The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th Century

by Terry Hale

  So this brilliant idea had arisen in his mind: to fake a journey; not a journey to Versailles or Le Havre, like husbands in plays, but a much longer journey and one from which return would seem much harder.

  And he would come back one of these nights, very much alive, and put his unfaithful wife on the spot.

  He had allowed himself three days; he thought about all this with satisfaction as he tucked himself up once more in his coffin.

  *

  The third day had just ended. Monsieur Mathias was feeling impatient. He waited for the cemetery clock to strike eleven. The time had come.

  The plan was well thought out. The cemetery walls adjoined his own property. He had what he needed to dress himself all in black, like the ghost of a pharmacist. He would cover himself in his winding sheet only in the cemetery, in keeping with local colour. Once he was over the wall he would go straight to his wife’s bedroom. And that would be that!

  Monsieur Mathias attired himself, and then, everything being just as it should be, he toppled the tombstone, climbed up into the chapel above, opened the door and was outside, his winding sheet under his arm.

  Once he was on the pathway, he unfolded the voluminous white sheet and spread it around him to cast it over his shoulders. But the folds were heavy, he could not manage it and had to start again.

  ‘Wait!’ said a voice behind him, ‘I’ll give you a hand.’

  *

  If you have never been found at midnight trying to put on your shroud in a cemetery, you will not understand quite how unpleasant this surprise was.

  The owner of the voice was the caretaker, old man Grimbot, well-known as a bit of a character in the local taverns. He went up to Monsieur Mathias and peered at him. Then he said:

  ‘What! It’s you, Monsieur Mathias! … Already!’

  Somewhat embarrassed, Monsieur Mathias attempted to muffle himself up, imagining that a sinister appearance would rid him of this annoying encounter. Nothing of the kind. Grimbot gladly gave him a hand, arranging the shroud around him neatly.

  ‘I have come from my grave …’ Monsieur Mathias began in a sepulchral voice.

  ‘So I see,’ Grimbot interrupted. ‘You’re in a lot more of a hurry than the others.’

  Monsieur Mathias was not listening. He was now walking with great strides on tiptoe, like a ghost.

  Grimbot, walking beside him, went on:

  ‘The others, you see, don’t get the urge right away. Only after a month or two.’

  Monsieur Mathias turned round abruptly, waving both his arms:

  ‘Be off, blasphemer! Be off!’

  ‘Come now! Come now!’ Grimbot turned paternal. ‘I’m not bothering you … You wanted to take a little walk … just like your pals.’

  Disconcerted, Monsieur Mathias walked straight on, not deigning to reply. In the shadows he discerned the cemetery gate. With his customary foresight, he had several louis in his pocket.

  ‘Enough of your chatter!’ he said, holding out two gold coins to Grimbot. ‘The key!’

  Grimbot shrank back:

  ‘The key! You want to go out, my lad? (somewhat disrespectfully!) Now there’s a notion! Now then! None of that …’

  ‘Four louis!’ groaned Monsieur Mathias.

  ‘Listen, you, fellow,’ answered Grimbot, ‘no more of that or I’ll thump you. I’ve got no objections to you leaving your chapel or going for a walk. The others come out too.’

  ‘The others! What others?’

  Grimbot made an ample gesture.

  ‘The dead, of course!’

  ‘The dead …! Who is talking about the dead? I’m alive, living!’

  ‘Sure you are! That’s a good one! Well listen, I’m a decent chap … Come and have a drink.’

  His hand fell claw-like on Monsieur Mathias’ wrist, dragging him into the small edifice where he lodged. He shoved him inside a ground floor room.

  Monsieur Mathias was literally stunned. Grimbot had pushed the door shut, taken a bottle from a dresser and filled two glasses. He raised his with these words:

  ‘Your health, Monsieur Mathias!’

  *

  ‘Listen, my good man,’ said Monsieur Mathias, ‘this is your little joke. Fine. But there is a time for everything. You know very well that I’m alive. I allowed myself to be buried for personal reasons. But there is serious business that I must attend to outside. I’ll pay you well, don’t worry …’

  While he was talking, Grimbot had progressed slowly around the table and now stood with his back to the door.

