle.
+
+“The others smiled with a look which was by no means pleasant, and then
+they all started to talk in the same breath:
+
+“‘Sorry, sorry, monsieur.... We are quite naturally surprised to meet
+you at the house of the good old captain, who swore on his wedding day
+to shut himself up in the country with his wife, and not to receive any
+one—any one but his very special friends, you understand. When one is
+so thoroughly a cripple as the captain consented to be, and is married
+to such a beautiful woman, it is quite natural—quite natural. But,
+after all, if in the course of his life he met a man of honor who does
+not happen to be a cripple, we’re glad of it.... We congratulate you.’
+
+“And they repeated: ‘We’re glad of it.... We congratulate you.’
+
+“Lord how odd they were, these dwarfs! I watched them and held my
+peace. Others arrived in twos and threes and so on. And they all
+contemplated me with a look of surprise or uneasiness or irony. For my
+part I was rendered speechless by the spectacle of so many cripples
+without arms or legs; for after all I was beginning to see through most
+of the extraordinary happenings which had so greatly stirred my mind;
+and though the cripples, by their presence, explained many things,
+the presence of the cripples still required explanation, as also did
+the monstrous union of that splendid woman with that awful shred of
+humanity.
+
+“True, I realized now that these little ambulating trunks were bound to
+pass unperceived by me in the narrow garden path lined with verbena,
+and the road running between two low hedges; and, truth to tell, when
+at the time I said to myself that it was impossible to avoid seeing
+any person going down those paths, I had in mind persons who would be
+standing upright on their two legs.
+
+“The handle of the garden gate itself no longer puzzled me, and in my
+mind’s eye I saw the invisible hook which had turned it.
+
+“The peculiar noise which I heard was but the creaking made by the
+small badly oiled wheels of these cars for freaks. Finally, the
+extraordinary sound like the thunderous beating of a wooden drum, was
+obviously caused by the many cars and hooks striking the floor when,
+after an excellent dinner, our friends the cripples indulged in a dance.
+
+“Yes, all this was capable of explanation, but I was conscious as I
+caught a curious eager gleam in their eyes, and heard the peculiar
+sound of their nippers, that something terrible still remained to be
+cleared up, and that all else which had surprised me was of no account.
+
+“Meanwhile Madame Beauvisage promptly appeared, accompanied by her
+husband. They were greeted with shouts of delight. The little hooks
+‘applauded’ them with an infernal din. I was deafened by it. Then I was
+introduced. Cripples were all over the place: on the tables, chairs,
+stools, on stands usually occupied by vases, on the sideboard. One of
+them sat on the shelf of a dresser like a Buddha in his recess. And
+each one politely held out his hook to me. They seemed for the most
+part people of good position, with titles and names indicating their
+relationship to aristocratic families, but I learned afterwards that
+these were false names given to me for reasons which will be obvious.
+Lord Wilmer certainly maintained the best front of them all, with
+his fine golden beard and no less fine mustache which he continually
+stroked with his hook. He did not leap from chair to table like the
+others, nor did he have the air of a huge bat taking wing from wall to
+wall.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+“‘We are only waiting for the doctor,’ said the mistress of the house,
+who every now and then gave me a look of obvious gloom, but quickly
+resumed her smile for her guests.
+
+“The doctor arrived. He was a cripple but he possessed both arms.
+
+“He offered one of them to Madame Beauvisage and led her to the
+dining-room. I mean that she touched his arm with the tips of her
+fingers.
+
+“Covers were laid in the room with the closed shutters. The table,
+which was laden with flowers and _hors d’œuvre_, was illuminated by a
+large candelabrum. There was no fruit. The dozen cripples at once leapt
+upon their chairs and began to pick greedily from the dishes with their
+hooks. It was not a pleasant sight, and I marveled at the voracity with
+which these trunks of men, who seemed just before so well-mannered,
+devoured their food.
+
+“And then suddenly they quietened down; their hooks kept still, and
+it seemed to me that they lapsed into what is usually described as a
+‘painful silence.’
+
+“Every eye was turned on Madame Beauvisage, whose husband sat by her
+side, and I noticed that she buried her face in her napkin, looking
+very uncomfortable. Then my friend Gérard, clapping one hook against
+the other with a flourish, said:
+
+“‘Well, my dear old friends, it can’t be helped. One doesn’t meet the
+luck of last year every day. But don’t distress yourselves. With the
+exercise of a little imagination we shall succeed in being as merry as
+we were then....’
+
+“And turning to me as he lifted the small handle of the glass which
+stood on the table before him:
+
+“‘Your health my dear Michel. To us all!’
+
+“And each man raised his glass by its handle with the end of his hook.
+The glasses swung over the table in the quaintest fashion.
