The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait

by Gabriel de Lautrec

  Vain were the measured cries of the priests, vain the supplications of the amazed crowd. After the vision, nothing else happened—just the grey smoke of bowls of perfume and pyres passing, unsuspected, over the empty screen. The pale enigma lasted until daybreak. Toward dawn, it faded away, and the people, their hearts henceforth alone forever, slowly made their way back to the city. Human sadness respired. Mystery, once more, had had faithfully kept the promise previously made, and the future god remained future. For one could not accept, if not with smiles, in the midst of universal doubt, the tale of an adolescent lost in the crowd, troubled by the memory of the beautiful legends with which, instead of coarse stories, the light sleep of infants was lulled. He claimed to have perceived on the wall, in the interval of a musical note, the form of a motionless female in a veil with numerous folds, who bore on her veil, on the forehead, the well-know seal of eternity.

  The Three Companions

  For Georges Geiger18

  They were three poor partisans who were coming back from the Spanish wars—in the year one thousand and some, to be precise. They had lost the main body of the army, one day when they had been delayed in a tavern in Estremadura, and had never found it again. And since then, they had been travelling in easy stages, without a sou, living by plunder, and very poorly at that. By night they bedded down in the woods when they did not have the good fortune to find hospitality in some peasant’s dwelling—but that latter stroke of luck was rare, for the country had been ruined by the war, and the government was dragging its feet in order to pay indemnities and replace the clepsydras, or water-clocks, which the enemy, following its age-old habit, had carried off as it left. Also, the land-owners looked at men-at-arms with a bleak and mistrustful eye.

  So, the three poor devils, who were four with the one that they had in their purse, wandered in a melancholy fashion along the roads of Spain, with miserable armor on their backs, which no longer comprised anything but a few threads and a dented helmet on the head. And they sighed, their belies empty, as they thought about the rich land of Flanders, of which they were natives. Thanks to their godfathers, who had a literary bent, they were named Amador, Mathurin and Gaetan.

  One evening, when the day had been more painful than usual, twenty-four hours of hunger having followed twenty-four hours of hunger, the worthy fellows, exhausted, found themselves on the edge of a wood in the mot desolate and sinister landscape that they had ever encountered. There were no other habitations in view but a miserable hut made of branches and mud, hidden among the trees. What a sudden joy there was, however, in seeing that the hut was surmounted by a chimney, and that smoke was escaping from that chimney! There’s no smoke without fire, our three companions said to themselves, rendered subtle by starvation. And fire sometimes accompanies a saucepan hiding some sort of precious stew. When one is truly hungry, there is no better roast.

  Just as the famished bellies, devoid of ears, were already opening wide eyes on a hypothetical feast, however, the door of the hut also opened abruptly, and out of it, howling and gesticulating, came a abominable old crone with wisps of grey hair escaping untidily from a dirty headscarf. Raising her arms to the heavens, she cried: “My cat! My cat! Oh, poor Beelzebub!”

  Our three companions were surprised by this sudden apparition, and they took a step backwards. Ugly as the old lady was, however, she belonged to the fair sex, and our worthy Flemings were gallant—especially as they could see a fireplace through the open door, with a cooking-pot on the fire, in which something was simmering. The old lady’s panic permitted them to suppose that it was not cat stew.

  Mathurin raised his eyes heavenwards in a gesture of supplicant piety—and he perceived a black form moving in the branches of a tree. There were two gleams in the middle of the form that had to be eyes. Mathurin did not hesitate. He ran to the tree and climbed into the branches. Taking advantage of the animal’s surprise—it had believed itself to be safe—he slipped into his coat pocket, made a rapid descent, and presented himself before the crone, to whom he held out the cat with a courteous gesture.

  “Thank you, young man,” she said. “Wait there! It shall not be said that you have done me a service for nothing.”

  She disappeared into the hut, without even inviting the three companions to come in. However, they saw her rummaging in the bottom of an old wardrobe, fm which a rat fled. She finally reappeared on the threshold, and handed the three objects she had in her hands to the young men.

