“You’re lying! You’re lying! It’s not true! My flesh will never know the ignoble frisson of lust, my mouth will never utter the sighs that reveal the pleasure of women in heat. No, I’m not a beast, and I won’t submit to the goat!”
She was panting, and in the ardor of her gestures, she had let go of the lapels of the peignoir, which opened up and revealed her, naked and starry.
Then, for a second, the green irises shone in front of her, and she recoiled.
Now, Marc Vanel spoke in an emotional, dolorous voice
“Jeanne, you’re alone, and I’m only a man. If anyone else—no matter who—had offered me those enticing visions, those luxurious attitudes. I would have hurled myself upon her like a famished beast on a prey. Spare me your hatred, Jeanne, because I haven’t told you the sequel to my thoughts. You know the sentiments, the savage determinations, than animated me when I crossed the threshold of this room. Well, Jeanne, my beloved, when I saw you just now, alone, and all my instincts were driving me toward you, a will more powerful than my own retained me, nailed me to the corner where I was huddled.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you. I suddenly understood, then, the immensity of that love and its character. Jeanne, Jeanne, I adore you—don’t you sense it?—and my lips will never take your lips, if your lips don’t want them to. Oh, I’m so unhappy, for I can measure the time and effort necessary to conquer you. Well, I shan’t be discouraged; I’ll pursue my goal and await my hour; but I’ll only have you now if you offer me the splendors of our body yourself.”
She did not reply with the grim “No!” she had so often pronounced, because she understood, now, the sentiments of the man, and—for the first time—she saw the distance that separates Love from sensual desire. In an ill-assured voice, she said: “Marc, you need to go.”
“Yes, Jeanne, but I need to take away the certainty that you won’t hold this against me.”
Softly, she replied: “I no longer hold this against you.” She took a step toward the voice. “Give me your hand, Marc, or take mine, since I don’t know where you are.”
She felt the contact of burning flesh around her wrist, and perceived the sensation of lips pressing against her hand. She shivered, and pulled away, stammering: “Adieu, Marc.”
“Adieu, Jeanne.”
The bathroom door opened of its own accord, then that of the bedroom, and Jeanne Fortin, going out on to the landing, heard muffled footsteps going down the stairs...
IV. The Gathering Storm
Outside in the savage garden, the Invisible started in surprise. Instead of moonlight enveloping the bare trees with a soft whiteness, there was now dense, warm, feverish, almost tragic darkness.
In the far distance, on the horizon, a black band had risen very rapidly into the sky, extinguishing the stars one by one. Then large inky clouds, driven by a nascent wind, had passed over the earth, veiling the moon at increasing narrow intervals.
The storm was gathering now, and Marc Vanel had difficulty finding his way through the interlaced branches. When he reached the gateway to the road, a pale light suddenly flared, the forerunner of the phenomena that were about to ensue.
Mardruk was dozing on his seat.
He heard the door of the auto click, and then a voice speaking to him through the acoustic tube.
“Let’s go back. At the Porte Maillot I’ll tell you where we’re going.”
V. And Now, Simone d’Armez
On leaving Jeanne Fortin, Marc Vanel was in a state of extreme overexcitement.
All his desires, flowing over his burning skin, were torturing him with imperious needs, and his eyes were phosphorescent again in the auto that was piercing the darkness. He remembered Simone d’Armez, the enticing little Comtesse, and her fiery kisses, the passionate embrace of her perfumed arms. What a flame there had been in her eyes when she had asked him, as a sorcerer, to bring back the libertine dream that had troubled her so much!
Oh, dear Simone! Now he was dreaming about her, her ideal, muscular body. Once again, he sensed the taste of her peppery lips, her soft throat, her amber skin. She was sincerely amorous, and Marc Vanel decided that because of that, tonight, she would be the Substitute.
He picked up the microphone that he used to communicate his orders to Mardruk, and gave him the address. They went through the Bois in a fine rain, falling from heavy clouds that obscured the sky, in which streaks of fire appeared from time to time, preceding rumbles of thunder.