+
+“My host went on:
+
+“‘You don’t seem to be equal to the occasion, my dear Michel. I have
+known you in merrier mood, more up to the mark. Is it because we are
+“like this” that you are so gloomy? What do you expect? We are what we
+are. But let us have some amusement. We are met together here, all of
+us very special friends, to celebrate the time when we became “like
+this.” Is that not true my friends of the _Daphné_?...’
+
+“Then my old comrade,” Captain Michel went on to explain, heaving a
+deep sigh, “told us how the _Daphné_, which sailed between France and
+the Far East, was wrecked; how the crew escaped in the boats, and how
+these miserable people took refuge on a chance raft.
+
+“Miss Madge, a beautiful young girl who lost her parents in the
+catastrophe, was also picked up by the raft. Some thirteen persons
+in all were on it, and at the end of three days the victuals were
+consumed, and at the end of a week the survivors were dying of hunger.
+It was then that, as the old song says, they agreed to draw lots as to
+‘which should be eaten.’
+
+“Messieurs,” added Captain Michel, in a serious voice, “such things
+have happened more often perhaps than they have been talked about, for
+the great blue waters close over these peculiar feats of digestion.
+
+“They were on the point, therefore, of drawing lots on the raft when
+the doctor’s voice was heard: ‘Mesdames and Messieurs,’ said the
+doctor, ‘you have lost all your belongings in the wreck of the ship,
+but I have saved my case of instruments and my forceps for arresting
+hemorrhage. This is my suggestion: There is no object in any one of us
+running the risk of being eaten as a whole. Let us, to begin with, draw
+lots for an arm or leg at will, and we will then see to-morrow what the
+day brings forth, and perhaps a sail may appear on the horizon.’”
+
+At this point in Captain Michel’s story the four old salts, who up to
+this had not interrupted, cried:
+
+“Well done!”
+
+“What do you mean ‘well done’?” asked Captain Michel with a frown.
+
+“Yes, ‘well done!’ Your story is a good joke. These people were ready
+to lose an arm or leg in turn.... That’s a good joke, but there’s
+nothing frightful about it.”
+
+“So you really find it a good joke!” growled the Captain, bristling
+with annoyance. “Well, I swear that if you had been seated among all
+those cripples whose eyes were bulging like live coal, and heard the
+story, you wouldn’t have found it such a good joke.... And if you had
+noticed how restless they were in their chairs! And how vigorously they
+clasped hooks across the table with an obvious delight which I couldn’t
+make out, but which was none the less frightful for all that.”
+
+“No, no,” broke in Chanlieu once more—that old fellow Chanlieu—“your
+story is not in the least frightful. It is funny simply because it is
+logical. Would you like me to tell you the end of the story? You shall
+say whether I am right or not. The people on the raft drew lots. The
+lot fell to Miss Madge who was to lose one of her beautiful limbs.
+Your friend the captain, who is a gentleman, offered his own instead,
+and he had his four limbs amputated so that Miss Madge should remain
+unscathed.”
+
+“Yes, old man, you’ve got it. That is so,” exclaimed Captain Michel,
+who felt a longing to break the heads of these imbeciles who treated
+his story as a good joke. “Yes, and what’s more, when it was a question
+of cutting off Miss Madge’s limbs after the survivors, except the young
+lady and the doctor—who had been left with both arms because they were
+wanted—had lost all their limbs, Captain Beauvisage had the pluck to
+have the poor stumps left from the first operation, cut off on a level
+with his body.”
+
+“And the young lady could do no other than offer the Captain her hand
+which he had so heroically saved,” interposed Zinzin.
+
+“Why, of course,” growled the Captain in his beard. “And you consider
+it a good joke!”
+
+“Did they eat all those limbs quite raw?” inquired that ass of a
+Bagatelle.
+
+Captain Michel struck the table such a resounding blow that the glasses
+danced like rubber balls.
+
+“That’ll do, shut up,” he exclaimed. “All that I’ve told you is
+nothing. Now comes the frightful part of it.”
+
+The four friends looked at each other smiling, and Captain Michel grew
+pale, whereupon seeing that they had carried matters too far they hung
+their heads.
+
+“Yes, the frightful part of it,” went on Michel with his gloomiest air,
+“was that these people who were only rescued a month later by a Chinese
+sailing vessel which landed them somewhere on the Yang-Tse-Kiang where
+they separated—the frightful part of it was that these people retained
+a taste for human flesh, and when they returned to Europe arranged to
+meet together once a year to renew as far as possible the abominable
+banquet. Well, messieurs, it did not take me long to find that out!
+First of all there was the scarcely enthusiastic reception accorded to
+certain dishes, which Madame Beauvisage herself brought to the table.
+Though she ventured to claim, but with no great assurance, that they
+were pretty nearly the same thing, the guests were of one mind in
+abstaining from congratulating her. Only certain slices of tunny-fish
+were received with any sort of favor, because they were, to use the
+doctor’s terrible expression, ‘well cut,’ and, ‘if the flavor was not
+entirely satisfactory at all events the eye was deceived.’ But the
+cripple with the spectacles met with general approval when he declared
+that ‘it was not equal to the plumber.’
