The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait

by Gabriel de Lautrec

  Suddenly, a gunshot made everyone start. They ran into the gaming room. Collapsed on an armchair, his eyes glabrous, Ripolin was still holding the fatal dagger in his menacing hand.

  The old black man was avenged.

  Monsieur House

  The individual lived on the ground floor of a five-story house with attics. His lodgings consisted of narrow passages and one room that he had made into his library, in which he lived.

  That library was vast and the shelves high, laden with books; their number might have been estimated, by means of the most moderate calculations, at twelve thousand five hundred.

  To reach the most difficult shelves and explore the in the midst of folio volumes, sextants, marine charts and dictionaries, the old man had been obliged to install a whole system of apparatus: ladders of different lengths and forms, straight or curved; smooth ropes swaying within arm’s reach. There were many trapezes in spiral stairways; beams at various heights facilitated access and respiration.

  As the old man rarely went out, confined to his lair, where he received his friends, the interior disposition of his lodgings permitted him to make up for the absence of movement. He had been able to reconcile his intellectual advantage and his need for activity. His muscles and his mind developed along two strictly parallel lines. It was the harmony of body and soul preached so ardently by the Pythagoreans.

  The charm of the library was, moreover, its variety. Its possessor was no more a stranger to poets than philosophy. With a vigorous readjustment on the rings he could reach Aristotle’s Metaphysics in five stout volumes, with marginal notes in Hebrew. Or, departing from the uppermost shelves on the flying trapeze, he could describe the arc of a majestic circle through the air to end up, down below, at the magical works of Éliphas Lévi. To get as far as Lamartine, a gentle swing was sufficient.

  Reading a great deal, he made notes in the same way, and his volumes were full of pieces of paper inscribed by his hands, in which he summarized. Sometimes, in the course of reading something else, the need to consult one of these notes arose. Poorly endowed with memory, he devoted himself, in order to retrieve it, to exercises of which the most picturesque description could give no idea. He took all the volumes successively in hand—about twenty thousand—and riffled through them. He shook them, threw them into the air, juggled with them. An intense dust blackened the atmosphere of the room. The old man continued. Sometimes, he shook his head, with a discouraged expression, to make large suspended tears fall. He swung on the apparatus holding a book, which he pulled apart, like a monkey with a coconut. The volumes flew across the room. Finally, the recalcitrant piece of paper would escape from the pages of one of them. Taking possession of it was then, for him, child’s play. He had adapted to this purpose and old butterfly-net in which the palpitating page would soon be captured.

  One day, however, a long time after the first, he sat sadly on a pile of old books on a shadowed shelf set beneath a large high-placed window. Reaching down to the floor, with his legs bent, he manipulated a few works beneath his blue-lensed spectacles. When he picked each one up by both edges of the binding, turned backwards like the wings of a captive insect, the body hung down lamentably. Moving the volumes through the air in this way, brushing others and the floor, the corners broke, the gold-leaf was eroded and the boards lost their freshness. Even treatises of philosophy could not resist the proofs of such an agitated life.

  He re-covered them with sheets of cloth; he put large copper nails in the corners and iron rods in the spine on which he heaviest folios slid like light skates.

  After that the volumes were sturdier, but another inconvenience presented itself.

  Previously the house had eroded the books; now, the book eroded the house.

  The iron roads and nails caught on the curtains, scratched the parquet, broke the chandeliers and the Japanese curious. By night, on the various floors, people developed the unnecessary habit of waking up for every volume consulted. Muffled noises were heard coming from the dark corridors, of creaking floorboards and windows opening to the street, and uncertain forms, shielding a candle from the wind, calling the watchman. The interrogation of three voluminous works, killers of sleep, having coincided with childish teething in the vicinity, Monsieur House was threatened with eviction.

