The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait

by Gabriel de Lautrec

  A clockwork mechanism opened the window of my room to let air in, and close the tap of deleterious gap, at a precise moment. I knew when to deflect the barrel of a gun, to the hundredth of a second. Various poisons and their doses no longer had any secrets from me. It was by mean of poison, especially, that I truly loved death. They intoxicate before killing, and we plunge a diamond dagger into the heart. We enter into the black domain through the gates of dream and gold. One knows nothing, if one has not crossed the threshold of forbidden paradises. Those who have attempted it, at the risk of passing over the other funereal threshold, will never forget the landscapes of a melancholy and supernatural blue….

  It is, however, a higher voluptuousness that I have sought in death. I have approached the sphinx, which has revealed to me all of its secret that it could tell me without devouring me. My eyes have leaned over the river, and I have seen my obscure reflection, a new Narcissus whom an elegant gesture incessantly throws back toward the bank and the flowers.

  But the face that I see in the mirror of flat water is modified insensibly every day. Its expression is gradually reverting to anxious expectation and anticipation. Every day, it inspires me with a more gripping and more profound love. I have realized that my delay is a kind of infidelity. I foresee, with increasing imminence, the moment when I will not longer be able to resist the attraction of the dark lips extended toward mine. And I encourage myself with the idea that I have earned my reward, since the day that I began, with wild desire and apprehension of the supreme kiss, to pay court to Death.

  The Old Demon of Leprosy

  For Georges Aubault de la Haulte-Chambre34

  After the theater, friends invited me to supper, and I got home late at night. I was drowsy, and yet, quite exhausted, I sensed that I would not sleep. The best thing to do was to seek in opium the wakeful calm that would suffice to restore my strength, magically.

  I’ve just smoked the tenth pipe. The tenth, or the twentieth? A mystery. It’s impossible to count the pipes one has smoked. The greatest mathematician in the world, if he took opium, would not succeed, even with the aid of logarithms and the integral calculus. Come on! Another one, and that will be all. Ah! How hard this one is! I’ve just broken my needle. It would be best to give up. Besides, I have a head full of dreams. Let’s put the pipe on the tray, in front of my eyes.

  My eyes have fixed themselves on the stove. Its surface is smooth and rounded. In the middle, a minuscule funnel-shaped hole resembles the crater of an extinct volcano.

  It might have been an illusion, but a few light swirls of smoke were escaping from it. I gazed at it for a long time. Gradually, the smoke condensed and took form. The form grew and became more precise, and I perceived a bizarre little being, a gnome or demon. I love dreams that enable us to see the inhabitants of the invisible. This one abruptly leapt down into the room and went to sit on a stool, facing me.

  The individual was as tall as a five-year-old child, but well-proportioned. His feet were shod in espadrilles. He was wearing trousers with turn-ups, too short to be full-length but too long to be culottes, which left the mind undecided. His excessively tight ancient chestnut-colored frock-coat, had stains on the back that seemed to me to be rust. It was closed all the way to the waist by buttons of different colors and sizes. No collar or cravat, but a sulfur-colored neckerchief wound several times around, forming a complicated ruff. All that I could see of him made him seem quite wretched, and yet an innate elegance guided all his movements. In his left hand he carried the fingers of a glove, separate and different, like those one puts on to hide cuts. Sticking out from the pocket of his frock-coat was the end of a telescope, on which, once seated, having extended its compartments, he leaned as if on a walking-stick. From time to time the telescope folded up and he fell forwards. These repeated falls punctuated our conversation.

  He greeted to me very correctly, in well-chosen terms, which smacked of old French politeness. I had just finished my examination of his costume, and I set about considering my visitor’s face.

  I could not suppress a fearful gesture.

  His face was strewn with white patches. The nose, the mouth and the ears were shriveled vestiges. The left eye no longer existed; it had been replaced by a minuscule lamp sheltered beneath the brow—but the right eye had a gaze stamped with nobility and generosity. The voluminous cranium was bald, except at the rear, where a host of little figures had been inscribed in black ink, which, at a distance, gave the illusion of curly hair.

