The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait

by Gabriel de Lautrec

  Dora had suspected, since then, that the other two companions must also be in possession of some talisman—and she swore to combine, for her personal profit, all their respective advantages. With Maturin, it was child’s play. Commanding him to secrecy on pain of death, she had the castle architect bore a hole in the kitchen ceiling, and from the room above she watched the operation of the napkin. It would be an insult to ladies who read to admit for a single instant that they might suppose that it required more than twenty-four hours for the queen to steal the precious piece of cloth.

  It will similarly be no surprise that the very next day was the king’s birthday, and that the lady took a malign pleasure in summoning Mathurin to her presence and demanding of him, for that celebration, the mot sumptuous and complicated of feasts. The poor devil, utterly stunned—for he had just become aware of the theft, without suspecting the culprit—could only bow very deeply, murmuring something unintelligible. For the rest of the day, he devoted himself to fruitless research; then, assured of his misfortune, he left the palace secretly, never to return.

  With Gaetan it was easier still. The next day, the queen invited him to accompany her to church. At the exit, there were the usual dispensations to all the hurrying beggars. Gaetan dipped into his purse, which was progressively refilled, taking care to leave the old copper coin at the bottom—to which it was, in any case, solidly attached—until the moment when the queen seemed to become impatient with the lamentations of an old man who was shouting more loudly than the rest. She snatched the purse from Gaetan’s hands and threw it to the unfortunate, who caught it in mid-air and immediately disappeared. Gaetan was so stunned that he dared not say anything

  As soon as he arrived at the palace, he summoned the most eminent policemen, promising fabulous rewards to whoever brought him the purse, but the old man stationed by the queen had acted diligently, and had already received a royal reward—naturally—in exchange for the purse.

  There remained Amador. Knowledge of his secret singularly favored Queen Dora’s projects. On the other hand, the fancy she had taken to him, which lent a greater attraction to the mystery, was worth less henceforth that possession of the ring, from which she expected to obtain the most precious advantages. So, one day when he was merely paying her a visit, and fully dressed, she took the ring playfully, then threw it into the back of a wardrobe, the door of which she swiftly locked, in front of the poor devil, whose stupor knew no bounds when the queen started uttering screams of distress and crying rape.

  Chamberlains and valets came running. Amador, proven guilty of having made an attempt on the queen’s virtue, was miraculously able to flee. It was arranged that he would not be too strenuously sought, and explanations were avoided. The king, however, immediately issued an edict by which Amador and his companions, denounced as accomplices, were banished from the realm, and all their wealth was confiscated. Then he embraced the queen, who was still all a-tremble, and had a Te Deum sung in the cathedral.

  A few hours later, three poor devils at the end of their tether were making their way miserably along the roads of Estremadura. Coiffed in badly-dented helmets, and clad in breastplates held together by pieces of string and nappy-pins, they were heading vaguely in the direction of France, where recruiting-sergeants had told them that enrolments were being taken for the war against the Huns. Meanwhile, in alternating stanzas, like ancient rhapsodies, they were cursing the perfidy of womankind, the eternal subject of meditations ever new to the other half of the human race.

  The Warning

  The Reverend P. W. Morrow emerged from the church where he had just celebrated the divine service. A fine drizzle was falling. It was typical London weather, grey and sullen. Umbrellas were moving back and forth in the street. The sidewalks were glistening.

  The clergyman hesitated at the top of the steps, frustrated, holding out his hand toward the raindrops in a mechanical interrogative gesture. His hesitation was interrupted, however, for, at the same moment, a carriage drew up in front of the steps. The door opened. A lady got down and rapidly climbed up to toward the man of God. Her voice was breathless.

  “I’m glad to have got here in time,” she said. “Come right away, I beg you. It’s for a gentleman who’s about to die. He’s extremely worried about the state of his soul, and wants to see you as soon as possible.”

