The Horla

by Guy de Maupassant

  August 17. What a night! What a night! And yet it feels as if I should rejoice. Until one in the morning, I read. Hermann Herestauss, doctor of philosophy and theogony, has written the history and manifestations of all the invisible beings that prowl around mankind, or that we dream of. He describes their origins, their dwelling-places, their powers. But not one of them resembles the one that is haunting me. We might reason that, ever since man began to think, he has had a premonition and a dread of some new being, stronger than he, his successor in this world, and that, feeling him nearby yet being unable to foresee the nature of this master, he has created, in his terror, the entire fantastic population of occult beings, vague phantoms born from fear.

  After reading till one in the morning, I went to sit down near my open window in order to cool my forehead and my thoughts in the calm night breeze.

  It was fine and warm out. How I would have loved this night, once upon a time!

  No moon. The stars in the depths of the black sky twinkled quaveringly. Who lives in those worlds? What forms, what living beings, what animals, what plants are there? What do the sentient beings in those distant universes know, more than we do? What more are they capable of doing than we? What do they see that we have not the least knowledge of? Some day or other, won’t one of them, crossing space, appear on our earth to conquer it, just as long ago the Normans crossed the sea to subjugate people who were weaker?

  We are so infirm, so helpless, so ignorant, so small, we others, on this spinning grain of mud mixed with a drop of water.

  I dozed off, musing like that, in the cool evening wind.

  After sleeping for about forty minutes, though, I reopened my eyes without making a movement, awakened by some confused, strange emotion. At first I saw nothing; then, all of a sudden, it seemed to me that a page of the book that I had left open on my table had just turned, all by itself. No breath of air had entered through my window. I was surprised, and I waited. After about four minutes, I saw, yes, I saw with my own eyes, another page rise up and fall back on the one before, as if a finger had turned it. My armchair was empty, seemed empty; but I understood that he was there, seated in my place, and that he was reading. With a furious leap, the leap of a rebellious animal who is about to disembowel his tamer, I crossed my room to seize him, strangle him, kill him!… But before I could reach it, my chair was knocked over, as if someone were fleeing before me … my table rocked back and forth, my lamp fell and went out, and my window slammed as if a surprised thief had rushed out into the night, grabbing the shutters.

  So he had run away. He had been afraid. He, afraid of me!

  Then … then … tomorrow … or the day after … or someday … I’ll be able to hold him in my fists, and crush him to the ground! Don’t dogs, sometimes, bite and choke their masters?

  August 18. I have been thinking all day. Oh, yes, I will obey him, follow his impulses, accomplish all his wishes, make myself humble, submissive, cowardly. He is the stronger one. But a time will come.…

  August 19. I know … I know … I know everything! I have just read this in the Revue du Monde Scientifique:

  A rather curious piece of news has reached us from Rio de Janeiro. A madness, an epidemic of madness, like the contagious dementias that attacked the population of Europe in the Middle Ages, is raging now in the province of Saõ Paulo. The inhabitants, distraught, are leaving their houses, deserting their villages, abandoning their crops, claiming they are pursued, possessed, ruled like human livestock by invisible but tangible beings, sorts of vampires, which feed on their life while they sleep, and which drink water and milk without seeming to touch any other food.

  Prof. Dom Pedro Henriquez, accompanied by several learned doctors, has left for the province of Saõ Paulo, in order to study on site the origins and manifestations of this surprising madness, and to suggest to the Emperor the measures he thinks best suited to restore these delirious populations to reason.

  And now I remember it, I remember the fine Brazilian three-master that passed by my windows as it went up the Seine, last May 8th. And I thought it was so pretty, so white, so cheerful! The Being was on it, coming from down there, where his race was born. And he saw me! He saw my white house too; and he jumped from the ship onto the shore. Oh my God!

  Now I know, I have guessed. The reign of mankind is over.

