The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories

by Émile Erckmann

  This strange being, in the midst of his voluntary isolation, appeared to have preserved for me alone a portion of his sympathy. He came to see me from time to time, and gravely seated in my armchair, with his fingers moving convulsively, he would entertain me with his metaphysical lucubrations.

  “Kaspar,” said he to me one day, proceeding in the Socratic manner of argument, “Kaspar, what is the soul?”

  Proud to display my erudition, I replied with dictatorial air:

  “According to Thales, it is a kind of lodestone; according to Plato, a substance which moves of itself; according to Asclepiades, an excitation of the senses. Anaximander says that it is composed of earth and water; Empedocles, of blood; Hippocrates, a spirit diffused through the body; Zeno, the quintessence of the four elements; Xenocrates—”

  “Yes, yes; but what do you believe the substance of the soul to be?”

  “I, Wolfgang? I say, with Lactantius, that I know nothing. I am an Epicurian from nature. For, according to the Epicurians, all judgement comes from the senses, and as the soul does not come under my senses, I cannot judge of it.”

  “And yet, Kaspar, there a number of animals, such as insects, fishes, that live deprived of several senses. Who knows if we possess all? If there does not exist some of which we have no idea?”

  “It is possible, but as it is a doubtful question, I refrain from giving an opinion.”

  “Do you believe, Kasper, that it is possible to know anything without having learned it?”

  “No; all science proceeds from experience or study.”

  “But how is it, comrade, that little chickens, the moment they issue from the egg, begin to run and pick up their nourishment? How is it that they perceive the hawk in the midst of the clouds, and hide themselves under their mother’s wing? Did they learn to recognize their enemy in the egg?”

  “That is the effect of instinct, Wolfgang; all animals obey instinct.”

  “Then it appears that instinct consists in knowing what has never been learned?”

  “Now you are asking too much,” I cried. “How can I answer you?”

  He smiled in a disdainful manner, and, throwing his worn-out cloak over his shoulders, left me without adding another word.

  I looked upon him as a madman, but a madman of the most innocent kind; for who could imagine that a passion for metaphysics could be dangerous?

  Such was the condition of affairs when the old cake-dealer, Catherine Wogel, suddenly disappeared. This good woman, with her tray suspended from her stork-like neck, would present herself at the taverns frequented by the students. She was a great favorite with the young men, and they would jest with her and she with them.

  Her disappearance was remarked on the third day.

  “What the deuce has become of Catherine?” said one of the students. “Can she be sick? It is very strange; she appeared so merry the last time she was here.”

  We learned that the police were in search of her. My own opinion was, that the poor old woman, overcome by kirsch-wasser, had fallen into the river.

  But the next morning, as I was leaving the lecture-room of Hasenkopf, I met Wolfgang. The moment he saw me his eyes sparkled, and he said:

  “I have been looking for you, Kaspar. I have been looking for you; the hour of triumph has come. You must follow me.”

  His appearance, his gestures, his pallor betrayed extreme agitation, and when he seized me by the arm, dragging me towards the Tanner’s quarter, I could not help experiencing a feeling of undefinable fear, without having courage to resist.

  The little street down which we proceeded was situated in the rear of the Munster, and was the very oldest part of Heidelberg. The square roofs, the wooden galleries, in which hung the clothes of the poor people who resided in the houses, the external staircases with worm-eaten steps, the thousand wan and curious faces, which, with half-open mouths, projected from the little windows and regarded with eager glances the strangers who were passing through their filthy quarter; the long poles reaching from one roof to the other, and loaded with bleeding skins, and the thick smoke which issued from the chimneys of every roof—all these things combined was like a resurrection of the middle ages to me, and, although the sky was clear, the long shadows cast by the sun on the decrepit walls added to my emotion by the strangeness of contrast.

  There are moments when a man loses all presence of mind. I had not even the idea to ask Wolfgang where we were going.

