Martyrs of Science Page 7

  No sleepless night had ever been longer or more dolorous.

  At about two o’clock in the morning someone hammered on the door. He pricked up his ears. Could that be Alice—Alice returning? Oh, this time, he would listen to her pitiful cries; this time…

  The knocker rapped again; a hoarse voice made itself heard. It wasn’t her. No, he knew who it was.

  He opened the door, and let in two men of sinister physiognomy; their ferocious smiles were a horrible parody of the satisfaction of a merchant seeking to talk up the merchandise he is offering.

  “Oh, for this one you’ll have to pay no less than fifteen guineas—we’ve paid more than two thirds of that.”

  “Yes,” his companion added. “It cost us dear.”

  Teddy paid the two men the money they were demanding; then they deposited, on a long table, a burden whose form it was difficult to discern, because it was wrapped in a vast sheet, and the only lamp that was lit in the apartment was giving out very little light.

  When the two men had gone and he had closed the door on them, Teddy unwound the cloth; it enveloped a corpse, the black and disfigured features of which were half-covered by a mask of pitch.

  “They’ve murdered her!” cried the young man, shivering with horror and indignation. “Oh, those villainous resurrectionists! I’m going to denounce their crime and demand vengeance for it!”

  He brought the lamp closer in order to try to identify the victim.

  It was Alice.

  FOLKLORE AND FAKELORE

  Introduction

  (From an appendix to “The Barn at Montcouvez”)

  [These] are legends of French Flanders, a land so fecund in memories, so rich in traditions. Visit any one of its villages, any one of its hamlets, and people there will tell you these stories; there, among bizarre events, an energetic, somber and wild imagination sparkles, in which the influence of our foggy atmosphere, our cold and rigorous landscapes and our superstitious customs is recognizable.

  In the warm climate of Spain, the peasants sing joyful seguidillas, an expression of the voluptuous indolence that gentle and fecund sun engenders; in Italy, an azure sky and a bewitching nature inspire amorous and tender canzonetti; but in Flanders, everything that surrounds us is grave, monotonous and austere in appearance; the eye sees nothing in the countryside but marshes, valleys and fields rich in agriculture but not very picturesque. The earth there only yields its fruits to persistent labor.

  To make an impression on organs hardened by fatigue, and to interest people used to seeing nothing but severe scenery, it requires stories of sinister marvels, which acquire a kind of plausible in being attached to familiar objects and places. It requires stories in which terror is taken to an extreme, and which leave a profound impression in the memory. They are retold in the long winter evenings. At the moment when interest reaches its peak, the spinning-wheels stop; the silent circle draws tighter; nothing can any longer be heard but the deep, hoarse voice of the story-teller, while the gazes of those surrounding the speaker glance behind fearfully, as if the evil spirits of which mention has been made, evoked by the nocturnal tales, were standing there, terrible pitchforks in hand.

  THE DEVIL’S CHESS GAME

  Seigneurs and ladies who have heard good stories told,

  if it pleases you to listen and remember, I have a good

  one to tell. So, please pick up this little book, correcting

  its faults if you find any, which is newly translated from

  old rhymes and prose.

  Prologue to Histoire de Richard-Sans-Peur7

  The Sire de Clairmarais had been out hunting since the early hours. His wife, the chatelaine, was occupying the leisure of a long autumn evening in her oratory, embroidering a veil of precious golden cloth destined to ornament the miraculous reliquary of the blessed Saint Bertin.8 Her ladies in waiting were working around her in silence, for their mistress was too haughty to chat with vassals, and even to permit them to raise their voices in her presence except in response to her request.

  An hour after the wind had ceased to bring the last chimes of the curfew rung at the belfry of Saint-Omer, a village about half a league away, to the château, the blast of a horn was suddenly heard at the manor’s postern. There was something strange and wild about the fanfare that made the chatelaine and her ladies tremble. A page went to enquire as to who it was, and came back to inform his mistress that a knight of noble appearance, who called himself Sire Brudemer, was requesting hospitality.

  If some poor laborer in mortal danger had been lamenting on the far side of the moat, the chatelaine would not have had the drawbridge lowered to give him shelter in the manor, but a noble lord was another matter entirely. She gave the order that he should be admitted to the château and introduced to her presence.

  Then, in accordance with custom, she set about preparing with her own hands the hypocras that one had to offer guests as a gesture of welcome. She had just finished pouring the beverage into a silver cup when Sire Brudemer was brought in by the page.

  He advanced toward the chatelaine with the charming and noble courtesy typical of a high-born knight, and began by thanking the lady politely for the hospitality that she had granted him.

  “I have lost my way in the domain,” he said. “A little while ago I was cursing the impetuosity of my horse, which, separating my from my huntsmen, drew me into marshes and ravines and the deepest thickets; but since I have been fortunate enough to be admitted to the presence of such a marvelously beautiful lady, I no longer take any account of fatigues, danger or anxieties.”