  The lady was unknown to Reverend Morrow. She was still young, and appeared to belong to the best society, but her clothes were slightly old-fashioned, and her fixed gaze had something distant about it. The clergyman could only concede. He followed the lady and climbed into the carriage with her. The coachman flicked the horses, and they drew away.

  The unexpected traveler expected to obtain some clarification during the journey. He was only able learn that the sick man’s name was Sir Edward Burrton, and that he had heard mention of the incumbent from friends who had represented him as a man of remarkable knowledge and piety.

  Sir Edward Burton’s name did not bring any light into the obscurity, but the lady did not seem to be in any mood to say more. Her fingers drummed the carriage window feverishly. Her anxious gaze sought to perceive the approach of the destination. Emerging from the familiar neighborhood, the carriage went along streets that P. W. Morrow could not recall every having traversed before, although he knew where he was. Finally, after about half an hour, the carriage stopped in front of the door of a private house. The lady, increasingly nervous, urged her companion to get down without delay, so he leapt out of the vehicle and rang the doorbell. A lackey appeared, and he asked to see Sir Edward Burton without delay.

  “I’ve just learned,” he added, “that he’s gravely ill and that he wishes to see me.”

  The valet struck an astonished pose and replied that his master was perfectly well.

  “But this lady…” said Reverend P. W Morrow, turning round.

  The lady and the carriage had disappeared, as if by magic.

  “Well, I’m not dreaming, though,” he continued, as soon as he had recovered slightly from his amazement. “That lady came to find me; I had just come out on to the steps of the church. We climbed into the carriage, and I accompanied her here. When I rang the doorbell, the carriage was there behind me. What’s happened, then? It’s impossible that you didn’t see it…”

  The lackey seemed to be wondering whether he was dealing with a practical joker or a madman. The venerable and sincere appearance of his interlocutor left him perplexed—but the door of the house was still open. A man appeared on the threshold. It was Sir Edward Burton.

  “What is it?” he said.

  The clergyman explained to him as best he could what had happened. He gave a description of the lady, whom he had not thought to look at attentively.

  “I don’t know anyone among my present relatives who corresponds to that description,” said he master, after a moment’s thought. “But it doesn’t matter. Since you’ve come this far, would you do me the honor of coming in, and excuse me for having left you outside for so long?”

  As soon as they were installed in the drawing-room, Sir Edward Burton reflected: “It’s very strange that you should find yourself here at this moment—far stranger than you can imagine. Your visit anticipates a desire that I would not have been long in expressing. I returned a short while ago from India, where I spent several years, and although I’m in very good health at the moment…I don’t know whether it’s the influence of the climate to which I’m now subject, but I have vague anxieties that I can’t quite define. It’s as if I were menaced by some danger as imminent as it is unknown. I’m conscious of having always lived as an honest man, thanks to the instruction of an admirable mother, lost too soon, whose memory I guard piously. But every man, in apprehension of the future life, judges himself severely, and one can’t take too many precautions. I’m haunted by the idea of making my complete peace with God. If my apprehensions are vain, they will not have been futile, wherever they come from. In this disposition, I have talked, since my return,
with a few religious friends, and I’ve asked them, having lost sight somewhat of the metropolitan clergy during my long sojourn out there, to point me in the direction of a spiritual physician. They fell into accord over your name, and I was about to seek you out when you arrived.”

  The reverend bowed. His host told him the names of the friends who had given his name, and P. W. Morrow recognized them.

  “Let’s leave aside, if you will,” added Sir Edward Burton, “the mysterious manner in which you came here. We’ll examine the material problem on another occasion. We can admit, for the moment, and with every chance of being right, that it was God who sent you to me.”

  The reverend then put himself at his host’s disposal. They conversed seriously for more than an hour, and the man of God only left after having restored calm to that troubled soul. Wanting to perfect his work, he made an appointment to meet Sir Edward Burton again the following morning.

