The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre

by John Polidori

  For ourselves, who had been witnessing for the first time the operation of the knife, we must plead guilty to a certain perturbation of the senses leaving every sensation indistinct; a whizzing in the ears,—a mistiness of vision,—a parchedness of tongue,—a throbbing of heart, rendering the very way before us hard to follow. We had a mind to visit Nôtre Dame for early mass. Our spirit hungered after the pealing of the organ and the music of those pure young voices which speak the promises of peace in heavenliest diapason. We had been present at the passing of a human soul, (guilty or guiltless, God alone could determine,) from time to eternity. We longed for the murmurs of a requiem; the tranquillity of a holy place; for the security of the sanctuary; for the groined roof, the echoing aisle, the word of God, the promises of salvation. In such a mood of mind, it was our destiny to stumble into the stall of the RED MAN!

  For a moment, indeed, we fancied that our eyes deceived us; that the hue of the blood we had seen spilled had attached itself to the whole external creation. And probably the horror of the impression depicted itself in our countenance; for the old man, having gazed for a moment in silence, laid down the rusty chain he was shaking into form, and having humanely demanded if we were not indisposed, tendered the Evangelic offering of a glass of water; which was gratefully accepted and swallowed, before we became accurately cognizant of our whereabout. Under all the circumstances, Balthazar’s wooden chair seemed a luxurious refuge. We were glad to sit there, and pour into sympathizing ears the confession of our blood-hatred. The old man happened to have religious scruples of his own anent prison discipline and the penitentiary system; he too was an eschewer of the punishment of death; and as an inhabitant for sixty years of the Quartier St Jacques, resented with much bitterness the indignity inflicted upon his parish by the transposition of the guillotine.

  Our minds were mutually attuned for horrors; we could talk of nothing but killing,—nothing but death. Balthazar had witnessed the execution of the monomaniac Papavoine;* and we, after tossing off another glass of eau filtre, had our own anecdotes to relate of Tyburn, of Newgate, of Jack Ketch, of the condemning cap of the judge, the condemned sermon of the felon, the cart, the toll of the bell, the ordinary, the sheriff, the coffin,—even unto the seething of the strangled corse, and the admonitory glass-case in Surgeons’-hall!*

  Balthazar was perhaps jealous of our adeptitude in these tales of terror; for, at the close of our narrative of the fearful tragedy of Gill’s Hill and fate of Thurtell,* he suddenly disappeared towards the back of his échoppe, and having penetrated into one of the subterranean recesses containing the choicer specimens of his trade, hobbled back to place in our hands a rusty complication of iron machinery, one portion of which seemed to be formed of pieces of bone or ivory. After turning it over and over without much enlightenment of our ignorance as to its nature and destination, we ventured to cast an upward glance of inquiry towards the old iron-dealer’s face.

  What a study for Rembrandt! The otter-skin cap of Balthazar, foxy as his own iron-dyed hair and whiskers, was pulled close upon one eye, while the other peered out, bleared and fiery from the excitement of its habitual atmosphere, with the leathern cheek around puckered into a peculiar expression of cunning and exultation. His thin lips were compressed, as if waiting the irrepressible interrogations of our curiosity; and while he stood leaning against a fascis* of jarring rods, he rolled unconsciously within his red hands a corner of his rusty leathern apron, from which the ferruginous particles flew off in volleys.

  ‘Well, Sir?’ said he, at last, tired of our perversity of silence: and—

  ‘Well, my good friend?’ was all the question we chose to vouchsafe in reply.

  ‘Why, what I have to say,’ was his somewhat more explicit rejoinder, ‘is, that the Armada-armoury of the Tower of London which you have been describing, contains no choicer instrument of torture than the one you regard so carelessly.’

  ‘Instrument of torture! Is this piece of rusty iron, then, a relique of the Inquisition?’ was our involuntary exclamation.

  ‘Not exactly. But you have not examined it. You have not observed the artist-like manner in which the springs close upon the bones—You do not perceive that it is one of the cleverest gins ever formed by the cunning of man—Try to extricate the skeleton hand! Try!’