  At first, the stranger’s voice had something bitter and coarse about it, but that was soon forgotten thanks to the honeyed grace of his words.

  The ladies in waiting, who, in accordance with custom, had retired to the far side of the room, in such a way that they could see what was happening without being able to hear anything that was said, exchanged remarks in low voices regarding the richness of Brudemer’s vestments, the elegance of his bearing, the symmetry of his features and the grim expression in his fiery eyes. Thus, it was not surprising that the chatelaine found an inexpressible charm in the society of her guest. She had had no other companions than vassals since birth, and her conversations had been limited to long accounts of her aged husband’s battles and tournaments, he being a better wielder of the lance than an amiable gallant.

  Profiting skillfully from his advantages, Brudemer did not take long to mingle with his discourse something more flattering and more affectionate than the chivalric mores of the era permitted. The chatelaine, ordinarily so proud and disdainful, subjugated by an unknown power, listened to him without anger, and then with ever-increasing emotion.

  Then, placing himself unceremoniously in such a way as to hide the Dame de Clairmarais from her ladies in waiting, he took possession of a hand that she did not think of withdrawing, and raised it tenderly to his lips; then, his knee pressed gently upon a knee that was trembling.

  It would be difficult to describe the chatelaine’s sensations: a harsh, infernal fire was circulating dolorously in her veins; it gripped her forehead and caused her bosom to heave. She did not experience any of the sweet languor and the ineffable intoxication that are the gentle and cruel symptoms of love-sickness; there was, instead, anguish, a cold sweat and the frissons of a sinner at fault; there was, instead, the horrible stupefaction of a pilgrim whose sees the mortal gaze of a basilisk fixed upon him.

  In her disturbance, the Dame de Clairmarais dropped the veil that she was embroidering. “Oh, if I were granted the gift of such a scarf, said Brudemer, “if the lady whose beautiful hands have fashioned it took me for her knight, how many lances I would break in her honor on the tourney-field and in battle!”

  She picked it up with a convulsive movement and said to him: “Here it is!”

  Brudemer raised the scarf to his lips, in order to hide a horrible smile that he could not repress—but he suddenly threw it away with a frisson of terror, as if it
were made of fire. The chaplain had examined it the previous evening, after vespers, with his hands still moist with holy water.

  Immediately recovering from his emotion, however, he drew nearer to the chatelaine and lowered his voice to say: “I was guided to your chattel by an old man in great haste to see the Sire de Clairmarais. He’s waiting at the postern to tell him an important secret, which concerns you.”

  The chatelaine went pale at those words.

  “I asked,” Brudemer continued, “about the motives that caused him to seek out your husband in such a hurry. His purpose, he told me, is to reveal a mystery to him—a mystery that might well lead to changes in the manor of Clairmarais. ‘The chatelaine,’ he said, ‘has expelled me ignominiously from the château; she has threatened to have me thrown in the moat if I return. The ingrate! I’ll deprive her of her titles and her wealth, of which she is so proud.’

  “As I did not want to add faith to these threats, he told me that his wife had been the nurse of the daughter of the Comte d’Érin; that the nursling had died without anyone in the world knowing it except him; that he had put you, his own daughter, in the dead young comtesse’s crib, and that you had been brought up and married as the child of the Seigneur d’Érin. He furnished me with numerous and irrefutable proofs of his fraud.

  “One this mystery is known, the Sire de Clairmarais will not take long to repudiate a vassal, the daughter of an ignoble serf by whom he had been duped.”

  The chatelaine wrung her hands in despair .

  “Listen,” Brudemer continued, lowering his voice even further, but in such a manner that the Dame de Clairmarais would not miss a single word. “The old man, wrapped in his cloak, is asleep outside the postern: take this dagger…come...”

  “My father!”

  “No, you’re right,” Brudemer replied, with an ironic coldness. “Who knows? Perhaps, out of pity, you’ll be admitted among the ladies in waiting of the Sire de Clairmarais’ new wife. At the worst, you’ll only be shaved and locked up in a convent...”

  The chatelaine rose to her feet swiftly, made a gesture to her women forbidding them to follow her, and gave her hand to Brudemer. They both went down to the postern.

  After having hunted all day, the Sire de Clairmarais came back, where he expected to find himself before long before a roaring fire, beside his wife, the beautiful chatelaine.

  He was in such haste to arrive that he was preceding his huntsmen by a short distance when his horse suddenly refused to advance any further, rearing up and giving sins of great fear. The old seigneur was forced to dismount. Oh, how surprised and chagrined he was to see his wife’s foster-father lying there, unmoving, with a deep wound in his breast.

