The Angel Asrael

by S. Henry Berthoud

  Emboldened by drunkenness, Simon marched toward his father and said to him, boldly: “You will do nothing.”

  The old man, irritated by such effrontery, struck Simon’s face violently with his gauntlet.

  Beside himself, the young man drew his dagger and delivered an ill-assured thrust. Monseigneur Guillaume fell nevertheless, although not dangerously wounded.

  But he was not yet on the ground before the hunter Amalric leapt forward with a single bound and split his skull with a blow of an ax. Then, leaning on the bloody weapon, he asked: “Now what do we do, Sire de Cagnicourt?”

  Simon thought he was struggling in a horrible dream.

  “The night is black,” the hunter continued. “No one, except one sentinel of whom I will take charge, has seen your father reenter. Let’s go throw this carrion in the external ditch, and tomorrow, we’ll say that it was the men of Villers-Outreaux who have killed him.”

  “Let’s do that, let’s do that,” replied Simon, with a stupid expression.

  Amalric loaded the cadaver on to his shoulders, and Simon followed him.

  They crossed the first bridge, from which Amalric had taken care to send away the sentinel, and when they arrived close to the gulf underneath the second drawbridge they threw the cadaver into the water.

  But instead of sinking, Monseigneur Guillaume’s body remained upright, his arms extended, as if he were cursing his son again.

  Simon wanted to flee and launched himself on to the bridge, but scarcely had he crossed it than, without understanding how it had happened, he found himself on the edge of the pavement before the terrible cadaver.

  The same thing happened at each of his numerous attempts.

  When day broke, he was found, pale, his hair standing on end, fixing his haggard eyes on the cadaver of his father, who was still cursing him.

  Everyone fled the château at the sight of that terrible marvel, and it remained uninhabited for two hundred years.

  Long after the events contained in that veridical legend, when it was scarcely remembered, the castellany of Cagnicourt fell by succession to sire Jacques Le Baudoin de Villers, hereditary chamberlain of Cambrésis. Curious to know what basis there was to the tales that were told about the abandoned manor, he went into it in the company of the prior of the Abbaye de Vaucelles.

  They saw very distinctly, in the middle of a pond that had almost become a marsh, the skeleton of a man standing upright, holding his arms extended.

  From the height of the rampart another skeleton seemed to be considering it in an attitude of distress.

  The prior of Vaucelles recited prayer for the repose of the soul of Monseigneur Guillaume de Cagnicourt. After that he sprinkled the two skeletons with holy water.

  They fell into dust.

  GILES THE HIDEOUS

  Seigneur de Marcoing

  1338

  Assuredly, the poor devil said to me, it is not difficult

  for you to remain virtuous, you who are young, noble,

  handsome, rich and likeable. Take my beggar’s wallet,

  my hump, my sixty years and my hunger, and we’ll see

  in a while whether you’ll be as honest as me.

  (Maître Haller,13 plea in favor of a man accused of theft).

  Confiteor... quia peccavi... Verbo et opre, mea culpa,

  mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Ideo precor.

  (Confiteor.)

  The evening office in the cathedral church of Cambrai had finished a long time ago. The religious chants and the confused buzz of the departure of the multitude had been succeeded by the most profound silence. Only the footsteps of one of the faithful emerging from the confessional could be heard from time to time, brushing the marble pave of the nave like a whisper and gradually dying away beneath the profound arcades of the vast edifice.

  The dead silence of the Christian temple borrowed, moreover, something lugubrious from the great obscurity that reigned among its ogival vaults and its heavy columns, stout and squat. One scarcely saw the reflection of the ruddy flame of a dying lamp gleaming on the golden feet of some statuette of the blessed, or the vacillating reflection of a lantern that an old sacristan was parading from chapel to chapel designing a yellow and indecisive angle on the flagstones.

  It was the eve of Pentecost, and the church had been left open to the faithful later than was customary, in order that they could approach the sacrament of penitence, but numerous patrols were circulating around the edifice, and a contingent of men-at-arms, spears in hand, were on guard at the portal. Such precautions were necessary to prevent the townspeople, always ready to revolt against the bishop, from taking possession of the Episcopal château by means of a surprise attack.