  He took the thirty-one thousand volumes down from his shelves and suspended them throughout the room by mean of ropes or chains, as solidly as he could. At head height, one could easily consult them. The old books dangled from the ceiling: for the thinnest, simple threads; for the others, the necessary apparatus. Kant had imperiously required the employment of a solid cable. For Larousse, incessantly consulted, a system of pulleys was installed. The light works and frivolous tales of the eighteenth century and other eras, unlike the other volumes, rose from the ground, retained by subtle silks like captive balloons.

  From then on, there was a magical spectacle for visitors. They marched through a profound forest, and by night, the noise of chains terrified burglars.

  But the man fell victim to these vain precautions.

  One evening, next to his lamp, the old man was absorbed in reading his favorite book, Blumenbach’s Decades octo craniorum diversarum genium.54 He was gazing at the old black letters on the yellow paper when a sudden sinister crack caused him to shudder. His spectacles rose up on to his forehead, then fell back, and his anxious eyes peered over them. But he did not have time either to get to his feet or call for help. Beneath the weight of thirty-nine thousand eight hundred and fifty volumes, copper plates, nails and chains, the entire ceiling collapsed, and with it the upper floors.

  Monsieur House’s body was found under the rubble, his back broken by the iron-reinforced quartos. Thus he died, a victim of the good order that he had established in his home.

  The Submarine Airplane

  The first person I saw when I opened the door was my friend Tom Joe. Although I hasn’t seen him for two days, I didn’t find him much changed. He still had his benevolent ruddy face, and a little hat on his head of the most cheerful appearance. Besides, give the late hour. I was not unduly astonished to see him sitting at the counter on top of a high chair, or rather a stool, with a large glass of whisky to either side in front of him. It seemed to me that he was having some trouble maintaining his equilibrium. He was oscillating in a disquieting fashion, but he contrived ingeniously to recover his aplomb every time by drinking a mouthful of whisky from the other side.

  His greeting was excessively cordial. He complained of not having heard my news for such a long time. I expressed the same regret. Tom offered me a drink and sighed:

  “Life isn’t always easy. The last time I saw you, I was finishing eating and drinking an inheritance from my old aunt in Greenland. It didn’t take long to burn through it, with the liquids; I was soon reduced to the worst expedients. The modern era isn’t favorable to men of genius. That’s been known that since the remotest antiquity. I’ve tried to launch a number of products, among others a shaving cream for politicians and my famous capillary water, the Nevermore. Nothing has succeeded. My last attempt was the construction of a factory for the manufacture of meter rules made of rubber.

  “Rubber, Tom Joe?”

  “Rubber. All great discoveries are due to commonplace observation. Newton, for example. I was suddenly struck by the idea that objects come in different sizes and that a meter rule, by definition, is never anything but a meter long. Hence its absolute uselessness for longer or shorter objects, which are much more numerous. With a meter rule made of an elastic substance, on the other hand, if you have to measure a room, for example, you attach one end of the meter firmly to one of the walls, and pull on the other end, until you reach the opposite wall…. It’s infantile, and genius. The factory burned down. I don’t even have enough left to measure the extent of my own misfortune.”

  “Poor Tom Joe!”

  “I’m not discouraged. Now I’m taking an interest in aviation. I have everything necessary to succeed. You k
now that I was the first to anticipate, fifteen years ago, the creation of watertight bulkheads inside balloons, to attenuate the danger of falls. Imagine my surprise and emotion when I found out that, not only had my idea been realized, but that gradually, people are dispensing with the envelopes of balloons, only keeping the partitions! These marvelous kites have been made, which are called airplanes. From there to realizing the submarine airplane is only a short step.”

  Admiration rendered me mute. Tom drank a glass of whisky and continued:

  “There’s one certain fact, established by all scientists. That’s that reverse logic is always the best. Let’s consider, for example, not airplanes but present-day dirigibles. Haven’t you noticed how they all affect the form of enormous fish? From that, a conclusion imposes itself. If, in order to move through the air, that form has proved to be the best, it naturally follows that submarine apparatus ought to resemble birds.

