Гастон Леру
The Man with the Black Feather
CHAPTER XII
THE HOUSE OF STRANGE WORDS
Among all the papers I found in the sandalwood box, by Theophrastus himself, by M. Lecamus, or by Commissary Mifroid, those which relate to the death of Cartouche are beyond doubt the most curious and the most interesting. They are indeed of great historical interest since they contradict history. Moreover they contradict it with such force and with such irrefutable reasoning that one asks how men of such weight as Barbier, who was in the best position of all not to be duped, since he lived at the time, could have been the victims of a very poor comedy, and how succeeding generations have failed to suspect the truth.
History then, serious history, teaches us that Cartouche, after having undergone the Question in its cruellest form without revealing one single name or fact,—how Cartouche, who had only to die and nothing to hope, was brought to the Place de Grève to be executed, and that there he decided to confess; that they took him to the Hôtel-de-Ville, and that he delivered to justice his chief accomplices; after which he was broken on the wheel.
The papers of Theophrastus Longuet explain the fraud. Cartouche was not only an object of terror, but also an object of admiration. His courage knew no limits; and he proved it under torture. From the moment that the pain of the Boot failed to make him speak, it was morally impossible that he should speak. Why should he have spoken? All that was left for him was to die game. The greatest ladies of the Court and the city had hired boxes and windows to witness his execution. Among the three hundred and sixty people who were arrested were men whom he loved as brothers, and his tenderest and most constant flames. Some of them came to Paris from the Provinces, contemptuous of all danger, in the hope that, at the trial, the Child would have the consolation of seeing them for the last time. The account of the trial which describes these women as throwing themselves, after he had denounced them, into his arms at the Hôtel-de-Ville itself, is manifestly nonsense.
I will not reproduce here all the protests of M. Longuet against the dishonourable death ascribed to Cartouche, but the few lines which precede this chapter seem, to me at any rate, to prove, a priori, that he is right.
But at this moment all that M. Longuet knew was that he died at the Gallows of Montfaucon, but that he was not hanged there.
In the course of discussing this serious question Theophrastus and his friend had reached Petit-Pont Street without having crossed the Petit-Pont. Theophrastus did not so much as look in the direction of the Petit-Pont. Half-way down the street Theophrastus, who was in a state half of memory, half of possession, said to his friend: "Look at that house next to the hotel there, 'The Market-Gardeners' Hotel.' Do you notice anything remarkable about it?"
Adolphe looked across the street at the hotel, a little old house, low, narrow, and dirty, with "The Market-Gardeners' Hotel" newly painted on it. It seemed to be propping itself up against a large eighteenth-century building to which Theophrastus was pointing with his green umbrella. This building had a bulging balcony of wrought iron, of solid but delicate design.
"I see a very fine balcony," said Adolphe.
"What else?"
"The quiver of Cupid carved above the door."
"What else?"
"Nothing else."
"Don't you perceive the thick bars across the windows?"
"Of course I do."
"At that time, my dear Adolphe, people took the greatest care to have their windows barred; never did one see as many barred windows in Paris as in the year 1720. And I could swear that these bars here were fixed the day after the affairs of Petits-Augustins Street. First the Parisians garnished all their ground-floors with bars. But this precaution gave us no trouble at all since we had Simon the Auvergnat."
Adolphe thought the moment opportune to find out who Simon the Auvergnat, who was always appearing in their talk without any appreciable reason, exactly was.
"He was a very useful object, he was the base of my column," said Theophrastus.
"And what's that—the base of your column?"
"You don't understand? I'll just show you. Suppose you're Simon the Auvergnat," said Theophrastus with almost boyish eagerness.
Adolphe was quite willing, but not for long. Theophrastus drew him across the road, set him against the wall of the Market-Gardeners' Hotel, showed him the position he was to take: to set his legs apart, and lean, lowering his head and raising his crossed arms, against the wall.
"I place you here," he said, "because of the little ledge on the left, I remember that it is very convenient."
"And next?" said Adolphe, leaning against the wall in the required position.