  “You find me vulgar,” he moaned.

  “Not at all,” I said, hurriedly. “On the contrary. Your lively physiognomy is out of the ordinary and pleases me a great deal. But I’d like to know…let go of that tranquil cane…it’s ridiculous…I’d be glad to know to whom I have the honor of talking.”

  “Why should I remain incognito any longer? I’m the old petty demon of leprosy.”

  I started at these words, pronounced with a childish insouciance, and I recoiled slightly.

  He reassured me immediately. “Oh, don’t worry there’s no longer any danger now.”

  “What business do you have with me, though? Why are you here? What reason do you have for paying me a visit, rather than the tenant of the floor above, or the one below?” My voice was rude and imperative.

  The little gentleman began to weep timidly. “It’s because I saw you smoking opium like a sage, and conceived in consequence a high opinion of your faculties. I hoped that you might overlook my somewhat unattractive physiognomy and appreciate my true value. The true beauty is that of the soul. What do the vain charms of the flesh matter? My own beauty is entirely moral. And I’m not even talking about the qualities of my heart and mind. By virtue of nothing but my influence, I have the right to the greatest eulogies. Think of all the devotion to which leprosy has given rise. Those who have leaned over their sick brethren, who have cared for them and consoled them, who have become saints and the heroes of charity in so doing—to whom do they owe their sanctity? To me, Monsieur. Without me, they would not have had the opportunity for devotion. All that moral beauty belongs to me.”

  He raised his head proudly. The abrupt gesture caused the tiny candle in his left eye to go out. He asked me for a match. Obligingly, I held one out to him.

  “I admit that,” I replied, then. “I’m even very flattered by your visit. But what is its purpose, and what can I do for you?”

  The old petty demon of leprosy seemed a trifle embarrassed. Finally, he admitted to me that he had come to ask me for a favor, being aware of my numerous connections and influential situation.

  “I’m getting old. Life is becoming difficult. It’s no longer what it once was. Antiseptic methods have done us a great deal of harm. It’s necessary to eat, though. I’ve taken my courage in both hands and I’ve come to ask you to find me an administrative position of some sort. The most modest employment would suffice. I have simple tastes and don’t spend very much. It would be an honorable retirement. You could do that for me.”

  “I don’t know of anything free at the moment,” I replied. “The minister seems very solid, and the Academy has just replaced its deceased fortieth member. There’s only a job as night-watchman in the administrative division where I work, but I can’t decently offer you that.”

  “I’ll accept it,” he sighed. “There’s no dishonor in earning one’s living, even when one has been what I was. If you only knew! Hold on, here’s a souvenir of long ago that I’ve kept. It was in the eighteenth century. Look.”

  He handed me a heavy object wrapped in silk paper. I unfolded the wrapping, for I was beginning to feel a genuine sympathy for my visitor. For a moment, I regretted remaining a bachelor, and not having a daughter to give him in marriage.

  It was a rather large bronze medallion. It bore an inscription in unknown characters, which he translated for me.

  “Presented by the Rajah of Samakura to the little god”—here a name escaped me—“for good and loyal service rendered in the war agains
t the English.”

  I handed the medallion back to him, congratulating him warmly.

  “I would so much like to make a favorable impression on you!” he exclaimed. “I sense that I’ve found a friend in you, even a companion, dare I say, and that our amity will last. Don’t you have a few documents concerning me among your books and papers?”

  I rummaged momentarily in the bottom of an old cupboard, from which a rat fled. My research was successful. I brought out a wad of yellowed newspapers, half eaten away. I sat the little demon down on a high chair and set the pile in front of him. His minuscule legs hung down from the chair like those of a child. I felt compassionate.

  “There you are,” I said. “Here’s the Courrier du Chili and the Gazette de Montréal. These papers surely mention you.”

  “Indeed, and in what eulogistic terms! Read them for yourself. What descriptions! Those were good times. How poor the present epoch is, compared with those heroic ages! What, I pray you, is appendicitis compared with leprosy or the Black Death? My glory is past, alas, and I didn’t know how happy I was!”

