by Unknown
In the evening, when the church-bells called the people to the Angelus, resting my elbows on the edge of the roof, I listened to their melancholy song, and watched the windows lit up one by one; the good townsmen, smoking their pipes on the pavements; the young girls, in short red petticoats, and with their pitchers under their arms, laughing and chatting about the fountain of Saint Sebalt. Insensibly all these objects faded from my view: the bats came abroad in the dim air, and I lay me down to sleep in the midst of the soft quietude.
The old second-hand dealer, Toubec, knew the road up to my little den as well as I knew it myself, and was not afraid of climbing the ladder. Every week his goat's head, surmounted by a rusty wig, pushed up the trap-door, his fingers clutched the edge of the floor, and in a noisy tone he cried–
"Well, well, Master Christian, have we anything new?"
To which I answered–
"Come in: why the deuce don't you come in? I'm just finishing a little landscape, and want to have your opinion of it."
Then his long thin spine lengthened itself out, until his head touched the roof; and the old fellow laughed silently.
I must do justice to Toubec: he never bargained with me. He bought all my pictures at fifteen florins apiece, one with the other, and sold them again at forty. He was an honest Jew.
This kind of existence was beginning to please me, and I was every day finding in it some new charm, when the good city of Nuremburg was agitated by a strange and mysterious event.
Not far from my garret-window, a little to the left, rose the auberge of the Boeuf-gras, an old inn much frequented by the country-people. Three or four wagons, loaded with sacks or casks, were always standing before its doors; for before going to market the countrymen used to take their nip of wine there.
The gable of this auberge was conspicuous for the peculiarity of its form: it was very narrow, sharply pointed, and its edges were cut like the teeth of a saw; grotesque carvings ornamented the cornices and framework of its windows. But what was the most remarkable was that the house which faced it reproduced exactly the same carvings and ornaments; every detail had been minutely copied, even to the support of the signboard, with its iron volutes and spirals.
It might have been said that these two ancient buildings reflected one another; only that behind the inn grew a tall oak, the dark foliage of which served to bring into bold relief the forms of the roof, while the opposite house stood bare against the sky. For the rest, the inn was as noisy and animated as the other house was silent. On the one side was to be seen, going in and coming out, an endless crowd of drinkers, singing, stumbling, cracking their whips; over the other, solitude reigned.
Once or twice a day, at most, the heavy door of the silent house opened to give egress to a little old woman, her back bent into a half-circle, her chin long and pointed, her dress clinging to her limbs, an enormous basket under her arm, and one hand tightly clutched upon her chest.
The physiognomy of this old woman had struck me more than once; her little green eyes, her skinny, pinched-up nose, the large flower-pattern on her shawl, dating back a hundred years at least; the smile that wrinkled her cheeks, and the lace of her cap hanging down upon her eyebrows – all this appeared to me strange, interested me, and made me strongly desire to learn who this old woman was, and what she did in her great lonely house.
I imagined her as passing there an existence devoted to good works and pious meditation. But one day, when I had stopped in the street to look at her, she turned sharply round and darted at me a look the horrible expression of which I know not how to describe, and made three or four hideous grimaces at me; then dropping again her doddering head, she drew her large shawl about her, the ends of which trained after her on the ground, and slowly entered her heavy door, behind which I saw her disappear.
"That's an old mad-woman," I said to myself; "a malicious, cunning old mad-woman! I ought not to have allowed myself to be so interested in her. But I'll try and recall her abominable grimace – Toubec will give me fifteen florins for it willingly."
This way of treating the matter was far from satisfying my mind, however. The old woman's horrible glance pursued me everywhere; and more than once, while scaling the perpendicular ladder to my lodging-hole, feeling my clothes caught in a nail, I trembled from head to foot, believing that the old woman had seized me by the tails of my coat for the purpose of pulling me down backwards.
Toubec, to whom I related the story, far from laughing at it, received it with a serious air.
