The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th Century

by Terry Hale

  There had been a few women in my life, but I had never experienced anything resembling passion or been tormented by the pangs of love. As I say, it was a very comfortable existence. Ordinary people may feel a wonderful sense of euphoria when they fall in love, but nothing perhaps as intense as what I later experienced, for love took possession of me in the most extraordinary way.

  Not being short of money, I used to collect antiques of all kinds, especially furniture; and I would often wonder about the unknown hands which had caressed these objects, about the eyes which had gazed on them in admiration, about the hearts which had loved them – for love such things we do. I could spend hour after hour staring at a little watch from the eighteenth century. It was so delicate, so pretty, with its skilfully-crafted enamel and gold. And it was still in perfect working order, just as it had been the day on which some woman or other had purchased it in the flush of enthusiasm to own such a fine piece of jewellery. Its mechanical heart had never ceased beating, ticking away regularly for more than a century. Who, I wondered, was the first woman to wear it, keeping it warm and cosy among the folds of her dress, their life-forces pulsating in unison? What hand had tenderly held it, turning it over and over again with the tip of the finger, or wiped the porcelain shepherds whose image had become momentarily dulled by the moisture of human skin? What eyes had anxiously studied the tiny face decorated with flowers watching for the long-awaited hour, the dear, the divine hour of love?

  How I would like to have known, or even seen her, the woman who had once chosen this rare and exquisite object! She is long since dead! I am obsessed with my desire for women of yesteryear; I love, from a distance, every woman who was once in love. The thought of all those bygone passions fills my heart with longing. All that beauty, all those smiles, all those youthful caresses, so much hope! Should not such things live forever?

  How I have wept for nights at a time over these forgotten women, women who were so beautiful and gentle, women who would open their arms to receive a kiss – dead, they are all dead now! The kiss itself is immortal! It travels from lip to lip, from century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others, and then die in turn.

  I am fascinated by the past and terrified by the present, because all that the future holds in store is death. I long for everything that has already happened, I weep over those who have already lived. If I could, I would stop the passage of time. But hour follows on hour, minute on minute, each second robbing me of a morsel of my self for the nothing of tomorrow. I shall never experience this moment again.

  Farewell, ladies of bygone years! I love you all!

  But I do not ask for pity. I have found the woman I have been waiting for; and through her I have known unimaginable pleasure.

  One sunny day I was strolling through Paris with a carefree step, casually glancing into the shop windows from idle curiosity. Suddenly I noticed in an antique dealer’s an Italian bureau from the seventeenth century. It was a rare and magnificent piece. I felt convinced that it was the work of a Venetian craftsman by the name of Vitelli, who was very famous in his day.

  But I did not venture in. Why did the image of this object pursue me so obstinately that I had to turn round and retrace my steps? I stopped once again outside the shop and, as I stood looking at it, I knew that it was tempting me.

  What a strange thing temptation is! You look at something, and slowly it seduces you, disturbs you, invades your very being like a woman’s face. You become imbued with its charms, a peculiar charm which is composed of its shape, its colour, its very appearance. And already you have fallen in love, you want it, you must have it. The desire to possess it takes hold of you, a desire which is pleasurable enough at first, but quickly turns violent and overpowering.

  Shopkeepers seem able to guess this secret, irresistible desire from the gleam in your eye.

  I bought this piece of furniture and had it delivered to my home immediately. I put it in my bedroom.

  How sorry I feel for those who have never enjoyed the honeymoon period which a collector experiences when he has just made an acquisition! You let your eye and your hand run over it as if it were human; you are constantly coming back to it, always thinking about it, wherever you go, whatever you do. The thought of your new purchase accompanies you every time you walk down the street, as you are jostled by the crowds; and when you return home, even before you take off your hat and gloves, you go and gaze at it with the tender eyes of the lover.

  For a whole week I was incredibly taken with this piece of furniture. I was forever opening the doors and drawers, handling it with sheer delight, savouring all the intimate joys of possession.

