“Saint Peter is the man of genius who built up our double power,” said the Pope to Don Juan; “he deserves this monument. But sometimes at night I think that a deluge will pass its sponge over it all, and the world will have to begin again—”
Don Juan and the Pope began to laugh; they understood each other. A fool would have gone the next day to enjoy himself with Julius II at Raphael’s or in the delicious Villa-Madama; but Belvidero went to see him pontificate, in order to be convinced of his doubts. At an orgy, Della Rovere would have been capable of criticizing or confuting the Apocalypse.
However, I did not undertake this legend to furnish materials to those desirous of writing memoirs of the life of Don Juan; it is designed to prove to all decent people that Belvidero did not die in a duel with a stone, as some lithographers would have us believe. When Don Juan had reached the age of sixty he went and took up his abode in Spain. There in his old age, he married a young and lovely Andalusian, but he purposely made neither a good husband nor a good father. He had observed that we are never so tenderly loved as by women for whom we scarcely care at all. Dona Elvira had been piously brought up by an old aunt, in a castle some few leagues from San Lucar, in the wilds of Andalusia; she was a paragon of devotion and grace. Don Juan divined that this young girl would make a wife who would fight against passion for a long time before she yielded, so he hoped to be able to preserve her virtuous until his death. It was a grim jest, a game of chess which he had determined to reserve to play during his old age. Forewarned by all the mistakes of his father Bartolomeo, Don Juan resolved to make the least actions of his old age contribute to the success of the drama which was to be played out upon his death-bed. With this end in view, he buried the greater part of his riches in the cellars of his palace at Ferrara, which he seldom visited. As to the other half, he devoted it entirely to purchasing an annuity in order that his wife and children might have an interest in the continuance of his life, a kind of roguery which it would have been well for Don Bartolomeo himself if he practiced; but for Don Juan this Machiavellesque speculation was scarcely necessary. The young Felipe Belvidero grew up as conscientious and religious a Spaniard as his father was impious, in virtue perhaps of the proverb: “A miser breeds a spendthrift son.” The Abbot of San Lucar was chosen by Don Juan to direct the consciences of the Duchess of Belvidero and of Felipe. This ecclesiastic was a holy man, of fine figure, admirably proportioned, with beautiful black eyes; in fact, he had the head of a Tiberius, fatigued with fasts, pale with penance, and tempted daily as are all men who live in solitude. The old noble hoped perhaps still to be able to kill a monk before finishing his first lease of life. But whether it was that the priest was as strong as Don Juan himself, or that Dona Elvira possessed more prudence or virtue than Spain usually bestows upon her daughters, Don Juan was constrained to spend his last days like an old country cure without a single scandal in his house. At times he took pleasure in finding his son or his wife at fault in their religious duties, for he willed despotically that they should perform all the obligations imposed on the faithful by the Court of Rome. In fact he was never so happy as when he was listening to the gallant priest, Dona Elvira, and Felipe engaged in discussing some point of conscience. However, in spite of the prodigious care which the Serior Don Juan Belvidero bestowed upon his person, the days of his decreptitude drew on; with this age of trouble came the cries of impotence, cries the more heartrending because of all the rich memories of his turbulent youth and voluptuous manhood. This man, who had reached the last degree of cynicism—to induce others to believe in laws and principles at which he scoffed—slept at night on the doubt of a Perhaps!
This model of fine breeding, this aristocratic athlete in debauchery, this paragon of gallantry, this gracious flatterer of women whose hearts he had twisted as a peasant twists an osier band, this man of genius, was plagued with catarrh, pestered by sciatica, a martyr to the agonies of gout.
He saw his teeth depart, as the fairest and most beautifully dressed ladies depart one by one at the end of a festival and leave the halls empty and deserted. Then his sinuous hands trembled, his graceful legs tottered; at last one evening apoplexy squeezed his neck with her icy, crooked fingers. After this fatal day he became harsh and morose. He found fault with the devotion of his wife and son, asserting sometimes that the touching and delicate care which they lavished upon him was only given because he had sunk all his fortune in an annuity. Then Elvira and Felipe would shed bitter tears and redouble their caresses upon the malicious old man, and then his voice would grow affectionate to them and he would say: “My dear, my dear wife, you forgive me both, do you not? I tease you a little. Alas! good God! Why dost Thou use me to try these two heavenly creatures? I, who ought to be their joy, I am their scourge.”
