The Angel Asrael

by S. Henry Berthoud

  It was eventually necessary for us to separate; and when, after ten years of absence, we met up again, I had become indolent, skeptical and disenchanted, while he was about to receive the tonsure.

  I made a few observations to him; he responded bitterly, and since then we had seen one another rarely, and coldly, for we no longer understood one another. Nevertheless, my relations with his family had not suffered, as you can see, and from time to time, as on that day, when hunting drew me too far, I went to seek shelter with Monsieur Lefebvre.

  I was entirely occupied with those childhood memories; I was wondering, with no less anxiety than his father, what Étienne’s despair might soon become in finding himself enchained by mystical vows that were so little in accord with his character when I saw a man dressed in black advancing toward me precipitately, with a gesture of mystery.

  It was Étienne.

  His clothing was in disorder, his head bare, and he attached a distraught gaze to me. He sat down beside me, covered his face with his hands, and made no response to my questions.

  “Henri,” he said, eventually, “I’m going to make you a strange confidence; I’m going to die soon.” He placed a burning and fleshless hand on me. “Shh! Don’t interrupt me, let me speak. I’m going to die soon, and I’m damned.”

  It was easy to see that it was a madman that was talking to me, and yet I could not help shivering.

  “I wanted to visit my father’s house once more,” he continued, without noticing that movement. “I wanted to place my pale and hollow cheeks against the panes of his room, and see him, my mother and my sisters, but without them perceiving me, without saying a word to them, for my moments are counted, and their despair will commence only too soon.

  “I’m damned, Henri, damned for eternity. I have given my soul to an infernal spirit; it will only return it to me when I prefer Hell to Paradise; for I love it, that demon, and I love it more than an eternity of happiness. For it I have renounced the sacred character of a priest of Jesus Christ, I have renounced the happiness of giving alms, of reconciling sinners with God, the ecstasies of prayer! I am going to die today in order to be with it more quickly, in order never to quit it again.

  “Listen, Henri. Two months ago, I was reciting my breviary; at first I prayed with fervor, but gradually, other thoughts preoccupied my imagination and drew it far away.

  “I started thinking about a soul that responds to every thought to our soul, to the transports and tenderness of amour, to a burning bond of sublime affection that nothing can weaken or break. A sigh escaped me.

  “I heard, beside me, a sigh respond to mine.

  “There was a being there the sight of which made me feel ill and delighted, a being such as the most tender and fecund mind cannot imagine.

  “Forms more ingenuous, more voluptuous, more delicate than those of a young woman; bare breasts, over which flowed long black hair; eyes simultaneously sparkling, soft and timid, whose gaze penetrated my soul.

  “I dared not make a movement, I dared not let my breath escape. The apparition might have vanished!

  “She sighed again, and the tears that were flowing from her eyes trickled down her cheeks like those of a sick child and came to fall upon her breast; and then she lowered her head as if she were afraid to show it to my gaze.

  “‘Étienne,’ she murmured, finally, in a low voice full of emotion. ‘Étienne!’

  “I was beside myself; I extended my arms toward her.

  “But she knelt down at my feet and said to me, in the tone of a young woman trying in vain to retain her sobs: ‘Étienne, make the sign of the cross in order that I shall vanish.’

  “‘Oh, no! Stay, stay! Always! Always! You’re so beautiful!’

  “‘Make it, the redoubtable sign, in order that I might return to the abode of malediction without having accomplished what Satan has demanded of me. Make it, I beg you, for I’m an angel of darkness sent to earth to doom your soul.’

  “She still remained there at my feet, her beautiful eyes raised toward me, her imploring hands joined together.

  “‘Étienne,’ she continued, ‘only tell me that you forgive me; tell me before I leave and I shall go without a murmur to offer myself to the chastisement of my irritated master; I shall not curse the horrible blows of his fiery whip, for you will not hate me, Étienne.