"Next, since you are the base of my column, I mount on that base…"
Before M. Lecamus had the time so much as to imagine a movement even, Theophrastus had climbed up on to his shoulders, sprung on to the ledge, leapt from it with one bound to the balcony of the house next door, and vanished through an open window into the room which opened on to it. M. Lecamus in a dazed consternation was gazing into the air, and asked himself where his friend Theophrastus could have vanished, when the street rang with piercing cries. A despairing voice howled, "Help! thieves! murderers!"
"I might have expected it!" cried M. Lecamus; and he dashed into the house from which the screams issued, while the passers-by stood still, or hurried to the spot. He bounded up the great staircase with the swiftness of a young man, and reached the first floor at the very moment when a door opened, and Theophrastus appeared, hat in hand.
He was bowing low to an old lady with chattering teeth, and crowned with curl papers, and said:
"My dear madame, if I had thought for an instant that I should give you such a shock by entering your drawing-room by the window, I should have stayed quietly in the street. I am not, my dear madame, either a thief or a murderer, but an honest manufacturer of rubber stamps."
Adolphe seized his arm and tried to drag him down the stairs.
But Theophrastus went on: "It is entirely Adolphe's fault, my dear madame. He would have me show him how Simon the Auvergnat acted as the base of my column."
Adolphe, behind Theophrastus, made signs to the lady of the curl papers that his friend was off his head. Thereupon the lady fell fainting into the arms of her maid, who came running up. Adolphe dragged Theophrastus down the staircase just as the hall filled with people from the street. The crowd took them for fellow-rescuers; and they escaped from the house without difficulty.
In the street Theophrastus said cheerfully, "The most surprising thing about the whole matter, my dear Adolphe, was that this Simon the Auvergnat served us as the base of our column for more than two years without ever suspecting anything. He thought that he lent his strong shoulders to a band of young gentlemen of quality, who were amusing themselves!"3
But Adolphe was not listening to Theophrastus. With one hand he was dragging him towards Huchette Street, and with the other he was wiping the sweat from his brow.
"The time has come!" he muttered. "The time has come!"
"Where are you dragging me to?" said Theophrastus.
"To see one of my friends," said Adolphe shortly, continuing to drag him along.
In Huchette Street they passed through a red porch into a very old house. Adolphe seemed to know his whereabouts, for he dragged Theophrastus up a dozen worn stone steps and pushed open a heavy door. They found themselves in a large hall, lighted by a lamp hanging by iron chains from the stone ceiling.
"Wait for me here, I shan't be long," said Adolphe, closing the door.
Theophrastus sat down in a large armchair, and gazed round him. The sight of the walls filled him with the wildest amazement. In the first place, there was an incredible quantity of words painted in black letters. They seemed to crawl about the wall without any order, like flies.
He spelt some of them to himself: Thabethnah, Jakin, Bohaz, Theba, Pic de la Mirandole, Paracelsus, Jacque Molay, Nephesch-Ruach-Neschamah, Ezechiel, Aïsha, Puysegur, Cagliostro, Wronski, Fabre d'Olivet, Louis Lucas, Hiram, Elias, Plotinus, Origen, Gutman, Swedenborg, Giorgius, Apollonius of Tyana, Cassidorus, Eliphas Levi, Cardan, Allan Kardec, Olympicodorus, Spinoza, and scores besides; and, repeated a hundred times, the word IHOAH. Turning towards the other wall, he saw a sphinx and the Pyramids, a huge rose, in the centre of which Christ stretched out his arms in a circle of flame, and these words on the rose: Amphitheatrum sapientiæ æternæ solius veræ. It was the rose of the Rosicrucians.
Below it were these words:
"Of what use are brands, and torches, and spectacles
To him who shuts his eyes that he may not see?"
"I am not shutting my eyes," said Theophrastus to himself, "and I am wearing spectacles, yet I'll be hanged if I know where I am!"
His eyes fell on this inscription in letters of gold:
"From the moment that you have performed an action, a single action, apply to it all the intelligence you have, seek its salient points, examine it in the light, abandon yourself to hypotheses, fly in front of them, if need be."
He saw hawks, vultures, jackals, men with heads of birds, several scarabs, a god with an ass's head, then a sceptre, an ass, and an eye.
Finally he read these words in blue letters:
"The more the soul shall be rooted in its instincts, the more it shall lie forgotten in the flesh, the less shall it have knowledge of its immortal life, and the longer it shall remain prisoner in living carcasses."
