by Eugène Sue
“How, boys, a duel? Ah, pluck the chickens!”
The Schoolmaster, fearing that he should lose his senses if he gave way to an ineffectual burst of fury, turned a deaf ear to this fresh insult of Tortillard, who so impertinently commented on the cowardice of an assassin who recoiled from suicide. Despairing of escape from what he termed, by a sort of avenging fatality, the cruelty of his cursed child, the ruffian sought to try what could be done by assailing the avarice of the son of Bras Rouge.
“Ah,” said he to him, in a tone almost supplicatory, “lead me to the door of my wife’s room, and take anything you like that’s in her room and run away with it! leave me to myself. You may cry out ‘murder’ if you like; they will apprehend me — kill me on the spot — I care not, I shall die avenged, if I have not the courage to end my existence myself. Oh, lead me there — lead me there; depend on it she has gold, jewels, anything, and you may take all, all for yourself, for your own, do you mind? — your own; only lead me to the door where she is.”
“Yes, I mind well enough; you want me to lead you to her door, then to her bed, and then to tell you when to strike, then to guide your hand — eh! that’s it, ain’t it? You want to make me a handle to your knife, old monster!” replied Tortillard, with an expression of contempt, anger, and horror, which, for the first time in his life gave an appearance of seriousness to his weasel face, usually all impertinence and insolence; “I’ll be killed first, I tell you, sooner than I’ll lead you to where your wife is!”
“You refuse?”
The son of Bras Rouge made no reply. He approached with bare feet and without being heard by the Schoolmaster, who, seated on the bed, still held his large knife in his hand, and then, in a moment, with marvellous quickness and dexterity, Tortillard snatched from him his weapon, and with one jump skipped to the further end of the chamber.
“My knife! my knife!” cried the brigand, extending his arms.
“No; for then you might to-morrow morning ask to speak with your wife and try to kill her, since, as you say, you have had enough of life, and are such a coward that you don’t dare kill yourself.”
“How he defends my wife against me!” said the bandit, whose intellect became obscure. “This little wretch is a devil! Where am I? Why does he try to save her?”
“Because I like it,” said Tortillard, whose face resumed its usual appearance of sly impudence.
“Ah, is that it?” murmured the Schoolmaster, whose mind was wandering; “well, then, I’ll fire the house! we’ll all burn — all! I prefer that furnace to the other. The candle! the candle!”
“Ah! ah! ah!” exclaimed Tortillard, bursting out again into loud laughter. “If your own candle — your ‘peepers’ — had not been snuffed out, and for ever, you would have known that ours had been extinguished an hour ago.” And Tortillard sang:
“Ma chandelle est morte, Je n’ai plus de feu.”
The Schoolmaster gave a deep groan, stretched out his arms, and fell heavily on the floor, his face on the ground, and, struck by a rush of blood, remained motionless.
“Not to be caught, old boy,” said Tortillard; “that’s only a trick to make me come to you that you may serve me out! When you have been long enough on the floor you’ll get up.”
Bras Rouge’s boy resolved not to go to sleep for fear of being surprised by the Schoolmaster, so seated himself in a chair, with his eyes fixed on the ruffian, persuaded that it was a trap laid for him, and not believing the Schoolmaster in any danger. That he might employ himself agreeably Tortillard drew silently and carefully from his pocket a little red silk purse, and counted slowly, and with looks of joy and avarice, the seventeen pieces of gold which it contained. Tortillard had acquired his ill-gotten riches thus: It may be remembered that Madame d’Harville was nearly surprised by her husband at the rendezvous which she had granted to the commandant. Rodolph, when he had given the purse to the young lady had told her to go up to the fifth story to the Morels, under the pretence of bringing them assistance. Madame d’Harville ran quickly up the staircase holding the purse in her hands. When Tortillard, who was coming from the quack’s, caught a glimpse of the purse, and, pretending to stumble as he passed the marquise, pushed against her, and, in the shock, slily stole the purse. Madame d’Harville, bewildered, and hearing her husband’s footsteps, hurried on to the fifth story without thinking or complaining of the impudent robbery of the little cripple. After having counted and recounted his gold Tortillard cast his eyes towards the Schoolmaster who was extended still on the ground. Disquieted for a moment, he listened, and hearing the robber breathe freely he thought that he was still meditating some trick against him.