+
+“When I heard those words I felt my blood run cold,” growled Captain
+Michel huskily, “for I remembered that about this time the year before
+a plumber had fallen from a roof near the Arsenal and was killed, and
+his body was picked up minus an arm.
+
+“Then ... O then ... I could not help thinking of the part which my
+beautiful neighbor must, of necessity, have played in this horrible,
+culinary drama, I turned my eyes to her and I noticed that she had put
+on her gloves again, gloves which covered her arms to the shoulder, and
+also hastily thrown a wrap over her shoulders which wholly concealed
+them. The guest on my right, who was the doctor, and, as I have said,
+was the only man among the cripples with both arms intact, had also put
+on his gloves.
+
+“Instead of bothering my head in vain to discover the reason of this
+fresh eccentricity, I should have done better to follow the advice
+which Madame Beauvisage gave me at the beginning of this infernal
+party, namely, to leave the place early—advice which she did not repeat.
+
+“After showing an interest in me during the first part of this amazing
+feast in which I seemed to discern—I don’t know why—a sort of pity,
+Madame Beauvisage now avoided looking at me and took a part which
+greatly grieved me in the most frightful conversation which I have
+ever heard. These little people with a vigorous clatter of nippers
+and clinking of glasses indulged in bitter recriminations or warm
+congratulations with regard to their peculiar appetite.
+
+“To my horror Lord Wilmer, who until then had been most correct, nearly
+‘came to hooks’ with the cripple with the monocle, because the latter
+had once on the raft complained of the former being tough, and the
+mistress of the house had the greatest difficulty in putting things in
+their true light by retorting to the monocled bust, who was obviously
+at the time of the shipwreck a good-looking stripling, that neither was
+it particularly agreeable to have to put up with ‘an animal that was
+too young.’”
+
+“That’s also funny,” the old salt Dorat could not help interjecting.
+
+It looked as if Captain Michel would fly at his throat, particularly as
+the three other mariners seemed to be shaking with inward joy and gave
+vent to queer little clucks. It was as much as the Captain could do to
+control himself. After puffing like a seal he turned to the foolhardy
+Dorat:
+
+“Monsieur you have two arms still, and I have no wish for you to lose
+one of them, as I did on that particular night, to make you see the
+frightful part of the story. The cripples had drunk a great deal. Some
+of them jumped on the table round me, and were gazing at my arms in a
+very embarrassing manner and I ended by hiding them from sight as far
+as possible by thrusting my hands deep into my pockets.
+
+“I realized then, and it was a startling thought, why Madame Beauvisage
+and the doctor, the two persons who still had arms and hands, did not
+show them. I grasped the meaning of the sudden ferocity which blazed in
+the eyes of some of them. And at that very moment, as luck would have
+it, I wanted to use my pocket handkerchief, and instinctively I made a
+movement which revealed the whiteness of my skin under my sleeve, and
+three terrible hooks swooped down at once on my wrist and entered my
+flesh. I uttered a fearful shriek.”
+
+“That’ll do, Captain, that’ll do,” I exclaimed, interrupting Captain
+Michel’s story. “You were quite right. I’m off. I can’t stand any more.”
+
+“Stay, monsieur,” said the Captain in a peremptory tone. “Stay,
+monsieur, for I shall soon finish this frightful story which has made
+four imbeciles laugh. When a man has Phocean blood in his veins,”
+he added with an accent of unspeakable contempt turning to the four
+ancient mariners who were obviously choking in their efforts to keep
+back their laughter, “when a man has Phocean blood in his veins, he
+can’t get over it.
+
+“And when a man lives in Marseilles he is doomed never to believe in
+anything. So it is for you, for you alone, monsieur, that I am telling
+this story, and, be assured, I will pass over the most loathsome
+details, knowing as I do how much the mind of a gentleman can bear. The
+tragedy of my martyrdom proceeded so quickly that I can call to mind
+only their inhuman cries, the protests of some and the rush of others
+while Madame Beauvisage stood up and murmured:
+
+“‘Be careful not to hurt him!’
+
+“I tried to leap to my feet, but by this time a posse of mad cripples
+was round me who tripped me up and I crashed to the floor. And I felt
+their awful hooks hold my flesh captive just as the meat in a butcher’s
+shop is held captive on its hooks.
+
+“Yes, monsieur, I will spare you the details. I pledged you my word;
+all the more so as I couldn’t give them to you, for I did not see
+the operation. The doctor clapped a plug of cotton wool steeped in
+chloroform on my mouth by way of a gag.
+
+“When I came to myself I was in the kitchen, and I had lost an arm.
