Down There (Là-Bas)

by Joris-karl Huysmans

  "It was high time, monsieur, I was putting myself under the care of Dr. Johannès, for I was nearly gone. Not possessing a shred of the gift of voyance and knowing no extralucid cataleptic who could inform me of the clandestine preparations of Canon Docre, I could not possibly defend myself by using the laws of countersign and of the shock in return."

  "But," said Des Hermies, "admitting that you could, through the intermediation of a flying spirit, have been aware of the operations of the priest, how could you have parried them?"

  "The law of countersigns consists, when you know in advance the day and hour of the attack, in going away from home, thus throwing the spell off the track and neutralizing it, or in saying an hour beforehand, 'Here I am. Strike!' The last method is calculated to scatter the fluids to the wind and paralyze the powers of the assailant. In magic, any act known and made public is lost. As for the shock in return, one must also know beforehand of the attempt if one is to cast back the spells on the person sending them before one is struck by them.

  "I was certain to perish. A day had passed since I was bewitched. Two days more and I should have been ready for the cemetery."

  "How's that?"

  "Every individual struck by magic has three days in which to take measures. That time past, the ill is incurable. So when Docre announced to me that he condemned me to death by his own authority and when, two hours later, on returning home, I felt desperately ill, I lost no time packing my grip and starting for Lyons."

  "And there?" asked Durtal.

  "There I saw Dr. Johannès. I told him of Docre's threat and of my illness. He said to me simply. 'That priest can dress the most virulent poisons in the most frightful sacrileges. The fight will be bitter, but I shall conquer,' and he immediately called in a woman who lives in his house, a voyant.

  "He hypnotized her and she, at his injunction, explained the nature of the sorcery of which I was the victim. She reconstructed the scene. She literally saw me being poisoned by food and drink mixed with menstrual fluid that had been reinforced with macerated sacramental wafers and drugs skilfully dosed. That sort of spell is so terrible that aside from Dr. Johannès no thaumaturge in France dare try to cure it.

  "So the doctor finally said to me, 'Your cure can be obtained only through an invincible power. We must lose no time. We must at once sacrifice to the glory of Melchisedek.'

  "He raised an altar, composed of a table and a wooden tabernacle. It was shaped like a little house surmounted by a cross and encircled, under the pediment, by the dial-like figure of the tetragram. He brought the silver chalice, the unleavened bread and the wine. He donned his sacerdotal habits, put on his finger the ring which has received the supreme benedictions, then he began to read from a special missal the prayers of the sacrifice.

  "Almost at once the voyant cried, 'Here are the spirits evoked for the spell. These are they which have carried the venefice, obedient to the command of the master of black magic, Canon Docre!'

  "I was sitting beside the altar. Dr. Johannès placed his left hand on my head and raising toward heaven his right he besought the Archangel Michael to assist him, and adjured the glorious legions of the invincible seraphim to dominate, to enchain, the spirits of Evil.

  "I was already feeling greatly relieved. The sensation of internal gnawing which tortured me in Paris was diminishing. Dr. Johannès continued to recite his orisons, then when the moment came for the deprecatory prayer, he took my hand, laid it on the altar, and three times chanted:

  "'May the projects and the designs of the worker of iniquity, who has made enchantment against you, be brought to naught; may any influence obtained by Satanic means, any attack directed against you, be null and void of effect; may all the maledictions of your enemy be transformed into benedictions from the highest summits of the eternal hills; may his fluids of death be transmuted into ferments of life; finally, may the Archangels of Judgment and Chastisement decide the fate of the miserable priest who has put his trust in the works of Darkness and Evil.'

  "'You,' he said to me, 'are delivered. Heaven has cured you. May your heart therefore repay the living God and Jesus Christ, through the glorious Mary, with the most ardent devotion.'

  "He offered me unleavened bread and wine. I was saved. You who are a physician, Monsieur Des Hermies, can bear witness that human science was impotent to aid me-and now look at me!"

  "Yes," Des Hermies replied, "without discussing the means, I certify the cure, and, I admit, it is not the first time that to my knowledge similar results have been obtained.-No thanks," to Mme. Carhaix, who was inviting him to take another helping from a plate of sausages with horseradish in creamed peas. "But," said Durtal, "permit me to ask you several questions. Certain details interest me. What were the sacerdotal ornaments of Dr. Johannès?"