In this way he chained them to his bedside, making them forget whole months of impatience and cruelty by one hour, when he would display for them ever new treasures of favor and false tenderness. This paternal system brought him infinitely more success than the system formerly used in his case by his father had brought him. At last he reached such a pitch of disease that, in order to put him to bed, they had to manoeuver him like a felucca entering a dangerous channel. Then the day of his death arrived. This brilliant and sceptical personage, whose intellect alone survived the most horrible of all destructions, found himself between his two antipathies, a physician and a confessor; but even with them he was gay. Was there not for him a light shining behind the veil of the future? Upon this veil—of lead to others, but transparent for him—the joyous, ravishing delights of youth played like shadows.
It was a beautiful summer evening when Don Juan felt the approach of death. The Spanish sky was exquisitely clear, the orange trees scented the air, the stars shed their bright and freshening beams, nature seemed to give him sure pledges for his resurrection, a pious and obedient son watched him with looks of respect and affection. About eleven o’clock he desired to be alone with this ingenuous youth.
“Felipe,” said he, in a voice so tender and affectionate that the young man trembled and shed tears of joy. Never before had this stern father thus pronounced the word “Felipe.”
“Listen to me, my son,” continued the dying man. “I am a great sinner. So during the whole of my life I have thought of my death. Formerly I was a friend of the great Pope Julius II. That illustrious Pontiff, fearing lest the excessive excitation of my senses should cause me to commit some mortal sin between the moment of my receiving the holy oils and my latest breath, made me a present of a phial in which there is preserved some of the holy water which gushed out of the rock in the desert. I have kept the secret of this diversion of the treasure of the church, but I am authorized to reveal this mystery to my son, in articulo mortis. You will find this phial in the drawer of the Gothic table which has always stood at my bedside. The precious crystal will serve for you too, my beloved Felipe. Swear to me on your eternal salvation to execute my orders exactly.”
Felipe looked at his father. Don Juan understood the expression of human feeling too well not to die in peace on the credit of such a look, just as his father had died in despair on the credit of his.
“Thou deservest another father,” replied Don Juan. “I must confess to thee, my child, that at the moment the worthy Abbot of San Lucar was administering the viaticum to me, I thought of the incompatibility of two powers as extensive as God’s and the devils.”
“Oh! my father!”
“And I said to myself that, when Satan makes his peace, he will be bound, unless he is a wretched scoundrel, to stipulate for the pardon of his adherents. This thought haunts me. I shall go to hell, my son, if thou dost not fulfil my wishes.”
“Oh! tell me, father, quickly!”
“As soon as I have closed my eyes,” replied Don Juan, “which will be in a few minutes, perhaps, take my body, even while it is still warm, and stretch it out on a table in the middle of this room. Then extinguish this lamp, the light of the stars will be sufficient for t
hee. Strip me of my clothes; and while thou recitest Paters and Aves, and raisest up thy soul to God, take care to moisten, with this holy water, my eyes, my lips, my whole head first, then all the members of my body in succession; but, my dear son, the power of God is so great, thou must not be astonished at anything!”
