The sole fault of that exquisite woman was an excessive vanity relative to everything connected with the nobility she had acquired by marriage and luck. Aristocratic tradition was a veritable obsession in her, to the point that she broke off all communication with her brother, Dr. Fortin, of whose scientific glory she was nevertheless proud, because of his excessively advanced scholarly ideas. It was, in consequence, very painful for her to see her son Antoine affect a great disdain for the traditions of nobility.
Antoine, who was certainly not stupid, devoted his youth to poetry, but a poetry that was very much his own, along with a few other petty decadents, pessimistic and mannered, affecting a style in which locations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were preferred to modern ones. He had obtained and retained antique mores and effeminate manners from his education with the Jesuit priests, which shocked his parents, and especially Monsieur de Simiane, who held the position in the Hôtel de Virmile of omnipotent arbiter.
Evil tongues also suggested that Monsieur de Simiane had been the beautiful Hélène’s lover for a long time, since the fall of Troy; others contented themselves with thinking that he was the titular fiancée of Huguette de Virmile. That young woman of twenty, brunette and Tanagrean,17 was due to connected the name of the Virmiles with the ancient blazon of Simiane, descendants of a nobility less ancient than that of the Virmiles, but going back nevertheless to the sixteenth century, when Tiburcio Fabiani, the squire of the Constable du Bourbon, had surrendered his daughter to François I, who had ennobled her and given her a fief. It had since been one of the specialties of the family to furnish favorites to kings or princes of the blood. Fortune had augmented the domains and income of the Simianes.
Unfortunately, the father of Jacques de Simiane had been ruined under the reign of the excessively bourgeois Louis-Philippe, by virtue of giving a warm welcome to Lord Seymour. He had only left his son the name and the debts. The Second Empire would gladly have lent its aid to such a great name, but Jacques had too many links with the legitimist party to move in that political direction and had preferred to accept the aid of a devoted and very rich friend; he lived more in the Virmiles’ home than his own, and simultaneously filled the functions there of steward and cavalier serving “la Belle Hélène.”18
Jacques de Simiane, although he had reached sixty, did not look, when heavily made up, any more than forty-five. Thus the projected marriage had nothing ridiculous about it, and many young men would not have had the success still carried off by that Lauzun.19
In accepting the invitation of the Marquise de Virmile, people were curious to see the magician Marc Vanel, about whom all Paris was talking. Present were, first of all, as prestidigitator, the President of the Council, Claude Barsac,20 who, by virtue of the rallying of the Republican government to the Court of Rome, had conquered all of the noble faubourg; the wily chameleon Louis Barthou,21 president of the Commission for the Reparation of Devastated Countries (four hundred thousand francs per year), his ferrety eyes behind a binocle, on the lookout for captures; the députés Vauclin and Baruyer and many others, of the right, naturally—Vauclin and Baruyer belonged to the socialist left, but the unscrupulous left that eats in all troughs—and finally, artists, journalists and anyone who had a name: all the peacocks who circulate in order that people will talk about them.
The conservatory, a magnificent winter garden in which the most beautiful specimens of tropical flora grew, was open to the elect. In the main drawing room, the Marquise had had chairs and armchairs set out. In front of the large marble fireplace, the work of Falconet,22 a vast Louis XV sofa formed the central point of the most intimate circle. In the intervals left to her by her social duties, the Marquise de Virmile took her place there between her young and intimate friend, the exceedingly blonde and seductive Comtesse d’Armez and her daughter Huguette. Behind the sofa, the Marquis de Virmile and the requisite Simiane went back and forth in front of the fireplace.
“My dear friend,” said the latter to Virmile, “Who is that beauty coming forward on the arm of d’Orsennes?”
“His sister Geneviève, emerged from the convent last week. D’Orsennes introduced her to us recently.”
“Amaury is counting on his sister,” Antoine put in, “to get him afloat again.”
“Pooh!” said Virmile. “He’ll marry her off to some nouveau riche exploiter of finance and the cost of living. Money has no odor today.”
“Today as yesterday,” riposted Antoine. “Our ancestors espoused some king’s bastard. It’s always been the same.”