  "His costume was a long robe of vermilion cashmere caught up at the waist by a red and white sash. Above this robe he had a white mantle of the same stuff, cut, over the chest, in the form of a cross upside down."

  "Cross upside down?"

  "Yes, this cross, reversed like the figure of the Hanged Man in the old-fashioned Tarot card deck, signifies that the priest Melchisedek must die in the Old Man-that is, man affected by original sin-and live again the Christ, to be powerful with the power of the Incarnate Word which died for us."

  Carhaix seemed ill at ease. His fanatical and suspicious Catholicism refused to countenance any save the prescribed ceremonies. He made no further contribution to the conversation, and in significant silence filled the glasses, seasoned the salad, and passed the plates.

  "What sort of a ring was that you spoke of?"

  "It is a symbolic ring of pure gold. It has the image of a serpent, whose head, in relief, set with a ruby, is connected by a fine chain with a tiny circlet which fastens the jaws of the reptile."

  "What I should like awfully to know is the origin and the aim of this sacrifice. What has Melchisedek to do with your affair?"

  "Ah," said the astrologer, "Melchisedek is one of the most mysterious of all the figures in the Holy Bible. He was king of Salem, sacrificer to the Most High God. He blessed Abraham and Abraham gave him tithes of the spoil of the vanquished kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. That is the story in Genesis 14:18-20. But Saint Paul cites him also, in Hebrews 7, and in the third verse of that chapter says that Melchisedek, 'without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of day, nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God, abideth, a priest continually.' In Hebrews 5:6 Paul, quoting Psalm 110:4, says Jesus is called 'a priest forever after the order of Melchisedek.'

  "All this, you see, is obscure enough. Some exegetes recognize in him the prophetic figure of the Saviour, others, that of Saint Joseph, and all admit that the sacrifice of Melchisedek offering to Abraham the blood and wine of which he had first made oblation to the Lord prefigures, to follow the expression of Isidore of Damietta, the archetype of the divine mysteries, otherwise known as the holy mass."

  "Very well," said Des Hermies, "but all that Scripture does not explain the alexipharmacal virtues which Dr. Johannès attributes to the sacrifice."

  "You are asking more than I can answer. Only Dr. Johannès could tell you. This much I can say. Theology teaches us that the mass, as it is celebrated, is the re-enaction of the Sacrifice of Calvary, but the sacrifice to the glory of Melchisedek is not that. It is, in some sort, the future mass, the glorious office which will be known during the earthly reign of the divine Paraclete. This sacrifice is offered to God by man regenerated, redeemed by the infusion of the Love of the Holy Ghost. Now, the hominal being whose heart has thus been purified and sanctified is invincible, and the enchantments of hell cannot prevail against him if he makes use of this sacrifice to dissipate the Spirits of Evil. That explains to you the potency of Dr. Johannès, whose heart unites, in this ceremony, with the divine heart of Jesus."

  "Your exposition is not very clear," Carhaix mildly objected.

  "Then it must be supposed that Johannès is a man amen
ded ahead of time, an apostle animated by the Holy Ghost?"

  "And so he is," said the astrologer, firmly assured.

  "Will you please pass the gingerbread?" Carhaix requested.

  "Here's the way to fix it," said Durtal. "First cut a slice very thin, then take a slice of ordinary bread, equally thin, butter them and put them together. Now tell me if this sandwich hasn't the exquisite taste of fresh walnuts."

  "Well," said Des Hermies, pursuing his cross-examination, "aside from that, what has Dr. Johannès been doing in this long time since I last saw him?"

  "He leads what ought to be a peaceful life. He lives with friends who revere and adore him. With them he rests from the tribulations of all sorts-save one-that he has been subjected to. He would be perfectly happy if he did not have to repulse the attacks launched at him almost daily by the tonsured magicians of Rome."

  "Why do they attack him?"

  "A thorough explanation would take a long time. Johannès is commissioned by Heaven to break up the venomous practises of Satanism and to preach the coming of the glorified Christ and the divine Paraclete. Now the diabolical Curia which holds the Vatican in its clutches has every reason of self-interest for putting out of the way a man whose prayers fetter their conjurements and neutralize their spells."