  He has come, the One the primal terrors of primitive tribes dreaded, the One anxious priests exorcised, the One magicians summoned on dark nights, without ever seeing him appear, the One to whom the premonitions of adepts wandering through the world attributed all the monstrous or gracious forms of gnomes, spirits, genies, fairies, elves. After the coarse imaginings of primitive horror, more perspicacious men had a clearer presentiment of him. Mesmer guessed his existence, and for ten years now doctors have discovered, in an accurate way, the nature of his power before he himself even exercised it. They have played with this weapon of the new Lord, the domination of a mysterious will over a human soul, which turns into a slave. They called it ‘magnetism,’ ‘hypnotism,’ ‘suggestion’.… What do I know? I have seen them amuse themselves like foolish children with this terrible power. We are cursed. Mankind is cursed. He has come, the … the … what is his name … the … he seems to be shouting out his name to me, and I cannot hear it … the … yes … he is shouting it … I am trying to hear … I can’t … again … the … Horla … I heard … the Horla … it is he … the Horla … he has come!

  Now the vulture has eaten the dove, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the lion has devoured the sharp-horned buffalo; man has killed the lion with the arrow, with the sword, with powder; but the Horla will make man into what we made the horse and the steer: his thing, his servant and his food, by the simple power of his will. Our woe is upon us.

  But the animal sometimes rebels and kills the one who tamed him.… I too want to do this.… I could … but I must recognize him, touch him, see him! Scholars say that the eyes of an animal, different from our own, cannot distinguish objects as our eyes do.… And my eyes cannot distinguish this newcomer who oppresses me.

  Why? Now I remember the words of the monk at Mont Saint-Michel: “Do we see the hundred-thousandth part of what exists? Look, here is the wind, which is the strongest force in nature, which knocks men down, destroys buildings, uproots trees, whips the sea up into mountains of water, destroys cliffs, and throws great ships onto the shoals; here is the wind that kills, whistles, groans, howls—have you ever seen it, and can you see it? Yet it exists.”

  And I thought further: My eye is so weak, so imperfect, that I cannot even make out solid objects, if they are transparent as glass!… If a two-way mirror bars my way, it knocks me down, just as a bird who has flown into a room breaks his neck on the windowpanes. A thousand other things deceive our sight and lead it astray. What is so surprising about our not knowing how to perceive a new body, one that light can pass through?

  A new being! Why not? Surely it had to come. Why should we be the last people? If we can’t distinguish him, as we can all the other creatures before us, it’s because his nature is more perfect, his body finer and more absolute than ours, which is so weak, so clumsily conceived, encumbered with organs that are always weary, always strained, like machinery that is too complex—our body, which lives like a plant, like an animal, feeding with difficulty on air, grass, and meat, an animal machine prey to sicknesses, deformations, putrefactions, short-winded, unstable, simple and strange, naively, poorly made, a coarse and delicate work, a rough outline of a being that could become intelligent and superb.

  There are just a few of us in this world, so few species between oysters and men. Why not one more entity, now that the era is over when all the various species appeared in orderly succession?

  Why not one more? And why not other trees with immense, dazzling flowers, perfuming entire regions? Why not other elements besides fire, air, earth, and water?—There are four of them, just four, those foster parents of beings! What a pity! Why aren’t there forty e
lements instead, or four hundred, or four thousand? How paltry everything is, how miserly, how wretched! Stingily given, aridly invented, heavily made! Look at the elephant, the hippopotamus—such grace! The camel, such elegance!

  But you’ll say, what about the butterfly? A flower that flies! I dream of one that would be as large as a hundred universes, with wings whose shape, beauty, color, and movement I cannot even describe. But I can see it … it goes from star to star, refreshing them and soothing them with the harmonious and light breath of its journey!… And the peoples up there, ecstatic and ravished, watch it go by!

  What is wrong with me? It is he, the Horla, who is haunting me, making me think these mad thoughts! He is inside me, he is becoming my soul; I will kill him!

