The Mysteries of New Orleans (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures)

by Baron Ludwigvon Reizenstein

  It was also in the Atchafalaya Bank that we met Sulla for the first time—but this will only be shown now, in the …

  Second Image

  The Hanged Woman, The Hanged Woman’s Son, and the Hangman

  (Hiram inserted the second slide.)

  The emanation theory was overcome by the undulatory theory, for there could be no question here of the propagation of light in waves. It can be seen on the white wall of clouds and also in how the projector functions.

  Cagliostro knew how to fix photographic images on golden plates—an innovation that was buried with him. No Daguerre has managed to recreate it. Through the shimmering haze of incense, he could make his creation take on life, and he laughed and cried with them. In the same way, Hiram had adapted the Mantis religiosa to modernize this lost process. His images are even more successful and have more brilliant coloration. There stood a wild mob of people, their beastly faces hungering for blood, surrounding an unfortunate pregnant Negro woman to lead her to the slaughter—without reason, only in response to the accusation of a rabid man. He came from the South and had offered himself as hangman. The projector was really doing a wonderful job. At first glance, who could mistake the face of the slave-breeder Ira B* from Louisiana? The Negro woman is nothing more to him than a wild pig, loaded—or pregnant, as they would say with a human being. What an act of heroism, O noble Ira! You can boast of being a hangman without fear and without reproach.

  (The company is upset about this image—including the Hungarian, who agrees that it is improper to show such an image to the group. He hesitates, however, and decides to let the presentation take its course.)

  Now the unfortunate Negro woman—Victoria of the White Rose—becomes a mother. The child falls into the midst of the mob—the sovereign people are ashamed of themselves. It is a nightmare of lynch mob justice.

  (Lady Evans-Stuart wants to command Hiram to leave the salon that instant—but her words die on her lips. Then she closes her eyes and watches no more. Strange, this offensive scene, the dreadful fate of this Negro woman, makes the blood freeze in their veins—they are offended by the magician’s limitless perversity, and yet no one moves. Only the Hungarian clenches his fists and swears to himself, “The old gray beast will pay for it.”)

  The mob, the hangman, and the hanged woman vanish. Alone on the white wall of mist lies the baby Sulla. He grows before their eyes.

  (This phenomenon is less shocking to the company—but the Hungarian’s eyes light up and the lightning bug game begins anew. His brain convulses several times in a row, as he recognizes Sulla.)

  Hello, hello—what is billowing around the Negro Sulla in the black clouds of dust, what dark ink spits around? Are they coming alive again? There! Lady Merlina, pale mestizas, cholas, zambas, pale chinos—Pharis, Elma, Hyderilla!

  Poof! Flown away!

  Third Image

  The Panthress and the Hyena

  (Hiram inserted the third slide.)

  This is no optical illusion, just the opposite: vera ars discendi methodum fluxionum et serierum infinitarum.8 One, two, three, four, five, six, seven—stop, no more! What point is there to all this counting? It is enough to see that there is a significant number of beds standing on the white cloud wall. In each of them are cats—stretching, hopping, snoring, frolicking over and under.

  (The Hungarian now believed Hiram was more than an ordinary charlatan—he saw in him his old persecutor, his gray beast. He recognized the large dormitory of the Hamburg Mill, where once the pale chino zambo chola ruled. He was rather glad that the magician had enough discretion to display cats instead of women. Still, the heads, the faces of these cats? Still, no one in the company had noticed that yet, not even the Hungarian.)

  How well the magician does his work! Truly there has never been a finer projector! Through the dormitory door jumps a panthress. On her appearance, the cats act as if they are sleeping. Now the door of the adjoining chamber opens. It is the Negro Sulla again. The panthress slips into the chamber and shuts the door behind her with her paws.

  (Each of the company thinks: “What could that mean? What are they doing in the chamber? A female beast and a Negro man?” Only the Hungarian was not confused.)

  Poof! Sulla and the panthress are gone. But the many beds, with the cats in them and over them and under them and between them and next to them, these are still visible on the white cloud-wall.