  “Take this,” she said to Mathurin.

  It was a napkin made of cotton—calico, as department-stores call it—which had nothing extraordinary about it. Mathurin had seen similar ones, before the war, selling for six francs eighty-five a dozen.

  He accepted the napkin thoughtfully.

  When it was the turn of the other two others, Amador received a brass ring, which was certainly not gold, and Gaetan an old copper coin, probably no longer legal tender, and certainly very rusty.

  “Thank you again,” squeaked the crone.

  And, while the three young men considered these strange gifts, stupidly, she bounded back to her hovel, with a cackle that resembled the sound of a badly-greased well-chain. Once past the threshold, she closed the door, which she bolted behind her solidly.

  Amador, Gaetan and Mathurin were immobilized by amazement. Recovering their senses, they raced to the door and hammered on it forcefully. What good were those ridiculous objects to them? What they wanted was supper. In fact, in spite of the hour, they would have been content with a good breakfast. It was in vain that they knocked, however, first with their fists and then with their feet. No one answered. And the door held firm. It was a solid door, primarily designed for closing.

  There was nothing to do but go away, and go without supper that night, as they had the night before. Swearing a mortal oath to give them courage, the three companions drew away from the inhospitable hovel. Mechanically putting the crone’s ironic gifts in their pockets, they followed the first path they came to, and were fortunate to find a cave whose floor was carpeted with dry grass. Gaetan took an old morsel of bread out of his satchel, so hard that he had been hesitating for a fortnight over eating it. He cut it into three with two blows of his sword, and, to help it go down, sprinkled it sadly with the water they had in their gourds. When the lugubrious meal was concluded, they lay down on the dry grass, went to sleep as best they could, and dreamed all night of bloody meat, fresh bread with a golden crust sprinkled with white flour, and wines of the most renowned vintages.

  The song of a skylark heralded the day. Our three companions shook themselves, yawned and sat up on their makeshift bed, with bewildered expressions. A moment later they were standing up, thinking about the problem of breakfast. It is a terrible thing to lack food every day, even when there is no bell to advertise meal times.

  “Ah!” said Mathurin, “I’d far rather have a dinner without a napkin than a napkin without a dinner!”

  As he said these words, he took the napkin the old crone had given him out of his pocket, with a scornful gesture, and threw it on the ground, where it spread itself out, very squarely.

  “If only,” the brave soldier continued, extremely exasperated, “there were a nice roasted turkey-hen on that napkin! I feel so hungry that I could eat it all myself.”

  Surprise!

  Scarcely had he pronounced these words, than there appeared on the napkin, from who knew what devil’s kitchen, a fine porcelain plate, and on that plate a superb turkey-hen, cooked and browned to a turn, with large bumps on the skin whose black transparency permitted the supposition that the animal must have died of an indigestion of whole truffles.

  “No!” said Mathurin, dumbfounded.

  “Yes!” replied Amador, reaching out to touch the turkey-hen and assure himself that it was not a phantom. The result of the experiment was entirely satisfactory.

  “There’s nothing lacking,” sighed Gaetan, “but bread and a few bottles of wine.”

  The turkey-hen was s
urrounded by four bottles, whose glass let generous reflections through, and four crisp loaves of the best pre-war bread extended like walls between the four bottle-towers to complete the sturdy fortress. A wasted effort—an hour later, the structure was entirely dismantled, the enemy’s skeleton lying in the dungeons of stomachs and the empty towers strewn on the ground.

  His face illuminated and joyful, Mathurin had jealously folded up the napkin and hidden it in his bosom. Amador, flat on his belly, was searching the dry grass for his brass ring, which he had dropped, while Gaetan was juggling his old coin and addressing the most pressing exhortations thereto. Then he rubbed it, as he had heard rumor of Aladdin’s lamp—but still with no result. In the end, war-weary, putting off his experiments until later, he picked up his old leather purse and carefully deposited the coin therein, in solitude.