  "Ah!" exclaimed Durtal, "and would it be too much to ask you how this former priest foresees and checks these astonishing assaults?"

  "No indeed. The doctor can tell by the flight and cry of certain birds. Falcons and male sparrow-hawks are his sentinels. If they fly toward him or away from him, to East or West, whether they emit a single cry or many; these are omens, letting him know the hour of the combat so that he can be on guard. Thus he told me one day, the sparrow-hawks are easily influenced by the spirits, and he uses them as the hypnotist makes use of somnambulism, as the spiritist makes use of tables and slates."

  "They are the telegraph wires for magic despatches."

  "Yes. And of course you know that the method is not new. Indeed, its origin is lost in the darkness of the ages. Ornithomancy is world-old. One finds traces of it in the Holy Bible, and the Zohar asserts that one may receive numerous notifications if one knows how to observe the flight and distinguish the cries of birds."

  "But," said Durtal, "why is the sparrow-hawk chosen in preference to other birds?"

  "Well, it has always been, since remotest antiquity, the harbinger of charms. In Egypt the god with the head of a hawk was the one who possessed the science of the hieroglyphics. Formerly in that country the hierogrammatists swallowed the heart and blood of the hawk to prepare themselves for the magic rites. Even today African chiefs put a hawk feather in their hair, and this bird is sacred in India."

  "How does your friend go about it," asked Mme. Carhaix, "raising and housing birds of prey?-because that is what they are."

  "He does not raise them nor house them. They nest in the high bluffs along the Saône, near Lyons. They come and see him in time of need."

  Durtal, looking around this cozy dining-room and recalling the extraordinary conversations which had been held here, was thinking, "How far we are from the language and the ideas of modern times.-All that takes us back to the Middle Ages," he said, finishing his thought aloud.

  "Happily!" exclaimed Carhaix, who was rising to go and ring his bells.

  "Yes," said Des Hermies, "and what is mighty strange in this day of crass materialism is the idea of battles fought in space, over the cities, between a priest of Lyons and prelates of Rome."

  "And between this priest and the Rosicrusians and Canon Docre."

  Durtal remembered that Mme. Chantelouve had assured him that the chiefs of the Rosicrucians were making frantic efforts to establish connections with the devil and prepare spells.

  "You think that the Rosicrucians are satanizing?"

  "They would like to, but they don't know how. They are limited to reproducing, mechanically, the few fluidic and veniniferous operations revealed to them by the three brahmins who visited Paris a few years ago."

  "I am thankful, myself," said Mme. Carhaix, as she took leave of the company, "that I am not mixed up in any of this frightful business, and that I can pray and live in peace."

  Then while Des Hermies, as usual, prepared the coffee and Durtal brought the liqueur glasses, Gévingey filled his pipe, and when the sound of the bells died away-dispersed and as if absorbed by the pores of the wall-he blew out a great cloud of smoke and said, "I passed some delightful days with the family with whom Dr. Johannès is living. After the shocks which I had received, it was a privilege without equal to complete my convalescence in that sweet atmosphere of Christian Love. And, too, Johannès is of all men I have ever met the most learned in the occult sciences. No one, except his antithesis, the abominable Docre, has penetrated so far into the arcana of Satanism. One may even say that in France these two are the only ones who have crossed the terrestrial threshold and obtained, each in his field, sure results. But in addition to the charm of his conversation and the scope of his knowledge-for even on the subject in which I excel, that of astrology, he surprised me-Johannès delighted me with the beauty of his vision of the future transformation of peoples. He is really, I swear, the prophet whose earthly mission of suffering and glory has been authorized by the Most High."

  "I don't doubt it," said Durtal, smiling, "but his theory of the Paraclete is, if I am not mistaken, the very ancient heresy of Montanus which the Church has formally condemned."

  "All depends on the manner in which the coming of the Paraclete is conceived," interjected the bell-ringer, returning at that moment. "It is also the orthodox doctrine of Saint Irenæus, Saint Justin, Scotus Erigena, Amaury of Chartres, Saint Doucine, and that admirable mystic, Joachim of Floris. This was the belief throughout the Middle Ages, and I admit that it obsesses me and fills me with joy, that it responds to the most ardent of my yearnings. Indeed," he said, sitting down and crossing his legs, "if the third kingdom is an illusion, what consolation is left for Christians in face of the general disintegration of a world which charity requires us not to hate?"