  “Ingrate!” I said, in order to appear to be following the conversation. And I got up to go in search of other documents on the top shelf of the bookcase. I was on the ladder for a few seconds, rummaging around the shelves. When I came down, the old demon of leprosy had disappeared.

  I went to bed, very tired. It had been a bad night. And I saw the bizarre little man again in my slumber. Eventually, my dreams gave way to a profound unconsciousness.

  I’ve woken up. It’s broad daylight. I must be pale his morning. Let’s take a look in the mirror. No, my face isn’t too bad. I have a rosy tint. Except, there, on the left cheek…I must have slept on that cheek.

  A sort of white patch, elongated in form. When I put my finger on it, it becomes livid.

  It’s nothing at all.

  The Talisman

  For René Chaillié35

  At the hour when the twelve nocturnal crows fly away from bell-towers, I was dreaming among unknown faces.

  People were standing in the middle of a room. They had the sadness of immemorial regret in their gaze; their enigmatic faces, although I had never seen them before, were frighteningly familiar to me.

  We were looking at an object that one of them had bought and set down in front of us, with gestures of profound veneration. It was a rectangular tablet, longer than it was broad, with the approximate dimensions of a quarto sheet. Its shiny surface appeared to be made of ivory, or perhaps the bark of a tree with a very narrow grain, polished extensively. It obviously came from a distant and fabulous civilization, and who knew how many hands had held it respectfully before ours? On drawing nearer, I distinguished lines traced on the ivory. Everyone was admiring the delicacy of the design. But it seemed to me that the details were fluctuating before my eyes, as sometimes happens in dreams, without presenting any precise significance. I felt annoyance in consequence, and a sort of humiliation.

  It seemed to me, moreover, on seeing their faces, that it was the same for most of the observers. Only two or three individuals, with wonderstruck expressions, remained plunged in an attention that allowed me to deduce that nothing of the scene represented had escaped them.

  I took hold of the tablet respectfully, in order to associate myself with the sentiments of my companions; I held it up to the light that was coming from a high-set window, and which was lending everything an unreal yellow tint. I maneuvered it in all directions, trying to obtain some clear vision.

  After my fruitless researches, one member of the company, drawing nearer to me with a sad smile, said: “That’s not it. You could have turned the tablet in every direction and it wouldn’t have become any more intelligible. I’ll tell you the secret, for you have in your hands the summation and votive offering of long dead souls. It’s appropriate to have a profound respect for that survival of the immemorial past. It’s a talisman clothed with all the successive adorations of the scene it represents.”

  And I evoked visions of yesteryear on the black wall of my thought, imagining the hands raised in temples whose very dust no longer exists, the lips chanting supplications for the dead in a language forgotten for hundreds of centuries. There were gods. The most ancient known to us did not even suggest their names to us. Prayers were addressed to them. They were invoked in their anger, or, at other times, taken as witnesses to trembling desires of love. Who can name, in disappeared religions, all the ancestors of Eros?

  The man who had read the tablet leaned towards it again, and by looking at it with me, enabled me to see it. The lines gradually became more precise. It was as if a picture were slowly emerging from the depths of the past. Born of vague undulations, a majestic river flowed between widely-spaced banks. On the banks stood trees resembling our palm-trees. And at intervals, between the trees, the ruins of temples could be distinguished, in various architectural styles, which moss and ivy had invaded. I glimpsed mutilated white statues beneath the sacred arbors, like those which we still venerate today in our museums. The gods are quitting the temples for the museums—but those marble fragments respired all the beauty and the dream created by the effort of generations.