  August 19. I will kill him. I have seen him! I had sat down at my table last night, and I pretended to write with great concentration. I was well aware that he would come prowl around me, quite close, so close that I might perhaps be able to touch him, to seize him.… And then … then, I would have the strength of the desperate. I would have my hands, my knees, my chest, my forehead, my teeth to strangle him, crush him, bite him, tear him apart.

  And I watched for him with all my overexcited organs.

  I had lit both my lamps, along with the eight candles on my mantelpiece, as if, in this brightness, I might expose him.

  Opposite me, my bed, an old oaken four-poster; to my right, my fireplace; to my left, my door, which I had carefully shut, after having left it open for a long time, in order to lure him in; behind me, a very high wardrobe with a mirror, which I used every day to shave and dress, and in which I had the habit of looking at myself, from head to foot, every time I passed in front of it.

  I was just pretending to write in order to trick him, for he too was spying on me; and suddenly, I felt, I was sure, that he was reading over my shoulder, that he was there, grazing my ear.

  I stood up with my hands outstretched, turning around so quickly that I almost fell down. And? Everything there was clear as in full daylight, but I could not see myself in my mirror—it was empty, clear, profound, full of light! My image was not inside it … yet I myself was facing it! I could see the large clear glass from top to bottom. I looked at it with terrified eyes, but dared not move forward. I did not dare to make any movement, fully aware that he was there, but that he would escape me again, he whose imperceptible body had devoured my reflection.

  I was terrified. Then suddenly I began to see myself in a mist, in the depths of the mirror, in a mist as if through a sheet of water. It seemed to me that this water shimmered from left to right, slowly, making my image more precise, from second to second. It was like the end of an eclipse. Whatever was obscuring me seemed not to possess any clearly defined outlines, but just a sort of opaque transparency, little by little becoming clearer.

  Finally I could distinguish myself completely, just as I do every day when I look at myself.

  I had seen him! The terror of it has remained with me, and makes me tremble still.

  August 20. How can I kill him, if I cannot touch him? Poison? But he would see me mixing it in the water; and besides, will our poisons even have any effect on an imperceptible body? No … no … they cannot.… What then?

  August 21. I have had a locksmith come from Rouen, and ordered iron shutters for my bedroom, the kind certain mansions have in Paris, on the ground floor, because of fear of thieves. He will also make me a door of the same material. I let him think me a coward, but I don’t care!

  September 10. Rouen, Hôtel Continental. It is done … it is done … but is he dead? My soul is in turmoil over what I have seen.

  Yesterday, after the locksmith had installed my iron shutters and door, I left everything open until midnight, although it was beginning to turn cold.

  All of a sudden, I felt that he was there, and a joy, a mad joy seized me. I rose up slowly and paced back and forth, for a long time, so that he wouldn’t guess anything was amiss; then I took off my shoes and nonchalantly put on my slippers; then I closed the iron shutters, and, quietly walking to the door, closed it too with a double turn of the lock. Then I came back to the window, locked it with a padlock, and put the key in my pocket.

  All of a sudden, I knew that he was getting agitated near me, that it was his turn to be afraid, that he was commanding me to open the window. I almost gave in. I did not give in. Instead, leaning back against the door, I half-opened it, just enough to let me slip through, backwards; since I am very tall, my head touched the lintel. I was certain he had been unable to escape, and I shut him in, all alone, all alone! At last! I had him! Then I ran downstairs. I picked up both the lamps in my drawing-room, which was underneath my bedroom, and poured out all the oil onto the rug, the furniture, everywhere. Then I set fire to it, and ran out, after having carefully closed the large front door with a double turn of the lock.

  I ran to the back of my garden to hide in a clump of bay-trees. How long it took! How long it took! Everything was dark, silent, motionless; not a breath of air, not a star, just mountains of clouds that couldn’t be seen, but that weighed so heavy, so heavy, on my soul.

