The truth flashed upon me in an instant, — I was the dupe of my own frenzy — and the leopard was nothing but a brain-phantasm! I laughed aloud, buttoned my coat close over me and drew myself erect, — as I did this, the leopard rose with slow and stealthy grace, and when I moved prepared to follow me. Again I looked at it — again it looked at me, — again I counted the spots on its sleek skin, — the thing was absolutely real and distinct to my vision, — was it possible that a diseased brain could produce such seemingly tangible shapes? I began to walk rapidly, — and another peculiarity of my hallucination discovered itself, — namely, that before me as I looked I saw nothing but the usual surroundings of the streets and the passing people, — but behind me I knew, I felt the horrible monster at my heels, — the monster created by my own poisoned thought, — a creature from whom there was no possible escape. The enemies of the body we can physically attack, and often physically repel, — but the enemies of the mind, — the frightful phantoms of a disordered imagination — these no medicines can cure, no subtle touch disperse.
And yet I could not quite accept the fact of the nervous havoc wrought upon me. I saw a boy carrying a parcel of Figaros to a neighbouring kiosque — and stopping him, I purchased one of his papers.
“Tell me,” I then said, lightly and with a feigned indifference. “Do you see a — a great dog following me? I chanced upon a stray one on the Pont Neuf just now, but I don’t want it at my lodgings. Can you see it?”
The boy looked up and down and smiled.
“Je ne vois rien, monsieur!”
“Merci!” and nodding to him I strolled away, resolved not to look back again till I reached my own abode.
Once there, I turned round at the door. The leopard was within two inches of me. I kept a backward watch on it, as it followed me in, and up the stairs to my room. I shut the door violently in a frantic impulse of hope that I might thus shut it out, — of course that was useless, — and when I threw myself into a chair, it lay down on the floor opposite me. Then I realized that my case was one in which there could be no appeal, — it was no use fighting against spectra. The only thing to be done was to try and control the frenzy of fear that every now and then threatened to shake down all reason and coherency for ever and make of me a mere howling maniac. I tried to read, — but found I could not understand the printed page, — I found more distraction in thinking of Pauline and her death, — if indeed she were dead. Then, all unbidden, the memory of the fair and innocent Héloïse came across my mind. Should I go and tell her that I had had a strange dream in which it seemed as though I had frightened Pauline into drowning herself? No! — I would wait; — I would wait and watch the Morgue, — for till I saw her there I could not be sure she was dead. Anon, a fragment of that old Breton song Héloïse used to recite repeated itself monotonously in my ears —
“Mon étoile est fatale,
Mon état est contre nature,
Je n’ai eu dans ce monde
Que des peines à endurer;
Nul chrétien sur la terre
Me veuille du bien!”
I hummed this over and over again to myself till I began to shed maudlin tears over my own wretched condition; I had brought myself to it, — but what of that? — the knowledge did not ameliorate matters. If you know you have done ill, say the moralists, you have gained the greatest possible advantage, because knowing your evil you can amend it. Very wise in theory no doubt! — but no use in practice. I could not eliminate the poisonous wormwood from my blood, — I was powerless to obliterate from my sight that repulsive spectral animal that lay before me in such seemingly substantial breathing guise. And so I wept weakly and foolishly as a driveling drunkard weeps over his emptied flagon, — and thought vaguely of all sorts of things. I even wondered whether, notwithstanding my having gone so far, there might not yet be a remedy for me — why not? — there was a Charcot in Paris — no man wiser, — no man kinder. But suppose I went to him, what would be the result. He would tell me to give up Absinthe. Give up Absinthe? — why then, I should give up my life! — I should die! — I should be taken away to that terrible unknown country whither I had sent Silvion Guidèl, — where Pauline had followed him — and I had no wish to go there; — I might meet them, so I stupidly fancied, and it was too soon for such a meeting — yet! No! — I could not give up Absinthe, — my fairy with the green eyes, my love, my soul, my heart’s core, the very centre and pivot of my being! — anything but that I would do gladly! — but not that, — never, never that! Pah! how that leopard stared at me as I sat glowering and thinking, and pulling at the ends of my moustache, in a sort of dull stupor, — the stupor of mingled illness and starvation. For I had eaten nothing since the previous day, and though I was faint, it was not the faintness of natural hunger. That is another peculiarity of my favourite cordial, — taken in small doses it may provoke appetite, — but taken in large and frequent draughts, it invariably kills it. The thought of food attracted yet nauseated me, and so I remained huddled up in my chair engrossed in my own reflections, the nervous tears still now and then trickling from my eyes and dropping like slow hot rain on my closely clenched hands.