“Shut up, Antoine!” said Madame de Virmile, dryly. “You know, my son, that we don’t like to hear you say such things.”
Antoine shrugged his shoulders and dived into the crowd. Meanwhile, Amaury d’Orsennes, having seen gazes fixed upon him, had approached.
“Come on, Geneviève,” said Huguette. “I’ve saved a place for you.”
She sat down beside her, and a joyful babble was not long delayed, mingled with little bursts of bright laughter.
“Well,” said Amaury to Madame d’Armez, “are we going to see this famous charlatan?”
“He’s Joseph Balsamo, Comte de Cagliostro,” she said. “Yes.”
“This magician impresses you when his eyes weigh upon yours.”
At that moment, a new arrival came to greet the Marquise: Albert Baruyer, the brother of the famous socialist leader Georges Baruyer. Of tall stature, built like an athlete, with broad massive shoulders and powerful hands with knotty fingers, over which brown hair grew, Albert had short-cropped hair, a bushy moustache descending slightly in the Gallic fashion, and cruel and sensual lips. One single defect: the inferior jaw, protruding and overlapping, made the mouth of the notorious commercial advocate resemble a foot bath. His prestige among women, however, was legendary. He was a highly regarded and redoubted Parisian figure. He had, moreover, the halo of his bother Georges, who might be a Minister one day, or even President of the Council.
“You know, Monsieur Baruyer, that you promised me to be indiscreet with regard to your play at the Théâtre de Paris. Will you tell me its subject?”
“Certainly, my dear Madame—but you alone.”
“You’re wrong, Baruyer,” Antoine de Virmile interjected, reentering the circle with the genteel painter Jaquelux23 and Michel Georges-Michel. “It’s necessary never to confide anything to a woman.”
The word “woman” was emphasized with a scornful disdain for the sex. Addressing himself to the chronicler of the good and bad places in Paris, Albert Baruyer took him by the arm and drew him into the elegant crowd, hunting for femininity.
“Do you know who that appetizing young woman on the sofa is?”
“The daughter of the house, Huguette de Virmile. Antoine’s only eighteen and his sister is twenty; she ages la Belle Hélène too much, and everyone in Paris, including you, knows that Simiane has been the Marquise’s lover and factotum since…well, forever…and Huguette’s fiancé.”
“That’s appropriate!” said Baruyer, without conviction. “The mother’s lover marrying the daughter!”
“But the mother is sure of keeping her beloved close to her, and the marriage stabilizes Simiane’s situation. It’s necessary to pay the jazz band. As long as the creditors are content.”
“Look,” said another besuited individual, joining in, “Vauclin and his wife, the beautiful Sophie Vandeuvre can’t be far away. You know Arsène Vauclin well, don’t you, Baruyer? What do you think of him?”
“A man of action without silly scruples; he’ll be a Minister before long. Look at him, with Barsac and Barthou. Birds who flock together...”
At that moment, there was a stir in the crowd; Dr. Marc Vanel, Homo-Deus, had just been announced. Madame de Virmile hurried forward.
Above medium height, he looked a trifle heavy in his regulation formal attire; his broad shoulders and muscular neck did not seem made for his cramped and uncomfortable garments. His head, a trifle massive, with strongly accentuated fea
tures, had a fantastic expression of power and authoritarian intelligence. In his slightly dark face, his steel-gray eyes had an unsustainable glare. His forehead, very high, was crowned with thick, almost frizzy metallic brown hair; one might have thought it a crown of bronze. He advanced with casual ease and kissed the hand that the Marquise held out to him.
“Be welcome, my dear Master. Everyone is dying to meet you.”
Madame de Virmile had an armchair brought forward, for, even though Vanel was not unaware that she had solicited his presence in order to interest her guests with the story of a few previously-unpublished adventures, it was necessary for her to mask that desire under the pretext of an introduction to Parisian society: an introduction that began immediately. The audience filed past Vanel, who, standing beside the armchair, found an amiable word for everyone. Then he sat down, and Madame de Virmile, leaning toward him, went into action.