  Sir Edward Burton did not come to the meeting. The clergyman was vaguely anxious, given the strange circumstances of the previous evening’s visit, but he was retained by various obligations and could not satisfy his legitimate impatience. He sought in vain to reassure himself, in the meantime, telling himself that it was only a fortuitous delay or that a perfectly excusable negligence on the part of his penitent merely proved that he had fully recovered his self-composure. All the reasons that he invented could not satisfy him, though, and in the evening, as soon as he was free, obedient to an imperious appeal, he went to Sir Edward Burton’s house.

  The same valet came to open the door, in tears, and informed him that his master had died the night before, and hour after they had parted.

  Profoundly moved by this sudden death, and particularly amazed by the alarming coincidence, which seemed bewildering, the reverend asked to be taken to the dead man in order to render him one last homage and say a final prayer. As they were going through a drawing-room on the way to the mortuary chamber, however, he suddenly started. Seizing the valet’s hand, he pointed, with a fearful gesture, at the portrait of a woman on the wall.

  “Who is that lady?” he stammered, in a voice strangled by emotion.

  “Sir Edward Burton’s mother,” the valet replied. “He had a veritable adoration for her. It’s now fifteen years since she died. My master never got over it.”

  Reverend P. W. Morrow had recognized the lady. It was the one who had come to fetch him.

  The Red Diamond

  This happened a long time ago, in the land of Maghada, which was ruled by a powerful rajah named Nehmi. By virtue of his wealth he had triumphed over all the princes of the fabulous Orient. His palace was marble and cedar-wood, with golden ceilings and porphyry columns. Caskets of rare wood were heaped up in the sumptuous halls, edged with jewels and precious stones. There were diamonds as big as pheasants’ eggs. For ten years, he had been able to let pearls stream between his fingers, whose nails were painted red, without exhausting the pile that he had. He also possessed tapestries embroidered in gold, silver and silk, and others whose somber verdure perpetuated the placid mysteries of the forest on his walls.

  His armies were powerful and well-equipped. The elephants and the horses, whose number he did not know, had thousands of servants and lived in a marble palace with troughs made of Lebanese wood. A host of slaves moved through the courtyards, gardens, halls and vestibules. Some carried golden urns on their heads.

  There were houris from all the countries in the world, the beauty of which they represented, having arrived swaying on the backs of camels, to whom he would throw the handkerchief of his whim in the evening, after the feasting and the music. But the most beautiful of all, and the best-loved, was his wife, the Maharani. By virtue of her grace, she resembled the most subtle of lotus flowers, and the gaze of her eyes was enchanting and troubling, like the Moon over the woods by night.

  She was of the bluest blood—so blue that, by comparison, that of a sapphire seemed pale. The origin of her glorious family was lost in the night of time. Her royal lineage was so ancient that the parchments on which the names and titles of her ancestors were inscribed, laid end to end, would have traversed the peninsula from Mount Davalghiri to Cape Comorin. But others said that she was even more illustriously born, and that one night, her mother had received the visit of Indra, the god of the sky.

  Now, for the queen’s birthday, wanting to celebrate his love, the maharajah chose the most beautiful jewel of his treasure. It was a diamond that had the perfect form of a dove’s egg, the dove being consecrated to the goddess born of the foam of the sea, but its water was so limpid that the whole sky seemed to be reflected therein. And when he gave her that gift, he asked her to swear, on the head of their young son, never to be separated from it—for there has always been a religion of jewels: a vague obscure religion of gleaming stones and their occult influence on human destiny. The loss of the diamond would surely lead to the loss of the woman who no longer had it.

  In the same palace lived a brother of the maharajah named Kali. He was an unscrupulous, scheming prince, who was mortally jealous of his brother and the latter’s wife, although, of necessity, he had to put on an amiable, or at least indifferent, face. He had not forgiven his brother for being loved and having acquired a position that he would have been very glad to have for himself. Everything that his inferior position evoked exasperated him. He had coveted the marvelous diamond, among others, for many years without daring to ask for it. He had always hoped that his brother might divine his desire, for he never ceased to make allusion to it, praising the diamond’s beauty every time he saw it, and sighing that the person to whom the prince, in his munificence, might make a gift of it, would be very happy. But he made the great mistake of not asking openly for what he coveted; one never gets anything by means of sighs and allusions. Perhaps the maharajah would have been embarrassed to respond negatively to a request to a frankly-expressed request, but he could not and did not understand—and without a doubt, he would rather give pleasure to his wife than his brother, since it was to her that he gave the diamond.