“Quickly!” Marc commanded.
Mardruk pressed the accelerator of the sixty-horsepower, which bounded forward like a fantastic beast.
It was one o’clock in the morning, perhaps later.
Marc would not have any trouble getting into the little Comtesse’s apartment. In anticipation of future visits that he was certain of making, one night or another he had obtained impressions of the locks from the hypnotized apache, which had permitted him to have keys made, by means of which he could enter Simone’s home as easily as his own.
Marc had the auto stop fifty meters away, got out, instructed Mardruk to wait, and, as usual, had no difficulty at all getting into the house. The concierge, profoundly asleep, did not notice the service door opening. Vanel went through the silent rooms whose floors were covered with thick carpets, and was soon in Simone’s bedroom. It was very dark, and he had to remember the layout of the room in order not to bump into the furniture and wake the sleeper.
Fortunately he remembered that a switch near the bed illuminated a discreet nightlight with a pink silk filter. He switched on the feeble light, for he feared that illuminating the large electric lamps would make the lovely Comtesse open her eyes. She was sleeping in an adorable attitude, forming a picture of the purest eighteenth century, her face very rosy, her sensual lips slightly fleshy, her upper body bare, the flesh appearing through delicate lace, her plump white arms like the wings of a dove.
Marc contemplated her for a long time. She had less nobility of contours, fewer muscles and less blood than Jeanne Fortin; she was no antique statue, but her child-like face was charming; everything in her spoke of the joy of love, the pleasure of pleasure. The Invisible saw her smile; her lips exhaled an imperceptible plea, while her features betrayed an emotion of contentment.
What was she dreaming about? What passionate idea was haunting her? Doubtless, she was ardently amorous, and a cold husband neglected her. But as she was naturally honest and rejected the idea of treason with horror, she must know tiresome evenings in which her forsaken, unquiet flesh, summoned dreams that deceived her desire.
So many honest women, so many faithful spouses are like that! How many times, their head buried in the pillow but their eyes wide open, have they not wished, with all their unemployed ardor, for a culpable embrace? They commit their sin cerebrally, and even physically, all alone, and—in minutes of illusion—they live perverse, violent joys, the kisses of the damned, extraordinary caresses. But it does not go any further! On awakening, exhausted and weary, undated, education and social limitations tame them, and they continue to be honest women and faithful spouses.
Oh, if, when they were asleep, a silent male came to visit them, disappearing thereafter forever, returning to the darkness, perhaps their virtue would be less intangible! And if, returning to the question of the Mandarin, a simple pressure on a button could make a powerfully virile, robust and anonymous being surge forth, who would depart once their appeal was satisfied, into the mists from which he had come. Doubtless not one of them would resist the desire to press that button. And, for want of an invisible satyr, more than one contents herself with the caresses of a beloved dog.
Marc Vanel, who was reading Simone’s face as he made these reflections, murmured: “I shall be a first class mandarin.” He put out the night-light.
Outside, the thunder and rain were raging; the atmosphere was heavy with electricity. Suddenly, a clap of thunder following a fantastic bolt of lightning caused the windows, the furniture and the cryst
al of the ceiling-light to shake. And soon, another, longer streak of lightning, similar to a firework, lit up the room.
Then Simone’s wide open eyes saw an unusual individual beside her, and she uttered a scream—the scream of a woman who perceives a danger and is frightened.
Instinctively, Marc Vanel straightened up. He had just experienced the intuition of an obscure menace that he did not understand. Simone, meanwhile, bravely switched on the ceiling-light. A blinding glare fell from above on the individuals present, and the Comtesse, very pale, considered the somewhat bewildered man before her, Marc Vanel.
“You!” she said. “You!”
She let her head fall back on to her pillow and sighed. “It could not, in any case, be anyone else...”
Marc had the habit, when he was invisible, of never speaking. But this time, someone was speaking to him, and seemed able to see him. A sincere, anguished amazement was painted on his face.