+The cripples were all around me. They had ceased their wrangling. They
+seemed to be united in the most touching harmony; in reality they were
+in a state of dazed intoxication which caused them to sway their heads
+like children who feel the need to go and lie down after eating their
+fill, and I had not a doubt but that they were beginning, alas! to
+digest me.... I was stretched at full length on the floor, securely
+bound, and deprived of all power of movement, but I could both see and
+hear them. My old comrade, Gérard Beauvisage, had tears of joy in his
+eyes as he exclaimed:
+
+“‘I should never have thought you would be so tender!’
+
+“Madame Beauvisage was not present, but she, too, must have taken part
+in the feast, for I heard some one ask Gérard how ‘she liked her share.’
+
+“Yes, monsieur, I have finished my story. I have finished my story.
+Those loathsome cripples having satisfied their weakness, must have at
+last realized the full extent of their iniquity. They made themselves
+scarce, and Madame Beauvisage, of course, escaped with them. They left
+the doors wide open but no one came to set me free until four days
+afterwards, when I was pretty well dead with hunger....
+
+“Those miserable wretches had not even left the bone behind!”
+
+
+
+
+                              THE GOLD AXE
+
+
+Many years ago I was at Gersau, a small health resort on the Lake of
+the Four Forest Cantons, a few miles from Lucerne. I wanted to complete
+certain work, and I had arranged to spend the autumn in the quiet of
+this delightful village whose ancient pointed roofs were reflected in
+the romantic waters of the lake on which William Tell sailed in days of
+old.
+
+It was the end of autumn, and tourists had scattered, while the many
+hideous Tartarins who had descended upon us from Germany with their
+alpenstocks, their puttees and their little round hats decked with
+the indispensable feather, had returned to their lager beer, their
+sauerkraut and their “big concerts,” leaving the country between
+Pilatus, the Mythen and the Rigi free to us at last.
+
+Not more than half-a-dozen of us foregathered in the hotel at meal
+time, and when evening came related our experiences of the day or
+indulged in a little music.
+
+An old lady, always enveloped in deep mourning, who when the little
+hotel was swarming with noisy visitors had never addressed a word to
+any one, and seemed the embodiment of woe, stood revealed as a pianist
+of the first rank, and without waiting to be pressed, played Chopin to
+us and, in particular, a certain lullaby by Schumann which she rendered
+with such exquisite tenderness that she brought tears to our eyes.
+
+We were all so grateful to her for the pleasant hours which she enabled
+us to pass, that we joined together to present her, at the moment of
+her departure, with a slight souvenir of our stay at Gersau.
+
+One of us who went that day to Lucerne undertook to buy the gift. He
+returned in the evening with a gold brooch in the form of a small axe.
+
+Neither on that evening nor the following one did the old lady make her
+appearance; and the visitors who were leaving entrusted the gold brooch
+to my care.
+
+Her luggage was still in the hotel, and I was prepared to see her
+return, sooner or later, reassured as to her well-being by the
+proprietor who told me that she was in the habit of disappearing for a
+day or two, and he had no reason to feel anxious about her.
+
+As a matter of fact the day before my departure, as I was making a
+final tour of the lake and had pulled up a few steps from Tell’s
+Chapel, I saw the old lady standing at the entrance of the building.
+
+Never until then had I been impressed by the unspeakable distress
+depicted on her face down which the tears were coursing, and never had
+I so clearly observed the traces, which were still manifest, of her
+former beauty. She caught sight of me, lowered her veil, and walked
+toward the lake. Nevertheless, I did not hesitate to overtake her, and
+bowing, expressed the visitors’ regret that we were about to lose her;
+and then, as I had the gift on me, I presented her with the small case
+containing the gold axe.
+
+She opened it with a sweet, far-away smile, but no sooner did she
+perceive the jewel inside than she began to tremble with emotion, and
+drew back some distance from me, as though she had something to fear
+from my presence, and with an insensate gesture threw the brooch into
+the lake.
+
+I displayed so much amazement at this unaccountable reception that she
+begged my forgiveness and burst into a fit of sobbing. A seat stood in
+this secluded spot, and we both sat down. And after a few lamentations
+against the decrees of fate which left me quite at a loss, she confided
+to me her strange, melancholy story which I was never to forget. For,
+in truth, I know of no more terrible destiny than that which befell the
+old lady in the black veil, who had played Schumann’s lullaby to us
+with such exquisite emotion.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+“I will tell you the whole story,” she said, “for I am about to leave
+for ever this country which I determined to visit for the last time.
+And then you will understand why it was that I threw the little gold
+axe into the lake.
+
+“I was born in Geneva, monsieur. We belonged to one of the leading
+families and were rich, but some unfortunate speculations on the stock
+exchange ruined my father, who died from the shock. When I was eighteen
+I was a beautiful girl without a dowry. My mother gave up all hope of
+marrying me. And yet she yearned to make sure of my future before she
+went to join my father.