  ‘You’ve got a way with words,’ he sniggered. ‘So you’re alive, eh! You’re not the first to tell me that. I hear some funny ones alright. Mind you, I’m fond of my subordinates. Every night there are one or two that come and have a drink, no standing on ceremony. Last night, it was the notary, you know who I mean – Radel, your nextdoor neighbour … the one with the broken pillar. The night before, it was Madame Claudin, a fine looking woman! I’m good-humoured about it, I let them stretch their legs all night, I have a bit of a natter … But letting them out! – that would be going too far!’

  Monsieur Mathias was becoming distraught. Grimbot talked with total calm, like a functionary bent on doing his duty.

  He was of medium height, thick-set, with hands like a gorilla’s paws. His eyes were black, shining … Monsieur Mathias shuddered. This was a madman!

  Yes, that was the truth of it. He hallucinated. He thought his cemetery was filled with revenants; he lived in a world of fantasy that was the product of his drunkard’s imagination. And he got confused! Yes, my word, he got confused!

  Monsieur Mathias started talking, pleading, promising, begging. What! A clever, right-thinking man like Grimbot mistaking him for someone really dead! He burst out laughing …

  ‘That’s enough!’ Grimbot spoke curtly! ‘What do you take me for? Back inside!’

  ‘Back inside! Where?’

  ‘Your own place, of course! At the corner of the third section …’

  ‘Back to the grave! Never!’

  ‘You refuse! Once! Twice!’

  Monsieur Mathias saw the huge hands quivering. He took fright and looked around, seeking a way out. There was but one. The door, with Grimbot planted right in front of it. It made no difference! He had to get past at all cost. He hurled himself forward, with a shout …

  Unperturbed, Grimbot reached out his open hand, his aggressor’s throat firmly in its grip. Monsieur Mathias, hiccupping, tried to put up a struggle. The vice tightened. Monsieur Mathias, hanging from the outstretched arm, went limp. He wriggled a little longer, then stopped moving altogether.

  Grimbot was no stranger to such sights. He slung Monsieur Mathias over his shoulder and, walking with the slow, dignified step of the trusty warden, carried him to the chapel, threw him into the crypt, kicked the tombstone back in place, closed the barred opening and returned to his stroll among the graves, grumbling to himself:

  ‘Have you ever seen the like! Take themselves outside! More than my job’s worth! …’

  *

  And this was how it came about that the widow of Monsieur Mathias married the man she had always loved.

  A Burnt Offering

  Léon Bloy

  To Alfred Vallette1

  When you’re dead, you’re dead.

  AN HEIR

  Having amassed a considerable fortune by way of his trade as a manufacturer of coffins, Monsieur Fiacre-Prétextat Labalbarie had retired from business at the age of sixty.

  He had never let a customer down and the Genevan aristocracy, who had charged him for so long with their commissions, were unanimous in proclaiming his probity and his meticulousness.

  The excellent quality of his workmanship, which was conceded even by the mistrustful English, had obtained the universal approbation of Belgium, Illinois and Michigan.

  His retirement was thus the cause of a certain amount of resentment in the Old and the New World alike as soon as the international press had, regretfully, annou
nced that this much respected old craftsman was relinquishing the obsequies of the shop counter to dedicate the last years of his life to his beloved studies.

  Fiacre was, in fact, a happy old man, whose philosophical and humanitarian vocation had not declared itself until the very moment when fortune – probably considerably less blind, and certainly far less capricious than the empty-headed masses would believe – had at last crowned him with her favours.

  Unlike so many others, he in no way despised the entirely honourable and lucrative commerce by which he had raised himself up from virtually nothing to a pinnacle of nigh on ten million francs.

  On the contrary, he insisted, with all the naïve enthusiasm of the seasoned campaigner, on the innumerable battle he had fought with competitors, and took pleasure in recalling the rough and tumble, sometimes heroic, of the inventories.

