The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait

by Gabriel de Lautrec

  We’re pulling away. It was a hundred years ago, to the hour, that the coachman’s whip cracked above the vehicle, which shook with a tinkle of bells—and everything is so exactly similar that I don’t know whether it’s the past that is living again or whether it’s us that have been transported magically into the past. The diligence rolls along the road, illuminated by the poor forward lantern. On hills, we get down and push the carriage. My God, how bad it is! The road is stony and there are no springs.

  Suddenly, the Moon pierces the clouds, and spreads a wan light over the countryside. One might think we were in a land of phantoms. The trees by the roadside seem to be whispering. We’ve been rolling for two hours and we can’t help being invaded, little by little, by a strange apprehension. In spite of our skepticism, we feel that there’s a sort of profanation in trying to revive something that has been dead for such a long time.

  Our conversation, cheerful at the outset, becomes awkward, and then dies away. There is silence and solitude. Except, just now, two tramps sleeping on a pile of stones got up painfully as we approached and gazed with amazement at the fantastic vision. In the morning, they’ll think that they were dreaming.

  Come on, a little courage! A few more kilometers and the first houses of Lieusaint will gaze at us with their red and myopic eyes. What an evocative name: Lieusaint! But no one will murder us—and we regret not having prepared a simulacrum of the most moving episode of the tragedy. It’s too late now to finish off this stupid adventure. Finally, here’s the last bend, and over there, a dark mass. It’s the wood at the edge of the village, which we only have to pass through. A train whistles in the distance.

  Suddenly, a gunshot, followed by another fired at closer range. The horses, rearing up, stop dead. And what I see at this moment I shall never forget, if I live to be a hundred.

  Two masked men on horseback were standing before us, pistols—not revolvers-in hand. Our friend the postillion, whom the abrupt halt of the vehicle had thrown to the ground, got to his feet, and all three of us were soon out of the vehicle, in front of those masked men. We had no weapons, and I regretted it bitterly. Meanwhile, the men were motionless, a few meters away, leaning over in their stirrups, their pistols aimed at us, seemingly ready to fire.

  Jim Corbett, the first to recover from his amazement, bravely took a step forward and spoke: “What do you want with us? We’re not travelers bearing treasures. The money that we have in our pockets we’ll give you; the sum isn’t enormous. But please let us pass. My comrades and I are making a carnival excursion. You only have to look at our costumes.”

  Having said these swords, our friend returned to us. We emptied into his hand all the money we had on us. The two men remained silent. Jim Corbett unhooked the diligence’s lantern and advanced toward one of them. Handing him the money, he said: “Take it, old chap—we have nothing more.”

  The man leaned down in his stirrups, took the money he was given with an abrupt movement, and threw it down on to the road. The metallic clinking was all that disturbed the silence. Our friend, utterly astonished, raised his lantern toward the men, of whom we had only seen, until then, the vague silhouettes, and he suddenly let out a burst of laughter.

  “Look!” he shouted to us.

  By the light of the lantern, we distinctly saw the two men on horseback, masked but dressed—just like us—in costumes of the time of the drama. A gleam of light dawned in our minds.

  Jim Corbett went on: “The joke’s excellent, provided it doesn’t go on too long. I’m anxious to know the ingenious friends who have got wind of our adventure and wanted to ensure its counterpart. We lacked brigands. In that respect, it’s perfect. If we aren’t being robbed, what…?”

  The blade of a sword glinted. A blow forcefully landed by the man on the horse caused the lantern to fall, which went out and broke on the road. Then the two men got down and marched toward us.

  “No,” our friend continued, “that’s enough. The farce is becoming dangerous to continue. Name yourselves, and let it be finished. We’ve had our little fright; you can be satisfied. But I warn you that if you don’t unmask immediately, I’ll apply a few punches whose marks you’ll bear for some time.”