“Are all the fabulous tales told about fakirs true?”
“The fabulous, Madame, is only so for those who do not understand its causes.”
“And you can produce the same phenomena as the fakirs?”
That dialogue, in a loud tone, could be heard by everyone in the profound silence of that Parisian assembly.
“My friend, the fakir Ahmasithamani had himself suspended by his feet, head down. He remained like that for several days without taking any nourishment. You wouldn’t want to hang me from your chandelier, I suppose, so that I could do likewise. For one thing, in this costume, I’d look ridiculous, and then again, you’d find the experiment long and tedious. Similarly, my other friend, the fakir Sahamaki, kept his arms raised for many years, each holding a handful of soil containing a sorghum seed, with the result that the seed germinated; a plant surged forth between his fingers, its roots surrounding his wrists, and the fakir thus became a kind of man-plant, to the most bizarre effect.”
“What suffering he must have endured!”
“No—for the good reason that, although the fakir was present so far as the profane were concerned, in reality, he was not.”
Since the beginning of the conversation, a prelude to the occult séance, everyone had drawn nearer, bringing their sets as silently as possible, with the result that a large circle of listeners surrounded Marc Vanel. Quite simply, Homo-Deus went behind his armchair, which he thus made into a kind of podium, He was facing the sofa that now accommodated Madames de Virmile and d’Armez, Huguette and Geneviève, while behind it stood the Marquis de Virmile, Simiane, Claude Barsac, Louis Barthou and Albert Baruyer.
“What do you mean?” asked Madame de Vermile.
“This: you’re not unaware of the work on hypnotism carried out by our eminent doctors, the Charcots, the Dumas, the Richets and the Férés,24 suggesting the most implausible things to subjects naturally prepared by an unhealthy state of neurosis or hysteria. Well, what our doctors obtain from subjects predisposed by an abnormal mental state, the fakirs, subjects predisposed by practice throughout their lives, are the most hypnotizable beings that it is possible to encounter, and they practice on themselves what our doctors practice on others. They can suggest to themselves whatever they wish; thus, by the force of their will alone, they force their spirit—or their soul, as you please—to emerge from their bodies and travel where it will. In the same way, during sleep, our own spirits roam and wander. The fakir, by virtue of daily training, is eventually able to command his spirit; that is why he can submit his body to the worst tortures; he does not feel them, any more than if he had been put to sleep by an anesthetic.”
That’s incredible!” cried Her Blondeness Simone d’Armez. “So, the soul of a fakir can escape his body and roam at random.”
“At random is not the term, for the spirit half of our being, and one is only veritably oneself when one is unburdened of the uncomfortable envelope known as the human body.”
“What a singular theory!” said Albert Baruyer.
“Not at all,” said Vanel, henceforth addressing his gaze more particularly to Simone d’Armez. “A little reflection would enable you to agree. You must have perceived, many a time, that there is a discord between our bodies and our minds, and if that demon obtains the upper hand, it’s at the price of real physical suffering. For example: you plan some excursion, promising yourself the pleasure of contemplating some location or some effect of the light at sunset, but in order to get there, the sun has burned you, the stones of the road have lacerated your feet and insects have bitten you; sweat is streaming over your body; your legs are fatigued, your forehead burning—everything is against you—but you go anyway, because the spirit wills it. What would be more agreeable would be to leave that wretched body behind and go alone, solely by means of the imagination, to wherever one desires to go. Well, among the fakirs, the body is abandoned, like an accessory.”
“Shall we have the chance to see a few phenomena of hypnotism with our own, thanks to you, Master?”
“The clinic at the Salpêtrière offers numerous cases to us every day. They would merely seem more striking if they were presented in the marvelous frame that is the Orient, with its ardent sunlight and its simultaneously starving and neurotic population, undermined by a five-thousand-year fever. There, hypnotism reigns as master, and every Indian is a marvelous subject. Out there, the European is submissive to the ambience and becomes an impressionable subject himself. Hence these phenomena, which are seen and heard everywhere, and which, in reality, only exist in the mind of the spectator. For example, a fakir places in front of him a kind of lyre, and that lyre plays whatever the fakir desires. Do you think that the lyre is really playing? No—it is only playing in the suggestible mind of the spectator.”