  One evening, as I was feeling the thickness of one of the sides, I realised that it must contain a secret recess. My heart started pounding, and I spent the whole night in the vain attempt to discover the hiding-place.

  But I found it the next morning, pushing the blade of a knife into a crack in the woodwork. A panel slid back and I saw, lying on a background of black velvet, a magnificent head of hair belonging to a women!

  Yes, a head of hair, an enormous mass of braided hair, blonde in colour though possessing an almost auburn lustre, which must have been cut close to the scalp and was now bound together by a single golden thread.

  I was speechless, stupefied! A barely perceptible perfume, so ancient that it was more like the ghost of a perfume, emanated from this mysterious recess and the remarkable relic it contained.

  I touched it gently, almost reverently, and drew it from its place of concealment. Immediately it uncoiled itself, spilling out in a gold wave, thick and light, and as supple and brilliant as the fiery tail of a comet, until it almost reached the floor.

  I felt myself strangely moved. What was it all about? How and when had it happened? Why had the hair been hidden away in a bureau? What adventure, what drama, lay behind this momento?

  Who had cut off the hair? A lover, on the day of his departure? A husband, on the day he accomplished some desperate act of vengeance? Or perhaps the woman whose hair it was had done it herself on a day of despair?

  Or could it be that she had thrust this love token in a hidden receptacle, as if to leave something behind her, before entering a religious order? Or again, had her lover, as they were screwing down the lid of the coffin following the untimely death of one who had died so young and beautiful, decided to preserve the glorious adornment of her head, the only part of her he could possibly keep, the only living part of the body which would not rot, the only part which he could still love and caress and embrace in the frenzy of his grief?

  Was it not strange that the hair has survived like this, though not the smallest particle of the body to which it had belonged remained?

  It flowed through my fingers, brushed against my skin in a peculiar manner – like the touch of a dead woman. I was so overwhelmed with emotion that I was on the verge of tears.

  I held it in my hands for such a long time; until, in fact, I began to feel that the hair was upsetting me, as though something of the woman’s soul remained within it. I replaced it on the velvet, which had lost its sheen with age; then, after closing the drawer and locking the bureau, I went out for a walk in order to lose myself in thought.

  I walked straight ahead, filled with sadness and a tremendous uneasiness – the kind of uneasiness you feel after you have exchanged a passionate kiss. I felt a strong sense of déjà-vu, as if I had known this woman in another life.

  And some lines from Villon1 came to my lips, almost like a sob:

  Tell me where Flora’s gone,

  Flora, the beautiful Roman?

  And what about that other courtesan,

  Thaïs, whatever became of her?

  And what about Echo, a sprite in the air,

  Possessed of such beauty none could bear?

  Where are the snows of yesteryear?

  Blanche the Queen, pure as snow,

  Bertha, Beatrice, Alice in a row,

 
Won’t someone tell me where they go?

  Arembourg to Maine once heir,

  Good Joan burnt in Rouen square?

  Supreme Virgin, tell me where,

  Where are the snows of yesteryear?

  When I got back home, I felt an overwhelming urge to inspect my strange find. As soon as I picked it up a long shudder passed through my entire body.

  For the next few days, I managed to live according to my usual fashion, though not for a single moment could I think of anything else other than the head of hair.

  Each time I came home, I had but one desire: to look at it and feel it. I used to turn the key in the lock of the bureau with the same thrill of expectancy as a man visiting his favourite mistress. My hands and heart were possessed of an unwavering yet strangely confused need to dip my fingers into that delightful stream of dead hair.

  Then, each time I had finished fondling it and locked it away in the bureau again, I could always feel its presence afterwards, as though it was a human being I was keeping prisoner. Not only could I detect its presence but I lusted after it; I was the continual victim of an overwhelming impulse to take it out again, to stroke it, to excite myself to the point of exhaustion by means of its smooth, cold, enervating, delicious contact.

  I must have lived like that for a couple of months or so. I became thoroughly obsessed with the hair. I was both incredibly happy and utterly miserable, as if my love could find no physical outlet.