Growing impatient at the long absence of Adolphe, after a while he rose to draw apart the curtains through which his friend had disappeared. As he was about to pass through them, his head struck against two feet hanging in the air which rattled with the noise of dry bones. He looked up: it was a skeleton.
He gazed at it with a sincere and gentle compassion.
"You would be much more at your ease in Saint-Chaumont Cemetery," he said and went on with a sad smile.
The corridor down which he walked had no windows. It was lighted from one end to the other by a crimson glow. At first Theophrastus could not make out where it came from. Then he perceived that he was walking on it. It came from the cellars, through the thick sheets of glass with which the corridor was paved. What were those crimson flames below, in whose glow he walked, doing?
He did not know. He did not even ask. He did not even ask why he, Theophrastus, found himself walking in this glow. He had ceased to ask, "Why am I in this house in Huchette Street?" He had ceased to ask because nobody answered.
Emmanuel, Noun, Samech, Hain… Sabaoth… Adonai…
Still names on the stone walls.
The only ornament on these walls about which names crawled was, at the height of a man, an endless line of stars formed by the two triangles of Solomon's Seal. Between each star or seal, in green letters, was the word NIRVANA.
The corridor did not run in a straight line. It had curves and angles. Presently he came to a spot at which two other corridors ran into it at right angles, and prudently stopped. But soon he grew impatient again, and plunged down one of these side corridors. Three minutes later, without knowing how it came about, he found himself back at the spot where the corridors crossed. Then he went back down the first corridor, retracing his steps to the hall. But he did not find the hall.
He was on the point of howling with distress, when Adolphe appeared before him. His eyes were red as if he had been weeping.
"Where am I?" cried Theophrastus tempestuously.
"You are in the house of the Mage—in the house of M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox!"
CHAPTER XIII
THE CURE THAT MISSED
At hearing that he was at the house of M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox, Theophrastus was somewhat reassured, for he had heard both Marceline and Adolphe speak of him with reverence as a leading member of the Pneumatic Club. Theophrastus had chanced to hear of the Pneumatic Club; and he had caused Marceline to become a member of it (he was at the time too busy to join it himself) under the impression that it was the chief social club of the most prominent people in the Rubber Industry. But of course everybody knows that Pneumatology is that part of metaphysics which deals with the soul, in Greek Pneuma; and the Pneumatics are those versed in this science, which has nothing whatever to do with the elastic and resilient substance extracted by incision from a tree, which was named by the benighted savages who discovered it, the Caoutchouc. Marceline did not trouble the busy Theophrastus with her discovery that the Pneumatic Club was a branch of Spiritualism and not of the Rubber Industry. She contented herself with inviting M. Adolphe Lecamus to join it also; and both of them became devout admirers and disciples of that great expert in the Occult, M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox. It is no wonder that, on learning from Marceline of the painful affair of the ears of Signor Petito, M. Lecamus should have urged instant recourse to that great expert, to learn the proper methods of dealing with a reincarnate soul of such unfortunate antecedents.
Adolphe looked at Theophrastus with deep commiseration in his eyes, as if his conversation with the Mage had given him reason for dismay.
"Come along, Marceline is here; and we are going to introduce you to a good friend," he said sombrely.
He led the way down the corridor, opened a door, and ushered Theophrastus into a large, dim room. At once his eyes were attracted by a marvellous light which fell on the noblest, gentlest, and most beautiful face of a man he had ever seen. The light was marvellous because that striking figure did not seem to receive it, but to diffuse it. When it moved, the light moved with it; it was a figure and a torch. Before this torch knelt Marceline, her hands joined as if in supplication; and on her fell some of the rays from this gracious, almost divine figure.
Then Theophrastus heard a friendly voice, a male voice, but sweeter far than the voice of any woman, which said, "Come to me without fear."
Theophrastus still gazed in wonder at the kind of astral light which was diffused from the figure of the Mage, the light which the painter James Tissot has succeeded in reproducing, in an engraving of great beauty, from a photograph of a mediumistic apparition communicated to the Congress of Spiritualists of 1910 by Doctor Macnab. In this drawing, beside the materialised figure of a young girl, stands M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox and his light.