+
+“I was twenty-four when a suitor whom every one looked upon as an
+unhoped-for chance appeared.
+
+“A young man from Briesgau who was accustomed to spend the summer in
+Switzerland and whose acquaintance we made in the casino at Evian,
+fell in love with me, and I liked him. Herbert Gutmann was a tall
+young fellow, kindly, unobtrusive and good-natured. He seemed to unite
+qualities alike of heart and mind. He possessed a certain affluence
+without being actually wealthy. His father was still engaged in
+business, and made him an allowance in order that he might travel until
+the time came for him to succeed him in his business. We were all
+intending to visit the elder Gutmann at his place in Todtnau, in the
+Black Forest, when the state of my mother’s health greatly hastened
+the course of events.
+
+“Conscious that she no longer possessed the physical strength to
+travel, my mother hurriedly returned to Geneva, where she received
+from the civil authorities of Todtnau, to whom she had written, the
+most satisfactory information in respect of Herbert and his family.
+Herbert’s father had begun life as an ordinary woodcutter, and then
+had left the district, returning to it with a small fortune which he
+had ‘made in timber.’ That was all, at least, that was known of him in
+Todtnau.
+
+“This was enough to induce my mother to press forward the formalities
+of my marriage, which took place a week before her death. She died with
+her mind at rest for, as she said, she felt ‘reassured about my future.’
+
+“My husband helped me to overcome the grief which this sore trial
+caused me by his constant goodness and solicitude. Before we set out
+for Todtnau we came here to Gersau to spend a week, and then to my
+great surprise we undertook a long journey instead of making our visit
+to Herbert’s father. My sorrow would have gradually been dispelled if,
+as the days sped by, I had not noticed, almost with dismay, that my
+husband was more and more becoming a prey to melancholy.
+
+“I was more surprised than I can express, because Herbert had seemed to
+me of a humorous disposition, open, unrestrained and extremely frank.
+Was I to discover that the liveliness which he used to display was
+forced, and veiled some deep mortification? Alas, his sighs when he
+thought himself alone, and the agitation which sometimes disturbed his
+night’s rest, scarcely left room for doubt, and I made up my mind to
+question him.
+
+“At the first word that I ventured to speak on the subject he made
+answer by bursting into laughter, treating me as a silly little goose
+and kissing me passionately, which merely served to strengthen my
+conviction that I was in the presence of some painful mystery.
+
+“I could not hide from myself that there was something in Herbert’s
+demeanor which was very like ‘remorse.’ And yet I could have sworn that
+he was incapable of committing, I will not say a low or mean action,
+but even one lacking in propriety.
+
+“It was then that the fate which had dogged my footsteps, struck us
+another blow in the person of my father-in-law of whose death we learnt
+whilst we were in Scotland. This grievous piece of news depressed
+my husband more than I can say. He remained the whole night without
+uttering a word, nor did he shed tears nor appear to listen to the
+words of consolation by which I, in my turn, endeavored to rouse his
+spirit. He seemed to be overwhelmed. At last, when the light was
+beginning to dawn, he rose from the arm-chair in which he had sat
+huddled, and turning toward me a face terribly distorted by suffering,
+said in a harrowing voice:
+
+“‘Come, Elizabeth, we shall have to go back. We shall have to go back.’
+
+“These words seemed to possess a significance from the tone in which
+they were spoken which I failed to understand. A return to the land of
+his father’s was quite natural at a moment like that, and I could not
+see why he should fight against the necessity of going home. From that
+day onward Herbert changed completely; he grew extraordinarily silent,
+and more than once I came upon him sobbing wildly.
+
+“The grief which the loss of a beloved father might occasion could not
+entirely explain the horror of our position, for there is nothing more
+terrible than mystery, the deep mystery which steals in between two
+beings who are devoted to each other, and separates them from their
+happiness....
+
+“We reached Todtnau in time to breathe a prayer over the newly made
+grave.
+
+“This little town in the Black Forest, at no great distance from
+Höllenthal, was a dreary spot; and there was scarcely any society in it
+for me. The Gutmann’s house, in which we took up our abode, lay on the
+borders of a forest.
+
+“It was a gloomy chalet standing in its own grounds, and our one
+visitor was an old clockmaker in the place, who was said to be rich and
+had been the elder Gutmann’s friend. He appeared from time to time at
+the lunch or dinner hour, in order to get himself invited.
+
+“I had no liking for this manufacturer of cuckoo-clocks, this petty
+usurer, for though he was rich, he was a miser and incapable of the
+least nicety of feeling. Nor did Herbert care for Frantz Basckler,
+though he continued out of respect for the memory of his father to keep
+on friendly terms with him.
+
+“Basckler, who had no children, had told the elder Gutmann times out of
+number that Herbert was his only heir. Herbert spoke to me about it one
+day with the most sincere aversion, and I had once more an opportunity
+of appreciating the strictness of his conscience.