  I watched my house, and I waited. How long it took! I was beginning to think the fire had put itself out, or that he had put it out, He, when one of the windows on the ground floor caved in under pressure from the fire, and a flame, a huge red and yellow flame, tall, soft, caressing, soared up along the white wall and kissed it all the way up to the roof. A glow ran through the trees, the branches, the leaves, and a shiver, a shiver of fear too! The birds woke up; a dog began to bark; it looked as if dawn were breaking. Immediately two other windows shattered, and I saw that the entire ground floor of my house was nothing more than a terrifying inferno. But a scream, a horrible, high-pitched, penetrating scream, a woman’s scream, rent the night, and two garret windows opened. I had forgotten my servants! I saw their terrified faces, and their waving arms.

  Then, beside myself with horror, I began to run towards the village, shouting, “Help! Help! Fire! Fire!” I met some people who were already on the way, and I went back with them, to see.

  The house, now, was nothing more than a terrible and magnificent pyre, a monstrous pyre, illuminating all the land around, a pyre where people were burning, and where he was burning too, He, He, my prisoner, the new Being, the new master, the Horla!

  Suddenly the entire roof caved in between the walls, and a volcano of flames shot up to the sky. Through all the windows opening onto the furnace, I could see the pit of fire, and I thought about him there, in this oven, dead.…

  —Dead? Maybe not.… What about his body? Wasn’t his body, which daylight could go right through, indestructible by all the methods that kill our own bodies?

  What if he wasn’t dead?… Maybe only time holds sway over that Invisible and Dreadful Being. Why should this body that is transparent, this unknowable body, this Spirit body, have to fear illnesses, wounds, infirmities, premature destruction?

  Premature destruction? All the horrors of humanity stem from that alone. After mankind, the Horla.—After our race that can die any day, at any hour, at any minute, from any number of accidents, has come that one, who will only die on his day, at his hour, at his minute, when he has reached the term of his existence!

  No … no … of course not … of course he is not dead.… So then—it’s me, it’s me I have to kill!

  —May 1887

  LETTER FROM A MADMAN

  FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE FEBRUARY 17, 1885 ISSUE OF THE MAGAZINE GIL BLAS, UNDER THE PEN NAME “MAUFRIGNEUSE”

  My dear Doctor, I place myself in your hands. Do with me what you like.

  I am going to tell you my state of mind very frankly, and you will judge whether it isn’t better to have me taken care of for a little while in a sanatorium, rather than leave me prey to the hallucinations and sufferings that are plaguing me.

  Here’s the story, lengthy and precise, of the singular illness of my soul.

  I was living like everybody else,
looking at life with the open, blind eyes of man, without surprise and without understanding. I was living as animals live, as we all live, carrying out all the duties of existence, examining and thinking I saw, thinking I knew, thinking I was familiar with, my surroundings, when one day I perceived that everything is false.

  It was a phrase from Montesquieu that suddenly illumined my thinking. Here it is:

  “One more organ or one less in our body would give us a different intelligence. In fact, all the established laws as to why our body is a certain way would be different if our body were not that way.”

  I reflected on that for months on end, and, little by little, a strange clarity came to me, and this clarity let there be night.

  In fact, our organs are the only intermediaries between the exterior world and ourselves. That is to say, the inner being, which constitutes the ego, is in contact, by means of a few nerve endings, with the exterior being, which constitutes the world.

  Beyond the fact that this exterior being escapes us by its size, its lengthy existence, its countless and impenetrable properties, its origins, its future or its aims, its distant forms and its infinite manifestations, our organs provide us only with information as uncertain as it is paltry about the portion of it that we can know.

  Uncertain, because it is nothing but the properties of our organs that determine for us the apparent properties of matter.

  Paltry, because since our senses number only five, the field of their investigations and the nature of their revelations are both quite limited.

  I will explain. The eye transmits dimensions, shapes, and colors to us. It deceives us on these three points.