  ‘The skeleton hand?—the bones?’

  ‘Ay! attempt to liberate them from the trap!’

  And the effort, when made, was, as he had announced, unaccomplishable.

  ‘But do you really mean,’ was our next inquiry, ‘that these pieces of bleached bone are, in truth, a portion of some human skeleton?’

  ‘What else?’ cried the old man, chuckling. ‘It needs no Cuvier* to decide the point. Any student of anatomy between this and the Jardin des Plantes shall teach you as much.’

  The skeleton of a human hand, and inclosed in an intricate fetterlock of rusty iron!

  ‘The bones are diminutive; the hand must surely have been that of a female?’ was the fruit of our cogitations upon this ugly instrument of barbarity;—‘of a female,—probably young,—perhaps beautiful;—one who must have lived, or rather died, a captive. But where? Not, surely, in France;—not in gallant, refined, chivalrous Paris? This curious specimen may have been imported from the East,—from Tunis, or Tripoli, or Fez?’

  ‘No such thing!’ interrupted Balthazar. ‘The ironwork does honour to a trusty workman, who must have served his time to a master-mechanic of the cité; the hand is that of a woman French-born,—Parisian-bred. The victim was, in short, one who lived and died almost within sight and sound of the very spot where we are standing.’

  ‘Centuries ago, of course. The times of the Frédégondes and Brunéhauts* have probably legends of domestic horror to match with the crimes of their historical archives.’

  ‘Bah, bah!’ cried the old man petulantly. ‘Human nature is the same in all ages and countries. Every day—every city—produces some monstrous wickedness, secret or discovered, arising from the triumphs of ungoverned passion;—from hatred,—lust,—revenge,—or mere blood-thirstiness. The crime in which this piece of ruthless machinery had its rise, was done in my own lifetime, in a place which I weekly and calmly traverse. The perpetrator went down to the grave, I will not say unpunished, but undiscovered. No one pitied the victim,—no one cursed the assassin. The whole story is, and is better, buried in oblivion.’

  ‘Impossible, impossible!’ we exclaimed, again carefully examining the whitened bones and their fiendish inclosure. ‘Since you profess yourself acquainted with the origin and destination of this mysterious instrument, you must not tantalize our curiosity.’

  ‘What avails it to rake up memoirs of the frailties of our fellow-creatures?’ said the Red Man, dropping the corner of his leathern apron, replacing his cap horizontally over his brows, and turning towards a tray of screws and hinges, as if provokingly bent on devoting his attention to indifferent objects. ‘Let the dead bury their dead! To-morrow it were cruelty to speak of the last throes of the unhappy wretch whom this morning you saw precipitated into eternity. Yet his life was given for a life, according to the decree of the Almighty, according to the laws of the land.’

  ‘Nevertheless, the lesson to be imparted by such examples were lost,’ we remonstrated, ‘were the deed hidden behind a curtain. It is for the good of mankind, not to gratify an individual craving for retribution, that the penalty is paid. No man has a right to connive in the concealment of crime.’

  ‘Unless when, as in the present instance, Time, the universal avenger, has swallowed up the offender and the offence,’ rejoined Balthazar. ‘All that could be done now in atonement were to curse with bell and book the place where the crime was perpetrated. And to what avail? You would affix an eternal stigma upon a spot of earth, the work of the Almighty’s hands, fast by his holy house, and sanctified by the daily echoes of his holy word.’

  ‘The Parvis de Nôtre Dame!’* we exclaimed, certain of having now attained the heart of the matter
.