  The men did not appear to have heard. They headed toward us at a phantasmal pace, took hold of our clothing, tore away our wigs and ripped our lace ruffs, all without saying a word. They seemed possessed of Herculean strength, and we twisted in their hands like wisps of straw. All resistance was futile. They broke the windows of the diligence and set about unhitching the horses. Then one of them climbed on top of the vehicle in three bounds and started throwing the luggage on to the road.

  That was too much. While my two friends were trying to stop him, I threw myself on the other one, hands reaching out to strangle him. I gripped him by the neck and squeezed. Horror! His clothing gave way and I felt within my grip a neck as hard as iron, and no thicker than a finger…

  With the energy of supreme terror, I seized the phantom’s mask and tore it away. And I perceived…a death’s-head, which was looking at me with green eyes.

  I could do no more. I had no thought but flight. I slipped out of the skeleton’s grip. I ran. But as I set off he pronounced two words the whispered in my ear while I ran:

  “Lesurques! Dubosc!”

  At daybreak I arrived in Lieusaint, disheveled, soaked in sweat, my clothes in tatters. A peasant took me in. After resting and taking a little nourishment, I told him some story or other to explain my accoutrement. Having recovered from panic, I had blushed at my cowardice and the abandonment of my friends. The peasant volunteered to lend me his cart and to go with me. We left, armed with a hunting rifle and a revolver. I remember now—I had told him that I was part of a company of actors and that we had been attacked by thieves.

  We arrived at the place where the drama had taken place. There was no longer anything there. The diligence had disappeared. No trace remained of the attack or the fight. The phantoms, my friends, the broken windows, the luggage—everything had vanished as if by magic.

  We searched the surroundings, beating the bushes. There was nothing to recall the tragic and horrible scene of the previous night. My companion was very near to taking me for a practical joker, and I began wondering myself whether I might have been dreaming.

  But no, I wasn’t dreaming. Everything really happened as I saw it—and the fantastic apparition of the bandits who robbed us was nothing but the logical conclusion of the adventure we had tried to reconstitute. No one knows what becomes of the past, and whether it is not still present, ready to revive redoubtably as soon as one summons it with the necessary incantations.

  We had been punished, my friends and I—the friends, it is necessary to say, that I never saw again—for having been tempted, by virtue of an unhealthy curiosity, to violate the gates of death. And for my part, I no longer see, haunted though I am by the fear of seeing them reappear, now that we have awakened them from their century-long sleep, the souls of Lesurques and Dubosc.

  Number Thirteen

  Matters of superstition and childish credulity, said the doctor, when it was his turn to speak, it is easy to resolve a priori. But we all have in our lives some story or some adventure in which mystery plays its part, and which leaves us thoughtful. For example, I’ve always had a sympathy for the number thirteen, which is that of love and death. An entire series of encounters has rendered it dear to me. And I’m convinced that, in one instance, it definitely saved my life.

  It was four years ago. I had gone to give a lecture in Brussels. It was the end of winter. The weather was execrable. We disembarked in the city in the middle of a deluge of rain and snow. An icy wind was blowing in gusts. There is no impression more unpleasant than arriving in an unknown city in bad weather. The darkness and cold created a kind of desert around us. I had great difficulty getting to the hotel where I was expected for diner. The lecture was at nine o’clock. Everything went smoothly, but it transpired that the only two people I knew in the ci
ty were unable, for various reasons, once the job was done and the compliments had been exchanged, to keep me company.

  I found myself alone in front of the hotel. The squalls of rain were getting worse. It was impossible to go anywhere. Strictly speaking, I would have been able to go back an hour later, but I was tired and sulky. I decided to wait until the following day. Perhaps, in the morning, a clear interval would permit me to take a walk through the city. The train wasn’t due to leave until one o’clock in the afternoon.

  I therefore took refuge, in a very bad mood, in the hotel lounge, where I spent two interminable hours smoking Belgian cigars and reading old numbers of the Monde Illustré. Toward midnight, weary of interesting myself in the actualities of the Second Empire, I went to bed, planning to get up early. I was always afraid of missing a train. It is, for me, not an inconvenience but one of the calamities of life. But the night went by peacefully and, waking up at the desired time, I went out to visit the city. The rain had stopped—and I was at the station a full hour before the departure time.