  I would lock myself in alone with it so that I could press it against my skin or bury my lips in it, kissing and biting it. I would smother my face in it, drinking it in, drowning my eyes in its rippling golden waves or peering through its auburn veil.

  I was in love with it! Yes, I was in love! I could no longer do without it, not go a single hour without seeing it.

  And I waited, for what I do not know, but I waited. For her.

  One night I suddenly woke up convinced that I was not alone in the room.

  I was alone, of course. Yet I couldn’t go back to sleep; and after tossing and turning in a feverish insomnia, I got out of bed to touch my talisman. It seemed to me to be in a more gentle humour than usual, and more full of life. Do the dead come back? The kisses I lavished on it almost caused me to faint with euphoria; and I carried it back to bed with me, where I lay with my lips pressed against it like a mistress one is about to possess.

  The dead do come back! She has come back. Yes, I saw her, I have held her in my arms, I have possessed her, just as she was when she was alive – tall, blonde, slightly plump, with cold breasts and hips shaped like a lyre. And I touched with my finger those divine undulations which run from the neck to the feet, following every curve in her flesh.

  Yes, I possessed her, every day and every night. She came back, the Dead Woman, the Beautiful, the Adorable, the Mysterious Dead Woman. Every night she came back.

  My happiness was so intense that I could no longer hide it. In her presence I felt a superhuman ecstasy, the profound, inexplicable joy of possessing the Intangible, the Invisible, the Dead Woman! No lover has ever tasted more ardent or more terrible delights than I!

  I loved her so passionately that I only wanted to be in her presence. I took her with me wherever I went. Even when I went for a walk around town I carried her with me, as though she were my wife, and when I went to the theatre I would rent a private box, as if she were my mistress … But we were seen together … People put two and two together … They took her away from me … Then they threw me in prison as if I were a common criminal … They have taken her away from me! … And now I am so miserable!

  The manuscript came to an end at this point. And suddenly, just as I was about to turn to the doctor again with a look of terror on my face, a terrible scream – a howl of helpless rage and frustrated desire – rang out in the asylum.

  ‘Just listen to him,’ said the doctor. ‘We have to give the pervert five or six cold showers a day. Sergeant Bertrand2 isn’t the only one to have liked dead bodies.’

  Overwhelmed by astonishment, horror and pity, I blurted out:

  ‘But what about this hair? Does it really exist?’

  The doctor got up, opened a cupboard full of bottles and surgical instruments, and threw over a gleaming chain of blonde hair which seemed to fly towards me like a golden bird.

  I shuddered as I felt its delicate caress on my hands. And there I stood, my heart beating with revulsion and envy – revulsion because I knew that I was handling something steeped in crime; envy because I could feel the powerful temptation of something both disgusting and mysterious.

  With a shrug of his shoulders, the doctor remarked:

  ‘The mind of man is capable of anything.’

  1 François Villon, fifteenth-century French poet whose brief and turbulent life is reflected in his poetry. The following citation comes from Le Testament (c. 1461). Flora was a famous Roman courtesan; Thaïs was an Athenian courtesan.

  2 Sergeant Bertrand. French soldier found guilty in 1849 of desecrating the graves at the Père-Lachaise cemetry. When questioned, he admitted an irresistible impulse drove him to disinter and violate corpses.

  Mademoiselle Dafné

  Théophile Gautier

  I

  Last year, the name on everyone’s lips was mademoiselle Dafné de Boisfleury, or just Dafné, as she was familiarly called in this milieu, whose main concern, or, to be more accurate, its only one, seems to be pleasure. Everyone who belonged to the rather smart type of club, who went to the races at Chantilly and la Marche, who turned up at the Opera to applaud the currently fashionable singer or dancer with one of Isabelle’s flowers tucked in their buttonholes, who played real tennis and cricket, skated on the lake, had supper at the café Anglais after the masked ball, and in summer would take themselves off to Baden to stake martingales, all of them knew Dafné. The rest, a sorry crew of modish hangers-on, unworthy of so great an honour, made a pretence of knowing her. Malicious gossips claimed that her real name was Mélanie Tripier, but people of taste approved her rejection of these graceless vowels, since an ugly name on a pretty woman resembles a slug on a rose; Dafné de Boisfleury was assuredly better than Mélanie Tripier. It had a little touch both of the mythological and the aristocratic which was altogether romantic. The unusual spelling of Dafné with an f, brought out its Italian Renaissance flavour and spiced it up. This name had doubtless been confected for this beauty by some lyric poet with nothing better to do, and baptised with champagne at dessert.