Chance saved the Schoolmaster from a congestion of the brain which else must have proved mortal. His fall had caused a salutary and abundant bleeding at the nose. He then fell into kind of a feverish torpor — half sleep, half delirium, and then had this wild, this fearful dream!
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DREAM.
THIS WAS THE Schoolmaster’s dream:
He was again in Rodolph’s house in the Allée des Veuves. The saloon in which the miscreant had received his appalling punishment had not undergone any alteration. Rodolph himself was sitting at the table on which were the Schoolmaster’s papers and the little Saint-Esprit of lapis which he had given to the Chouette. Rodolph’s countenance was grave and sad. On his right the negro David was standing motionless and silent; on his left was the Chourineur, who looked on with a bewildered mien. In his dream the Schoolmaster was no longer blind, but saw through a medium of clear blood, which filled the cavities of his eyeballs. All and everything seemed to him tinted with red. As birds of prey hover on motionless wing above the head of the victim which they fascinate before they devour, so a monstrous screech-owl (chouette), having for its head the hideous visage of the one-eyed hag, soared over the Schoolmaster, keeping fixed on him her round, glaring, and green eye. This fixed stare was upon his breast like a heavy weight. The Schoolmaster discerned a vast lake of blood separating him from the table at which Rodolph was seated. Then this inflexible judge, as well as the Chourineur and the negro, grew and grew, expanding into colossal proportions, until they touched the ceiling; and then it also became higher in proportion. The lake of blood was calm, and as unruffled as a red mirror; the Schoolmaster saw his hideous countenance reflected therein. Then that was suddenly effaced by the tumult of the swelling waves. From their troubled surface there arose a vapour resembling the foul exhalation of a marsh, a livid-coloured mist of that violet hue peculiar to the lips of the dead. In proportion as this miasma rises — rises, the faces of Rodolph, the Chourineur, and the negro continue to expand and expand in an extraordinary manner, and always remain above this fearful cloud. In the midst of the awful vapour, the Schoolmaster sees the pale ghosts, and those murderous scenes in which he had been the actor. In this fantastic mirage he first sees a little bald-headed old man, clad in a long brown coat, and wearing an eye-shade of green silk. He is employing himself in a dilapidated chamber in counting and arranging pieces of gold into piles by the light of a lamp. Through the window, lighted by the dim moonlight reflected on the tops of some high trees waving in the wind, the Schoolmaster recognises his own figure. Pressing his distorted features against the glass, following every motion of the old man with glaring eyes, then breaking a pane, he opens the window itself, leaps with a bound upon his victim, and stabs him between the shoulders with his long and keen knife. The movement is so rapid, the blow so quick and sure, that the dead body of the old man remains seated in the chair.
The murderer tries to withdraw his weapon from the dead body, — he cannot! He redoubles his efforts, — in vain! He then seeks to quit the deadly steel, — impossible!
The hand of the assassin clings to the handle of the poignard, as the blade of the poignard clings to the frame of the wounded man. The murderer then hears the sound of clinking spurs and clashing swords in the adjoining room. He must escape at all risks, and attempts to carry
with him the body of the feeble old man, from which he cannot withdraw either his weapon or his hand.
He cannot do even this. The light and feeble carcass weighs him down like a mass of lead. Despite his herculean shoulders, his desperate efforts, the Schoolmaster cannot even stir this overwhelming weight.
The sound of echoing steps and jingling sabres comes nearer and nearer. The key turns in the lock, — the door opens. The vision disappears.
And then the screech-owl flaps her wing, and shrieks out:
“It is the old miser of the Rue de la Roule. Your maiden murder! murder! murder!”
A moment’s darkness, — then the miasma which covers the lake of blood resumes its transparency, and another spectre is revealed.
The day begins to dawn, — the fog is thick and heavy. A man, clothed like a cattle-dealer, lies stretched, dead on the bank of the highroad. The trampled earth, the torn turf, proved that the victim had made a desperate resistance. The man has five bleeding wounds in his breast. He is lifeless; yet still he seems to whistle on his dogs, calling to them, “Help! help!”
But his whistling, his cries, proceed from five large and gaping wounds, —
“Each one a death in nature,” —
which move like so many complaining lips. The five calls, the five whistlings, all made and heard at once, come from the dead man by the mouths of his gushing wounds; and fearful are they to hear!