  After we had passed through this populous quarter, where misery reigned triumphant, we reached the, comparatively speaking, deserted Butcher’s Quarter. Suddenly Wolfgang, whose cold and dry hand seemed riveted to my wrist, dragged me into a building which was destitute of windows.

  “Go forward!” said he.

  I followed a wall, at the end of which I found a staircase, so much dilapidated that it was with the greatest difficulty I could ascend. My comrade kept repeating to me, in an impatient voice:

  “Higher! Higher!”

  I stopped sometimes, almost frozen with fear, under the pretext of taking breath, and for the purpose of examining the nooks of this sombre dwelling, but in fact to deliberate if it were not time to escape.

  At last we reached the foot of a ladder, the upper steps of which were lost in the darkness. I have often asked myself since, how I could be so imprudent as to ascend this ladder, without exacting the slightest explanation from my friend Wolfgang. It seems that madness is contagious.

  I ascended then, he behind me. I reached the top, and my feet came in contact with a dusty floor. I looked around me, and found that I was in an immense garret, the roof of which contained three windows; on the left the gray wall of the gable reached the top of the roof. A small table, loaded with books and papers, stood in the middle of the loft. Above it was so dark that the beams supporting the roof could scarcely be distinguished. It was impossible to look out into the street, for the windows were ten or twelve feet from the floor.

  At the first moment I did not notice a low door with a large vent-hole contrived in the gable-wall, breast high.

  Wolfgang, without saying a word, pushed towards me a trunk, which served him for a chair, and then taking in both his hands a large pitcher of water he took a long drink, whilst I gazed on him as if I were in a dream.

  “We are in the false roof of an old slaughter-house,” said he, with a strange smile. “The council has voted funds to build another outside the city. I have been here five years without paying any rent. Not a soul has come to trouble my studies.”

  He sat down on a heap of firewood in a corner.

  “Well,” he continued, “let us proceed to business. Are you sure, Kaspar, that we have a soul?”

  “Listen, Wolfgang,” said I in a bad humor, “if you have led me here to talk metaphysics, you have done wrong. I had just left Hasenkopf’s lecture, and was going to breakfast, when you intercepted me. I take my dose of abstract ideas every day—that is sufficient for me. Explain yourself clearly, then, or let me go to breakfast.”

  “You only like to eat, then?” said he in a hoarse voice. “Do you know that I have passed whole days without putting a bit into my mouth? And I have done this from love of science.”

  “Everyone to his taste; you live on syllogisms and preposterous theories. I love sausages and beer. I can’t help it—my appetite is stronger than my love of science.”

  He became quite pale, his lips trembled, but conquering his anger, he said:

  “Kaspar, since you will not answer my question, listen at least to my explanations. Man has need of admirers, and I wish you to admire me. I wish to confound you by the sublime discovery that I have made; I think it not too much to ask an hour’s attention for ten years of conscientious study.”

  “Very well, go on, I will listen—but hurry.”

  His face twitched again and made me reflect. I repented having accompanied him, and I assumed a grave demeanor for the purpose of not irritating the maniac. My meditative face appeared to calm him a little, for
after a few moments’ silence he resumed:

  “You are hungry—here, take my bread; and here is water—eat, drink, but listen.”

  “It is unnecessary, Wolfgang; I can listen very well without that.”

  He smiled bitterly, and continued:

  “We have a soul—a thing admitted from the earliest ages. From plants to man, all living things have souls. Is it necessary for me to attend Hasenkopf’s lectures six years to make you this reply—“All organized beings have at least one soul.” But the more their organization is made more perfect, the more complicated it is, the more the souls multiply. It is this which distinguishes animated beings one from the other. A plant has only one soul, the vegetable soul. Its function is simple, unique; it has to imbibe nourishment from the air by means of its leaves, and from the earth by means of its roots. An animal has two souls—first, the vegetable soul, the functions of which are the same as in the plant, nutrition by means of the lungs and stomach; secondly, the animal soul, properly so-called, which has for its end sensibility, and the organ of which is the heart. Man, who sums up terrestrial creation, has three souls—the vegetable soul, the animal soul, the functions of which are exercised the same as in the brute, and the human soul, which has for its object reason and intelligence—its organ is the brain. The nearer animals approach man, the more perfect is their cerebral organization, the more they participate in this third soul—such as the dog, the elephant, the horse—but men of genius alone possess this soul in its fullest perfection.”