  Following the example of Charles V, he had simply abdicated the empire of the invoice in order to embrace a higher life.

  In short, having enough to live on, and recognising that his commercial powers were failing him (that indefinable quality of acting naturally, which is so essential to dealings in the business world, together with a penetrating insight into all the chicaneries of which one’s rivals are capable), he had the foresight to withdraw on advantageous terms from a powerful trading position before his professional luck started to desert him.

  ***

  Henceforth, he devoted himself exclusively to the pursuit of worldly pleasures.

  Taking stock, not without a touching shrewdness, of the utter failure of every scheme ever devised by the stupid for the relief of poverty, unshakeably convinced moreover of the usefulness of the poor, he believed that he could do far better than to employ his financial resources and intellectual acumen in alleviating the misery of the masses.

  Consequently, he resolved to apply the final glimmers of his genius to the consolation of millionaires.

  ‘Whoever thinks,’ he used to say, ‘of the sufferings of the rich? I alone, perhaps, together with the incomparable Bourget,2 whom my clients so dote on. Because they accomplish their task, which consists of enjoying themselves to the utmost so as to stimulate commerce, we assume too readily that they are happy, forgetting that they also have hearts. We have the impudence to compare their suffering to the vulgar tribulations of the destitute whose duty it is to be miserable; after all, rags and hunger are nothing in comparison with the distress of knowing that one day you must die. But that is the way of things. Only the wealthy realise what it is to die. Vast assets are indispensable to the surrendering of the soul; and that’s just what people fail to realise. Death is only the parting with money. Those who don’t have any wealth aren’t alive; therefore, they are incapable of dying.’

  Filled with these thoughts – which were more profound than he realised – the coffin-manufacturer devoted all his considerable energies to the abolition of the fear of death.

  He had the honour of being the first to advocate the noble idea of the crematorium. According to this luminary, the traditional abhorrence of death was due, above all, to the hideous spectre of decomposition. At the conference of cremationists, who had elected him as their president, he expounded in florid rhetoric, and with all the eloquence of the impromptu speaker, on the repulsiveness of the subterranean chemistry which turns a human being into a flower – a process quite abhorrent to his accountant-like mentality.

  ‘I for one have not the slightest intention of allowing myself to become a putrefying corpse!’ he bellowed. ‘As soon as I pass away, I insist that I am cremated, that I am calcinated and reduced to ashes, for fire purifies all things, etc., etc.’

  His wishes were honoured in every particular, as we are about to see.

  ***

  This worthy entrepreneur had the very sort of son you would wish a man who understands the value of money to have.

  I must beg the reader’s permission at this point to insert a short eulogy.

  Diedonné Labalbarie was, if I dare say it, even more admirable than his father. Conceived at a moment propitious for the ruination of more reckless rivals, he became the living embodiment of the sterling qualities that not even the most stolid credit establishments fail to recognise.

  At fifteen, he had already opened a savings account and his conduct was as transparent as a ledger. If a calculating machine had been consulted, it would have been unable to discover the slightest irregularity in his life.

  It would have been the height of injustice to reproach him for showing the faintest sign of any sentimental attachment to anything or any person.

  So proud was he of having produced such a son that his father was obliged to support himself against a cash register whenever he mentioned his name.

  This prodigy lived and prospered. In the three years since he was orphaned, he has even doubled his inheritance, having wheedled himself into the affections of a wealthy collector of tortoises whom he persuaded to marry him. Many people would undoubtedly recognise him immediately if I were not prevented from describing the pleasing nature of his features from fear of offending the delicate flower of his modesty.

  Let those who are able to guess his identity do so. I will already have said too much perhaps if I reveal that he has the beautiful physiognomy of a reptile and that he is usually accompanied by a monstrously large mastiff.

  I shall now recount for you the little-known story of the death and funeral service of the father.

  Those who are easily offended are entreated to read no further.