  The last person that Monseigneur Guy d’Auvergnac believed to be in the church finally came out; it was none less than the respectable wife of the town treasurer, Messire Eustache Panseron. She had murmured at length into the ear of the good bishop a list of sins of which the worst were doubtless some petty slanders that the worthy treasurer’s wife did not believe to be false. Duly sermonized and absolved, she was going away contrite with a repentance that would not prevail for long against the force of habit.

  Finally liberated from such rude labor, the prelate was preparing to return to his palace, and had already started to recite a final prayer, when a man of tall stature—whom Guy d’Auvergnac had not perceived until then because he was standing with his back to a column enveloped in a large cloak—approached abruptly.

  “Worthy fellow,” the prelate said to him, mopping his sweat-covered brow, “we’re too tired to hear you in confession today; come back tomorrow.”

  The stranger replied in a strong and vehement voice; “I can’t wait another moment. If I die without confession, I’m damned. May my damnation fall back on you!”

  A vague terror took possession of the man of God, but he calmed himself with a mental prayer, sat down resignedly in the confessional, and made the stranger a sign to commence.

  “I am Giles de Marcoing, Giles the Hideous,” the stranger murmured, without kneeling down. My mother died on the day of my birth; my father gave me, three months thereafter, a pitiless stepmother. No one, therefore, ever loved Giles the Hideous, for his repulsive appearance made those whom his miseries might have moved to pity turn their heads away.

  “My brothers were handsome; they were the children of a second bed, and, in consequence, my father only had tenderness for them and aversion for me, paltry and deformed. Neglected by him, maltreated by his wife, outraged by her children, turned to derision by my own family’s varlets—that is how lived until the age of twenty, desiccated by anguish and despair, damaged, burning a with thirst for vengeance.

  “Eventually my father died. Without mercy, I threw his widow and her children out of my domain personally. After that I made all those who had become my vassals expiate harshly the cruel derisions of before; my gibbets were covered in cadavers. My extortions brought need and tears into my eight villages, Marcoing, Villers-Plouich, Paluisel, Pronville, Brebières, Flesquières, Mésengarbe and Rouveroy. How many of the young women who once mocked my red hair, my haggard eyes and my sharp teeth I have made to enter my bed by force! Several have died of it. Well, I was unable to change my insupportable nickname. I believed that they would call me, like Simon de Cagnicourt, the Pitiless or the Accursed, but no! Always the Hideous; always, always Giles the Hideous.

  “One day it was announced to me be a herald-of-arms that a tourney was to be held a few days hence in the vicinity of Cambrai; it was the young nephew of Bishop Pierre de Mirepoix, Hugues de Levis, the only son of Maréchal de la Foi, who was assembling five hundred knights for breaking lances in honor of ladies.

  “At that news, a thousand merry thoughts, pleasant and unfamiliar, came to refresh my blood. ‘I’ll go!’ I cried. ‘Yes. I’ll go. My armor will be magnificent, and I’ll keep my visor constantly lowered. Oh, if I could perform prowesses! If I could hear good wishes formed from all directions for the unkno
wn night! If I could perceive young woman smiling at me! If I could hear mention of me with praise and benevolence!’

  “If I were to be fortune enough for things to happen in that fashion, I would not say that I was Giles de Marcoing. I would disappear when the heralds came to proclaim the victor; I would be called and sought in vain; but when I reappeared at other tourneys people would cry: ‘There’s the unknown knight! There’s the knight who flees triumphs as others seek them!’ And perhaps some lady of rare beauty and high lineage, deceived by the attraction of the mystery with which I would be surrounded, would take a vague and tender interest in me; perhaps her heart would beat faster with emotion when I encountered my adversary in the arena, and when the swirls of dust did not allow her to see which of two would be lying in the arena.