  Here Wolfgang paused a few moments, and fixed his glance on me.

  “Well,” said he, “what have you to reply?”

  “That it is like any other theory, it wants proof.”

  A kind of frantic exultation seized Wolfgang at this reply. He jumped up with a bound, and crossing his hands in the air, cried:

  “Yes, yes, proof was wanting. It is this that has rent my soul for ten years; it is this that has been the cause of so many vigils, so much moral suffering and privation. For it was on myself, Kaspar, that I first experimented. Fasting only forced on my mind the conviction of this sublime truth, without my being able to establish the proof. But at last it is discovered—the proof is made manifest! You shall hear the three souls manifest themselves—proclaim their own existence. You shall hear them!”

  After this explosion of enthusiasm, which was announced with such energy that it made me shiver, he suddenly became cold again, and sitting down with his elbows resting on the table he resumed, pointing to the lofty gable-wall:

  “The proof is there, behind that wall. I will show it you by-and-bye; but first of all, you must follow the progressive march of my ideas. You know the opinion of the ancients on the nature of souls. They admitted four united in man. Caro, the flesh, a mixture of earth and water, which is dissolved by death; manes, the phantom which hovers around the grave—its name comes from manere, to rest, to dwell; umbra, the shadow, more immaterial than the manes; and last of all, spiritus, the spirit—the immaterial substance which ascends to the gods. This classification appears to me to be just; the question was to decompose a human being, in order to establish the existence of three souls distinct from the flesh. Reason told me that every man before reaching his last development must have passed through the state of a plant and an animal, or in other words, that Pythagoras had a glimpse of the truth without being able to furnish the demonstration. Well, I determined to resolve this problem. It was necessary that I should successively extinguish in myself the three souls and then reanimate them. I had recourse to rigorous fasting. Unfortunately, the human soul must succumb first to allow the animal soul to act freely. Hunger made me lose the faculty of observing the animal condition. By exhausting myself I made myself powerless to judge of the animal state. After a number of fruitless efforts on my own organization, I became convinced that there was but one means to attain the end I had in view. It was to act on another! But who would resign himself to this species of observation?”

  Wolfgang paused. His lips became contracted, and in an abrupt tone he added:

  “A subject was necessary to me at any price. I resolved to experiment in anima vili!”

  I shivered, this man was then capable of anything.

  “Do you understand?” said he.

  “Very well! You required a victim.”

  “To decompose,” he added coldly.

  “And you have found one?”

  “Yes; I have promised that you shall hear the three souls. It may perhaps be difficult now, but yesterday you might have heard them howl, roar, supplicate and grind their teeth by turns.”

  A cold shiver ran through me. Wolfgang, perfectly impassible, lighted a little lamp which he used for his night studies, and approached the vent-hole to the left.

  “Look,” said he, extending his arms in the darkness; “approach and look, and then listen!”

  In spite of my baleful presentiments, in spite of the cold shiver of terror which agitated me, drawn there by the attraction of mystery, I gazed through the sombre opening. There, under the rays of the lamp, about fifteen feet below the surface of the floor, I saw a kind of pit, without any means of exit excepting that of the garret. I immediately comprehended that it was one of those holes into which butchers throw the skins of slaughtered animals, that they may become green before handing them over to the tanners. It appeared to me to be empty, and for some moments I could distinguish nothing.

  “Look well,” said Wolfgang to me in a low voice; “do you not see a bundle of rags heaped up in a corner? It is old Catherine Wogel, the cake-dealer, wh—”

  He had not time to finish, for a piercing, savage cry, resembling the lugubrious mewing of a cat whose paw is crushed, was heard at the bottom of the pit. A wild-looking being rose up, and seemed to be trying to climb up the walls with her nails. And I, more dead than alive, my forehead covered with cold perspiration, drew back, exclaiming:

  “Oh, it is horrible!”

