Now we were out of the village, and I was beginning to delude myself that the current object of my heart had taken his distance, at least for the moment. Ah! If only I could reach Maravillas, fall at dona Mencia’s knees, I said to myself, if only I could put myself under the protection of my estimable mother, would these persistent ghosts and monsters dare to violate that refuge? There, amidst nature, I should again discover the wholesome principles from which I had strayed, and would use them as a breast-plate against them.
But what if the sorrow brought upon her by my misconduct had hastened the loss of my guardian angel? Oh, then I would wish to go on living only to expiate and to repent. I would bury myself in a monastery … But even there, who would rid me of the phantoms engendered in my brain? Let us take the ecclesiastical estate, I told myself: fair sex, I must renounce you, for a fiend has donned all the graces I adored…
In the midst of these reflections, which absorbed all my attention, the carriage entered the great courtyard of the castle, and I heard a voice saying: “It is Alvaro! My son!” I raised my eyes and recognised my mother on the balcony of her apartment.
My joy and my relief were unconfined, my soul seemed born anew. I rushed forward to fly into her waiting arms. “Ah", I cried, my eyes bathed in tears, my voice shaken with sobs,” ah, mother! So I am not your murderer? Would you recognize me as your son? Ah mother, you embrace me…
My passions, and the vehemence of my actions, had so twisted my features and altered the sound of my voice, that dona Mencia seemed disturbed. Kindly she bid me rise, embraced me again, obliged me to be seated. I wanted to talk, but could not; I seized her hands, bathing them in tears and covering them with the most impassioned caresses.
Dona Mencia considered me in astonishment: something extraordinary must have befallen me, she concluded, and even feared some derangement to my reason. Her concern, her curiosity, her goodness and her tenderness were manifest in her looks as in her deeds, as she providently assembled before me all that could soothe the needs of a traveller wearied by a long and painful journey.
The servants hastened to attend to me, and I took a sip of refreshment in an attempt at politeness, my distracted glances seeking out my brother; alarmed at not seeing him, “Madame,” I enquired, “where is the estimable don Juan?”
“He will be very glad to know that you are here, because he wrote requesting your return; but as his letter, written from Madrid, would have left only a few days ago, we were not expecting you so soon. You are a colonel in his former regiment and the king has just appointed him to a vice-royalty in the Indies.”
“Heavens!” I cried, “Could everything in my dreadful dream be entirely untrue? It is impossible…”
“What is this dream of which you speak?”
“The longest, the most astonishing, the most frightful imaginable.” Then, overcoming my pride and shame, I gave her a detailed account of what had happened to me since I had entered the grotto at Portici, until the happy moment when I had fallen at her knees.
This estimable woman heard me with extraordinary attentiveness, patience and goodness. As I well knew the extent of my fault, she saw that it was needless to magnify it.
“My dear son, you have pursued a lie and it has engulfed you. The news of my indisposition and the anger of your elder brother are sufficient proof of this. Berthe, whom you thought you spoke to, has been confined to her bed for some time. I never dreamed of sending you 200 sequins in addition to your allowance. I would have feared giving encouragement to your disorderly life, or plunging you into ill-conceived liberality. The honest squire Pimientos died eight months ago. And of the eighteen hundred villages in all Spain over which the duke of Medina-Sidonia is Lord, there is not an inch of his land at the place you mention. I know it well; you must have dreamed that farm and all its inhabitants.”
“Ah, Madame,” I replied, “the muleteer who brought me here saw it as I did. He danced at the wedding.”
My mother ordered the muleteer to be brought forward, but he had unharnessed the carriage on arriving, without asking for his wages.
This precipitate departure, which left no traces, threw my mother into some suspicion. “Nugnes,” said she to a page who was walking through the apartment, “go and tell the venerable don Quebracuernos that my son Alvaro and I are awaiting him.”
“He is a doctor from Salamanca,” she continued; “he has my trust, and deserves it; you too may place your trust in him. The end of your dream has one peculiarity which confounds me; don Quebracuernos knows these mysteries and will cast light upon them better than I”.
The venerable doctor did not keep us waiting. Even before he spoke, the very gravity of his demeanour was imposing. My mother bade me give a sincere account of my blunders and their consequences and he heard me out, his attention mingled with astonishment.
When I had finished, after a pause for considered thought, he spoke as follows:
“Undoubtedly, senor Alvaro, you have just escaped the greatest peril to which a man can be exposed through faults of his own making. You provoked the evil spirit and, through a series of needless acts, you furnished him with all the guises he needed to ruin and deceive you. Your adventure is truly extraordinary; I have read nothing comparable in Bodin’s Démonomanie or Bekker’s Monde Enchanté. And it must be admitted that, since the time of those great writers, our enemy has become prodigiously sophisticated in his strategies, exploiting ruses which men of our age deploy for their mutual corruption. He copies nature faithfully and effectively; he makes use of gracious talents, he arranges cunningly conceived gatherings and makes passions speak out in their most seductive tongue; in some ways he even imitates virtue. For me, your tale is very revealing and throws light upon many current happenings. I see clearly many grottoes more dangerous than that of Portici, and a multitude of souls obsessed who, unfortunately, do not see themselves as such. As for yourself, by taking wise precautions for the present and the future, I believe you will be entirely delivered. Your enemy has withdrawn, so much is clear. He seduced you, it is true, but he did not succeed in corrupting you; your will power and your remorse have preserved you, together with the supernal aid you have received; thus his alleged triumph and your defeat were for him and for you but an illusion, from which your repentance will wash you clean. As for him, his portion was an enforced retreat; yet one cannot but marvel at how shrewdly he covered it and, in departing, left your spirit troubled, and secret intelligences in your heart to enable him to renew the attack, should you ever offer him the opportunity. Having beguiled you, he then had to appear to you in all his deformity, and acted like a slave premeditating his revolt; he does not wish to leave you any discernible and clear image of himself, so he mingles the grotesque and the awesome, the absurdity of his luminous snails with the alarming vision of his horrible head, in a word the lie and the truth, dream and reality; thus your confused spirit can no longer make distinctions, and may believe that the vision which has beset you is rather a dream occasioned by the vapours of your brain than the effect of his evil-doing. But he has subtly preserved for you the idea of a pleasing phantom, the very one he long used to lead you astray. He will put her in your way if you let him do so. Yet I do not think the barrier of the cloister, or of our estate, is the one you should raise against him. Your vocation is not sufficiently pondered; people who have learned from experience are needed in the world. Believe me, you must form legitimate bonds with a person of the fair sex; let your estimable mother preside over your choice; and even should the one she has chosen have talents and charms divine, never would you be tempted to take her for the Devil.”
