The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait

by Gabriel de Lautrec

  The foot rose up, and, as the table fell back, made a cracking noise that sounded like a groan.

  “Well then, I’d like to do something for you. We have no intention of tormenting you. Are you there?”

  One faint rap.

  “You ought not to think about getting your body back. It’s lost to you. Souls, once emerged, never re-enter their bodies. Their presence cannot prevent the work of decomposition, which is regular, fatal and definitive. That would be an indiscretion. This is what you should do. Listen to me, please. You must go to Egypt. Souls travel rapidly. When you get there, go to the pyramids. Beside them is the sphinx, its feet buried in the sand. Stop in front of it, in the sunlight. And I give you permission to spend all eternity imploring it to tell you the secret of life and death.”

  The table rose up, as if in bewilderment, leaning toward Madame Moreau, who had stood up, rigid, her eyes staring hypnotically.

  The table leaned over further, then lost its equilibrium and fell at the poor woman’s feet. There, it no longer budged.

  Monsieur Husson looked at Madame Moreau, who was in great distress, and could not help protesting, timidly: “Perhaps it’s wrong to carry out such experiments on the dead.”

  “It would be a terrible thing,” said Carmellin, if one could, in the same conditions, evoke the souls of the living.”

  Alice’s Story

  For Joseph Hémard23

  In those days, the maidservants in inns had a miserable time. It was necessary for them to get up before it was light, as soon as the cock crowed. Otherwise, the old shrew came to wake them with thrusts of the broom. In winter, they emerged from the bed shivering and leapt on to the cold stone floor with bare feet. They sang The King’s Daughter in timid voices, in order to imagine themselves thus, but they had to get down to the ground floor quickly. All day long they worked, serving soldiers and peasants, washing jugs, drawing beer and lighting pipes. In the evening, they cleaning the crockery in a dark corner, which the inn’s guests huddled around the fire, eating chestnuts and telling ghost stories.

  After having toiled from one St. Sylvester’s Day24 to the next they received three écus a year and a pair of Candlemas sabots.

  Little Alice was a servant in an inn in a village lost in the middle of the woods. The houses were scattered along the main road that cut through the forest. The bell-tower of the church mingled with the crowns of tall oak trees, and when the wind blew hard it seemed to sway like them, but in an opposite direction. It was also covered in moss, like them. There were crows that flew around and through the bell-tower, cawing raucously. In winter, there were some that settled in the middle of the road, and the falling snow put white patches on the black crows.

  No one knew who Alice’s parents were. She was as more of an orphan than anyone has ever been. Sometimes, when the Sun threw its gold coins on the ground through the foliage of the trees, she thought that she might perhaps be the abandoned child of some great lord who had gone to fight a distant war, and that she would be a princess one day.

  In the meantime, though, she sent her life in a big kitchen with a low ceiling; then she was summoned to the main room by fists thumping loudly on the tables and she ran out carrying large jugs of beer, always fearing as she went that she might spill the foam.

  In the afternoon, when the laborers were in the fields and the carters were no longer passing by, she was sent out with a basket to gather mushroom in the forest, where she learned to sing with the birds—and she went there all alone, under the trees, very far, to places where no one else ever went. In fact, people dared not go through the middle of the forest, because of the wolves.

  Alice was not afraid of wolves, however, because she had never read the story of Little Red Riding-Hood—and she was sure, in the heart of the forest, of not encountering the miller, who ran after her to throw her under his mill-wheel, or the beadle with the long wig, who threatened her with his stick, or the village children, who threw stones at her as she went by.

  The days passed in succession, however, for time marches on whether one is happy or not. The year was approaching its end, and people were preparing to celebrate the death and rebirth of the Sun, as they have since the beginning of the world, without ever doubting it. That year, Christmas fell on a Sunday. All through the preceding week, the villagers made great preparations. Floors and walls were washed with plenty of water and brasses rubbed energetically. The men had themselves shaved a week in advance and bought beautiful red cravats from hawkers.