  “Did you hear?” said Wolfgang, his face lighted up with infernal joy. “Was not that the cry of a cat? The old woman before attaining the human condition was either a cat or a panther. Now the beast is awakened. Oh, hunger, hunger, and especially thirst, performs miracles!”

  He was so absorbed by his discovery that he did not look at me. An abominable complacency and self-satisfaction could be traced to his look, in his attitude and in his smile.

  The piercing cries of the poor old woman had ceased. The madman, having placed his lamp on the table, added in the form of a commentary:

  “She has been without food for four days. I attracted her here under the pretext of selling her a little cask of kirsch-wasser. I made her descend into the pit, and then I shut her in. Intemperance is the cause of her ruin. She is expiating for her immoderate thirst. The first two days the human soul was in all its vigor. She supplicated me, she implored me, she proclaimed her innocence, saying that she had done nothing to me, and that I had no rights over her. Then rage took possession of her. She overwhelmed me with reproaches, calling me a monster and a wretch, etc. The third day, which was yesterday, a Wednesday, the human soul completely disappeared. The cat showed its claws—she commenced to mew and to growl. Fortunately, we are in a retired spot. Last night the inhabitants of the Tanner’s quarter must have thought there was a real battle of cats—the cries were enough to make one tremble. Now do you know when the beast shall be exhausted what will be the result? The vegetable soul will have its turn; it is that which will perish last. It has already been remarked that the hair and nails of the dead grow in their graves; there is also formed in the interstices of the skull a sort of human moss, and which is considered as engendered by the animal juices of the brain. At last the vegetable soul itself retires. You see, Kaspar, that the proof of the three souls is complete.”

  These words struck my ears like the reasonings of a madman. I seemed to be a victim of the most horrible of nightmares. Catherine Wogel’s cries had pierced me to the very marrow of my bones. I no longer reco
gnized myself—I seemed to have lost my senses. But, suddenly awakening out of this moral stupor, indignation exerted its sway. I rose up. I seized the maniac by the throat and dragged him towards the entrance of the loft.

  “Wretch!” said I, “who gave you permission to raise your hand against one of your fellow-creatures—against one of God’s creatures, for the purpose of satisfying your infamous curiosity? I will myself deliver you up to justice!”

  He was so surprised at my aggression—his acts had appeared to him so natural, that he at first made no resistance, and allowed me to drag him towards the ladder without making me any reply. But, suddenly, turning with all the suppleness of a wild beast, he, in turn, seized me by the throat, his eyes shooting fire, his lips foaming. His hands, powerful as steel, lifted me from the ground and nailed me to the wall, while with the other he pushed back the bolt of the door which opened into the pit. Fully comprehending his intention, I made a terrible effort to free myself. I fixed myself across the door—but this man was endowed with superhuman strength. After a rapid and desperate struggle, I felt myself raised a second time from the ground, and was launched into space, while above me I heard these strange words:

  “So perishes the flesh in revolt—so triumphs the immortal soul!”

  And I had scarcely reached the bottom of the pit, bruised and stunned, when the heavy door was closed fifteen feet above me, intercepting from my sight the gray light from the garret.

  My consternation at falling to the bottom of the pit, and feeling myself taken like a rat in a trap, was such, that I rose up without uttering a single complaint.

  “Kaspar,” said I to myself, with strange calmness, ‘the question now is to devour the old woman or be devoured by her. Choose! As to try to escape from this den it is time lost. Wolfgang holds you under his claws and he will not let you escape—the walls are of flint and the flooring of oak as hard as stone. None of your acquaintances saw you enter the Tanner’s quarter—no one knows you in this part of the city—no one will ever have an idea of searching for you here. It is all up, Kaspar, it is all up. Your last resource is this poor Catherine Wogel—or rather, you are the last resource of each other!”