"Master Christian," he said, "if the old woman means you harm, take care; her teeth are small, sharp-pointed, and wonderfully white, which is not natural at her age. She has the Evil Eye! Children run away at her approach, and the people of Nuremburg call her Fledermausse!"
I admired the Jew's clear-sightedness, and what he had told me made me reflect a good deal; but at the end of a few weeks, having often met Fledermausse without harmful consequences, my fears died away and I thought no more of her.
Now, it happened one night, when I was lying sound asleep, I was awoken by a strange harmony. It was a kind of vibration, so soft, so melodious, that the murmur of a light breeze through foliage can convey but a feeble idea of its gentle nature. For a long time I listened to it, my eyes wide open, and holding my breath the better to hear it.
At length, looking towards the window, I saw two wings beating against the glass. I thought, at first, that it was a bat imprisoned in my chamber; but the moon was shining clearly, and the wings of a magnificent night-moth, transparent as lace, were designed upon its radiant disc. At times their vibrations were so rapid as to hide them from my view; then for a while they would lie in repose, extended on the glass pane, their delicate articulations made visible anew.
This vaporous apparition in the midst of the universal silence opened my heart to the tenderest emotions; it seemed to me that a sylphid, pitying my solitude, had come to see me; and this idea brought the tears into my eyes.
"Have no fear, gentle captive – have no fear!" I said to it; "your confidence shall not be betrayed. I will not retain you against your wishes; return to heaven – to liberty!"
And I opened the window.
The night was calm. Thousands of stars glittered in space. For a moment I contemplated this sublime spectacle, and the words of prayer rose naturally to my lips. But judge of my amazement when, looking down, I saw a man hanging from the iron stanchion which supported the signboard of the Boeuf-gras; the hair in disorder, the arms stiff, the legs straightened to a point, and throwing their gigantic shadow the whole of the street.
The immobility of this figure, in the moonlight, had something fearful in it. I felt my tongue grow icy cold, and my teeth chattered. I was about to utter a cry; but by what mysterious attraction I know not, my eyes were drawn towards the opposite house, and there I dimly distinguished the old woman, in the midst of the heavy shadow, squatting at her window and contemplating the hanging body with diabolical satisfaction.
I became giddy with terror; my whole strength deserted me, and I fell down in a heap insensible.
I do not know how long I lay unconscious. On coming to myself I found that it was broad day. The mists of night, entering my garret, had dropped their fresh moisture on my hair. Mingled and confused noises rose from the street below. I looked out from my window.
The burgomaster and his secretary were standing at the door of the Boeuf-gras; they remained there a long time. People came and went, stopped to look, then passed on their way. Women of the neighbourhood, sweeping in front of their houses, looked in the direction of the inn and chatted together. At length a stretcher, on which lay a body covered with a woollen cloth, was brought out and carried away by two men; children, on their way to school, followed them as they went.
Then everyone else disappeared.
The window in front of the house remained open still; a fragment of rope dangled from the iron support of the signboard. I had not dreamed – I had really seen the night-moth on m
y window-pane – then the suspended body – then the old woman!
In the course of that day Toubec paid me his weekly visit.
"Anything to sell, Master Christian?" he cried, as his big nose became visible above the edge of the floor, which it seemed to shave.
I did not hear him. I was seated on my only chair, my hands upon my knees, my eyes fixed on vacancy before me. Toubec, surprised at my immobility, repeated in a louder tone, "Master Christian! – Master Christian!" then, stepping up to me, tapped me smartly on the shoulder.
"What's the matter? – what's the matter?" he asked.
"Ah! is that you, Toubec?"
"Well, it's pleasant for me to think so! Are you ill?"
"No – I was thinking."
"What the deuce about?"
"The man who was hung–"
"Aha!" cried the old broker; "you saw the poor fellow, then? What a strange affair! The third in the same place!"
"The third?"