+
+“‘Would you like to be the heir of this sordid old miser who made his
+fortune by ruining all the clockmakers in Höllenthal?’
+
+“‘Certainly not,’ I returned. ‘Your father left us a certain amount of
+property, and with what you can honestly earn we shall have enough to
+live on even if Heaven chooses to send us a child.’
+
+“I had no sooner uttered these words than I saw my Herbert turn as
+white as a sheet. I put my arms round him, for I thought that he was
+about to faint, but the blood returned to his face, and he exclaimed in
+forcible tones:
+
+“‘Yes, yes, the only true thing is to have the approbation of one’s
+conscience.’
+
+“And so saying he rushed wildly from the room.
+
+“Sometimes he was away for a day or two on business, which consisted,
+he told me, of buying plantations of standing trees and selling them
+again to contractors. He did not work the whole thing himself but left
+to others the task of turning the trees into sleepers for railways,
+if the wood was of inferior quality, and posts and ships’ masts if it
+was of the best quality. The essential thing was to display expert
+judgment; and he had acquired his knowledge of timber from his father.
+
+“He never took me away with him on any of his journeys. He left me
+alone in the house with an old maid-servant who had received me with
+ill-disguised hostility. I kept out of her way and wept in secret, for
+I was not happy. I felt convinced that Herbert was hiding something
+from me, something which was obsessing his mind, and which I too who
+knew nothing, was never able to dismiss from my thoughts.
+
+“And then the great forest frightened me. And the servant frightened
+me. And old Basckler frightened me. And the old house! It was very
+large with staircases everywhere leading to passages into which I dared
+not venture. At the end of one of them in particular, stood a small
+room. I had seen my husband enter it two or three times, but I myself
+had never set foot in it.
+
+“I could not pass the door of this room, which was always closed,
+without a tremor. It was to this study that Herbert was wont to retire,
+so he told me, to make up his accounts and balance his books, but it
+was also to this room that he retired alone to bewail his secret.
+
+“One night after he had set out on one of his journeys and I was vainly
+endeavoring to sleep, my attention was attracted by a slight sound
+under my window which I had left partly open on account of the extreme
+heat. I got out of bed with every precaution. The sky was overcast and
+great clouds hid the stars from sight. It was as much as I could do to
+discern the threatening shadows of the nearest trees which faced the
+house.
+
+“I could not clearly distinguish my husband and the maid-servant until
+they passed under my window, walking on the lawn with infinite caution
+so that I should not hear the sound of their footsteps and carrying
+between them a sort of long, somewhat narrow trunk which I had never
+before seen. They entered the chalet and I did not hear nor see them
+again for the next ten minutes.
+
+“My anguish exceeded anything that it is possible to conceive. Why
+were they hiding themselves from me? How was it that I had not heard
+the coming of the chaise which usually brought Herbert home? Just then
+I seemed to catch in the distance the neighing of a horse, and the
+maid-servant appeared, crossed the lawn, vanished into the darkness,
+and soon returned leading our mare unharnessed over the soft ground.
+Never had they taken so many precautions to prevent me from waking up!
+
+“Growing more and more surprised that Herbert did not come to our
+room as was his custom after his return at night, I hastily slipped
+on a dressing-gown and wandered into the darkness of the passage. My
+steps turned quite naturally toward the little study of which I stood
+in so much fear. And I had only just entered the corridor which led
+to it when I heard my husband say in a rough, muffled voice to the
+maid-servant who was mounting the stairs:
+
+“‘Water! Bring me some water. Hot water of course. It won’t come off.’
+
+“I stopped short and held my breath. Besides I could not breathe. I
+was stifling. I was filled with the presentiment that some dreadful
+misfortune had befallen us. Suddenly I was once more startled by my
+husband’s voice:
+
+“‘Ah, at last! That’s done it. It’s come off.’
+
+“My husband and the old woman were still talking in low tones and I
+heard his step. That brought me to myself and I fled to my bedroom and
+locked myself in. Soon he knocked at the door and I went through the
+form of pretending to be asleep and to wake up, and at last I opened
+the door. I held a candle in my hand which fell to the floor when I
+caught sight of the look on his face.
+
+“‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Are you still asleep? Do go back to
+bed.’
+
+“I made a movement to light the candle again, but he stopped me and I
+threw myself on the bed. I spent a cruel night.
+
+“Herbert turned and tossed and sighed beside me and could not sleep. He
+did not speak a word. At daybreak he rose, pressed an icy kiss on my
+brow and left the room. When I got downstairs the old woman gave me a
+note from him in which he stated that he was obliged to go away again
+for a couple of days.
+
+“At eight o’clock that morning I learned from workmen on their way
+to Neustadt, that old Basckler had been found murdered in a small
+cottage which he possessed at Höllenthal, where he sometimes spent
+the night when his business of money-lending kept him too long among
+his peasant-debtors. Basckler had received a terrible blow with an
+axe which had split his head in two. It was undoubtedly the work of a
+woodman.