The sound of a bugle-note startled me for a moment, and sent my thoughts flying off among fragmentary suggestions of national pride and military glory. France! France! — oh, fair and radiant France! — how canst thou smile on in the faces of such degenerate children as are clambering at thy knees to-day! Oh, France! — what glories were thine in old time! — what noble souls were born of thee! — what white flags of honour waved above thy glittering hosts! — what truth and chivalry beat in the hearts of thy sons, what purity and sweetness ruled the minds of thy daughters! The brilliancy of native wit, of inborn courtesy, of polished grace, were then the natural outcome of naturally fine feelings; — but now, — now! — what shall be said of thee, () France, who hast suffered thyself to be despoiled by conquerers and art almost forgetting thy vows of vengeance! Paris, steeped in vice and drowned in luxury, feeds her brain on such loathsome literature as might make even coarse-mouthed Rabelais and Swift recoil, — day after day, night after night, the absinthe-drinkers crowd the cafés, and swill the pernicious drug that of all accursed spirits ever brewed to make of man a beast, does most swiftly fly to the seat of reason to there attack and dethrone it; — and yet, the rulers do nothing to check the spreading evil, — the world looks on purblind as ever and selfishly indifferent, — and the hateful cancer eats on into the breast of France, bringing death closer every day. France! — my France! degraded, lost, and cowardly as I am, — too degraded, too lost, too cowardly to even fight in the lowest ranks for thee, there are moments when I am not blind to thy glories, when I am not wholly callous as to thy fate! I love thee, France! — love thee with the foolish, powerless love that chained and beaten slaves may feel for their native land when exiled from it, — a love that cannot prove its strength by any great or noble act, — that can do nothing, — nothing but look on and watch thee slipping like a loosened jewel out of the blazing tiara of proud nations, — and watching, know most surely that J, and such as I, have shaken thee from what thou wert, and what thou still shouldst be! “Aux armes, citoyens!” I cry stupidly, as my patriotic reverie breaks in my brain like a soap-bubble in air, “Formez vos bataillons!”
Ah God! — I start from my chair, staggering to and fro, my head clasped between my hands; — I am dreaming again, like a fool! — dreaming, — and here I am, an absintheur in the city of Absinthe, and glory is neither for me, nor for thee, Paris, thou frivolous, lovely, godless, lascivious dominion of Sin! Godless! — and why not? — sinful! — and why not? God did not answer us when we prayed, — He was on the side of the Teutons.
And we have found out that when we try to he good, life is hard and disagreeable; when we are wicked, or what moralists consider wicked, then we find everything pleasant and easy. Some people find the reverse of this, or so they say, — well! — they are quite welcome to be virtuous if they choose. I tried to
be virtuous once, and with me it failed to prove its advantages. I loved a woman honestly, and was betrayed; another man loved the same woman dishonestly and — kept her faith! This was God’s doing (because everything is done by the will of God) therefore you see it was no use my striving to be honest! False arguments? specious reasoning? — not at all! I have the logic of an absintheur! voilà tout!
That leopard again! — By-and-bye I began to find a certain wretched amusement in watching the sunlight play on the smooth skin of this undesired spectral attendant, and I endeavoured to accept its presence with resignation. After a while I discovered that when I remained passive in one place for some time, the hallucination was brought forward in front of my eyes, — whereas when I walked or was otherwise in rapid motion it was only to be seen behind me. Let scientists explain this if they can, by learned dissertations on the nerve-connections between the spine and brain-cells, the fact remains that the impression created upon me of the actual palpable presence of the animal was distinct and terribly real, — and though later on I found I could pass my hand through its shining substance, the conviction of its reality never left me. Nor is there much chance of its ever leaving me, — it is with me now, and will probably continue to haunt me to my dying day. I walk through Paris apparently alone, but the huge, panting, stealthy thing is always close behind me, — my ears as well as my eyes testify to its presence, — I sit in cafés and it lies down in front of me, and we — the spectre and I — stare at each other for hours! People say I have a downward look, — sometimes they ask why I so often give a rapid glance behind me as though in fear or anxiety; — well! — it is because I always have a vague hope that this phantasmal horror may go as suddenly as it came — but it never does — it never will! André Gessonex used to peer behind him in just the same fashion, — I remembered it now, and understood it. And I idly wondered what sort of creature the Absinthe-fairy had sent to him so persistently that he should have seen no way out of it but suicide. Now I had the courage of endurance, — or let us say, the cowardice; for I could not bear the thought of death, — it was the one thing that appalled me. For I so grasped the truth of the amazing fecundity of life everywhere, that I knew and felt death could not be a conclusion, — but only the silence and time needed for the embryo-working of another existence. And on that other existence I dared not ponder! Oh, if there is one thing I rate at in the Universe more than another, it is the uncertainty of Creation’s meaning. Nature is a great mathematician, so the scientists declare — then why is the chief number in the calculation always missing? Why is it that no matter how we count and weigh and plan, we can never make up the sum total? There is surely a fault somewhere in the design, — and perchance the great unseen, silent, indifferent Force we call God, has, in a dull moment, propounded a vast Problem to which He Himself may have forgotten the Answer!
XXXIII.