  Meanwhile, a cry of joy was heard. “I’ve found it! I’ve found it, and I’ll never be separated from it again….”

  Gaetan and Mathurin turned in the direction from which the voice had come, searching for Amador with their eyes.

  Amador had vanished.

  “Why are you looking at me with those stupid expressions?” the voice continued. “Look, here it is, the ring. What’s so special about it?”

  Amador had just appeared before them, as if suddenly sprung from the ground. He showed them the brass ring that he had just removed from his finger.

  It was necessary to yield to the evidence. The ring made its wearer invisible. Another marvelous discovery. Meanwhile, only Gaetan remained miserable in his corner. What if his old coin did not have the same virtue as the napkin and the ring? As he got up, in a melancholy fashion, he uttered an exclamation.

  “Lord, how heavy I am!” He put his hand in his pocket and took out his purse awkwardly. He opened it. It was full of gold pieces bearing the effigy of the king of Estremadura.

  Then there was a royal celebration. Our companions were the masters of the world. They began by dividing up the contents of the purse, carefully leaving the old copper coin at the bottom. It filled up again, without any apparent effort. Then, before embarking on the conquest of the universe, they spread out the napkin in the middle of the cave and had themselves served with a feast compared with which the famous wedding of Gamache19 was nothing but a timid essay in slow death by starvation.

  They woke up three days later, their heads very heavy, totally devoid of memories—but their first gesture was to seek out the three talismans. The coin was in its place, and the ring too. As for the napkin, it had been firmly kept in place by the sleeper’s feet.

  The only inconvenience was that Amador, in a last spark of reason, had put the ring on his finger, and did not think to take it off again; his comrades were stumbling over him, or stepping on his feet in the most impudent fashion.

  But they were the first, and doubtless the last, since they were the only ones there, to laugh at these slight inconveniences. Everything was set in order again once Amador, confused by his dazed condition, had taken the ring off his finger, and the three companions had drunk long draughts from a nearby stream.

  A few weeks later, no one in the King of Estremadura’s capital was talking about anything but the three mysterious individuals who had arrived in the city a short while before, whose deeds and activities were occupying public opinion uninterruptedly.

  First of all, an individual named Mathurin had presented himself at the palace one evening and had applied for the job of head chef, rendered vacant by the death of its previous holder, who had succumbed to an indigestion of roasted anchovies. Mathurin, accepted on trial, had quickly made himself indispensable. The king had a hearty appetite and the queen, Dora, did not disdain nice morsels. The new cook possessed an entire intuitive science. There was no dish so complicated that he could not immediately find a perfectly-realized recipe. The king, although a sober man, had three indigestions a day, so incapable was he of resisting Mathurin’s temptations.

  There was only one bizarre detail, which formed a part of the mystery that we mentioned just now. Mathurin left the task of preparing vulgar dishes to his assistant cooks, but when it was a matter of one of the more exotic dishes, of which he alone knew the secret, once a large fire had been lit, he shut himself away in the kitchen and forbade anyone, on the most severe penalties, to enter it. That was only a pretext, however; as soon as Mathurin was alone he laid out he napkin and the dish immediately presented itself on demand.

  This bizarrerie seemed natural in a man of genius. The king was very fond of Mathurin, and would have appointed him prime minister if he had not feared distracting him from more important occupations. In the meantime, he gave him a salary superior to what all the ministers of the court earned in total. The President of the Council, who was known as Tiger because of his moustache, spent his time conspiring fruitlessly against Mathurin. He possessed the monarch’s heart, but Mathurin was the master of his stomach.

  Meanwhile, Amador and Gaetan had also made progress since leaving the witch’s hut. Amador had gained the confidence of the king, to whom he had made the offer of taking responsibility for the most secret missions, and fulfilling them to general satisfaction, that of the king in particular. He was placed at the head of the espionage service, and worked marvels there. The prince was fully informed of all the intrigues being woven in his own court and neighboring courts. He did not know, of course, about the magic power of the ring, and had all the more admiration or Amador’s talents. He had assured him of the most brilliant situation, and always treated him with assurances of the most distinguished consideration.