  ‘The Parvis de Nôtre Dame!’ reiterated the Red Man, in an affirmative tone. ‘And since you appear so obstinately interested in the subject, it may save my time and your own to enter at once into explanation. Know, then, that this relique came not into my hands in the way of traffic. At the epoch of the first revolution,* when the very name of priest had become abomination in the ears of the people, and so many venerable servants of the church were arrested and sacrificed in every part of the kingdom, the greater number of the canons of Nôtre Dame were wise enough to seek safety in flight or in concealment. One, however, there was—an aged man, familiarly and favourably known to the poor of the island by the name of Père Anselme, who disdained to follow the example of the fashionable abbés or beneficed nobles; and attached beyond all power of separation to the old towers and aisles of the cathedral, or, as some thought, to the little, gloomy, official habitation wherein, for thirty years, he had abided, refused to stir,—surrendered himself, as it were, to his destinies,—and was eventually numbered among the victims of the massacre at the prison of L’Abbaye.* It was on the evening following his arrest that a decrepit mulatto serving-man, attired in shabby mourning, entered my échoppe, entreating my assistance in opening the springs of the fetterlock in question, one end of which was still attached to a chain and staple, which had evidently been wrenched by force from a stone wall. Vain, however, were the utmost endeavours of my skill; the cunning of the springs effectually defied my artificership; and having rendered it back to the old man to be re-enveloped in the cloth in which he had transported it to my dwelling, I could not forbear an inquisitive remark or two concerning the mysterious task he had sought to impose upon me, and the inexplicable nature of the instrument.

  ‘He shook his head mournfully in reply; but at length admitted that the trap was connected with certain family secrets, which he was desirous of screening from the scrutiny of the National officers in a house to which, that morning, the seals of office had been affixed.

  ‘“It required some exertion of strength, as you may perceive,” said the poor old mulatto, opening his shrivelled hands and displaying the mangled palms, “to wrench the staple from the wall. Thank Heaven, however, I succeeded: and all that now remains for me to accomplish is to unclose the springs,—consign these wretched bones to consecrated earth, and this wicked instrument to the furnace;—that so may finish all memory of one of the cruellest deeds darkening the history of human kind.”

  ‘Smitten with an interest in the business, almost equal to that you now evince, I instantly proffered a renewal of my efforts in so pious a cause; and promised, if the lock could be left in my possession, to apply the whole of my leisure to the task. Christophe’s first impulse was a decided negative to this proposal; but, on consideration, he admitted that the trap would be safer from observation in my hands than in his own, and having extorted from me a promise of secrecy, he departed with the intention of returning in the course of a week. Many weeks elapsed, however, before I saw the mulatto again; and when he once more entered the shop, I could scarcely bring to remembrance my former visiter. He was so worn, so wasted, so tremulous, so fearful, that I had scarcely courage to refer to the painful secret by which we had been originally brought into collision. But Christophe was the first to recur to the fetter-lock; and after a vehement burst of almost childish tears, admitted that the great motive for secrecy was now at an end. “God has avenged all—God, in his own good time, has poured down retribution!” was his reiterated exclamation. “My poor old master was butchered in the massacre of the 2nd of September. All is over!—I have nothing now to care for!—let those come and see who list! My own days are numbered:—to others lie the accomplishment of my tasks—to you, Sir, if it be the will of Heaven, the expiatory deed of opening this fatal springe, and consigning the bones of Lucile to hallowed ground!”

  ‘Touched by the helplessness of his grief, no less than by the fidelity of his attachment, I undertook to fulfil, as far as my powers might avail, the task proposed; and in the process of another week’s acquaintance with old Christophe (the last week of his mortal existence), derived from his lips the particulars of a family history of unequalled interest and horror connected with the lock. You seem at leisure to listen;—hear, and moralize upon the tale.

  ‘Anselme Lanoue, Sir, was the only son of respectable parents, occupying a small property in the neighbourhood of St Etienne; destined from his infancy to follow in their footsteps as the unaspiring cultivator of his paternal estate. Having, however, at a very early age, distinguished himself among his fellow-students at the Lycée of St Etienne by a remarkable proficiency in mathematics, and, at his leisure hours, by a singular tendency to mechanical pursuits, the proprietor of one of the chief engine-foundries in the country, a distant kinsman of Madame Lanoue, persuaded his father and mother to bind the boy in apprenticeship to a calling for which he evinced so marked a vocation, and which afforded such auspicious prospects of future fortune. Anselme accordingly became an engineer, and soon confirmed the prognostications of his new master by striking out various improvements and inventions of high account. At three and twenty he had achieved the post of chief engineer in the establishment, and at eight and twenty was not only a partner but the affianced husband of his master’s daughter. His parents did not survive to witness the consummation of his prosperity—both were already in the grave, and Anselme’s patrimony disposed of to augment the capital of his thriving trade.