  “The day of the tourney came; it came and twelve knights fell, disarmed by me. Messire Le Borge de Mauny, the rude jouster who had just maltreated so badly young Hugues de Levis that he died of it subsequently, yes, Messire Le Borge de Mauny, found me unshakable in my stirrups, and was tipped over by my lance all the way to his horse’s rump.

  “Never had I struck a blow so rude! Oh, that was because I saw curls of fine black hair escaping from his helmet, it was because people had clapped their hands when he had raised his visor on his entry into the arena and displayed his mild, pure and charming features.

  “I was proclaimed the best performer of the day The clamors of the heralds, the cries of joy, the enthusiasm of an entire crowd, the ladies who saluted me while waving their scarves and applauding me with their delicate hands, the knights who surrounded me, congratulating me, shaking my hand—all of that stunned me, troubled me and intoxicated me.

  “I no longer knew what I was doing…a thousand different sensations swelled my chest, took away the use of my reason…I allowed myself to be dragged to the feet of the queen of the fête, Mahaut d’Apremont, the fiancée of sire Georges de Quiévraing. My visor was raised...

  “Mahaut fell in a faint at my hideous aspect, and a cry of horror and disgust went up from all direction, and then execrable bursts of laughter.

  “In an inexpressible despair, I launched myself on to my steed and went to hide in my castellany of Marcoing.

  “Would you believe it? The image of that pale woman, fainting at the sight of my hideous features, the image of that woman only reopening her eyes to turn them away in terror, yes, that image no longer quit my imagination; it intoxicated me with a cruel sensuality, a bizarre ecstasy, a mixture of despair and amour. A bitter fire was consuming me; I roared, prey to insensate desires and transports of rage; I wept, I prayed to God, I blasphemed! Oh, what sufferings were mine!

  “To see her, to see her once again, and die! That idea did not quit me. On the day of the wedding I put on the clothes of a varlet, I put a dagger in my belt; with my face covered by my cloak and after having prowled around the manor of Quiévraing for a long time, I succeeded, at nightfall, in penetrating as far as the nuptial chamber; the disorder of the celebrations served me in that. I hid behind great brocade curtains. When the guests bring the newlyweds, I said to myself, it will be easy for me to slip out without being recognized. I shall have seen her one last time, and I shall die less unhappy.

  “But a magical power enchained me to the place where I was hiding. They remained alone. They exchanged words of love; they said delirious things; I heard their lips meet…and then I launched myself forward, furiously...

  “After that, I don’t know what happened. I only remember having struck two blows with my dagger, and finding myself the following day in my domain of Marcoing.

  “What had happened to me the day before seemed to be a bad dream; I could not believe it. A summons to appear before the bishop, my suzerain, informed me only too clearly of the reality of my crime: Godefroi d’Apremont had accused me before Monseigneur Pierre de Mirepoix of having wickedly and treacherously killed his brother-in-law the sire de Quiévraing and his own sister Mahaut d’Apremont.

  “My first impulse was to refuse to obey the bishop’s summons; but, held in horror by all my vassals, who among them would have wanted to defend me even if a bull would not have struck with excommunication anyone who opposed resistance to the bishop’s orders? I therefore followed the prelate’s provost and his numerous men-at-arms with apparent docility.

  “As you can imagine, what I suffered on the way is not something that human words can describe.

  “The fate that unfailingly awaited me held me breathless with horror and despair. My head shaved, my escutcheon broken and covered with mud, heralds who proclaimed me a villain, my head cut off by the executioner, my cadaver on the gibbet! The hairs still stand up on my head when I think about it.

  “And no compassion, no pity. Who would cry mercy? Who would even say: ‘Poor young man,’ on seeing Giles de Marcoing, the murderer, the Hideous, led to the scaffold? Doubtless people would be moved to pity by the sad end of a young sire with a handsome face, with long black hair, even if he had, as I had, slain in a jealous rage a rival and mistress! But Giles the Hideous? ‘To the scaffold! To the scaffold! The monster! Well done!’ Yes, that is how they would have been moved to pity by my fate!