  But there! There slinks a hyena through the salon door and into the dormitory.

  (“That’s a hyena! I have seen them many a time in the zoos,” say the onlookers—soon they will have more to say on it.)

  The hyena turns to present himself and looks at the company face-to-face. The hyena has the Hungarian’s head, pale as death, his high-forehead, his long beard.

  (“That’s too much!” Lady Evans-Stuart cries out, “Sir, enough with your pictures!” The others are shouting that, too—only not the Hungarian, who knows what the image intends. When he sees his own pale image on the ugly neck of a hyena, he starts back—he wants to cry out, but he cannot. He wants to raise himself from his armchair, but he cannot, he is exhausted unto death. Are any of you capable of mustering the will to throw the rascal out, who has so offended the count? Why can’t the count do it himself? That is what everyone is thinking, and that’s how it remains. The Mantis religiosa draws its circle ever tighter.)

  Away we go again!

  Fourth Image

  Elective Affinities

  (Hiram inserts the fourth slide.)

  Now an entirely different world appears. There is no black person to be seen. The place is Algiers—but the image trembles mightily on the white cloud-wall. We have to wait until it comes to rest. Oh how beautiful it is now! This blooming, enchanting garden! And what stands there in the middle, so secretively placed behind the oleanders, magnolias, orange trees, and china trees? It is the lovable cottage! The most wonderful of all the houses in Algiers. And now, out of the cottage steps a slender blond satyr, with locks of gold and eyes of blue. Beautiful as a dawning day—only a little delicate—and as naked and alabaster-white as his stepbrother Apollo.

  (“Emil, my Emil!” cries a voice from the audience, and the owner of this voice rises from her seat, stretching her arms out, trying to lunge at the deceptive white cloud-wall.)

  (“Holy Virgin!” Lady Evans-Stuart cries out, “what is Countess Jenny doing?”)

  (“Damn’d fakir!” hisses Captain Marcy, “that’s what he is, Hiram … that’s the young man who misled me on the Red River.”)

  (Jenny had to cringe back before she’d gone halfway, for the light emanating from the cloud-wall almost blinded her. She threw herself in her armchair and whimpered, “My Emil, my poor, dear Emil!”)

  Emil vanishes into the dark shadows of a tree-lined path, and another man steps out of the cottage and stands in the same place.

  (“My Albert!” cries the same voice that earlier had mourned for Emil, and its owner wants to rush the white cloud-wall. Halfway there she must cringe back again, owing to the blinding light glowing from the wall. She throws herself back in her armchair and mourns, “My dear, sweet husband!”)

  (But one should look now at Claudine de Lesuire and the baroness de Saint Marie—they have turned white as nuns and are shaking with rage.)

  The cottage, the lovable cottage, is gone, together with the garden, Emil, and Albert.

  This time the scenery changes very quickly. It is really requires concentration to follow it. There is hardly time to dip a pen.

  Toulouse Street? How apropos! The fat, spongelike man with a guitar under his arm—isn’t that the Cocker? As he lives and breathes! Now the scoundrel is gone, but the house he stood before opens up. The same man kneels before a marvelous maiden with shining, blue-black hair and large, splendid, antelope-eyes.

  (“My Orleana! That awful man! Orleana, Orleana!” Claudine cries out, going half-mad before hiding her head in her old aunt’s lap.)

  Poof! Away like a feather carried awa
y by a breeze while a mattress is being filled.

  Now there is the prince of Württemberg. He looks very concerned as he holds a small child in his arm. “Where is Countess Jenny?” he seems to be saying. And when he glances down at the child, he looks at it in a comic manner, as if to say to the little worm, “Dear child, if no one else knows, then at least you should know who your father really is.”

  The elective affinities are gone!

  Fifth and Last Image

  Reunion to Follow

  (Hiram inserts the fifth and last slide.)

  The trampling of horses—a snort as from a mucus-filled nostril, a whinny, in between them a true howl from hell, then the weeping of a person—what is coming? Three minutes have passed and still nothing can be seen on the white cloud-wall. What is the matter with the projector? Is the image to be heard and not seen this time?