  “I see, in fact, airplanes as being much more in their element in the water than in the air. Their employment would get rid of all the dangers of submarine navigation. Naturally, it’s necessary not to think of constructing them in canvas, even tarred. But let’s imagine one or two inclined planes, in aluminum, with a simple seat for the pilot in the middle, with the propeller at the rear, or in front, or at the side. The airplane, by virtue of its inclination, would dive as soon as it was started up. The man would be dressed in a diving-suit and would carry a sufficient provision of air. There wouldn’t be any difficulty. Thank God, air is the only thing whose price hasn’t yet gone up. One can have as much as one wants for a minimum price. There’s no comparison with whisky.”

  “But don’t you think, Tom Joe,” I observed, timidly, “that there might be some danger in plunging into the depths like that?”

  “Danger? What danger? That of falling to the sea-bed? Child! What is there to prevent you from fitting your machine with large empty spaces, full of air, or covering your aluminum with sheets of cork, in such a way that the whole thing is lighter than water? Then, the worst that can happen to you would be an engine failure—but instead of falling, as in the air, you’d rise calmly to the surface. I know that you’re going to raise a serious objection…”

  “Yes, Tom Joe? What’s that?”

  “You’re going to tell me that it would doubtless be difficult to maintain, amid the waves, any sort of incandescent engine. I’ve foreseen the difficulty. I’ll use a whisky-soda engine.”

  “Hurrah, old man!” I cried, positively enthused this time.

  “Hurrah!” replied Tom Joe, waving his arms weakly, as if to take flight in the bosom of the waves.

  This final attempt compromised his equilibrium irredeemably, and the unfortunate fellow, having tried in vain to cling on to the bars of the stool, fell heavily to the ground. Aided by a few courageous citizens, I carried him to a bench, where we laid him down, and where, a few minutes later, doubtless pursuing his brilliant idea in his dream, he imitated the sound of an engine in a surprising fashion, with his nose.

  Voyage to the Moon

  When Cyrano de Bergerac decided to go to the Moon, it was only after mature and serious reflection. There is no reproach more unjust than that addressed to poets of dissolving into levity. Poets are, on the contrary, essentially practical men. They seek in all things their advantage and their pleasure. The truth is that they do not find it in the same place as more vulgar minds. But should one reproach them for preferring sunbathing, or a pretty woman, to a joint of meat, especially when they have eaten?

  Thus, our hero had his idea well worked-out when he departed, to the extent that one can depart with a fixed idea. Very precocious, he had anticipated the verses of Alfred de Musset, and was dying to write his own ballad on that planet. Voyages shape youth, and poets are forever young. That is how one recognizes them, even when they are very old.

  The bottles full of subtle air that he had attached to his belt did their job marvelously. He did not have the misfortune of seeing his waxen wings melt over the Aegean Sea, like Icarus. On the contrary, having no wings, it all went like wax for him. He rapidly surpassed the crystalline or primary sphere, which is, as everyone knows, the last terrestrial region.

  Immediately, lunar attraction being less powerful than terrestrial attraction, because of the difference in volume, but predominant, because of proximity, the resistance the bottles offered to that attraction decreased in proportion, and the voyager’s descent to the lunar surface increased rapidly—to the extent that Cyrano scarcely had time to perceive the lunar volcanoes that loomed up in front of him like monstrous funnels. Before he knew it, he fell on the lunar soil, with an impact so violent that all his bottles were broken and he lost consciousness, remaining insensible, lying full length with his nose in the air.

  When he awoke, it was broad daylight. He spent a few moments rubbing his sides, which were aching somewhat, then looked around. He saw trees that bore a singular resemblance to the trees of France, except that they were smaller. And when he tried to get up, even though he was rather tired, he observed that his inconsiderate thrust launched him ten meters into the air. But he was suddenly reassured on remembering that the volume of the Moon is five times less than that of the Earth, and that its mass can be estimated as an eightieth of that of our globe, because of the difference in density, according to the most reliable authorities.