Here Don Juan, who felt death approaching, added in a terrible voice: “Hold the phial tight!” then expired gently in the arms of a son whose tears ran in copious streams over his pale, ironical countenance. It was about midnight when Don Felipe Belvidero placed the corpse of his father upon the table. After having kissed the menacing brow and the gray locks, he extinguished the lamp. The soft glow cast by the moonlight lit up the country with its strange reflection, and allowed the pious Felipe to see but indistinctly his father’s corpse—a something white amid the shade. The young man steeped a cloth in the liquid and—absorbed in prayer meanwhile—faithfully anointed the venerated head amidst profound silence. He certainly heard an indescribable shivering, but he attributed it to the play of the breeze in the tree tops. When he had moistened the right arm, he felt himself closely embraced round the neck by a young and vigorous arm, and yet it was his father’s arm! A piercing shriek burst from his lips, he dropped the phial, it broke;—the liquid evaporated. The servants of the castle came running in armed with torches. This cry had terrified and astounded them; it was as if the trumpet at the last judgment had shaken the universe. In a moment the room was full of people. The trembling crowd found Don Felipe in a swoon, held by his father’s powerful arm which clasped him round the neck. Then, marvelous to relate, the assistants saw the head of Don Juan, as young and beautiful as Antinoüs; a head with black hair, and brilliant eyes, and ruddy mouth straining horribly, and yet unable to move the skeleton to which it belonged. An old serving man cried out, “A miracle!” The Spaniards all repeated, “A miracle!” Too pious to admit the mysteries of magic, Dona Elvira sent for the Abbot of San Lucar. When the Abbot had seen the miracle with his own eyes, being an Abbot who asked for nothing more than a chance of augmenting his revenues, he resolved to profit by it, like a man of sense. He declared at once that the Señor Don Juan would undoubtedly be canonized, and appointed the ceremony of his apotheosis at his monastery, which, he said, would be called henceforth San Juan de Lucar. At these words the head made a very funny grimace.
The taste of the Spaniards for this kind of solemnity is so well known, that it ought not to be difficult to imagine the religious fripperies with which the Abbey of San Lucar celebrated the translation of the Blessed Don Juan Belvidero into its Church. Within a few days of the death of this illustrious Señor, the miracle of his incomplete resurrection had been passed on so briskly from village to village within a radius of more than fifty leagues round San Lucar, that already it was as good as a play to see the sightseers on the road; they came from all sides scenting the delicacy of a Te Deum chanted with flambeaux. The ancient mosque of the monastery of San Lucar—a marvelous edifice built by the Moors, whose vaults had heard for three centuries the name of Jesus Christ substituted for the name of Allah—could not contain the crowd come together to witness the ceremony. Packed as close as ants, Hidalgos, in velvet mantles, armed with their good swords, stood upright round the pillars, finding no room to bend knees that bent in no other place but there; bewitching peasant girls, clad in basquines which displayed their charms to advantage, gave their arms to old white-haired men; young men, with passion in their eyes, found themselves side by side with elderly decked-out women. Then there were couples tremulous with happiness, curious maidens brought thither by their sweethearts, brides and bridegrooms married bu t a single night, children shyly holding one another’s hands. Such was the company, rich in color, brilliant in contrast, laden with flowers and enamel, making a soft hum of expectation in the silence of the night. The wide doors of the Church opened. Those who had come too late remained outside, and saw from afar through the three open portals a scene of which the vaporous decorations of our modern operas could not give the faintest idea. Pious women and unholy men, eager to gain the good graces of a new saint, lit thousands of tapers in his honor throughout the vast Church—interested lights which made the building seem as if enchanted. The black arches, the columns with their capitals, the deep chapels glittering with gold and silver, the galleries, the Saracen carving, the most delicate particles of this delicate sculpture were outlined in this excess of light, like the capricious figures formed in a glowing furnace. It was an ocean of fire, dominated, at the end of the Church, by the gilded choir, where towered the high altar rivalling in its glory the rising sun. But the splendor of the golden lamps, the silver candelabra, the tassels, the saint and the ex votos, paled before the shrine wherein lay Don Juan. The corpse of that impious person glistened with jewelry, and flowers, and crystals, and diamonds, and gold, and feathers as white as the wings of a seraph;—it replaced upon the altar a picture of Christ. About him glittered numberless tapers, which shot into the air their waves of lambent flame.
