The Nyctalope vs Lucifer 1: Enter Lucifer!
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11 A burgrave was originally an official appointed to command a burg (a town or a castle), although the title subsequently became hereditary in many of the German duchies.
12 A mullion is an subsidiary upright within the frame of a window positioned between the lights.
13 The Nyctalope never does find out, and nor do we. The presence of the windlass in the sentry-box is quite nonsensical, and was obviously improvised ad hoc to get Saint-Clair and his companions into the castle–entirely unnecessarily, as it eventually turns out, because a subsequent ad hoc improvisation will establish the existence of a much easier entry-route. Such narrative hiccups are inevitably commonplace in feuilleton fiction, as is the awkward device of raising the question of explanation and then postponing it indefinitely.
14 I have left this paragraph untouched, although this statement about the Baron’s ancestry is subsequently contradicted in no uncertain terms, to illustrate the fact that La Hire presumably has no idea, at this point, where his narrative might be heading. He may well have been awaiting instructions from the editor of Le Matin as to how much further he would need to spin the story out; had reader reaction been indifferent, he might have had to close it down abruptly, contriving a climax within the castle, and substitute a new serial. He was presumably told to keep going, and prepare for a long haul–at which point he had to begin making more elaborate provision for Baron von Warteck’s background and ambitions. With regard to the Baron being the “Antichrist,” no more is heard of this particular notion, but when La Hire elected to continue the Nyctalope’s adventures and had to come up with other villains of even greater nastiness, he employed surnames such as “Zattan” and “Belzebuth” and the concept of the Antichrist was central to La Captive du Démon (1927).
15 A banderilla is a barbed dart, sometimes loaded with explosives, of a type once extensively used in bull-fighting; its use is nowadays considered rather unsporting.
16 La Hire includes a footnote at this point to translate Wolf’s German into French. In English, the staccato speech would go as follows: “Lord! Yes! The sentry, Lord. Yes, the sentry! Rose Laura. Number six. Yes, six!”
17 The Pleyels were a notable French musical family. The composer Ignace Pleyel (1757-1831) founded a prestigious piano factory in Paris, which was inherited by his son Camille (1788-1855), the husband of the famous pianist Marie (1811-1875).
18 The story of Judith, as told in Greek and Latin texts allegedly translated from Hebrew–although no Hebrew original has survived–obtained wide circulation in Christendom as an item of Old Testament apocrypha. It was a popular subject in Decadent Art and a frequent reference in 19th-century French accounts of femmes fatales. In order to free her native city, Bethulia, from a siege laid by the Assyrian general Holofernes, the seductive Judith pretended to be a traitor and insinuated herself into the general’s tent, where she got him drunk (presumably in a euphemistic sense) and then hacked off his head.
19 There was a popular song of the day about a little frog, whose chorus consisted of the repetition of the nonsense-word laïtou.
20 Sar–which La Hire renders as sâr–is a term allegedly derived from the Assyrian, meaning mage-king or “priest-king; La Hire would have been familiar with it by virtue of its adoption as a title by Joséphin Péladan (1859-1918), the head of the most prominent “Rosicrucian Lodge” in fin-de-siècle Paris; his successors in that role also adopted it. A popular character published in French pulp magazines in 1909 was the Sâr Dubnotal, a magician who fought a variety of occult menaces.
21 Omphale was the daughter of the Lydian King Iardanus. After the death of her husband Tmolus, she became ruler in her own right. When Hercules was afflicted with a nasty disease as a penalty for killing his friend Iphitus in a fit of madness, he was informed by the Oracle that he could only be cured by going into service for three years (he had already completed his famous labors, so this was a sort of repeat prescription). Hermes sold him to Omphale so that he might serve out this sentence, and he became so enamored of his mistress that he allegedly allowed her to put on his lion’s skin while he dressed in women’s clothes and devoted himself to the traditionally female task of spinning wool. The name was well-known in 19th-century France by virtue of providing the eponymous heroine of one of Théophile Gautier’s several nouvelles featuring beautiful phantom women who offer contemporary men sexual delights that real women cannot provide.