  The most important person in the court, however, was not the king; it was Queen Dora. Beautiful, intelligent and ambitious, her hair curled every morning with little iron tongs, she could make her husband do anything she wished, for his character was weak and he recognized the superiority of his wife—with whom he was, moreover, very much in love. And if the queen appreciated Mathurin’s fine cuisine, she attached more real value to the services that Amador could provide. She had been quick to conclude a sort of treaty of alliance with him, all the more so because, from the very first day, he had fallen in love with her. The lady had had a rather pensive air for some time, which rendered her ten or twelve time prettier. As the people of Estremadura believed in witchcraft, a legend was established to explain the queen’s shadowed and contented eyes; it was whispered that she was visited at night by an incubus, a sort of invisible demon that she could only know by means of its embraces—and the respectful esteem in which she was held was increased by it.

  The truth was that one evening, Amador had taken advantage of the ring to introduce himself into the queen’s bedroom. On feeling him next to her, in the bed, she had initially utterly a faint cry of alarm, than had turned precipitately to the button on her bedhead, to light the resin torches. But she had seen nothing, and her emotion had been such that she had abandoned herself, stupefied by the mystery, to the reality of which, in spite of the negative testimony of her eyes, she was convinced—penetratively, let us say.

  In any case, it did not lack charm, for so virtuous a woman, and the sighs that she uttered attracted anxious chambermaids who thought that she was ill. They looked furtively though a crack in a door, then retired discreetly, laughing up their sleeves, even though they were in their nightgowns, but reassured.

  From the reports they gave him, in the morning, the palace astrologer concluded that the queen had received the nocturnal visit of an invisible god, or a demon, and that the heir to the throne would be a superman, as the German philosophers of the present day put it. Not being absolutely sure, however, he did not want to say anything to the lady’s august spouse, in order not to cause him any false joy.

  As if the city had not had enough subjects for gossip, a noble lord had been seen to arrive in the capital at the same time as Amador and Mathurin, whose magnificent appearance had immediately seduced everyone, and who was none other than Gaetan. Without bothering to conquer the royal favor, whi
ch he would be able to purchase whenever he wanted, he had bought the most beautiful palace in the city with coins of full weight that rang true. He had furnished it sumptuously and had immediately thrown splendid parties. The entire court and city were pressed around him, for he had a generous hand and willingly tended to the great lords’ needs. Everyone praised his fine demeanor.

  There were a few lacunae in his education, and his table manners were not perfect—he was not afraid to pick his teeth with his knife and ate salad with his spoon—but the fare was exquisite and the liveried lackeys impeccable, pouring the best wines in the entire kingdom and its surrounding lands into glasses profusely. So, Gaetan’s vulgarities were deemed to be delightful eccentricities, and all the women were very taken with him.

  Naturally, he was received at Court, and there was no cajolery that the king and queen did not lavish upon him. The queen welcomed him into intimacy, and soon acquired the habit of taking him with her on her excursions through the city—and the brave Gaetan, dazed with pride, threw handfuls of gold coins to the crowds that cheered her. The queen’s popularity was affected, and that of the king, without the latter, who was the most modern prince of his dynasty, being in the least offended by it. Thus, one of our companions became the joy of the queen’s nights, and the other of her days.

  This charming life continued for several months, but grim destiny was lying in wait. The queen had realized, gradually, that there was something strange about the three individuals’ existence. The mystery of Amador had been unveiled some time before. Having read a certain amount of literature, it had been sufficient for the queen, one day—or rather, one night—to feel the ring on her invisible lover’s finger, for her immediately to ask whether it was the instrument of his power of invisibility. The admission had been extracted from him amid voluptuous sighs, and henceforth, they had taken it in turns to wear the ring. Their amour had undergone a renewal in consequence.