  “‘And then I will retain a sweet and sincere memory of you, a memory that will make me dream under the immense vaults reddened by the reflection of the eternal flames. Listen, I shall try to hide a drop of water, which I shall pour on to the lips of one of the damned. I shall say to him: It’s for love of Étienne that I’m soothing you; and Hell will wax ecstatic on hearing its sad echoes repeat a benediction, for the damned soul will repeat: Blessed be Étienne, forever.

  “‘When you are in Paradise—for, Étienne, you have only a few days to live—when you are in Paradise, I shall try to approach its divine vaults; perhaps, in the midst of the eternal canticles, I shall be able to distinguish your voice. Then I shall return to my prison, and I shall say to myself: I am alone, alone and unhappy for eternity, but Étienne is happy!

  “‘Make the sign of the cross, Étienne, make it, that I might disappear.’

  “And I, Henri, I listened, in an ineffable delight; I would have given my soul for her not to stop speaking.

  “‘Étienne,’ she resumed, ‘I imagined a kind of happiness for myself with you, but I no longer want it; it would cost me too dear, I would buy it at your expense. I said to myself: We will never be separated, a mysterious and indissoluble marriage will unite us for eternity, he and I, who will henceforth only be one. I shall carry him tenderly on my wings, in order that he does not feel the bite of the flames; with my breath I shall refresh his forehead; with my soft embrace, I shall cradle him softly in order that his eyes will be able to close in sleep. And while he alone is asleep in Hell, I shall repeat in whispers words of love and songs that will suspend the sufferings and cries of the reproved.’

  “Henri, I could not resist those words; I surrounded the fallen angel with my arms and hugged her to my bosom. ‘I want to be yours,’ I said to her. ‘I want to be yours, for you are able to love, as I am able to love, as I imagined love in the insensate dreams of my youth.’

  ‘No! Make the sign of the cross,’ she interrupted me, ‘there is also love in Paradise, and you will be loved by a cherub with a heart of flame. The torments of Asraelle will be increased by your happiness, but what does it matter? You will be happy.’

  “‘I want to be yours, to belong to you, who bear the sweet name of Asraelle, to be yours for eternity. I deny my God for you, I deny for you the salvation of my soul. Asraelle, Étienne belongs to you.’

  “The naked arms of the angel were enlaced with mine; our lips met…and when I returned from a long ecstasy of amour, Asraelle started to weep, for I was damned.

  “Every night, she has come to visit her husband; every night, she has come to rest her head on my shoulder, and surround me with her caressant arms.

  “Yesterday, she seemed sad, and instead of covering my forehead with kisses, she folded her arms sadly over her breast and said: ‘Étienne, tomorrow we shall no longer be apart.’

  “I understood her meaning.

  “‘Tomorrow, Asraelle,’ I replied, ‘yes tomorrow, I consent to that; but let me see my mother and my sisters once more; let me see my father once more.’

  “‘You shall see them again’ she said, ‘but without speaking to them.’

  “This morning, I fled the seminary, and I hid in this garden, and just now I have seen them all. At present, Asraelle is waiting for me,”

  The storm had begun to rage violently, the wind was roaring, the rain falling in torrents, and the precipitate claps of thunder scarcely allowed me to hear Étienne’s voice.

  I cannot tell you the terror I experienced during my unfortunate friend’s strange story.

  “Don’t allow yourself to be carried away like this by the whims of your imag
ination,” I said to him, without paying overmuch heed to what I was saying.

  A flash of lightning suddenly burst forth, and by its light I saw Étienne smile sadly; then he listened attentively, as if he had heard a noise. “Asraelle, my Asraelle,” he cried, “there you are, my beloved. Come, come, I’m eager...”

  The lightning fell at my feet, and when I recovered my senses, Étienne’s cadaver was lying there.

  Étienne’s father has been rendered destitute, for having, according to the sub-prefect, engaged his son to flee the seminary.

  The village curé, a young priest of twenty-five, preached a sermon, in which he proved clearly that God had struck Étienne with lightning to punish his apostasy.