+
+“I returned to the house as best I could. And once more my feet led me
+toward the little study. I could not explain exactly what was passing
+in my mind, but after the words which I had overheard during the night
+and the look on Herbert’s face, I felt a need to see what that room
+contained. Just then the servant observed me and exclaimed maliciously:
+
+“‘Leave that room alone. You know quite well that M. Gutmann has
+forbidden you to touch it. A lot of good it would do you to know what’s
+inside.’
+
+“And she walked away with a fiendish laugh.
+
+“I took my bed, suffering from high fever. I was ill for a fortnight.
+Herbert looked after me with maternal solicitude. It seemed to me that
+I had been the sport of some evil dream, and it was enough now to see
+his good-natured face to confirm my impression that I was not in a
+normal condition on the night when I fancied that I had seen and heard
+so many extraordinary things. Moreover the murderer of Basckler had
+been arrested. He was a woodman belonging to Bergen whom the old miser
+had ‘bled’ too freely and who had taken his revenge by ‘bleeding’ his
+persecutor in his turn.
+
+“This woodman, a man named Mathis Müller, never ceased to protest his
+innocence, but though not a single trace of blood was found on his
+clothes and his axe was almost like new steel, there was, it seems,
+sufficient evidence of his guilt to bring him to justice.
+
+“Our circumstances were in no way affected, as we imagined they might
+be, by old Basckler’s death, and Herbert looked in vain for a will
+which did not exist.
+
+“To my surprise its absence considerably upset him, and one day when I
+questioned him about it he answered irritably:
+
+“‘Well, yes, if you want to know, I was relying a great deal on that
+will—a great deal.’
+
+“And as he spoke a black look came over his face, and the terrible face
+which I had seen on the mysterious night rose up before me, and after
+that never left me. It was like a mask which I was always ready to
+place over Herbert’s face even when it was naturally kind and sad.
+
+“During Mathis Müller’s trial at Freiburg I eagerly read the
+newspapers; and certain words which fell from the counsel for the
+defense haunted me day and night:
+
+“‘Until you have discovered the axe with which the deed was done and
+the murderer’s blood-stained clothes, you cannot convict Mathis Müller.’
+
+“Nevertheless Mathis Müller was found guilty and sentenced to death,
+and I am bound to say that the verdict strangely affected my husband.
+At night he dreamt of nothing but Mathis Müller. I was terrified of him
+and my thoughts also terrified me.
+
+“Oh, I longed to know the truth! I was determined to know the truth.
+What was the meaning of those words ‘It won’t come off?’
+
+“What was the nature of the work upon which he was engaged in the
+mysterious little study during the night?
+
+“One night I rose and groping in the dark stole his keys from him. I
+crept into the corridors. I went to the kitchen to fetch a lantern.
+With chattering teeth I reached the forbidden room ... I opened the
+door and my eyes at once fell on the trunk—the oblong trunk which had
+so greatly perplexed me.
+
+“It was locked, but I had no difficulty in finding the small key on the
+bunch ... I unlocked it and raised the lid. I went down on my knees in
+order to see better, and the sight that met my eyes forced a cry of
+horror from me....
+
+“The trunk contained blood-stained clothes and the axe which had struck
+the blow still spotted with rust....
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+“How I managed, after what I had seen, to live with Herbert through the
+few weeks which preceded the convicted man’s execution I cannot tell....
+
+“I was afraid that he might kill me....
+
+“How was it that my attitude, the dread that possessed me, failed to
+enlighten him? The fact is that at that time his mind was wholly a prey
+to fears not less great than my own. The thought of Mathis Müller never
+left him.
+
+“To enable him to escape the obsession, apparently, he now shut himself
+up in the little study, and I sometimes heard him delivering tremendous
+blows, which made the floor and walls resound, as if he were fighting
+with his axe against the ghosts and phantoms which beset him.
+
+“Strange to say, and it seemed at first impossible to understand,
+Herbert recovered his calmness a couple of days before Müller’s
+execution—the calmness of marble, the calmness of a statue. That
+evening he said:
+
+“‘I am going away to-morrow morning early. I have some important
+business to do near Freiburg. I shall probably be away for a couple of
+days. Don’t worry.’
+
+“It was at Freiburg that the execution was to take place, and I had the
+impression that Herbert’s composure was the result of the resolution
+that he had taken.
+
+“He was going to give himself up!
+
+“The thought was so much of a relief to me that for the first time for
+many a night I fell into a sound sleep. It was broad daylight when I
+awoke. My husband had already left the house.
+
+“I dressed in haste and without saying a word to the old servant I
+started for Todtnau. Here, I took a conveyance and drove to Freiburg.