  There was no living creature in the landscape, but the river carried boats that seemed to be coming toward us. In their prows were idols, which did not have human figures like he gods of today. They did not resemble those of Egypt, whose features represent forms that we call animals, and which preceded us. Thus, when we have disappeared, the image of our gods will doubtless survive us for some time, perpetuating the memory of our present appearance, and future humankinds will retain idols after us. But those forms of strange and terrible aspect told of a fabulous epoch. They must have been contemporary with the earliest ages of creation. Sad muzzles leaned over the water of the river. Membranous wings flapped like veils. They still seemed damp with all the mud of the Deluge. And passing over their hideous faces, first sketches of humankind, like smoke dispersed by the wind, I saw the love, hate and anguish of the eternal becoming. I held out my hands, in supplication, toward the frightful apparitions. I knew that after the vision, it would not be possible for me to talk about them in terms capable of evoking them again.

  And beneath the boats with the divine cargoes, sailing toward some unknown shore of nocturnal adorations, the river slowly rose and respired like a loving wave.

  As one changes individuality in revelatory slumber, I had been one of the ignorant at first, then one of those who knew. I was now part of the scene that I had been contemplating a little while before, as if my fabulous ancestors had beckoned me to follow them in their headlong flight toward the future. The river overflowed its banks and I found myself borne away by the current. A limpid joy invaded me, along with the pride of reliving my most distant past. The anxious words of the people standing nearby still reached my distracted and disdainful ears, muffled by the water—but I finally faded away into an unconsciousness laden with sentiments and memories.

  SELECTIONS FROM POEMS IN PROSE

  Glorious Action

  It was a happy city; in the streets bordered by low houses with polished walls, air and sunlight circulated freely. The rare strollers who ventured out during the hottest hour paused on the thresholds of doorways, overtaken by a sudden nonchalance, to listen to the monotonous song that some idle poet was singing beneath a pale-leaved fig-tree; and through their vibrant souls passed, everlastingly, the thrill of musical harmony that takes flight but never dies, being the very respiration of the gods. Through the wide open porticoes, horizons like those painted by Leonardo da Vinci could be glimpsed, where blond adolescents struck artistic poses beneath foliage and beside marble states, while others caused grave music in the Dorian style to resonate on their musical instruments—and all the streets, paved with lava, descended in gentle slopes toward the market place on the edge of the sea.

  The glorious sea, younger sister of eternity, breathed in silken waves beneath the subtle caress of the air. Slow ships could be
seen gliding smoothly over its surface to the sway of lateen sails. From a green transparency at the foot of the coast, the sapphire infinity of the waves became bluer with distance, in successive water-color shades, and far away, on the distant shore formed by the crease of the gulf, the waves extended immutably in a sheet of profound indigo.

  Sometimes, in the sultry afternoons, the young ephebes descending rhythmically to the beach, as far as the eye could see, took off their clothes with calm and beautiful gestures, worthy of causing the desire of a troubled soul to die; naked, arrogantly proud of the cadenced movements of their subtle movements, they impregnated the lukewarm air with their perfumed youth. Philosophers, lovers of souls, expatiated on the good and the beautiful, while courtesans with firm breasts and algal gazes let their purple garments fall about their ankles with gestures like the flutter of wings, in order to prove the divinity of the gods, and stood up straight beneath the Sun, haloed by their russet hair.

  These people adored only one god, leisure, and one goddess, beauty. They knew, thanks to fabulous travelers’ tales, that other peoples lived beyond the hills, and other gods than their luminous and gilded demons, but their souls had been open since their dawn to the intelligence of all supplicant attitudes to the ideal, and in their temples they had dedicated, albeit while smiling, temples to the unknown gods. At the very least, they did not want a religion that was not a joy. Sometimes, at solemn festivals, they gathered in vast enclosures, where skilful performers made representations of an even more intense and harmonious life quiver before their eyes. The chimerical imagination sang in beautiful lines, before their eyes and lips, of the misfortunes and gigantic works of demigods, and the legends of which their ancestors had formed the brazen pages of their golden book. Passionate for the sober and living crease that a movement of the soul imprints on the floating peplum of the performer, they did not permit clownish gestures and grotesque spectacles, and sent rope-dancers and bear-handlers back to the barbarian lands. They lived thus, searching with solicitude for beauty in all things, and profoundly ignorant of everything that was not the inutility of life—but all the porticoes were painted with frescoes, and white marble statues stood in the streets, launching marble arrows toward the sky!