At this instant the Chouette waves her wings, and mocks the deathly groans of the victim with five bursts of laughter, — a laughter as unearthly and as horrible as the madman’s mirth; and then again she shrieks:
“The cattle-dealer of Poissy. Murder! murder! murder!”
Protracted and underground echoes first repeat aloud the malevolent laughter of the screech-owl. Then they seem to die away in the very bowels of the earth.
At this sound two large dogs, as black as midnight, with eyes glaring like burning coals, begin to run rapidly around — around — around the Schoolmaster, baying furiously. They almost touch him, and yet their bark appears as distant as if carried on the wind of the morning.
Gradually these spectres fade away as the previous one did, and are lost in the pale vapour which is continually ascending.
A new exhalation now arises from the lake of blood, and spreads itself on its surface. It is a sort of greenish, transparent mist; it resembles the vertical section of a canal filled with water. At first he sees the bed of the canal covered in by a thick vase formed of numberless reptiles usually imperceptible to the unassisted eye, but which, enlarged, as if viewed through a microscope, assume monstrous forms, vast proportions relatively to their actual size. It is no longer mud, but a compact, living, crawling mass, — an inextricable conglomeration which wriggles and curls; so close, so dense, that a sullen and low undulation hardly stirs the level of this vase, or rather bed of foulest animalculæ. Above trickles gently — gently, a turbid stream, thick and stagnating, which, in its dilatory flow, disturbs the filth incessantly vomited by the sewers of a great city, — fragments of all sorts, carcasses of animals, etc., etc. Suddenly the Schoolmaster hears the plash of a body, which falls heavily on the water; in its recoil the water sprinkles his very face. In the midst of the air-bubbles which rise thick and fast to the surface of the canal he sees the body of a woman, which sinks rapidly as she struggles — struggles.
Then he sees himself and the Chouette running hastily along the banks of St. Martin’s Canal, carrying with them a box covered with black cloth; and yet he is still present during all the variations of agony suffered by the victim whom he and the Chouette have thrown into the canal. After the first immersion the victim rises to the surface and moves her arms in violent agitation like some one who, not knowing how to swim, tries in vain to save herself. Then she utters a piercing cry, — a cry of one in the last extremity, — despairing — which ends in the sullen, stifled sound of involuntary choking; and the woman the second time sinks beneath the troubled waters.
The screech-owl, which hovers continually motionless, imitates the convulsive rattle of the drowning wretch, as she mocked the dying groans of the cattle-dealer. In the midst of bursts of deathlike laughter the screech-owl utters, “Glou! glou! glou!”
The subterranean echoes repeated the sound.
A second time submerged the woman is fast suffocating, and makes one more desperate effort for breath; but, instead of air, it is water which she inspires. Then her head falls back, her convulsed features are swollen and become livid, her neck becomes blue and tumefied, her arms stiffen, and, in a last spasmodic effort, the drowning woman in her agony moves her feet, which are resting on the vase. Then she is surrounded by a mass of black soil, which ascends with her to the surface of the water. Scarcely has the choked wretch breathed her last sigh than she is covered with myriads of the microscopic reptiles, — the greedy and horrible vermin of the mud. The carcass floats for a moment, balances for a moment, and then sinks slowly, horizontally, the feet lower than the head, and between the double waters begins to follow the current of the land. Sometimes the dead corpse turns, and its pale face is before the Schoolmaster. Then the spectre fixes on him glaringly its two blue, glassy, and opaque eyes; the livid mouth opens. The Schoolmaster is far away from the drowning woman, and yet her lips murmur in his ears, “Glou! glou! glou!” accompanying these appalling syllables with that singular noise which a bottle thrust into the water makes when filling itself.
The screech-owl repeats, “Glou! glou! glou!” flapping her wings, and shrieking:
“The woman of the Canal St. Martin! Murder! murder! murder!”
The vision of the drowned woman disappears. The lake of blood, through which the Schoolmaster still constantly beholds Rodolph, becomes of a bronzed, black colour, then red again, and then changes instantaneously into a liquid, furnace-like, molten metal. Then that lake of fire rises — rises — rises towards the sky like an immense whirlpool. There is now a fiery horizon like iron at a white heat. This immense, boundless horizon dazzles and scorches the very eyes of the Schoolmaster, who, fascinated, fastened to the spot, cannot turn away his gaze. Then, at the bottom of this burning lava, whose reflection seems to consume him, he sees pass and repass, one by one, the black and giant spectres of his victims.