  “You know the rest. I appeared before the bishop. Sire d’Apremont’s accusation only reposed on vague indications. I was about to be sent away absolved, and I was already making a vow to Our Lady to give the holy church all my domains and retire to some austere convent where I would spend the rest of my life in hard penitence—alas, she too turned her head in order not to listen to me, and perhaps it was in horror of my ugly face and hoarse and ill-sounding voice.

  “‘I demand the judgment of God!’ cried the Sire d’Apremont.

  “‘What you demand is granted to you,’ replied the Bishop, after having consulted the peers of Cambrésis.

  “And the day of the combat was designated for a week hence.

  “If you knew what it is to go to an arena, when one dare not invoke either the Holy Virgin, nor one’s good angel, nor one’s patron saint, because one is going to fight for a bad cause! In order not to become guilty of a further crime, I had formed the design to allow myself to be struck by d’Apremont, without assailing him with my battle-ax, without opposing my shield to the cutting edge of his. I would let one and the other fall, as if by fortuitous ill-fortune and the disfavor of fate. Slain by a single blow, I would have been spared the anguish of a dolorous death, and the humiliation of hearing my crime proclaimed in a loud voice. Perhaps also, I said to myself, Our Lord Jesus Christ would take that voluntary and expiatory death into account in his mercy and for the remission of my sins.

  “But when I advanced into the arena to swear an oath on the Gospel that I was not bearing either any enchanted weapon or any talisman, it was necessary to raise my visor. My face had its effect, and from all directions people shouted jeers and insults ‘Down with Giles the Hideous!’ A rage that I cannot describe troubled my reason; it changed my good thoughts into a thirst for blood. The heralds had scarcely cried ‘Begin!’ than the Sire d’Apremont rendered his soul, his head broken by an ax-blow.

  “Then I felt myself shiver with a fiery joy and a heretical delirium.

  “I had triumphed, and I was the guilty party. The executioner will suspend the cadaver of the innocent from the gibbet; there is no God, there is no Hell! I said to myself. And I laughed, and I went back to my domain without thanking God for my victory and repeating: ‘There is no Hell, for there is no God; I will therefore not be damned.’

  “For fifteen years I have not set foot in a church once, observing neither vigils nor fasts, cursing with a glad heart, laughing at oaths sworn on relics and delivering myself to all sorts of evil actions; for I said to myself in memory of the judgment of the God of Cambrai: ‘There is no God, nor any Hell.’

  “Alas, I have learned only too well, in the last month, how insensate such blasphemies were.

  “Three phantoms never quit me, day or night.

  “They hold one anothe
r by the hand; they circle around me incessantly.

  “One of them has a bloody head, each of the other two a large wound in the breast. They laugh in bursts, they exchange mocking glances between them that they then direct at me; and then they cry out, as they recommence their execrable dance: ‘He will not be damned! He will not be damned!’

  “They quit me for the first time since then when I entered the church. Ensure Monseigneur, ensure that I do not fall back into their power, and I promise to give all my property to the church; I promise you to go barefoot to the Holy Land if necessary; but do not let me fall back into their power—oh, no!”

  Bishop Guy d’Auvergne dared not give absolution to such a great sinner. He engaged him, however, not to despair of divine mercy, and enjoined him to come back in two days in order that he would be able to reflect maturely as to what remedies it was necessary to bring to a soul sick in that fashion, whose salvation appeared so desperate.”

  But Giles the Hideous never reappeared at the church of Our Lady or the manor of Marcoing.

  He was robbed and slain by thieves as he was returning to his domain.

  Peasants found his cadaver the following day, stabbed by two dagger-blows, with his head broken by a battle-ax.

  Day began to break during that encounter, and the good people thought they saw three phantoms disappearing, and heard voices repeating ironically: “Oh, there is no Hell! Oh, you will not be damned!”

  THE DE PROFUNDIS

  Manuscript of an old Monk

  1343

  “If I live I shall pray for you,”

  Those were your last words;