  About twenty minutes later, a set of carriages appeared alongside the platform. I sought information. On the affirmative response of station staff, I climbed in and put my suitcase on a rack, along with two or three newspapers on the seat, to reserve the corner. Then I got back down on to the platform. After a few moments, the set of carriages started moving. I was reassured when I learned that it was going into a siding in order to allow the Amsterdam train to arrive.

  It was from that moment on that providential error, clandestine and blind illusion took possession of more and submerged me entirely. Haven’t you noticed that at certain times, we become suddenly and completely absent from life? An invisible paralysis separates us from the environment. We no longer think, or think differently. We lost the exact notion of reality and the sense of adaptation. The cruelest memories are those in which this unconsciousness arrives unexpectedly in the middle of an amorous adventure. I have—we all have—the keen vision, at a distance, of a moment when one only has to extend one’s arms or lips to pluck the most delightful of flowers. What temporary blindness prevents us from seeing, at that moment? Later, sometimes an hour, sometimes years afterwards, one suddenly realizes it, and curses it furiously. For a man smitten with a woman, the memory of those joys offered, but stupidly neglected, is a remorse unique in life.

  But the ironic divinity sometimes changes into a benevolent demon. That’s what happened to me that day. I watched the Amsterdam train come along the empty track and draw up alongside the platform. And, suddenly convinced that I was not going to Amsterdam, but to Paris, I remained in complete tranquility, repeating to myself mechanically, in order to be persuaded, that it was necessary to wait for that train to disappear, to make way for the one that I needed to take.

  I listened, as if petrified, to the departure signals; I saw the doors closed; I looked at the clock, merely astonished that the train was leaving exactly on the hour, at the same time as mine. And it was only at the moment when the carriages moved off, drawing slowly away from me, that I had the sudden, blinding intuition, that it was not one that was heading for Amsterdam, but the one that had come from Amsterdam and was going to Paris, having picked up on the way, on another track, the set of carriages formed in Brussels, in which I had left my suitcase. I had that sudden vision, just at the moment when it was too late.

  I shall pass over what followed: the desperate perspective of the whole mortal afternoon, until the evening train. It was one of those stupid frustrations that cause nervous individuals to think, momentarily, that life is not worth living. When I was a little more resigned, I sent a telegram to friends who were due to meet the train, and another to the station-master at the frontier, asking him to collect my suitcase from the carriage during the halt and to keep it until I passed through that evening. Then I trailed miserably from café to café, drinking insipid commonplace beer, crossing streets in the squalls of rain and snow that were gaining fury again. The time passed, with its sinister slowness. I eventually found myself back on the platform and took the train, this time with no hitches.

  On arriving at the frontier I hurried to the station-master’s office. That functionary greeted me with an embarrassed expression. He had, indeed, received my dispatch and had searched for my suitcase when the train went through, but without result. In addition, a singular accident, which had caused a man’s death, had occasioned a certain disturbance for several hours.

  On the very train that I had missed, when it arrived at the frontier, a passenger had been found collapsed in his seat, his torso pierced all the way through by a frightful wound. The cadaver had been transported to the mortuary and the carriage detached, in which the traveler’s luggage had been carefully left in place. Although he had been found alone in his compartment, research carried out on the track had permitted the tragic scene to be reconstituted. A large branch, broken off by the storm from a tree alongside the track and leaning over it, must have come through the open window in the carriage door and struck the passenger full in the chest, with all the velocity of the train.

  I had a sort of presentiment—and anyway, I had to recover my suitcase. On my insistence, I was allowed to visit the fatal carriage. We climbed up—and I perceived my suitcase in the rack where I had placed it myself. Beside it were other items of luggage. But below the suitcase, where I would have been sitting if I hadn’t missed the train, exactly in the middle of the padding, was a large bloodstain.