"Yes, the third. I ought to have told you about it before; but there's still time – for there's sure to be a fourth, following the example of the others, the first step only making the difficulty."
This said, Toubec seated himself on a box; struck a light with the flint and steel, lit his pipe and sent out a few puffs of tobacco-smoke with a thoughtful air.
"Good faith," said he, "I'm not timid; but if anyone were to ask me to sleep in that room, I'd rather go and hang myself somewhere else! Nine or ten months back," he continued, "a wholesale furrier, from Tubingen, put up at the Boeuf-gras. He called for supper; ate well, drank well, and was shown up to bed in the room on the third floor which they call, the 'green chamber'; and the next day they found him hanging from the stanchion of the signboard.
"So much for number one, about which there was nothing to be said. A proper report of the affair was drawn up, and the body of the stranger was buried at the bottom of the garden. But about six weeks afterwards came a soldier from Neustadt; he had his discharge, and was congratulating himself on his return to his village. All the evening he did nothing but empty mugs of wine and talk of his cousin, who was waiting his return to marry him. At last they put him to bed in the green chamber, and the same night the watchman passing along the Rue des Minnesangers noticed something hanging from the signboard stanchion. He raised his lantern; it was the soldier, with his discharge-papers in a tin box hanging on his left thigh, and his hands planted smoothly on the outer seams of his trousers, as if he had been on parade!
"It was certainly an extraordinary affair! The burgomaster declared it was the work of the devil. The chamber was examined; they replastered its walls. A notice of the death was sent to Neustadt, on the margin of which the clerk wrote – 'Died suddenly of apoplexy.'
"All Nuremberg was indignant against the landlord of the Boeuf-gras, and wished to compel him to take down the iron stanchion of his signboard, on the pretext that it put dangerous ideas in people's heads. But you may easily imagine that old Nikel Schmidt didn't listen with the ear on that side of his head.
"'The stanchion was put there by my grandfather,' he said; 'the sign of the Boeuf-gras has hung on it from father to son, for a hundred and fifty years; it does nobody any harm, not even the hay-carts that pass under it, because it's more than thirty feet high up; those who don't like it have only to look another way, and then they won't see it.'
"People's excitement gradually cooled down, and for several months nothing new happened. Unfortunately, a student from Heidelberg, on his way to the University, came to the Boeuf-gras and asked for a bed. He was the son of a pastor.
"Who could suppose that the son of a pastor would take into his head the idea of hanging himself to the stanchion of a public-house sign, because a furrier and a soldier had hung themselves there before him? It must be confessed, Master Christian, that the thing was not very probable – it would not have appeared more likely to you than it did to me. Well–"
"Enough! enough!" I cried; "it is a horrible affair. I feel sure there is some frightful mystery at the bottom of it. It is neither the stanchion nor the chamber–"
"You don't mean that you suspect the landlord? – as honest a man as there is in the world, and belonging to one of the oldest families in Nuremberg?"
"No, no! Heaven keep me from forming unjust suspicions of anyone; but there are abysses into the depth of which one dares not look."
"You are right," said Toubec, astonished at my excited manner; "and we had much better talk of something else. By-the-way; Master Christian, what about our landscape, the view of Sainte-Odile?"
The question brought me back to actualities. I showed the broker the picture I had just finished. The business was soon settled between us, and Toubec, thoroughly satisfied, went down the ladder, advising me to think no more of the student of Heidelberg.
I would very willingly have followed the old broker's advice, but when the devil mixes himself up with our affairs he is not easily shaken off.
* * *
In solitude, all these events came back to my mind with frightful distinctness.
The old woman, I said to myself, is the cause of all this; she alone has planned these crimes, she alone has carried them into execution; but by what means? Has she had recourse to cunning only or really to the intervention of the invisible powers?