+I reached Freiburg when the light had begun to wane. I went at once to
+the Court House, and the first person whom I saw entering the building
+was my husband. I stood rooted to the spot. And as Herbert did not come
+out again I felt sure that he had surrendered and was being held there
+at the disposal of the authorities.
+
+“The prison at that time was next the Court House. I walked round
+it like a mad-woman. All that night I wandered about the streets,
+returning every now and then to this gloomy building, and the first
+gleams of day were beginning to break when my eyes encountered two men
+clad in black frock-coats mounting the front steps of the Court.
+
+“I ran up to them and said that I wanted to see the public prosecutor
+as soon as possible, as I had a communication of the utmost gravity to
+make to him about the Basckler murder.
+
+“As it happened, one of the gentlemen was the public prosecutor, and he
+invited me to accompany him to his office. Here I explained who I was
+and said that he must have received a visit from my husband the night
+before. He told me that he had in fact seen him, and then as he took
+refuge in silence I threw myself on my knees before him beseeching him
+to have pity on me and tell me whether Herbert had confessed his crime.
+He seemed surprised, helped me to rise to my feet, and questioned me.
+
+“Slowly I told him the story of my life, such as I have told it to
+you, and at last I described the awful discovery which I had made in
+the little study in the chalet at Todtnau. I ended by declaring that I
+should never have allowed an innocent man to be executed, and that had
+not my husband given himself up, I should not have hesitated to inform
+the police. And then I asked him as a final act of mercy, to be allowed
+to see Herbert.
+
+“‘Yes, you shall see him, madame,’ he returned. ‘Please come with me.’
+
+“He took me, more dead than alive, to the prison, through the corridors
+and up a staircase. Here he stood me before a small barred window which
+jutted over a large hall and left me, telling me to have patience. A
+number of other persons soon took up their positions at this window,
+and looked into the hall without speaking.
+
+“I did as they did. It was as though I was fastened to the bars, and I
+had the feeling that I was about to witness some monstrous spectacle.
+
+“The hall was gradually lined with a number of persons all of whom
+maintained a mournful silence. Daylight now rendered the scene more
+visible. In the center of the hall we could clearly discern a heavy
+block of wood, and some one behind me exclaimed:
+
+“‘That’s the headman’s block!’
+
+“So Müller was to be executed! An icy perspiration began to trickle
+down my forehead, and I cannot say even now how it was that I did not
+fall into a dead faint. A door opened, and a procession appeared headed
+by the condemned man, quivering in his shirt which was cut low and
+showed his bare neck. His hands were bound behind his back, and he was
+supported by two warders. A minister of religion was murmuring in his
+ear.
+
+“The wretched man began to speak. In a few trembling words he confessed
+his crime and asked forgiveness of God and man. A civic officer took
+note of the confession and read out the sentence of the Court; and then
+the two warders thrust the convict on his knees and placed his head on
+the block.
+
+“Mathis Müller might have already been dead for all the sign of life
+he gave, when a man with bare arms carrying an axe on his shoulder,
+stepped forward from the side where he had hitherto remained in the
+background.
+
+“This man placed his hand upon the prisoner’s head, waved the two
+warders aside, lifted the axe and struck a terrible blow. Nevertheless
+he had to strike a second time before the head fell. Then he picked it
+up by the hair and stood erect.
+
+“How was it that I was able to watch the unspeakably horrible sight
+until the end? Yet I could not remove my eyes from this scene of blood,
+and it seemed as though there was still something for me to see, and
+indeed my eyes did see ... they saw, when holding in his shaking hand
+the abominable trophy the executioner drew himself up and raised his
+eyes.
+
+“I uttered a piercing shriek, ‘Herbert!’ and fell unconscious.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Now, monsieur, you know my story. I had married the public
+executioner. The axe which I had discovered in the little study was the
+executioner’s axe; the blood-stained clothes were the executioner’s
+clothes.
+
+“Next day I fled to the house of an old relative, and I very nearly
+lost my reason; and I don’t know how it is that I am still in this
+world.
+
+“As for my husband, who could not live without me, for he loved me more
+than anything on earth, he was found two months later hanging in our
+room. I received a last letter from him:
+
+“‘Forgive me, Elizabeth. I have tried every sort of occupation. I
+was dismissed as soon as it was discovered that I was the son of my
+father. I was forced at an early age to make up my mind to take up the
+succession of his work. You will understand now how it is that the
+office of public executioner descends from father to son. I was born
+an honest man, and the only crime that I have ever committed in my life
+was to conceal the truth from you.... Farewell!’”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+While I stood gazing in dumb amazement at the spot in the lake where
+the lady in black had thrown the little gold axe, she disappeared in
+the distance.
+
+
+                                 THE END
+
+
+                          Transcriber’s Notes:
+
+  • Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
+  • Text enclosed by pluses is in small caps (+small caps+).
+  • Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76493 ***