The worthy Abbot of San Lucar, vested in full pontificals, wearing his jewelled miter, his rochet, and golden cross, was enthroned on a seat of imperial splendor above the choir. All his clergy, aged and passionless men with silver hair, clad in albs of fine linen, were gathered round him, like the holy confessors whom painters group about the Eternal. The precentor and the dignitaries of the Chapter, decorated with their brilliant insignia and all their ecclesiastical vanities, passed to and fro in the shadowy depth of the incense, like the stars which roll through the firmament. When the hour of triumph was come, the bells awoke the echoes of the country, and this vast assembly raised to God the first cry of praise with which the Te Deum commences. It was indeed a sublime cry—voices clear and joyous, the voices of women in ecstasy, mingled with the deep, strong voices of men, those thousands of voices in so stupendous a chorus that the organ could not surpass it with all the roaring of its pipes. But amid this tumult of sound, the penetrating notes of the choristers and the sonorous tones of the basses evoked a train of gracious thought, representing childhood and strength in an impassioned concert of human voices blended in one sentiment of Love.
Te Deum laudamus!
From the midst of the Cathedral, black with the kneeling multitude, this chant rose like a light that bursts forth suddenly in the night, and the silence was broken as by the roar of a thunder-clap. The voices ascended with the clouds of incense as they spread their blue, transparent veils upon the fantastic marvels of the architecture. All was splendor, perfume, light, and melody. At the moment when this anthem of love and thanksgiving rolled upward toward the altar, Don Juan, too polite not to return thanks, and too humorous not to understand a joke, answered by a terrible laugh, and drew himself up in his shrine. But the devil having put it into his head that he ran a chance of being taken for an ordinary individual, a saint, a Boniface, a Pantaloon, he threw this melody of love into confusion by a howling to which were added the thousand voices of Hell. Earth spoke her blessings, and Heaven uttered its curse. The ancient Church trembled to its foundations.
“Te Deum laudamus!” cried the assembly.
“Go to all the devils, brute beasts that you are! God, God! Carajos Demonios, idiotic creatures, with your silly old god!”
And a torrent of curses rolled out like a stream of burning lava in an eruption of Vesuvius.
“Deus Sabaoth!—Sabaoth!” cried the Christians.
“You insult the majesty of Hell!” answered Don Juan, grinding his teeth.
Presently the living arm succeeded in getting free out of the shrine, and menaced the assembly with gestures eloquent of mockery and despair.
“The saint blesses us,” said the old women, the children, and the maidens betrothed—a credulous people. Truly, we are often deceived in our worship. The man of power mocks at those who compliment him, and sometimes compliments those whom in the depth of his heart he mocks.
At that moment when the Abbot, prostrate before the altar, began to sing, “San
cte Johannes, ora pro nobis!” he heard quite distinctly, “O coglione.”
“What’s going on up there?” said the sub-prior, seeing the shrine move.
“The saint is playing the devil,” answered the Abbot.
Then the living head detached itself violently from the body which lived no longer, and fell on the yellow skull of the officiant.
“Dost thou remember Dona Elvira?” it cried, fastening its teeth in the Abbot’s head.
The Abbot uttered a terrible shriek, which threw the ceremony into confusion. All the priests ran up together and crowded round their superior.
“Idiot, say at least that there is a God!” screamed the voice. Just at that moment the Abbot, bitten in the brain, was about to expire.
Justin Dowling
The Legs That Walked
In 1954, Justin Dowling was a journalist for the Sunday Tribune in South Africa. Weird Tales published three of his short stories: “The Living Eyes,” “The Arm” and the following offbeat little chiller, which “The Unique Magazine” featured in November 1953. Each of Dowlings “anatomical” fantasies is concerned with the horror of dismemberment, an understandable pre-occupation for a writer who, during World War II, lost his right arm in a tank battle in Italy “fighting alongside the Americans.”
I FIRST saw the legs that walked in a thunder storm. Which made it worse. But having seen them once I had to see them again.
They did that to you. They did it to Mr. Peach, too, who owned them.
I was one of the first to meet Mr. Peach when he bought the old widow’s gloomy house on the corner. We became friendly and I used to drop in after supper for a chat and a cup of China tea with lemon.
He attracted me because there was something in his pale eyes which I could not fathom, something which I knew was haunting him but which he hid so cleverly.
Lovers and Other Monsters Page 25