  ***

  One morning, the doctor certified that the great Fiacre had passed away.

  Labalbarie junior immediately sprang into action. Without shedding useless tears, without slackening the pace of his own life, that is to say without wasting a moment (for, in the noble phrase of Benjamin Franklin, which he cited incessantly, ‘time is money’), he ordered his father’s affairs to be wound up on the spot and organised an immediate funeral.

  At ten thirty-five, the newspapers were informed of his bereavement and the notification of his loss was simultaneously sent abroad to the four points of the compass – the cards having been judiciously ordered and collected long in advance.

  The same was true for the black marble memorial plaque destined for the columbarium, on which a phoenix was designed spreading out its wings in the middle of the flames above the following terrifying inscription which the deceased had insisted on:

  I SHALL BE BORN AGAIN

  Diedonné Labalbarie went for a vigorous bicycle ride in order to boost his morale by means of an energetic dose of air, ate a hearty lunch, received several distressing calls, paid his respects to the Stock Exchange and, in the evening, managed to collect several large debts. As a mark of how overcome he was by his grief, he failed to return home that night.

  The following day, an elegant hearse, strewn with flowers, and followed by a less than select crowd, carried the deceased’s remains to the crematorium.

  ‘Ah ha! You’d like to be born again, would you?’ muttered the affable Diedonné to himself, as he remained alone in the sombre chapel of rest with the two men responsible for feeding his father to the furnace. ‘We’ll soon see about that!’

  The coffin – fashioned, according to regulations, from thin planks, which are immediately consumed at a temperature of seven hundred degrees – was resting on a mechanical trolley. A vigorous shove of the two metal antennae would propel the deceased into the furnace before withdrawing with a sound like a scream, the entire cycle of extension and retraction taking only twenty-five seconds.

  Diedonné was dutifully fulfilling his filial obligations by paying his last respects to the deceased when a noise could be heard coming from inside the bier.

  Admittedly, it was a muffled and rather indistinct sort of sound, but, all the same, a sound it was – like someone who isn’t dead trying to turn over in his shroud. It even seemed that the coffin moved slightly.

  At the same moment, the mechanically-controlled door of th
e furnace swung open.

  Three faces, each reflecting the unbearable heat of the flames, looked at each other.

  ‘It’s only the evisceration of the corpse,’ asserted Diedonné calmly.

  The two workmen still hesitated.

  ‘Get on with it, for God’s sake!’ yelled the parricide angrily. ‘I tell you it’s just the evisceration of the corpse.’ And he planted a wad of bank notes into the nearest palm.

  The antennae sprang forwards and withdrew.

  The door closed, though not quickly enough perhaps, because Diedonné, standing straight before the opening, imagined he saw in the instantaneous conflagration of the coffin two outstretched arms and the desperate face of his father.

  1 Alfred Vallette (1858–1935) was the dominant figure behind the famous Mercure de France publishing house (which also brought out a journal of the same name).

  2 Bourget. Paul Bourget (1852–1935), popular French novelist of the turn of the century. His readable style and wide popularity earned the disapproval of the avant-garde.

  A Family Treat

  J.-K. Huysmans

  One of the articles in the journal caught Jacques’ attention and he fell into a brown study. What a wonderful thing is science! he thought. Here you have a Professor Selmi at Bologna who has discovered ptomaine, some kind of alkaloid present in putrefying animal matter; it has a colourless, oily appearance and gives off a faint but distinct odour of hawthorn, musk, syringa, and rose or orange-blossom.

  At the present date, these were the only fragrances which it had been possible to detect in the extracts of an organism in a state of decomposition, but others would undoubtedly present themselves; meanwhile, to satisfy the assumptions of such a commercial century as our own, which buries those without a penny by mechanical contrivance at Ivry, and recycles everything – waste liquids, residue from earth-closets, the guts of decaying carcasses, old bones – the cemeteries could all be converted into factories which would prepare to order for rich families the concentrated extracts of their ancestors, the essential oils of children, and the bouquet unique to the paterfamilias.