22 In his haste to send Saint-Clair to Laure’s rescue, La Hire has completely forgotten about Lucifer’s machine, for which none of his characters has spared a glance–an error of omission that causes him some difficulty in the subsequent development of the plot.
23 Retrieving the golden apples of the Hesperides was the eleventh of Hercules’ 12 labors. The apples were those that Hera had received as a wedding-gift from Ge (nowadays better known as Gaia), and the garden where they were kept was guarded by the dragon Ladon. Hercules only killed the dragon in some versions of the story; he had no need to do so because he persuaded Atlas to get the apples for him, agreeing to bear the weight of the heavens temporarily in the giant’s stead–but then had to trick Atlas into reassuming his traditional burden.
24 This hasty improvisation raises the question of why the Nyctalope did not observe this opening in the base of the rocky spire during his initial reconnaissance–it might well have served as a more convenient and more plausible means of ingress than the one he actually employed.
25 As in other instances where La Hire employs this formula in response to some sudden realization, no explanation is ever forthcoming–but La Hire took care never again to lose sight of the possibility that Lucifer might well have such weapons at his disposal.
FRENCH MYSTERIES COLLECTION
M. Allain & P. Souvestre. The Daughter of Fantômas
A. Anicet-Bourgeois, Lucien Dabril. Rocambole
Guy d’Armen. Doc Ardan and The City of Gold and Lepers
A. Bernède. Belphegor
A. Bernède. Judex (w/Louis Feuillade)
A. Bernède. The Return of Judex (w/Louis Feuillade)
A. Bisson & G. Livet. Nick Carter vs. Fantômas
V. Darlay & H. de Gorsse. Lupin vs. Holmes: The Stage Play
Paul Feval. Gentlemen of the Night
Paul Feval. John Devil
Paul Feval. ’Salem Street
Paul Feval. The Invisible Weapon
Paul Feval. The Parisian Jungle
Paul Feval. The Companions of the Treasure
Paul Feval. Heart of Steel
Paul Feval. The Cadet Gang
Paul Feval. The Sword-Swallower
Emile Gaboriau. Monsieur Lecoq
Goron & Gautier. Spawn of the Penitentiary
Jean de La Hire. Enter the Nyctalope
Jean de La Hire. The Nyctalope on Mars
Jean de La Hire. The Nyctalope vs Lucifer
Jean de La Hire. The Nyctalope Steps In
Jean de La Hire. Night of the Nyctalope
Maurice Leblanc. Arsène Lupin vs. Countess Cagliostro
Maurice Leblanc. The Blonde Phantom
Maurice Leblanc. The Hollow Needle
Maurice Leblanc. The Many Faces of Arsène Lupin
Gaston Leroux. Chéri-Bibi
Gaston Leroux. The Phantom of the Opera
Gaston Leroux. Rouletabille & the Mystery of the Yellow Room
Gaston Leroux. Rouletabille at Krupp’s
Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier. Tales of the Shadowmen 1
Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier. Tales of the Shadowmen 2
Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier. Tales of the Shadowmen 3
Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier. Tales of the Shadowmen 4
Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier. Tales of the Shadowmen 5
Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier. Tales of the Shadowmen 6
Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier. Tales of the Shadowmen 7
Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier. Tales of the Shadowmen 8
Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier. Tales of the Shadowmen 9
> Frank J. Morlock. Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper
P.-A. Ponson du Terrail. Rocambole
Antonin Reschal. The Adventures of Miss Boston
P. de Wattyne & Y. Walter. Sherlock Holmes vs. Fantômas
David White. Fantômas in America
Acknowledgements: We are indebted to Marc Madouraud, Philippe Ethuin and Jean-Luc Buard for research assistance.
English adaptation, introduction and afterword Copyright 2007 by Brian Stableford.
Cover illustration Copyright 2007 by Denis Rodier.
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ISBN 978-1-932983-98-2. First Printing. May 2007. Published by Black Coat Press, an imprint of Hollywood Comics.com, LLC, P.O. Box 17270, Encino, CA 91416. All rights reserved. Except for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The stories and characters depicted in this novel are entirely fictional. Printed in the United States of America.