  Now it comes! The scene that had been heard now takes on color and forms itself. A wasted, dreadful locale—everywhere are horse tails and mucous nostrils. One slips on a patch of mucus, and it splashes like a gobbet of rain on the cavalcade of mad huntsmen.

  Here it is! This old stud has an arm in its mouth, the mare a leg. A young foal has ripped off the foot of another leg, throws it in the air and catches it again. Clop, clop, here come two other horses, one carrying two thin thighs and the other hindquarters—then others follow with rump, belly, and heart. Are these parts all from the same human being? That’s right, a human being.

  But the head—can’t we see a head? They part and make way for Lydia Prairiefire! She has the head.

  It is the same head that earlier sat on the neck of the hyena, but it no longer has a high forehead and a long beard—there is almost no forehead left, and the skull is as naked as a rat’s tail, bloody all over, and, what is most disgusting, there is a gaping scar on the cheek. What? Are there two heads? No, but there are four eyes. The two eyes emerging from the gaping scar are fascinating, since they are weeping. They belong to the peddler Cleveland.

  (There is a cry of terror, not even excepting Frida this time, whose merciful madness had earlier spared her from fear. The Hungarian did not scream aloud from terror. He was reaching into his pocket, and once it has become still as death, the muffled sound of a pistol-hammer being cocked is heard.)

  “J’ai l’honneur—” and Hiram bowed. The lights of the salon flamed bright again.

  “S’il vous plaît, Monsieur Cleveland,” Hiram called out from the door, turning to the Hungarian and pointing at the entering peddler.

  “Count! Sam Cleveland from Illinois!”

  • • •

  Dear Jenny’s heart didn’t hurt any more, nor did the splendid blonde Frida’s head, since the former had been split by sharp steel and the latter had been smashed by a pistol bullet.

  The morning after Hiram’s presentation, the two sisters lay next to each other in one coffin. They had often said in life that they wished it so. Constanze and her little sister Gertrude, who knew of this wish, had laid the two sisters next to each other.

  Only Jenny’s face lay exposed; that of her sister was thickly covered.

  Why must they lie together dead? Had these unhappy women done anything to deserve it?

  The lowdown dogs of moralism will rush in and draw conclusions that support their ilk. These hounds, if allowed to run at large, would sniff around the deathbed and howl: “One sinned with her heart, the other with her head—it had to happen!”

  But we owe the reader some information about the mysterious events of the previous night.

  At almost the same instant the peddler Cleveland entered the salon on Hiram’s summons, Constanze and Gertrude (who had been looking after the ailing Dudley) were surprised by a loud report.

  “That was a shot, Gertrude,” Constanze said, and before she finished her words, she heard a second and a third shot.

  Dudley in fact lay in a fever, and she was not returning to consciousness from a swoon, as Lady Evans-Stuart, Constanze, and her little sister believed. But she rose from her bed in terror and cried out.

  “Where is the shooting? Are you still there, Constanze, Gertrude?”

  “Calm down dear Dudley! We are with you,” they responded as if from one mouth. Then they listened.

  They heard the black servants calling one another by name, then there was a hasty sound of someone running down the stairs—a loud slamming of doors, a violent opening of them, and then a fourth shot that caused the house to shudder from top to bottom.

  The sleeping chamber in which Dudley lay, watched over by Constanze and Gertrude, was located in a wing of the Stuart mansion separated from the attic by three broad passageways containing rooms, and thus it was rather far away from the salon where Hiram had conjured up his images. Despite that, even this part of the mansion shook from the last shot.

  Constanze rushed to the door, but she opened it only a little, afraid to step out.

  “Don’t go out, Constanze,” Dudley asked, who worried her friend was leaving.

  “What could that have been?” Gertrude mused anxiously, laying her blonde head on Dudley’s pillow.

  “Is it in our house, Constanze?” Dudley asked, dropping her head back on the pillow.

  “You are feverish, dear Dudley,” Gertrude declared, placing her naked arm on her friend’s glowing cheeks.

  “Gertrude, it must be a fever. Where am I? Are you still there?” Dudley cried out suddenly.