DURING the next two days I lived for the Morgue, and the Morgue only. I could not believe Pauline was dead till I saw her there, — there on the wet cold marble where her lover had lain before her. I haunted the place, — I skulked about it at all hours like a thief meditating plunder. And at last my patience was rewarded. An afternoon came when I saw the stretcher carried in from the river’s bank with more than usual pity and reverence, — and I, pressing in with the rest of the morbid spectators, saw the fair, soft, white body of the woman I had loved and hated and maddened and driven to her death, laid out on the dull hard slab of stone like a beautiful figure of frozen snow. The river had used her tenderly — poor little Pauline! — it had caressed her gently and had not disfigured her delicate limbs or spoilt her pretty face, — she looked so wise, so sweet and calm, that I fancied the cold and muddy Seine must have warmed and brightened to the touch of her drowned beauty!
Yes! — the river had fondled her! — had stroked her cheeks and left them pale and pure, — had kissed her lips and closed them in a childlike happy smile, — had swept all her dark hair back from the smooth white brow just to show how prettily the blue veins were pencilled under the soft transparent skin, — had closed the gentle eyes and deftly pointed the long dark lashes in a downward sleepy fringe — and had made of one little dead girl so wondrous and piteous a picture, that otherwise hard-hearted women sobbed at sight of it, and strong men turned away with hushed footsteps and moistened eyes. The very officials at the Morgue were reverent, — they stood apart and looked on solemnly, — one of them raised the tiny white hand and examined a ring on the finger, a small enamel forget-me-not in gold, and seemed about to draw it off, but on second thoughts left it where it was. I knew that ring well, — Héloïse had given it to her — it was a trinket for which she had always had a sentimental fondness such as girls often indulge in for perfectly worthless souvenirs. I stared and stared, — I gloated on every detail of that delicate, half-nude form, — and my brain was steady enough to remind me that now — now it was my duty to identify the poor little corpse without a moment’s delay, so that it might be borne reverently to the care of the widowed Comtesse de Chermilles and Héloïse St. Cyr. Then it would receive proper and honourable interment, — and Pauline, like Shakespeare’s Ophelia would have
“Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home
Of bell and burial.”
But no! — I put away the suggestion as soon as it occurred to me. I took a peculiar delight in thinking that if her body were not identified within the proper interval, she too, like her lover, Silvion Guidél, would be cast into the general ditch of death, without a name, without a right to memory! My deformed and warped intelligence found a vivid pleasure in the contemplation of such petty and unnecessary cruelty, — it seemed good to me to wreak spite upon the dead, — and as I have already told you, the brain of a confirmed absintheur accepts the most fiendish ideas as both beautiful and just. If you doubt what I say, make inquiries at any of the large lunatic asylums in France, — ask to be told some of the aberrations of absinthe-maniacs, who form the largest percentage of brains gone incurably wrong, — and you will hear enough to form material for a hundred worse histories than mine! What can you expect from a man, who has poisoned his blood and killed his conscience? You may talk of the Soul as you will — but the Soul can only make itself manifest in this life through the Senses, — and if the Senses are diseased and perverted, how can the messages of the spirit be otherwise than diseased and perverted also?
And so, yielding to the devilish humours working within me, I held my peace and gave no sign as to the identity of Pauline; — but I went to the Morgue so frequently, nearly every hour in fact, and stared so long and persistently at her dead body that my conduct at last attracted some attention from the authorities in charge. One evening, the third, I think, after she had been laid there, an official tapped me on the arm.
“Pardon! Monsieur seems to know the corpse?”
I looked at him angrily, and though there were a few people standing about us, I gave him the lie direct.
“You mistake. I know nothing!”
He eyed me with suspicion and disfavour.
“You seem to take a strange interest in the sight of the poor creature, all the same!”
“Well, what of that?” I retorted. “The girl, though dead, is beautiful! I am an artist! — I have the soul of a poet!” and I laughed ironically. “love beauty — and I study it wherever I find it, dead or living, — is that so strange?”
“But certainly no, not at all!” said the official, shrugging his shoulders and still looking at me askance. “Only there is just this one little thing that I would say. If we could obtain any idea, however slight, — any small clue which we might follow up as to the proper identification of this so unfortunate demoiselle, we should be glad. She was a lady of gentle birth and breeding — we have no doubt of that, — but the linen she wore was unmarked, — we can find no name anywhere except one contained in a locket she wore—”
My nerves shook, and I controlled myself with difficulty.
“What sort of
locket?” I asked.
“Oh, a mere trifle, — of no value whatever. We opened it, of course, — it had nothing inside but a withered rose leaf and a small slip of paper, on which was written one word, ‘Silvion.’ That may be the name of a place or a person — we do not know. It’ does not help us.”
No! — it did not help them — but it helped me! — helped me to keep my puny rage more firmly fixed upon that helpless smiling, waxen-looking thing that lay before me in such solemn and chilly fairness. A withered rose leaf, and the name of that accursed priest — these were her sole treasures, were they? — all she cared to save from the wreckage of her brief summer time! Well, well! women are strange fools at best and the wisest man that ever lived cannot unravel the mystery of their complex mechanism. Half puppets, half angels! — and one never knows to which side of their natures to appeal!
“We have given a very precise and particular description of the corpse in our annonces” — went on the official meditatively— “but at present it has led to nothing. We should be really glad of identification, — though it is only a question of sentiment—”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 237