Recommended Reading
If you have enjoyed reading The Devil in Love there are other books on our list which should appeal to you;
The Dedalus Book of French Horror – edited by Terry Hale
The Dedalus Book of the Occult – Gary Lachman
The Land of Darkness – Daniel Arsand
Les Diaboliques – Barbey d’Aurevill
y
The Fiery Angel – Valery Bruisov
Spirite (and Coffee Pot) – Theodore Gautier
The German Refugees- Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Satan Wants Me – Robert Irwin
The Road to Darkness – Paul Leppin
Monsieur de Phocas- Jean Lorrain
The Angel of the West Window – Gustav Meyrink
Smarra and Trilby- Charles Nodier
Tales from the Saragossa Manuscript – Jan Potocki
Stephanie – Herbert Rosendorfer
Lucio’s Confession – Mario de Sà-Carneiro
Paris Noir- Jacques Yonnet
These books can be bought from your local bookshop or online from amazon.co.uk or direct from Dedalus, either online or by post. Please write to Cash Sales. Dedalus Limited, 24-26, St Judith’s Lane, Sawtry, Cambs, PE28 5XE. For further details of the Dedalus list please go to our website www.dalusbooks.com or write to us for a catalogue.
The Dedalus Book of French Horror – Edited by Terry Hale
“Stories like Eugene Sue’s wickedly funny cautionary tale of how a brush with Rousseau can lead to an unpleasant end show that the French macabre is worthy of attention for its irony and humour. There are contes cruels, frenetiques and fantastiques by Baudelaire, Maupassant and the Marquis de Sade. But some of the best tales are by writers, now forgotten, who used E.T.A. Hoffman, Edgar Allan Poe and the English Gothic novel to create a uniquely French genre.” Isobel Montgomery in The Guardian
“Hale’s inspired selection – he includes little-known pieces by Sade, Baudelaire, Dumas and Maupassant, as well as stories by unjustly forgotten writers such as Catulle Mendes, Jean Pichepin, Charles Nodier and Petrus Borel – not only makes this an invigorating collection to read, it virtually redefines the boundaries of the French horror genre.” Brendan King in The Times Literary Supplement
“The two dozen authors collected here span the 19th century, from La Harpe in the aftermath of the Revolution to Huysmans’ fin de siecle decadence. Poe, Hoffmann and the English Gothic novel all fed the imagination of the French fantasists, who frequently added a touch of Gallic wit to the heady brew of vampirism, ghostly gore and sexual misbehaving. Hale provides a scholarly introduction to this highly enjoyable selection of strange tales.”
Scotland on Sunday
£10.99 ISBN 1 873982 87 7 361p B. Format
Tales from the Saragossa Manuscript – Jan Potocki
“As a reader you find yourself teased, intrigued and disorientated. You never quite know where you are – whether you are reading a series of lies, illusions and superstitious tales, or whether this is a great work of art with its own special kind of truth. Although the book clearly has roots in medieval forms, it is also amazingly modern – predating the works of Italo Calvino and the Magical Realists by at least 150 years, and, incidentally, making them look rather tame. The English translation by Christine Donougher is a model of clarity and quiet elegance.” Book Choice, BBC World Service
“A marvel of elegant storytelling that uses exotic settings to lure the reader into accepting impossible events. One of the true masterpieces of fantasy.”
Denis M. Kratz
“A work of magical intricacy which carries the torch of fantasy into our own century. The baffled Alphonse is a precursor of the Kafka hero or the automata of the nouveau roman.”
David Coward
“By far my favourite novel of clandestine fraternities, spine-chilling plots and mystic revelations was written 200 years ago by a Polish adventurer, Jan Potocki; the legendary Manuscript Found in Saragossa” Boyd Tonkin in The Independent
£5.99 ISBN 978 0 946626 67 0 160p B. Format
Copyright
Published in the UK by Dedalus Limited,
24-26, St Judith’s Lane, Sawtry, Cambs, PE28 5XE
Email: info@ dedalusbooks.com
www.dedalusbooks.com
ISBN 978 1 907650 05 5
ISBN e-book 978 1 907650 41 3
Dedalus is distributed in the USA and Canada by SCB Distributors,
15608 South New Century Drive, Gardena, CA 90248
email: [email protected]
web: www.scbdistributors.com
Dedalus is distributed in Australia by Peribo Pty Ltd. 58, Beaumont Road, Mount Kuring-gai, N.S.W. 2080
email: [email protected]
Publishing History
First published in France in 1772
First published by Dedalus in 1991
New Dedalus edition in 2011
First e-book edition in 2011
Translation and introduction © copyright Dedalus 1991
Printed in Finland by Bookwell
Typeset by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A C.I.P. listing for this book is available on request.
The Devil in Love Page 9