  Be that as it may, Dafné would arrive at the races in an eight-spring barouche harnessed in such a way as to defy the criticism of the most exacting sportsmen and driven in the Daumont manner by grooms in white leather breeches, soft turned-down boots, apple-green satin blouses and hair crimped and powdered under their jockey caps. A full-blown duchess could not have been driven any better, and this fastidiousness over horsey things gave her a certain standing among the equestrian set. Her horses were horses in earnest and her black livery had style.

  A natural blonde, in keeping with the fashion of the time, Dafné had dyed her hair red with the use of those cosmetics that had their origins in the Venetian beauty-kits of the sixteenth century. Falling onto her nape in a thick chignon, her hair was lit with the sun-dazzle of sequins and shone like golden butterflies in a net. She had sea-green eyes – procellosi oculi – stormy eyes enlivened by dark lashes and eyebrows, an unusual and piquant feature indebted to either nature or art, but whatever the case they were striking. Her skin was too white to be without freckles dotted under the powder and the layer of hydrangea-hued paint that covered it, but this defect was compensated by its extreme fineness of texture, and, besides, in this cosmetic century one can choose one’s complexion. Her lips were made brighter by a coating of crimson and when they were parted allowed a glimpse of pure white, perfectly straight teeth, though with very sharp canines which were reminiscent of the fangs of Elves, Nixis and other aquatic creatures with whom it was hazardous to have truck.

  As for
her attire, it was very varied, but always outlandish; colourful, however, like fancy dress. It was wildly luxurious and extraordinarily overloaded with every kind of frippery invented by the fashions of the demi-monde, whenever it runs out of ideas for making heads turn and causing a stir. Little Andalusian hats, Hungarian ones, Russian ones, with peacock feathers, half-veils, constellations of sequins made of steel, glass teardrop fringes, jet bead trimmings, and other furbelows of the same ilk that rushed like the headstall of a Spanish mule; Zouave bodices, Turkish waistcoats, Cossack blouses, Garibaldi tunics embellished with buttons, bells, braiding and tags so elaborate that the fabric disappeared beneath them; petticoats slashed, hitched up, puffed out, plastered with piping and harlequin squares in the gaudiest and most summarily matched colours; pretty Moroccan leather boots Levantine-style with red high heels and gold tassels; nothing was left out, and take my word for it that her buttons were emblazoned with horseshoes and crossed riding whips. She resembled, to the point of being indistinguishable, one of those elegantly exaggerated sketches of fashionable apparel with which Marcelin illustrates La Vie Parisienne.

  Now it happened that in the midst of her triumph, at the height of her success, mademoiselle Dafné de Boisfleury suddenly disappeared. Her star was eclipsed and obliterated from the firmament of flirtation. What had become of her? Had her creditors wearied of waiting and sent her off to Clichy on a holiday? Had she fallen in love with some seraphic youngster demanding her complete renunciation of Satan and his sumptuous works? Had some civilized pasha, tired of Georgians, Circassians and negresses, offered her an engagement of five hundred thousand francs in his seraglio, with a stay-at-home and fidelity clause written in? Nobody had a clue. Some even went so far as to imagine that she had been gripped by some sudden remorse and buried herself in a convent. This odd event demanded some strange and romantic explanation, for Dafné was too beautiful, too young and too fashionable to allow any notion of one of those vulgar calamities which, when they age, return these creatures to the obscurity whence they come.