  “Dudley, my dear Dudley! … Constanze, come here, look at Dudley,” the dear child begged, “see what a fever she has!”

  Across the way, beneath the attic, it was finally silent—silent as death. Constanze closed the door again and, without intending to do it, she secured it with the double bar.

  “That must have been someplace else,” she said. “Still, I thought I could hear the voices of our own servants.”

  She now stood in front of Dudley’s bed.

  “Put your hand here again,” Gertrude said to her sister, leading her hand to Dudley’s hot forehead.

  “My God, Dudley, you have a fever?”

  “Mother, Mother—help! help! Count Lajos wept—Mother, look at my hand, how the tears burned. Help me, dear Mother—I cannot remove the tears—oh Mother, it hurts so much. Where did my little seat under the Weymouth pine go? I was always your good child, Mother—why do you reject me now? Mother, the abbé killed me—but no, now he’s going away—it is the count!” Dudley raved on this dreadful manner for some time.

  “Constanze, run down and get Dudley’s mother, I’ll stay here until you return,” Gertrude ordered her sister.

  “Good heavens, she says she is so sick—yes, stay Gertrude—Dudley, should I get Mother?” Constanze leaned over Dudley’s feverish face before leaving the bedroom with an inexpressibly pained expression.

  But she was no sooner out the door than she returned.

  Gertrude jumped up in shock when she saw her.

  Constanze was as white as death.

  “What’s happening, Constanze?” Gertrude asked, her whole body shaking. Meanwhile, Dudley was raving once more, more dreadfully than before.

  “I couldn’t go to the stairs, Gertrude—how glad I am to be back here.”

  “But what’s the matter, Constanze? Don’t frighten me so dreadfully! Constanze, tell me—listen to poor Dudley—get … oh leave it, I’ll get someone myself—but what is the matter?”

  Gertrude asked all this in confusion, and when she tried to go to the door herself, her sister held her back, commanding: “Little sister, don’t go out—wait a bit until it’s gone—oh stay, stay!”

  “What is out there, Constanze? Listen to poor Dudley—she wants her mother!”

  “I cannot tell you what it was, Gertrude—when I came to the stairs, it pushed me back—”

  Dudley resumed her raving, and in such a terrifying manner that the two girls could not do anything but scream.

  Constanze did not release Gertrude from her side, although Gertrude wanted to rush out the door de
spite her sister’s strange report. Instead, they hurried together to the window, which gave a clear view of the side of the garden, and called the names of male and female servants.

  A Negro who was rushing from the garden into the adjoining courtyard heard Constanze’s call for help from the window.

  He paused a moment and looked up.

  When Constanze noticed this, she called to him.

  “What happened downstairs? Was that dreadful shooting at our place? Tell Semiramis and Hannah to come up—I cannot come down, and Miss Dudley is so sick—”

  “There’s nobody else here but me—the others are all gone, Miss.”

  “For heaven’s sake, what was going on, Tom? Where is everybody? Where is Lady Evans-Stuart? Tell her she should come up, her child is so sick—”

  “There’s nobody here, Miss,” the Negro repeated, then he sobbed, pointing in the direction of the grand salon. “There are still two in there, but they’re dead—”

  Constanze and Gertrude rushed from the window, and in a moment of extreme agitation they went through the door without the least bit of fear. There was nothing on the stairs to hold them back. As they rushed along they did not notice the thin, fine strips of mist that followed them down the stairs and then vanished down the long corridor into the garden, following a breeze.

  Gertrude and Constanze lost their senses when they entered the salon.

  Here, in the same place Hiram had stood with his projector, lay dear Jenny:

  … as pale, as thin,

  And as immobile,

  As if she had been an Italian statue of marble

  The image of Diana.

  A dagger was stuck in her heart, and her hands covered her dead eyes. Don’t ask who plunged the deadly steel into her lovely young breast—do not think it was Hiram when you see her lying so. If anyone should tell you who did it now, you would henceforth brand that person a murderer. It is enough to know that she fell victim to romanticism on the cursed soil of America.