Theophrastus gazed silently upon the radiant visage of M. Eliphas de la Nox (it would be unfair on the ink of the printer to give him his full name every time I mention him). Then, since he felt a sudden strong sympathy with this radiant being into whose presence he had been so suddenly introduced, in spite of having found him in a frame he thought almost diabolic, he plucked up courage and resolved to learn the meaning of all the strange things he had seen.
"I don't know where I am," he said somewhat plaintively. "But since I see my friend Adolphe and my wife Marceline with you, I feel reassured. I should like very much to know your name."
"My friend, I am called Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox."
"You're really called all that?" said Theophrastus, who was beginning to recover his spirits.
The radiant being bowed his head gravely.
"Well, after all, there's nothing very astonishing in that," said Theophrastus. "My name, my real name, my actual family name, is Cartouche; and for a long time everybody has believed that it was a nickname."
"Your name is not Cartouche; it is Theophrastus Longuet," said M. Eliphas de la Nox with gentle firmness.
"The one does not prevent the other," said Theophrastus, who better than anyone else knew what he was talking about, quite logically.
"I beg your pardon," said M. Eliphas de la Nox, with the same gentle firmness. "You must not cherish this confusion of mind. Once upon a time your name was Cartouche, but now it is Theophrastus Longuet. Understand that: you are Theophrastus Longuet. My friend, listen to me carefully, as you would listen to a physician who was going to heal you. For you are ill, my friend, very ill, exactly because you believe you are Cartouche, when you are really Theophrastus Longuet. I appeal to all the simplicity of your soul."
"That's all right," said Theophrastus. "I like simple things myself; so I dislike very much, very much indeed, the way by which one comes to see you, through a labyrinth of passages, with skeletons hanging up in them. What's he doing in your house, by the way, that skeleton, instead of resting quietly on Saint-Chaumont Hill? I recognised him at once. They were dragging him to the charnel-house at the Gallows of Montfaucon the very day of my marriage with my dear wife Marie-Antoinette Neron, when we were having our wedding breakfast at the Chopinettes. Beaulieu and Old Easy-Going were with us. At that epoch, my dear M. Eliphas de Taillepot—"
"Eliphas de Taillebourg," corrected Adolphe in a somewhat shocked tone.
"At that epoch—my friend Adolphe, who's as serious as a donkey, will tell you so—they no longer hung people at the Gallows of Montfaucon, but they used to throw into the charnel-house of those gallows the remains of people whom they hung elsewhere. That's how it was that this poor Gastelard, whose skeleton I recognised just now, was dragged to the charnel-house after having been hung in the Place de Grève. Gastelard, my dear M. St. Elmo's-Fire—"
"De Saint-Elme," M. Lecamus corrected him again.
"My dear M. de Saint-Elme, Gastelard wasn't up to much, a poor beggar full of imagination, who, having one day disguised himself as a King's deputy, demanded his sword from a gentleman, showing him at the same time an Order of Committal. The gentleman believed that he was being duly arrested, and handed over his sword, the hilt of which was gold and the most beautiful you ever saw. The story ended with Gastelard at the end of a rope. But I'll be hanged, my dear M. de l'Equinox—"
"De la Nox," insisted Adolphe.
"De la Nose, my dear M. de la Nose, I'll be hanged if I ever expected that I should one day find his skeleton in a house in Huchette Street!"
The Mage, motionless and silent, regarded Theophrastus and his talk with an attention nothing could divert.
"I have never laughed anywhere so much as at Saint-Chaumont Hill, between Chopinettes mill and Cock mill," said Theophrastus with the same garrulous cheerfulness. "Chopinettes tavern was there; it had taken the place of the tavern François Villon was so fond of, where for centuries all the cullies and doxies of Paris used to come on hanging-days to carouse. It was between Chopinettes mill, Cock mill and the Gallows of Montfaucon that I buried my treasures; and if you have a plan of old Paris, my dear M. Elephant de Taillepot de St. Elmo's Fire de la Nose—"
Theophrastus had not quite come to the end of his host's name, when, of a sudden, the darkness fled; and the room and all in it shone clear in the brilliant light of day.