  ‘Nothing now remained for him to desire. Lucile Moronval was a lovely girl of eighteen, whom he had fondly watched from childhood, with a gradually increasing hope of being enabled, at some future time, to aspire to her hand; and although it was whispered among the commercial coteries, that she had for some time testified considerable repugnance to the marriage arranged for her by her parents, on the grounds that Anselme, in spite of his enlightenment and high moral principles, was of a silent, stern, jealous, and even at times morose disposition, mistrustful in his temper and sullen in his deportment,—all was finally reconciled; and ere the bride had attained her nineteenth year, they were settled as man and wife in a pleasant house in the suburbs of St Etienne, the dwelling attached to the foundry being supposed disadvantageously situated for the health of the young matron. Lanoue seemed indeed to derive double happiness when established in his cheerful home at the close of his labours of the day, from the circumstance of their temporary separation. Lucile had household cares to occupy her time during the interim, and at the close of the first year of their marriage, had a pretty little Lucile of her own to display to her husband and father on their return from the foundry.

  ‘Still it was remarked by the same prying gossips who had been the first to notice her disinclination to become the wife of Anselme, that after the first few months of her motherly triumph, Madame Lanoue appeared to take little pleasure in her child. She grew dispirited, indifferent, negligent in her person and household; and the more her husband evinced his discontent at these changes in her deportment, the more her spirits were depressed. Some of her neighbours were prompt to attribute the mischief to the arrival of a young cousin, a certain Clement Manoury, who had been the companion of Lucile’s early years, and for some time past detained by the arrangement of his family affairs in the island of Martinique. It was even said that her kinsman had returned with the intention of claiming her hand; and that Lanoue, on discovering his abortive pretensions, had forbidden Clement the house, insisting on an absolute rupture of the family connexion.

  ‘Certain it was that the door of Anselme was closed upon his supposed rival; and certain also it was said to be, that Lanoue, who had hitherto contented himself with returning home at the close of his day’s labours to his evening meal, was now frequently seen traversing the town, from his foundry at the river-side to his cheerful habitation in the suburbs, with hurried step and gloomy countenance, at various unaccustomed periods of the day. Those who were busiest on the watch managed to ascertain that he had, at different times, broke
n in suddenly on the solitude of Lucile—but, happily, only to find it solitude. Nothing transpired to justify his suspicions, but nothing seemed to pacify the disturbance of his mind.

  ‘For often does a husband or a wife possess confirmation strong of fickleness or infidelity, which less interested persons account as nothing—symptoms of coldness, of estrangement, of loathing in moments once devoted to endearment—tears where smiles should be, or smiles of scorn instead of the playful self-abandonment sanctioned by reciprocal tenderness. And Anselme had good reason to see that he was no longer beloved. Had he not, therefore, reason to suspect that another had already superseded him in the affections of his wife?

  ‘He did at least suspect it, and the suspicion maddened him. He read it in the averted eye, the quivering lip, the hand withdrawn from his own; and when at length he gathered from his wife that he was about again to become a father, the admission, instead of filling his heart with the rapture which had preceded the birth of little Lucile, struck him with disgust. Perplexed in the extreme by the agonizing misgivings which had taken possession of his mind, he soon became brutal, wild, ungovernable in his exasperations against his unhappy victim. Yet strange enough it was that Lucile never resented his violence—never appealed to her neighbours’ compassion or her father’s protection. She suffered all in silence—too mild to murmur, too gentle to resist. It was even hinted that harsh words had been followed by hard blows; yet still the humbled creature uttered not a syllable of complaint!