  Meanwhile, he was in a hurry to make contact with the inhabitants of that fabulous land. He had read in Plato that the Moon is the abode of the souls of dead poets, and he was very impatient to enter into conversation with Homer, Vigil, Villon and a few other excellent men of ancient times. Mechanically, he searched around him with his eyes for the flowers of the lotus and the asphodel.

  But all he saw was a dusty road, devoid of interest, except that three silhouettes were perceptible in the distance that were approaching rapidly. When they were closer, he found that they were human, or something analogous. One of the lunar men was dressed as a gendarme. He had a crescent of flesh for a head, with tapering bony points, one eye in the middle and a quarter of a mouth underneath. The second had a whole sphere for a head, redolent with health, and a peasant’s costume. He seemed to be middle-aged. The third looked like a policeman. He had no mouth, and only a quarter of an eye.

  The gendarme began speaking in English. He asked in a surly manner for Cyrano’s papers—who rummaged in his pockets distractedly and found nothing but the verse manuscript of a tragedy. He gave it to the gendarme for want of anything better. The latter had scarcely given it a glance when he began making broad gestures and his face welled up, almost completely, with indignation. Then all three of them fell on Cyrano, tied him up and carried him off at a run, with so much brutality that he fainted again.

  On recovering consciousness, he found himself between four walls, in some sort of cell sealed by an iron door, whose narrow window was furnished with bars. The floor was simply compacted Moon.

  He deduced that he was in prison.

  A lugubrious daylight descended in an oblique beam from the window. The prisoner’s eyes went to something white that was lying on the ground, crumpled. He got to his feet and picked it up. It was a fragment of a newspaper abandoned there.

  He looked for the feuilleton, in order to read it while awaiting events, but there was no feuilleton. The only page still intact carried an account of a session of the lunar Academy awarding prizes for virtue, with the list of murderers to whom the Prix Montyon had been awarded.55 There were also details of the arrest of a vagabond, recognized as a non-functionary and immediately taken into custody, plus the story of the execution of three poets, one of whom had taken cynicism so far as to recite a sonnet on the scaffold.

  Then Cyrano understood that the old Moon was more civilized than the Earth, and that it was our planet, the true Moon, that was the abode of lunatics. He thought that it was necessary to hasten to live there, while waiting for age and the progress of civilization to render it similar to our satellite. His energetic resolv
e gave him strength enough to loosen the bars of the window and to run away into the country. An ardent Sun was shining there. The problem of departure was less difficult to solve, because of the weak gravity. Cyrano dived into river that ran alongside the road, then exposed himself to the rays of the day-star. As the heat caused the water with which his clothes were soaked to evaporate, the voyager felt himself gently lifted up, as if breathed in by the Sun. He found his way back easily when he was at a certain height, and steered unhurriedly toward the Earth, where he arrived just in time for the première of Chantecler.56

  The Lost Reflection

  Jean Loiseleur came home in a state of high excitement. Absent-mindedly, he took his key off the hook in the vestibule of the house and climbed the stairs. Once he was in his room and the door was locked again he turned the door handle two or three times to put on the electric light. Nothing happened.

  “Strange!” he murmured. “Am I drunk? That’s not possible—I haven’t drunk anything except whisky for three days.”

  Finally, he put his hand on the correct switch. The room lit up. He released a sigh of satisfaction.

  A distracted glance in the mirror over the mantelpiece enabled him to see that he was pale. It was an old mirror. Someone had stuck strips of paper similar to the wallpaper, which continued its design, on to the worn and discolored frame.

  There was a black marble clock in the middle of the mantelpiece, condemned to remain there in perpetuity, because it had never worked. To either side of the clock were two horrible vases, in white porcelain with a flower pattern, flared at the top and full of artificial green moss, like chaste ears plugged in order not to hear nocturnal chatter.