He looked round him with manifest satisfaction, at his wife, who was muttering a prayer, at his friend Adolphe, who was on the verge of tears, at the bookshelves, which practically walled the room, and at M. Eliphas de la Nox, who smiled at him with gentle compassion. The Mage had lost his supernatural air; his cloak of astral light had gone; and if his features had still their sublime and ineffable pallor, he none the less looked a man like anybody else.
"I like this a good deal better," said Theophrastus with a deep sigh of relief.
The Mage raised his hand. "No: I will not give you a map of old Paris to look at, though I have them of every age," he said. "You have nothing to do with old Paris. You are Theophrastus Longuet; and we are in the year 1911."
"That's all very well. But it's a question of my treasure, treasures which belong to me," said Theophrastus stubbornly. "And I have every right to look in a map of old Paris at the place where I formerly buried my treasures, in order that I may see on a map of new Paris where I shall have to hunt again. It's clear—"
The Mage interrupted him, saying to M. Lecamus, "I have often seen here crises of Karma; but it has never been my privilege to study one of such force."
"Oh, but so far you've seen nothing—nothing at all!" cried Theophrastus.
The Mage reflected a moment; then he took Theophrastus to a map of the Paris of to-day which hung on the wall of this great library, and pointed out to him the exact spot on which had stood Chopinettes mill, Cock mill, and the Gallows of Montfaucon. Then he laid his finger in the middle of the triangle they formed, and said: "Here is where you must hunt, my friend, to recover your treasures. But all this quarter has been altered again and again; and I very much doubt whether your treasures will still be found where you buried them. I have shown you the spot on a modern map, to clear your mind of the matter. For, my friend, you must clear your mind. You must not dwell on your treasures. You must not live in the past. It is a crime. You must live in the present, that is to say, for the Future. My friend, you must drive out Cartouche, because Cartouche is no more. It is Theophrastus Longuet who is."
The Mage pronounced these words in a tone of the most solemn earnestness. Theophrastus smiled at him sadly, and said: "I'm very much obliged to you for your interest in me; and I will not hide from you the fact that I find you extremely sympathetic, in spite of your skeletons and the odd words which crawl about your walls. You must be very learned indeed, to judge from all these shelves full of books. And you must be very good-hearted, for you have certainly treated me with the greatest kindness; but I tell you—and sorry I am to say it—that you can do nothing for me. For unfortunately, my dear sir, you think that I'm ill; but I'm not ill at all. If I were ill, I've no doubt that you'd cure me, but one doesn't cure a man who's not ill. You say to me, you must drive out Cartouche. It's a grand thing to say, splendid; but I don't believe it, my dear M. Elephant de Brandebourg de St. Elmo's Fire de la Box."
But the Mage took his hand, and said with unchanged kindliness:
"None the less Cartouche must be driven out, for if we do not succeed in driving him out, we shall have to kill him; and I will not conceal from you, my dear M. Longuet, the fact that that is an exceedingly difficult operation."
"When the Man of Light," says Theophrastus in his memoirs, "undertook to relieve me of this obsession by Cartouche, which was not, alas! a matter of imagination but a very real thing, I could only smile pitifully at his vast conceit. But when I understood that he proposed to drive him out by the sole miracle of the reason, I thought it was time to serve the Mage up hot at Charenton lunatic asylum.
"But presently, when he had explained the matter more fully to me, and I began to understand his theory and method, I found myself in full agreement with him and ready to serve his purpose of driving Cartouche out of me by the sole miracle of the reason. Indeed I came in the end to appreciate the vast abyss which separated the Man of Light from my friend Adolphe, the vast abyss which will always separate the Man of Reason from the Learned Ape.
"First of all, he assured me that I had been Cartouche. He was assured of it. And furthermore it was the most natural thing in the world. He said he had scolded Adolphe for having presented my case to him as exceptional, when my case was the case of everybody. Of course, everybody has not been Cartouche. But everybody has been, before their existence of to-day, a good many other people, among whom may very well have been found persons every whit as bad as Cartouche.
"You understand the Man of Light: mine was an every-day case. Everybody has lived before living and will live again. He told me that it was 'The Law of Karma.' One is being born all the time; one never dies. And when one dies, it is that one is being born again, and so on from the beginning of beginnings!
"It is understood that at each birth the personality differs from the preceding and succeeding personalities, but each is only a modification of the divine and spiritual ego. These different personalities are in a way only the rings in the infinite chain of life which constitutes throughout the ages our Immortal Individuality.