Simone went on: “I thought you more a sorcerer than you are, and my disillusionment saddens me, because it puts an end to our relations. Yes, the first time, I thought that a supernatural power gave you the means of only being, at times, a creature of dream. Alas, here you are in the flesh and bone; you’re only a man, just like the rest, and I, now, am an adulterous wife.”
She dissolved in tears, and Vanel, stupefied, considered her without the power to make a gesture, the one that was required.
“A man just like the rest,” he stammered, repeating Simone’s words.
He looked down at himself and understood. He was visible.
While the young woman sobbed, he remained pensive. The adventure caused him real pain, for it resulted from a failure of his invention, and his own failure, too—and that truly did him harm.
He quickly divined the reason for that avatar: it was the fault of the storm. His body, charged with electric fluid, had not been sufficiently isolated in an atmosphere charged with ozone. A contact had been established between the ambient electricity and that which ensured his invisibility; thus, an event had occurred akin to the abrupt discharge of an accumulator in the middle of a storm; all his fluid had abandoned him and he had become visible again—exactly like other men, in fact. And now he found himself in the ridiculous situation of a man caught in a fault, and weakening.
Marc Vanel was too intelligent not to understand that it was finished between Simone and him. He leapt out of the bed, and said in a faint and dolorous voice: “Pardon me, I’m a very poor sorcerer. I had the power that you supposed me to have, but a furious nature has reminded me, tonight, that the power of God always exceeds that of human beings. I should not have come tonight.”
Ashamed, she was still hiding her face in the pillow. He headed for the door, slowly, head bowed, defeated.
As he was about to go out, she sat up.
“My friend, how will you leave?”
Marc Vanel thought sadly: her reputation. He smiled palely and said: “Don’t worry. No one will ever know anything about our adventure. It will remain in my memory as a strange flower too briefly bloomed, and although no human being will ever know about this amour, I will always retain the delectable perfume within me.”
“Thank you.”
As she said that, the manner in which she looked at Marc betrayed her regret—and he went away less sadly.
Mardruk, on seeing him, uttered an exclamation of amazement.
“Yes, my poor Mardruk,” Vanel said to his chauffeur, in a melancholy tone, “the science of love has proved bankrupt, this time. Let’s go home.”
VI. Huguette de Virmile
It had been a bad night for Marc Vanel; the two amorous failures he had just experienced put that passionate nature into a state of nervous tension that the memory of the two beauties he had contemplated in the course of the night was not calculated to calm. Unable to sleep, he got up and went down to his laboratory, haunted by the accident that had just occurred.
Unless he were to renounce his marvelous discovery, it was necessary to find a means of avoiding a further catastrophe, for some such adventure could have happened to him at the Baruyers’ home, and then he would have been the murderer caught in the act—and he, the superman, Homo-Deus, would have been arrested and guillotined like a vulgar bandit.
With his head in his hands, he thought hard. He envisaged new chemical procedures, means of isolating himself more completely. Daylight surprised him still at work, mentally, on the perfection of invisibility. An idea had taken form in his mind.
“I’ll talk to Jeanne about it, and the two of us will be able to solve the problem.”
That resolution calmed him, and gave him confidence. He saw in that revelation made to Jeanne Fortin a means of getting closer to her, and that baroque thought brought a smile to his lips. It would be amusing to make love, both of us invisible; the trivial aspect of the act, which Jeanne finds repugnant, would thus be avoided.
He was about to throw himself on the bed in order to get a little rest when the sound of an auto pulling up outside the house caused him to stay where he was.
Almost immediately, Mardruk came in.
“Master, it’s the veiled lady who came before...”
“Huguette!” exclaimed Marc Vanel. “Show her in.”
The young woman came into the studio where he was meditating, and immediately came toward him, nervously. “Excuse me for disturbing you so early, Master, but I left the house at dawn in order not to be seen by the servants.”
Marc sat her down on a divan and took her hand. “I told you that I would be at your disposal when you needed me. The moment has come?”
“Judge for yourself. My marriage to the Comte de Simiane has been arranged to take place in three days. My mother had pushed forward so actively with the preparations for the celebration that the sinister incest would have occurred sooner than I expected.”