  So, there came a night when the spirit of evil, weary of keeping silent, whispered in the ear of Prince Kali—and he prince got up from his sumptuous bed, taking care not to wake his servants. He slipped into the darkness, through the odorous gardens and along the marble veranda, until he arrived at the place where the maharani slept.

  He crept toward her like a panther slyly approaching its prey, and when he was close to his victim in the darkness he stopped, listening to the light, calm breath that the young woman’s lips exhaled. Momentarily, he hesitated, perhaps touched by the beauty he divined beside him without seeing it. Perhaps he was also thinking of his brother’s wrath, if the guilty party were discovered—but cupidity was the stronger. He reached out his hands, groping for the princess’s neck, in order to unfasten the necklace from which the marvelous diamond was suspended.

  His hands were trembling in the darkness, however. His gestures were awkward and he became impatient. As he tugged abruptly, the maharani woke up.

  She uttered an exclamation of sudden terror on feeling a black hand upon her. The wretch was terrified; the cry might wake someone. If anyone came, he was lost. He saw himself suddenly surrounded by servants bearing torches—and in that imminent apprehension, with an unconscious and feverish movement, without thinking, he seized his dagger and plunged it to the hilt in his victim’s delicate breast. There was a slight sigh, a few convulsive movements on the thick carpet of the room, then silence and immobility.

  There had been no movement in the palace: no sound, no light. The murderer stayed there momentarily, listening; then, reassured by the mortuary tranquility that reigned around him, he seized the diamond and tore it away with an abrupt gesture, scattering the rare pearls of the necklace around the room. Without any regret for his victim, he hastened with a light and prudent step toward the palace gates.

  A fast horse, fully saddled, was attached to the grille. He mounted rapidly, after having hi
dden the precious jewel in his bosom, and rode away at top speed.

  All night and all day he rode, only stopping when the horse fell dead of exhaustion. Then he sat at the foot of a tree, in the dying light of dusk, took the fruit of his crime from his clothing and contemplated it with tremulous admiration. Then he shuddered.

  On the clear beauty of the diamond there was a large bloodstain—the royal blood of the maharani.

  Kali rubbed the precious stone vigorously with a silk handkerchief. The handkerchief was stained red, but the stain did not disappear.

  Slightly alarmed, he went to the nearby river, dipped the diamond in the water, and rubbed and scraped it, carefully and patiently. The bloodstain was still there. Sometimes it disappeared, only to reappear more intensely on the other side. The wretch became desperate. What profit had he obtained from his crime, except for having bloody and bright remorse with him forever?

  He sought the shelter of a cave, and lay down on a bed of dry leaves, where he ended up going to sleep, worn out by fatigue. But his sleep was heavy, haunted by frightful nightmares. In his dreams he saw the god Shiva, the destroyer with the cruel gaze. Frenzied women twisted at his feet, their hearts pierced by daggers with crystal hilts. Cascading streams of diamonds fell from Shiva’s hands, over which an infernal light emerging from the divine eyes caused ardent red reflections to pass.

  Kali awoke at dawn, with the vague hope, in the softness of the cool morning, that the reality of the previous day might vanish with the nightmare of the night. But he saw the stone and the stain again, and it seemed to him that it had become larger. All of the following day, weary and desperate, he ran through the countryside, stopping at springs and wells to dip the fatal stone therein. But days and nights went by, and the stain did not disappear. Every day, on the contrary, it increased in breadth and intensity. A splendid red leprosy devoured the diamond.