  Étienne’s mother lost her reason. I’m assured that within his family, two other persons have also been afflicted by mental alienation.

  THE ANGEL ASRAEL

  1150

  I. The Three Damned Souls

  Thus God has wished it: in the torments of Hell there are moments of relaxation, and almost of repose. The flames cease to spring forth then, folding into themselves, fading no longer exhaling anything more than a smoke as pale as the mists of Flanders at sunset. The lightning ceases to bristle then, no longer throwing forth sparkling darts. The cries cease then, the plaints expire, the howls fall silent, and in the eternal abysms there is a sad obscurity and a bleak silence. One might think that Hell and its victims have sunk into a profound slumber.

  But sleep, by means of which one forgets the pains of the body and the distress of the soul, the mysterious benefit given by the Almighty to humans in exchange for the miseries of this base world, is not made for the reproved. A numbness replete with malaise grips their limbs, stiffened by tortures; a glacial cold penetrates their bones, semi-calcined by the flames; an anguish compounded of stupor and impatience weighs upon their heads, and without thought being entirely annihilated by it, mingles a dolorous uncertainty therein.

  Nevertheless, a kind of joy shines in the fatigued eyes of the damned souls and the devils, simultaneously torturers and companions in torment of the damned, when the shadow of the hand of God, extending over Hell, casts that cruel appeasement over it. Yes, a kind of joy shines in their eyes, and, in order to understand it, it would be necessary to know how horrible the suffering of Hell are—but no mortal thought is able to comprehend what such sufferings are, none! And yet, the imagination of humans, so poor and so imperfect in creating for itself an image of happiness, becomes rich and fecund in order to invent horrible torments.

  St Paul has said: “The flames of the earth, compared with the flames of Hell, are only painted flames. And if the rich man whose foot drove poor Lazarus from his table could obtain from that pauper a single drop of water to refresh his burning tongue, he would change his clamors of despair into benedictions and transports of joy.”

  Now, it is not for a frail motive that benedictions and joy would be able to penetrate such an abode.

  For a few hours, Hell had been plunged into the appeasement that God only deigns to accord at long intervals, when a piercing scream suddenly burst forth beneath those mute vaults, an expression of both triumph and dolor. Suddenly, the flames were reignited, and their roaring sheaves woke up and bit the damned. The demons resumed their own torments and their duties as torturers, and Satan raised his hands despairingly to his forehead, on which the iron crown was red and resplendent, like an aureole.

  Devils and damned souls raised their eyes, and saw above their heads a demon who was flying in circles, with wings extended, repeating the cry that had reawakened Hell, and holding two men and a young woman in his claws, by their hair. At a sign from Satan he furled his wings and knelt down before the infernal throne, without releasing his triple prey, who, upright and panting with terror, dared not raise their eyes to look upon the horrible face of the master to whom they belonged forever.

  First there was an old man. His balding forehead attested that he had worn a helmet more than once and hidden his face beneath the plates of his visor. Beside him stood a youth whose gaze was seeking a pale and beautiful woman, whose arms were striving modestly to veil her breasts, and who was blushing at the lubricious gazes and impure laughter of the demons.

  Never had such merriment contracted the lips of fallen angels. To begin with, they enjoyed the poor woman’s embarrassment, at length and with pleasure; afterwards, they lifted up her hair, which veiled her shoulders slightly; they parted her hands, and ran their filthy claws over her delicate limbs, amused on seeing them tremble convulsively at that frightful contact.

  The old man and the youth could not contain their indignation and their jealousy. The demons understood that, with an inexpressible joy. Placing them facing the young woman, holding their heads in order that they could not turn away and placing iron fingers on their eyelids in order that they could not be lowered, they continued the cruel game for a long time, which amused the accused cohorts greatly. The damned souls, surprised, sat up on the ardent couches of the abyss in order to watch their executioners’ frolics.

  That lasted for several hours.