I paced my garrett, a voice within me crying, "It is not without purpose that Heaven has permitted you to see Fledermausse watching the agony of her victim; it was not without design that the poor young man's soul came to wake you in the form of a night-moth! No! all this has not been without purpose. Christian, Heaven imposes on you a terrible mission; if you fail to accomplish it, fear that you yourself may fall into the toils of the old woman! Perhaps at this moment she is laying her snares for you in the darkness!"
During several days these frightful images pursued me without cessation. I could not sleep; I found it impossible to work; the brush fell from my hand, and, shocking to confess, I detected myself at times complacently contemplating the dreadful stanchion. At last, one evening, unable any longer to bear this state of mind, I flew down the ladder four steps at a time, and went and hid myself beside Fledermausse's door, for the purpose of discovering her fatal secret.
From that time there was never a day that I was not on the watch, following the old woman like her shadow; never losing sight of her; but she was so cunning, she had so keen a scent that without even turning her head she discovered that I was behind her, and knew that I was on her track. But nevertheless, she pretended not to see me – went to the market, to the butcher's, like a simple housewife; only she quickened her pace and muttered to herself as she went.
At the end of a month I saw that it would be impossible for me to achieve my purpose by these means, and this conviction filled me with an inexpressible sadness.
"What can I do?" I asked myself. "The old woman has discovered my intentions, and is thoroughly on her guard, I am helpless. The old wretch already thinks she sees me at the end of the cord!"
At length, from repeating to myself again and again the question, "What can I do?" a luminous idea presented itself to my mind.
My chamber overlooked the house of Fledermausse, but it had no dormer window on that side. I carefully raised one of the slates of my roof, and the delight I felt on discovering that by this means I could command a view of the entire antique building can hardly be imagined.
"At last I've got you!" I cried to myself; "you cannot escape me now! From here I shall see everything – the goings and comings, the habits of the weasel in her hole! You will not suspect this invisible eye – this eye that will surprise the crime at the moment of its inception! Oh, Justice! It moves slowly, but it comes!"
Nothing more sinister than this den could be looked on – a large yard, paved with moss-grown flagstones; a well in one corner, the stagnant water of which was frightful to behold; a wooden staircase leading up to a railed gallery, from the balustrade of which hung the tick of an old mattress; to the left, on the
first floor, a drain-stone indicated the kitchen; to the right, the upper windows of the house looked into the street. All was dark, decaying, and dank-looking.
The sun penetrated only for an hour or two during the day the depths of this dismal sty; then the shadows again spread over it – the light fell in lozenge shapes upon the crumbling walls, on the mouldy balcony, on the dull windows. Clouds of motes danced in the golden rays that not a motion of the air came to disturb.
Oh, the whole place was worthy of its mistress!
I had hardly made these reflections when the old woman entered the yard on her return from market. First, I heard her heavy door grate on its hinges, then Fledermausse, with her basket, appeared. She seemed fatigued – out of breath. The border of her cap hung down upon her nose, as, clutching the wooden rail with one hand, she mounted the stairs.
The heat was suffocating. It was exactly one of those days when insects of every kind – crickets, spiders, mosquitoes – fill old buildings with their grating noises and subterranean borings.
Fledermausse crossed the gallery slowly, like a ferret that feels itself at home. For more than a quarter of an hour she remained in the kitchen, then came out and turned her mattress-tick, swept the stones a little, on which a few straws had been scattered; at last she raised her head, with her green eyes carefully scrutinised every portion of the roof from which I was observing her.
By what strange intuition did she suspect anything? I know not; but I gently lowered the uplifted slate into its place, and gave over watching for the rest of that day.
The day following Fledermausse appeared to be reassured. A jagged ray of light fell into the gallery; passing this, she caught a fly, and delicately presented it to a spider established in an angle of the roof.
The spider was so large, that, in spite of the distance, I saw it descend round by round of its ladder, then, gliding along one thread, like a drop of venom, seize its prey from the fingers of the dreadful old woman, and remount rapidly. Fledermausse watched it attentively; then her eyes half-closed, she sneezed, and cried to herself in a jocular tone–