"And then the Man of Light told me that when one has grasped this immense truth, one should not be astonished that some of the events of to-day recall some of the events of long-ago. But in order to live according to the law of wisdom one should live in the present and never look backward. I had looked backward too much. My spirit, badly guided by M. Lecamus, had during the last few weeks been wholly occupied with the long-ago; and undoubtedly, if that had gone on, I should soon have been reduced to a state dangerously near to that of madness. I ought to be no more astonished at having had another state of soul two hundred years ago than I ought to be astonished at having had another state of soul twenty years ago. Was it that the Theophrastus of to-day had any connection with the Theophrastus of twenty years ago? Certainly not. The Theophrastus of to-day ignored that young man; he even disapproved of him. Would it not be stupid indeed to devote all my faculties to reviving the Theophrastus of twenty years ago? Therefore the great mistake I had made had been only to live for Cartouche, because I had chanced to remember that I had once been Cartouche.
"I tell you that I found the words of M. Elephant de la Box indeed refreshing. They did me a world of good.
"He also told me other things which I shall remember if I live to be a thousand years old. He told me that what are called 'Vocations' in the men of to-day are only latent revelations of their past lives; that what is called 'Facility' is only a retrospective sympathy for objects with which they are better acquainted than with anything else, because they made a more careful study of them before this actual life; and that is the only explanation of it.
"Thereupon he pressed me to his bosom, as a father embraces his child; he breathed upon my eyes and brow his healing breath; and he asked me if I was now persuaded of this truth, and realised that to live happily it was necessary to bear in mind our condition of perpetual change, and that by doing so we should learn to live in the Present and to understand that the whole of time belonged to us.
"I wept with joy, and my dear wife wept with joy, and Adolphe wept with joy. I assured the Man of Light that I understood and believed, that I was no longer astonished that I had been Cartouche, though I was somewhat distressed by the fact, but that it was, after all, so natural that I should never again give it a moment's thought. I cried:
"'Be at ease! Let us all be at ease! Let us live in the Present! Cartouche is driven out!'
"Thereupon Marceline asked what time it was; and Adolphe answered that it was eleven o'clock. I pulled out my onion and saw that it was half-past eleven. Then, since my watch keeps perfect time, I declared that it was half-past eleven.
"'No. I beg your pardon, but it's eleven o'clock,' said Adolphe.
"'You can cut off my finger if it isn't half-past eleven!" I cried; for I was sure of my watch.
"But the Man of Light looked at his watch and assured me that it was only eleven o'clock. My friend Adolphe was right; and I was sorry for it—on account of my finger. I am an honourable man and an honest manufacturer. I have always kept my word; and no bill of mine has ever been dishonoured. I did not hesitate. Could I have done otherwise?
"'Very well,' I said to Adolphe. 'I owe you a finger.'
"And seizing a small stone tomahawk, which lay on the desk of the Man of Light and was evidently used as a paper-weight, I raised it in the air, and was bringing it down on the little finger of my left hand which I had stuck well out on the corner of the desk—I had the right to give Adolphe the little finger of my left hand; for I had only said to him, 'You can cut off my finger,' without stipulating which finger; and I chose the finger the loss of which would inconvenience me the least. My little finger then would infallibly have been cut off, had not the Man of Light caught my wrist in a grip of steel and held it firmly.
"He bade me put down the tomahawk. I answered that I would not put down the tomahawk till I had cut off my finger which belonged to Adolphe.
"Adolphe exclaimed that my finger was of no use to him, and I could keep it. Marceline joined her entreaties to his, and begged me to keep my finger, since Adolphe made me a present of it. But I answered him that there was no reason for him to make me presents at this season of the year; and I answered her that she knew nothing at all about business.
"Then M. Eliphraste de l'Equinox pointed out that I was not observing the conditions of the contract: I had said, 'You can cut off my finger'; consequently it was the privilege of Adolphe to cut off my finger.
"I admired this exact logic, which indeed never failed him; and I put down my tomahawk.
"I was wrong to put down my tomahawk in that house in Huchette Street; for they flung themselves upon me, and the Man of Light cried:
"'Come on! It's too late! The only thing to do is to kill him!'"