Homo-Deus paused for a few moments, and then resumed: “Nevertheless, Madame la Marquise, I should like, in order to thank you for your welcome, to show you a phenomenon of fluidic emanation at a distance, of which I confess that I have not yet made a scientific demonstration. It can perhaps be seen as an instance of the influence of mind on matter. Would you care to have that sidetable brought here and to give me a simple piece of letter paper?
The Marquise hastened to a bell, and gave the order for the requested objects to be brought. Marc Vanel had the sheet of paper passed from hand to hand, and asked Madame d’Armez to place it on the table herself. Then, going to stand with his back to the fireplace, he seemed to absorb himself in profound contemplation.
There was a rather long pause, and a few mocking gazes were beginning to drift away, when Marc’s steely eyes opened again and fixed their gaze on the table. Then, to the general amazement, the sheet of paper rose up a few centimeters above the tabletop. It remained immobile momentarily, and then, with a single surge, fell onto the knees of the Comtesse d’Armez, who could not suppress a cry of fright.
A frisson had passed over every pair of shoulders, and a little timid applause was heard. The Comtesse, emboldened by the bravos of the audience, picked up the sheet of paper.
“Read it,” commanded Vanel’s curt voice.
Her Blondeness Simone d’Armez looked down at the paper. Immediately, an ardent blush covered her face and shoulders.
“Oh!” she cried, in a squeal of offended modesty.
“What’s the matter?” asked those nearest to her.
The Comtesse had dropped the piece of paper. It was de Simiane who picked it up.
“But there’s nothing there,” he said, passing the piece of paper to his neighbors.
“Madame, however, read something,” Vanel replied. “An effect of suggestion produced by one free spirit on another.”
“What was it?” whispered Huguette in Simone’s ear.
“But…you can see, there’s nothing there.” And she darted a glance at Vanel that was both fearful and imploring.
De Simiane had taken the piece of paper back. “What about me?” he asked. “Can’t I read something?”
“Perhaps,” replied the hypnotist. “Look.”
De Simiane looked down at the sheet of paper a
gain, where there was a picture of a mackerel.25 A few other members of the audience saw it, too. He went pale, then wadded up the piece of paper and threw it away, angrily.
Turning toward Vanel, he said: “Do you know what I’ve just seen?”
“I have absolutely no idea, Monsieur, any more than anyone else.”
The Marquise de Virmile had picked up the crumpled sheet.
“But there’s still nothing…nothing at all...”
“Give it to me! To me!” clamored several voices.
Mademoiselle Alexane, the star dancer of the Opéra, had just arrived, and, not having witnessed the two experiments, had them related to her by Michel Georges-Michel, who had seen the fish. So, Vanel being beside her, she said to him: “You merit the pyre, my dear sorcerer.”
Then the conversation moved on, and Vanel took advantage of it to go into the conservatory, toward which he had seen the Comtesse d’Armez heading.
Simone was sitting under an arbor of magnolias with Geneviève d’Orsennes. “Every man for himself!” she exclaimed. “It’s Balsamo.”
Geneviève, under the suggestion of the satyr, understood that she was excess to requirements, and stood up, giving the excuse that she had something to say to her brother, and left Simone and Marc Vanel alone.
“You find my manner of action bold, but I’m nonetheless sincere; allow me to hope that the keen attraction that you inspire in me merits reciprocity.”
“You’re forgetting that I’m married.”
“Very slightly…so very slightly!”
“What do you know about it?”
“I know everything.”
“What strange conceit!”
“No—conceit is unknown to me, but I’m conscious of my means…and I make use of them…with your permission, I’ll resume this conversation, tonight, in your own home.”
“In my home! You’re mad!”
“Mad with love, a little, yes.”
Homo-Deus took the Comtesse’s hands and planted a long kiss on it. Then he drew away, leaving his victim and his prey troubled, pensive and enervated, tracked everywhere by the suggestion of the faun.
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