  But ennui is the finest chastisement imposed by God on the reproved, and ennui did not take long to contract the diabolical brows: ennui, the deadliest evil of the eternal fires; the ennui that does not permit an idea to unfurrow the brow and nourish the activity of thought. Soon, therefore, the persecutions that had previously enthused them to such a degree fatigued them.

  They sought hard to reanimate them by refinements, but nothing could do it. In vain they took the young woman in their black arms, covered her with noxious kisses and then passed her on to another; in vain they knotted their claws in her long hair and whirled the poor bewildered victim over their heads; their blasé enjoyment was not reanimated. Folding their fatigued arms over their chests, they interrogated with their eyes and in silence the orders of Satan.

  The sovereign demon had already turned his head away a long time ago, and he was parading his indecisive and aimless gaze hither and yon. In the end, he brought them back to the three souls standing in his presence, and, after having considered them with a distracted attention, he spoke to them.

  “Who are you, old man with a harsh and boastful expression?”

  “Jacques, Seigneur de Crèvecoeur.”

  “And you, honeyed youth who is playing timid?”

  “Daniel de Cantaing, seigneur of the village of that name,

  “And you, tearful beauty, who have taken it into your head to ape modesty here, where there is truly no place for it? Speak, and quickly, else...”

  The blow followed, or rather accompanied, the threat, for Satan struck the young woman violently with his iron scepter. She shivered under the rude impact.

  “My name is Jeanne de Beaumetz, and this is my very noble and very redoubtable lord, husband and master.”

  “Good, I understand. Your sins are more of those sins that all resemble one another, the monotony of which is a torture for me. Stupid human race! You only know how to march in the tracks of others. Is it impossible for you, then, to put your feet anywhere but where those who preceded you placed theirs? Wretched fools, who are caught in traps still fully garnished with remains, whom example does not render wary, and who have the pretention to be wicked when they are merely imbeciles bound by routine! Your imagination must be very poor not to be able to invent some new crime.

  “If you want to be damned, at least don’t be damned foe a ridiculous peccadillo to which too much honor is done in charging the infernal spirits with chastising it. We live in Hell ourselves, but at least it’s for having almost conquered Heaven. It’s for having shaken the one who presently calls himself the Almighty on his throne. We reached as high as him, though! But for traitors, but for cowards, but for hazard, above all—hazard, even more powerful than Jehovah!—yes, I would be God at present, and it’s Jehovah who would be wearing the iron crown! Mine would be Heaven, mine the angels, mine the choirs of Seraphim, mine the hymns of virgins, mine the universe,
and mine nature!

  “No matter; I did not triumph, but I march as his equal. Those adorations, of which he is so proud, I have troubled; that worship, in which he contemplates himself, I share with him, I receive more of it than him. Seven legions of angels took part in my revolt. Let him count his elect, and he will see whether he finds them as numerous as my reproved.

  “You see, stupid mortals, that in order to damn myself, I raised myself up to be the equal of God. And you, what have you done? You, handsome youth, received a kiss from a woman; you, brutal old man, gave two thrusts of a dagger; this madwoman preferred Hell to Paradise, and that in order not to be separated from a lover she will quit for eternity. Imbecile creatures, is that not your story? The same as that of all the others...

  But it’s necessary that I hear it with its futile details; I have to submit to that tedium. Come on, Astaroth, don’t strut so much on account of these three souls conquered for my kingdom; don’t brag about such a little thing as a splendid victory. Certainly, it wasn’t worth the trouble of waking me up with your boastful cry just now. It wouldn’t take much for me to plunge you into the most profound abysms of my realm for three centuries, reducing you to the condition and torments of a simple mortal.

  “Tell me for what reasons these three creatures are damned; tell me, since it’s necessary that you tell me, alas, and so that I can decide the genre of torture to which it’s appropriate to subject them.”

  II. Jeanne de Beaumetz

  That speech by the King of the Abyss wounded Astaroth’s pride profoundly. Nevertheless, he enclosed his wound within himself, for the demons surrounding him were directing piercing and mocking gazes at him, rejoicing in the humiliation to which their rival had been subjected in his triumph.