While she was speaking, Marc looked at her. The animation into which her singular situation had plunged her gave her features an expression that embellished them further; her hand shivered in the savant’s, and she suddenly withdrew it.
“I came here to find a protector,” she stammered.
Marc was slightly embarrassed. As he gazed at the splendid young woman, desire had gripped him, and unwittingly, his expression had betrayed him. He collected himself.
“Forgive me,” he said. “In spite of my science, I’m only a man, and as such, submissive to the impulses of my temperament. I’m still too young to play with beauty with impunity. I would not want to take on the appearance of a Don Juan in your eyes and abuse your confidence, but believe me, it’s a hard proof.”
Huguette stood up. “I’m not, alas, the ideal young woman of whom poets and fashionable novelists sing. Life has been hard for me. Although pure, I know what vice is. Around me I’ve seen nothing but depravity. Like all children abandoned to themselves, I’ve had unhealthy curiosities. I’ve spied, I’ve seen, I’ve learned, and if I’ve remained virtuous, it’s because my pride had set me above certain sins. The ermine, it’s said, dies of a stain on its fur; I’m similar—I’d die of a stain on my dignity.”
“And yet you came back here, to the home of a man you don’t know?”
“I came back because I judge you to be above other men, almost equal to a god—at any rate, far above the mundane society of which I have a horror.”
“Ah! What dream have you had, then?”
“A dream, alas. Can one live, if one doesn’t dream? I live, since I have a hope, a goal. My dream is to liberate myself from this ridiculous life and leave—to go where? I don’t know, but to flee, to flee recklessly toward the new, toward the ideal.”
“And you’ll flee alone?”
She blushed. “Yes, at first. Afterwards, I don’t know. I’m only a woman…just as you said, a little while ago, ‘I’m only a man, in spite of my science.’”
Marc stood up and paced back and forth across the studio for a few moments.
“Listen to me, Huguette,” he said, stopping
in front of her. “If I had known you sooner, perhaps I would have asked for your love. Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to talk to you as an amorous man, but as a friend. I’m in love with a young woman who, in all probability, will never be mine. If that amour were not my entire life, my entire hope, I would say to you: ‘Let’s leave together,’ because you have everything within you necessary to be adored, and I deserve to be loved. But beside that impossible love, there is room for physical love—I’m speaking to you brutally, you see. If, once liberated from the caste that horrifies you, you have need of an affection, a desire for a man, think of me, who is worthy of you.”
“You do well to speak to me like that,” said Huguette, her voice trembling slightly. “The reply I shall make to you has something of the air of a bargain, but events have overtaken my modesty and my will. On the day I am free I shall give myself a master, and that master will be you.”
Homo-Deus took the virgin in his arms and kissed her forehead chastely.
VII. A Spring Night’s Dream
It was the night following Huguette de Virmile’s visit to Marc Vanel—which is to say, two days before her marriage to Monsieur de Simiane, her mother’s aged lover and the father of the bride: an Edenic night on the middle of June.34 After several days of storms and squalls, the calmed atmosphere was definitely set fair, and the end of spring seemed to promise a splendid summer. It was a warm night, with a dark sapphire sky studded with a diamante star named Huguette, a svelte brunette intoxicated by her blooming youth, who was further inebriated by respiring all the pollens of renewal.
After the contract dinner, the young woman, offering the pretext of a slight fatigue, retired at about eleven o’clock to her own apartment, a kind of pavilion attached to the house by a small gallery. In that fashion, Huguette had her own abode, which she had occupied since childhood. Madame Virmile, unconcerned with maternal duties, had thus rid herself of a child who had aged her, putting her in the shade by virtue of her beauty. Huguette had gained in strength and health in consequence. She had lived in the vast garden, almost in the middle of nature, without disturbing overmuch the artificial existence and worldly habits of her mother. It had required the necessity of establishing her lover on a solid footing and keeping him closer to her for the Marquise to consent to bringing their daughter out of that penumbra.
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