  Three months earlier they had begun fattening the geese in order to eat them on the day of the festival, and people both large and small were preparing to put their sabots in the hearth. The geese had been brought together in a flock; each of them bore the name of its owner around its neck, and poor Alice, lent out by the inn, took them to graze on the common.

  The animals, which did not know the maidservant, were very naughty for the first few days, seeking all the time to escape, going up the slopes to either side of the road and escaping into the forest. The child chased the fugitives, getting out of breath, and when she finally caught them the geese pecked her hands. Gradually, however, by dint of patience, she ended up establishing herself as their mistress and getting them to love her. They could now be seen marching very meekly, with a heavy and awkward waddling gait. Alice had had the good idea of attaching them together with long ribbons, and they no longer went astray, as docile as sleep. Their guardian loved them now, with all her heart. She counted the days sadly, thinking that the unfortunates would soon be killed and eaten.

  But the geese had no suspicion of that, and they stuck out their necks with an innocent curiosity in the direction of death. Why, after all, had they got such long necks, if not for someone to cut through them?

  Thus Alice consoled herself.

  Finally, the day arrived. The previous evening, all the geese had been gathered together in the main hall of the schoolhouse. They were to be sacrificed the next morning. In a last gesture of affection, Alice had removed the calendar bearing the fatal date from the wall. There were still maps on the panels and textbooks in the cupboards. There was little sign, though, that the geese wanted to profit from their last day—or, rather, their last night—by perfecting their education, somewhat neglected until then. Alice had wept when she left them, and they had all embraced her with their beaks. She knew full well that, at the celebratory feast, no one would give her even a morsel of her friends, with chestnuts. She would not have had the heart to eat it anyway. She went to bed very sadly, therefore, in the attic whose skylight fortunately overlooked the forest.

  The poor child did not even have the resource of putting her sabots in the hearth, like all the other people in the village, for the room had no fireplace, or even a stove. It was only warm there in summer.

  Alice wept a little, went to sleep, and had the most beautiful dreams in the world.

  The night went by, as usual, in the most profound darkness. Then daybreak came. People woke up, rubbed their eyes, got dressed and went downstairs to devote themselves to their usual tasks, with the hope of a good dinner. Suddenly, however, cries of surprise and disappointment emerged from every house in the village.

  All the fireplaces were empty. Instead of being full of joyous gifts, the sabots than had been placed in the hearth had disappeared.

  The schoolmaster, also stupefied before his empty fireplace, ran downstairs quickly, vaguely anxious. He went as far as the schoolroom where, the evening before, the geese had been lodged. The room was totally deserted; there was no longer even a single goose.

  It was a very sad festival. For all the inhabitants of the village, the day was spent barefoot on the main road and the forest pathways, searching for the fugitives, but nothing was found and the question was raised: had the sabots carried off the geese, or the geese the sabots?

  As was only to be expected, suspicion fell on the maidservant. She was accused of having got up in the night, hidden the sabots and stolen the geese.<
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  She did not think of defending herself—and anyway, what could she have said? It was necessary to punish someone. She was expelled from the region, shamefully, and after the official ceremony, the village crier, in the middle of a circle of gossips in the square, forbade her ever to return.

  So there she was, alone on the road, not knowing where to go.

  Fortunately, the moonlight was brought and the violets were perfuming the edges of the road.

  Poor Alice was hungry. She picked violets and ate them. Then she set off again. At first, the landscape was familiar, but she soon found herself in the heart of the forest, which the road traversed from end to end, and as very afraid, for they were trees she had never seen.

  She walked on regardless, until her feet were hurting by virtue of fatigue. She walked for much longer than she had ever walked before. Surely, she thought, as she went on all through the night, I’ll arrive somewhere in the morning.

  The Moon set. There was a diffuse light on the other side of the sky. Dawn came, and the bright mist in the willows, and there was still the road, with no village on the horizon. And even when she reached another village, would she not encounter people just as hard-hearted there, and would she not be condemned to carry jugs of beer or tend the village geese throughout her young eternity?