  "I am furthermore obliged to admit," said Des Hermies, "that in spite of the blood shed on Golgotha, I personally feel as if my ransom had not been quite effected."

  "There are three kingdoms," the astrologer resumed, pressing down the ashes of his pipe with his finger. "Of the Old Testament, that of the Father, the kingdom of fear. Of the New Testament, that of the Son, the kingdom of expiation. Of the Johannite Gospel, that of the Holy Ghost, the kingdom of redemption and love. They are the past, present and future; winter, spring and summer. The first, says Joachim of Floris, gives us the blade, the second, the leaf, and the third, the ear. Two of the Persons of the Trinity have shown themselves. Logically the Third must appear."

  "Yes, and the Biblical texts abound, conclusive, explicit, irrefutable," said Carhaix. "All the prophets, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zachariah, Malachi, speak of it.' The Acts of the Apostles is very precise on this point. In the first chapter you will read these lines, 'This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.' Saint John also announces the tidings in the Apocalypse, which is the gospel of the second coming of Christ, 'Christ shall come and reign a thousand years.' Saint Paul is inexhaustible in revelations of this nature. In the epistle to Timothy he invokes the Lord 'who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearance and his kingdom.' In the second epistle to the Thessalonians he writes, 'And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the Spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.' Now, he declares that the Antichrist is not yet, so the coming which he prophesies is not that already realized by the birth of the Saviour at Bethlehem. In the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Jesus responds to Caiaphas, who asks Him if He is the Christ, Son of God, 'Thou hast said, and nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of
heaven.' And in another verse He says to His apostles, 'Watch, therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.'

  "And there are other texts I could put my finger on. No, there is no use in talking, the partisans of the glorious kingdom are supported with certitude by inspired passages, and can, under certain conditions and without fear of heresy, uphold this doctrine, which, Saint Jerome attests, was in the fourth century a dogma of faith recognized by all. But what say we taste a bit of this crême de céléri which Monsieur Durtal praises so highly?"

  It was a thick liqueur, sirupy like anisette, but even sweeter and more feminine, only, when one had swallowed this inert semi-liquid, there lingered in the roots of the papillæ a faint taste of celery.

  "It isn't bad," said the astrologer, "but there's no life to it," and he poured into his glass a stiff tot of rum.

  "Come to think of it," said Durtal, "the third kingdom is also announced in the words of the Paternoster, 'Thy kingdom come.'"

  "Certainly," said the bell-ringer.

  "But you see," interjected Gévingey, "heresy would gain the upper hand and the whole belief would be turned into nonsense and absurdity if we admitted, as certain Paracletists do, an authentic fleshly incarnation. For instance, remember Fareinism, which has been rife, since the eighteenth century, in Fareins, a village of the Doubs, where Jansenism took refuge when driven out of Paris after the closing of the cemetery of Saint Médard. There a priest, François Bonjour, reproduced the 'convulsionist' orgies which, under the Regency, desecrated the tomb of Deacon Paris. Then Bonjour had an affair with a woman and she claimed to be big with the prophet Elijah, who, according to the Apocalypse, is to precede the last arrival of Christ. This child came into the world, then there was a second who was none other than the Paraclete. The latter did business as a woolen merchant in Paris, was a colonel in the National Guard under Louis-Philippe, and died in easy circumstances in 1866. A tradesman Paraclete, a Redeemer with epaulettes and gold braid!

  "In 1886 one Dame Brochard of Vouvray affirmed to whoever would listen that Jesus was reincarnate in her. In 1889 a pious madman named David published at Angers a brochure entitled The Voice of God, in which he assumed the modest appellation of 'only Messiah of the Creator Holy Ghost,' and informed the world that he was a sewer contractor and wore a beard a yard and a half long. At the present moment his throne is not empty for want of successors. An engineer named Pierre Jean rode all over the Mediterranean provinces on horseback announcing that he was the Holy Ghost. In Paris, Bérard, an omnibus conductor on the Panthéon-Courcelles line, likewise asserts that he incorporates the Paraclete, while a magazine article avers that the hope of Redemption has dawned in the person of the poet Jhouney. Finally, in America, from time to time, women claim to be Messiahs, and they recruit adherents among persons worked up to fever pitch by Advent revivals."