  My fearful gaze moved up again, and I saw, above the back of the seat, the seat-number that I hadn’t noticed the first time.

  It was, naturally, number thirteen.

  The Amorous Queen

  For Dora8

  In a legendary country, far away beyond the sea, lived an old king and a young queen, in the midst of the adulation of their courtiers. There were adventures there like those in fairy tales. The lords addressed their declarations to the ladies on a daily basis, and the ladies took care to put on pink make-up so that no one could see them blush. The people, naturally, were overwhelmed by taxes, but thought that they were very happy, because they were used to it. Anyway, the trees in the Royal Park were several hundred years old and the hall of the palace were ornamented with profound mirrors, perfect for the multiplication of the floral patterned dresses worn by the queen and the ladies of the court.

  After the queen and the king, the most important person in the aforementioned court was the king’s jester, to whom an immemorial right granted a seat on the Council of Ministers, where he began to speak immediately when his august master fell silent. His name was Tripetus,9 and he claimed decent, by the distaff line, from one of the most ancient aristocratic families in the land. The monarch liked him a great deal, and boasted of his wisdom in all matters. The ladies of the court could do no less than follow such a noble example, and all day long, a swarm of pretty women swirled around the jester, passionately delighted by his impertinent conceit.

  Tripetus spent his time making up puns and puzzles, which he subsequently recopied in beautiful characters in a red notebook, with Indian ink. When he was not working, or listening disdainfully to the declarations of ladies, he slept or smoked his pipe. He was an intellectual. One ran into him in the kitchens, sniffing the perfume of dishes and saucepans like a food critic. Master chefs in large white pointed hats passed by gravely. In the window-bays there were purring cats sitting on scullion’s knees, and hundred-year-old women, entirely clad in black with mildewed skin, with the red blaze of the fire on their faces….

  Tripetus, in his half-red, half-green costume, which made him resemble a parakeet, arrived slyly beside tables, cut thick slices of bread and dipped them in the soup. He had put on a lot of weight, and his short stature caused his fat belly to stand out. When politics shut down, the jester’s gluttony alimented the newspapers with jokes—always the same—at which the idiotic people always laughed heartily.

  One day, however, when the trees in the great park were shedding melanch
oly leaves in the crazy autumn wind, the aforementioned young queen leaned over her balcony in the direction of the forest, letting her blonde hair stream downwards, just as Tripetus went by. He was going to the forest to gather dry leaves for his pipe. The jester was very miserly, and had come, in the wake of a ministerial crisis, to pad out a two-sou packet of tobacco.

  The lady was very pretty, but Tripetus did not see her, and as such great beauty demanded that a heart should be captivated, it was the queen’s. It was the forest’s fault, although perhaps it is also necessary to blame her feminine nervous system. Besides, there were in the person of the jester all sorts of extenuating circumstances for the queen not having previously perceived his beauty.

  As soon as the queen was in love, she quit the golden balcony and went back into her boudoir, where she set about thinking very sadly. Sitting on her sculpted chair, on cushions of old silk, she made a few very beautiful and exceedingly weary gestures, and then headed for the mirror and the rice-powder. Convention satisfied, she sent for her maids of honor and went to look for the king. The halberdiers stood aside in the calm of the galleries and carpets, and in the doorways she brushed past, plaintive pages in white satin costumes burst into tears.

  When she had made her request, in the most polite terms she could find, the king said: “Madame, it displeases our very courteous power to forbid you, being the queen, any whim or sensuality, no matter how sumptuous it might be—all the more so if it’s simply a matter of my jester—but I have no wish to come down in the world in too brutal a fashion, and I require that the chosen one should render himself worthy, to the extent that is possible, of the great honor reserved for him by you. His education is very poor, his qualifications deplorable. From now on, I shall provide him with the best teachers. When he has become a veritable man of the world and a great savant, you can, without losing prestige, offer your imagination the violins and amorous feast that it desires.”