  The poor girl, exhausted and discouraged, sat down on the roadside, at the foot of a mossy tress, and fell gradually half-asleep, in spite of the cold.

  Slowly, softly, a vague noise becomes audible. Alice stirs in her semi-slumber. She is dreaming. She hears a murmur in the difference, which becomes more distinct and emphatic. It’s as if someone were riding through cotton wool. There! It’s the cortege of the Prince Charming who is coming, from the land of dreams, to marry the young shepherdess. A shepherdess and an inn-servant, when they are pretty, are the same thing. Alice wakes up, little by little. The rumor grows louder. No more doubt. There are the gilded carriages, with lackeys hanging on behind, upright, clinging to leather straps, and, comfortably ensconced on the front seat, a chubby and pot-bellied coachman.

  Alice suddenly opened her eyes—and there, on the road she has travelled, was a distant cloud of dust, and a great tumult, coming toward her. One might have taken it for the hoofbeats of a troop of horsemen.25 Abruptly turning her head, Alice perceived all the geese, joyfully flying after her with unequal wings. At the end of a long ribbon tied around its neck, each of them was dragging a sabot—all of which made an infernal racket as they bounced over the dusty ground.

  They were all the sabots of the village, which the worthy animals had stolen. They were full to the brim with various objects, which were rebounding and falling to the ground. There were flowers and toys, fans for damsels, garters and ribbons, and pipes and tobacco for the old folk.

  The little girl was surrounded, in the midst of a deafening tumult. Her friends made a great fuss of her. Then two geese, the fattest, approached haltingly, holding a vast sabot in their beaks. It belonged to Anatole, the old beadle, who was also the gravedigger. Before Alice’ marveling eyes, all the geese made sacrifices, plucking out a few feathers, and the young girl sat down a queen on a feather bed in the middle of the huge sabot.

  With the former ribbons, all her fiends harnessed themselves to this improvised chariot, and the cortege, taking off, brushed the treetops and disappeared over the horizon. It went all the way to the Moon, which is not as far away as people think, where the people gave the company the friendliest of welcomes. In a nearby village, Alice was easily able to sell the objects contained in the sabots—the majority of which were great novelties—for a tidy sum. The snuff-boxes, in particular, were a great success, and the pipes and tobacco, which the local people were seeing for the first time; it was from that exact day onwards that pipes were smoked on the Moon.

  Alice lived very happily, and only kept the geese thereafter to amuse herself. With the provision that she had, she was able to change her sabots every day. The ones she kept for Sundays had long points, and the rims of the openings were decorated with blue plush.

  A Family Matter

  Old Hop Jones, the founder of the famous mercantile enterprise at the sign of the Black Diamond, who was familiarly known as “Uncle Jones,” had been dead for some time. His old establishment on the quay would not have recognized him. It had once watched him come and go, from its affectionate windows, in his afternoon routine, year after year, small and plump, his wig on sideways, his jacket worn at the elbows by the friction of the tall desk, tapping the flagstones of the quay lightly with his cane. One day, however, without any apparent pretext, there had been a crowd of black coats and top hats outside the open door, in mourning: relatives and friends, with appropriate expressions, had energetically shaken the hands of nearer relatives, representatives of the communal grief. Eyes had been raised to the ceiling, and lips curled into the arc of a circle, in warranted amazement.

  From that day on, people had acquired the habit, on the steps, of considering the actions of old Hop Jones as if they had been affected by such commercial depreciation that they had been reduced to zero. Life had continued, with other faces and other canes tapping the sidewalks, and the old gentleman had become, in the eyes of his entourage, a mere supposition of the past. Even his old suit, hung up somewhere in the house in the most obscure wardrobe, no longer remembered his rounded shoulders.