“The magic-lanthorn of remorse! remorse! remorse!” shrieks the night-bird, flapping her hideous wings, and laughing mockingly.
Notwithstanding the intolerable anguish which his impatient gaze creates, the Schoolmaster has his eyes fixed on the grisly phantoms which move in the blazing sheet. Then an indefinable horror steals over him. Passing through every step of indescribable torture, by dint of contemplating this blazing sight, he feels his eyeballs — which have replaced the blood with which his orbits were filled at the commencement of his dream — he feels his eyeballs grow hot, burning, and melt in this furnace — to smoke and bubble — and at last to become calcined in their cavities like two crucibles filled with red fire. By a fearful power, after having seen as well as felt the successive transformations of his eyeballs into ashes, he falls into the darkness of his actual blindness.
But now, suddenly, his intolerable agonies are assuaged as though by enchantment. An odorous air of delicious freshness passes over his burning eyeballs. This air is a lovely admixture of the scents of springtime, which exhale from flowers bathed in evening dew. The Schoolmaster hears all about him a gentle murmur, like that of the breeze which just stirs the leaves — like that of a brook of running waters, which rushes and murmurs on its bed of stone and moss “in the leafy month of June.” Thousands of birds warble the most enchanting melodies. They are stilled, and the voices of children, of angelic tone, sing strange, unknown words — words that are “winged” (if we may use the expression), and which the Schoolmaster hears mount to heaven with gentle motion. A feeling of moral health, of tranquillity, of undefined languor, creeps over him by degrees. It is an expansion of the heart, an elevation of the mind, an effort of the soul, of which no physical fee
ling, how delicious soever it may be, can impart the least idea. He feels himself softly soaring in a heavenly sphere; he seems to rise to an immeasurable height.
··········
After having for some moments revelled in this unspeakable felicity he again finds himself in the dark abyss of his habitual thoughts. His dream continues; but he is again but the muzzled miscreant who blasphemes and curses in the paroxysm of his impotent rage. A voice is heard — sonorous — solemn. It is Rodolph’s. The Schoolmaster starts “like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons.” He has the vague consciousness of a dream; but the alarm with which Rodolph inspires him is so great that he tries, but vainly, to escape from this fresh vision. The voice speaks — he listens. The tone of Rodolph is not severe; it is “rather in sorrow than in anger.”
“Unhappy man,” he says to the Schoolmaster, “the hour of your repentance has not yet sounded. God only knows when it will strike. The punishment of your crimes is still incomplete; you have suffered, but not expiated. Destiny follows out its work of full justice. Your accomplices have become your tormentors. A woman, a child, tame, subdue, conquer you. When I sentenced you to a terrible punishment for your crimes I said — do you remember my words?— ‘You have wickedly abused the great bodily strength bestowed upon you; I will paralyse that strength. The strongest have trembled before you; I will make you henceforward shrink in the presence of the weakest of beings.’ You have left the obscure retreat in which you might have dwelt for repentance and expiation. You were afraid of silence and solitude. You sought to drown remembrance by new crimes. Just now, in a fearful and bloodthirsty access of passion, you have wished to kill your wife. She is here under the same roof as yourself. She sleeps without defence. You have a knife. Her apartment is close at hand. There was nothing to prevent you from reaching her. Nothing could have protected her from your rage — nothing but your impotence. The dream you have had, and in which you are still bound, may teach you much, may save you. The mysterious phantoms of this dream bear with them a most pregnant meaning. The lake of blood, in which your victims have appeared, is the blood you have shed. The molten lava which replaced it is the gnawing, eating remorse, which must consume you before one day, that the Almighty, having mercy on your protracted tortures, shall call you to himself, and let you taste the ineffable sweetness of his gracious forgiveness. But this will not be. No, no! these warnings will be useless. Far from repenting, you regret every day, with horrid blasphemies, the time when you could commit such atrocities. Alas! from this continual struggle between your bloodthirsty desires and the impossibility of satisfying them, — between your habits of fierce oppression and the compulsion of submitting to beings as weak as they are depraved, — there will result to you a fate so fearful, so appalling. Ah, unhappy wretch!”