  But there was a son of Hop Jones sitting in front of the cash-box and the big ledger, in the same attitude as the elder one. There was a son of Hop Jones, pen at his ear, rebuking the packers in the dispatch-room. There was a son of Hop Jones, fat and solemn, his chin laden with ruddy side-whiskers, rounded out in a large armchair in front of an oak table on the first floor of the house. He was the most important Hop Jones. Within range of his hand were acoustic tubes and telephone apparatus. At the far end of each one, far away or close and hand, were other Hop Joneses—grandsons, cousins or nephews, some sitting in armchairs, others standing up in front of some transmission apparatus, listening, with varied expressions and movements, to the words of the most important.

  That individual himself, in the midst of his calculations, was distracted and irritated at regular intervals by the sounds of a piano on which the same notes were played, invariably, for ten hours a day, by slender fingers that must belong to some demoiselle Hop Jones, gaunt and gauche, ripe for marriage. Is it necessary to add that, in the provincial branches, Hop Jones brothers-in-law were putting weighty letters into the post on a daily bases, bearing that same name in their addresses, while one encountered other Hop Joneses, younger and more distantly-related, on the platforms of railway stations, travelling on behalf of the business, and moving at a light and rhythmic step, suitcase in hand, along avenues of beautiful and rather solitary plane-trees, toward the melancholy of little towns that cool down, and close down as rapidly, at dusk? Old Hop Jones was dead, but Old Hop Jones’ descendants were more numerous than the pages of the big ledger, or those of Receipts and Outgoings, and the house was rich enough to deem the death of the ancestor to be a simple matter of profit and loss.

  A few years after the events whose supposition is permitted by the preceding lines, the entire Jones family came together in a vast glazed hall, lit from above. Not one of those who bore the illustrious name had failed to respond to the invitation. There was an imposing crowd of Hop Joneses there, young and old, all the ladies well-dressed and the men in suits. Second-class return tickets had been solicited in unusual quantities on the preceding days. For those who lived in the house on the waterfront, the journey had been easier.

  A few of the ladies, in response to a coquettish impulse that the continuation of this story will doubtless excuse, were wearing all their diamonds. They were, naturally, the oldest and the ones with the lowest necklines. There were smiles there as old and as vainly charming as the sparkling stones and gold, and shoulders were drooping. A few young women, all Hop Joneses, made a pleasant contrast with massive towers of corkscrew-curls and false headbands; a
nd hired women with powerful bosoms, bearing in their arms the latest offspring of the family, clad in white bibs and ridiculous outfits. All the costumes and silks were sparkling at the back of the hall. At the opposite extreme stood a strange object on which all eyes and attention seemed to be fixed. It was a tall and delicate item of furniture posed on a tripod. A green serge curtain suspended from the ceiling, rising or falling, impeded access to it.

  One day, one of the younger Hop Joneses had revealed to other family members a few ideas that seemed strange and new, but persuasive, the result of which was the presence of all these people at the gathering. The event had just been completed. All the Hop Joneses, in succession, had sat down in the tall armchair; the important individual on the first floor had made the springs of the egalitarian chair creak under his finery, and the young woman with the long fingers had give up her piano-stool for him. Widowed aunts had uttered faint cries. Meanwhile, the necromancer, whose existence was a sin against the Sun, lifted up the heavy drapery for each one in turn, and the same glassy gaze had appeared every time, round and jealous. That implacable and mocking gaze seemed, within the interval of a lightning-flash, to fix itself furtively on every face; one might have though it the eye of a formidable stranger, seeking to recognize forms and shadows that resembled him as they passed by and passed on.

  Now they were waiting. A certain vulgar anguish oppressed their hearts, and falsely calm words enunciated conventional banalities.

  “What advantage will not stem,” said the head of provincial branch, a second-cousin, “from vulgarizing this procedure! I think few discoveries justify the fine name of the age of enlightenment better than this one. If we adopt a philosophical viewpoint, it’s a fine example of synthesis: taking the images of several individuals, united by blood ties, and combining all those images into one, representing the trading name of all the rest, if I might put it thus.”26