  People hastened around the old man, and the care that they lavished upon him had not been in vain. He opened his eyes, raised himself up effortfully, and, leaning close to the ear of the Sire de Clairmarais, murmured a few words that had made the castellan shudder with horror; then he fell back and died.

  Without proffering a single word, the old seigneur marched straight to the oratory, where he found his wife. Her forehead coved by a mortal pallor, she was sitting in front of a narrow table, and, in order to conceal her trouble, was pretending to play chess with Brudemer.

  The latter, at the sight of the Sire de Clairmarais, emitted a horrible burst of laughter. The chatelaine shared that execrable hilarity, and must have been suffering a great deal to laugh like that.

  Then the Sire de Clairmarais had no further doubt as to his misfortune—for until that moment, he had been unable to believe in the crimes of which the dying man had accused the chatelaine. “Satan!” he cried, at the peak of indignation and despair. “Satan! I abandon the parricide, the adulterous spouse and the château she has soiled with her presence to you.”

  “I accept,” said Brudemer. At the same time, a crown of flames sprang forth around his head, and he reached out for the chatelaine’s white shoulders with two terrible hands that were suddenly armed with infernal claws.

  It was more than two hundred years after the Sire de Clairmarais had died in an odor of sanctity in the abbey of Saint Bertin when, one evening, a monk of the order of Saint Benedict asked an inhabitant of Saint-Omer what the manor was whose towers could be seen in the middle of a wood surrounded by immense marshes.

  “May Our Lady and the saints protect you!” the townsman replied. “That’s the Château de Clairmarais, an accursed place haunted by the Demon. Every night, it lights up with a sudden glow; every night, the Devil and I don’t know how many revenants arrive there in their chariots of fire.”

  “If the old people of the region can be believed, the demon that inhabits the château is named Brudemer, and forces the insensate individuals who penetrate his abode to play chess for their souls, in exchange for the property of the domain and all the treasures it contains. As you can imagine, no one, as yet, has been able to beat the devil, and, in consequence, no one has come back from Clairmarais.

  The monk listened to the townsman in silence, and then, after having reflected briefly, he marched at a firm step toward the diabolical manor.

  He got in without meeting any obstacle, and went to sit down in a richly-furnished oratory, in the middle of which there was a narrow table on which a chessboard was set and all the pieces for a game.

  While the monk was examining these objects, which nightfall was beginning to render indistinct, a bright light suddenly flooded the oratory and the monk was surrounded by a crowd of varlets, pages and ladies-in-waiting dressed in an antique style. Al of them carried out their duties in silence, without their footsteps being audible, and, marvelously, without their bodies producing a shadow when they passed in front of the light.

  Shortly afterwards, a richly-dressed seigneur advanced, who wore on his blazoned doublet, by way of an armory, a divided shield forked with sable, with the device: Brudemer. On his arm there was a woman, still young, whose beautiful features were covered with a cadaverous pallor; then came eight pages, bowed down beneath the weight of four heavy coffers filed with gold.

  Brudemer sat down at the chessboard and made sign to the monk inviting him to sit opposite. The monk obeyed, and they commenced playing without either of them saying a single word.

  By means of clever strategy the monk believed that he had checkmated his adversary when the pale lady, who had remained standing behind Brudemer and leaning on the back of his large armchair leaned over and pointed at a pawn. Then the game changed its aspect, and it as the monk who found himself in danger of being checkmated.

  Having brought off that coup, Brudemer and the lady burst out laughing, and all the people in the oratory gathered around the players, taking part in that frightful fit of gaiety, which no human words can describe.

  The monk began to regret his temerity. Cold sweat formed on his brow, and he would have given anything in the world to find himself back in his convent at that moment. Nevertheless, he did not despair of divine bounty, and he appealed mentally to his blessed patron Saint Benedict, for only a miracle could get him out of the dangerous pass. Suddenly, thanks to a celestial inspiration, he perceived that a new stratagem might yet enable him to win the game, and he was about to advance the pawn that would ensure him of it when the bursts of laughter that were resounding around him changed into frightful howls. Then he heard and saw no more.

  The monk, after having spent all night in prayer, finally saw dawn break with a joy that is easily imaginable. He found, in the place occupied by the pale lady, a skeleton covered in ragged shreds of rich women’s clothing.

  Left the owner of the château and the wealth it contained, the monk made the accursed place into a monastery, of which he was appointed the superior. No more of it remains today that meager vestiges of the cloister, destroyed in the epoch of the revolution.

  How I regret not having been able to recount the story in the native dialect and with the expression of credulity of the old woman who told it to me, in a poor cottage lit be a single lamp and the
red glow of the hearth, while the rain fell in torrents and the roaring wind plunged into the immense wood of Clairmarais.9

  THE MOUTH OF HELL

  My good seigneur, have compassion on the

  piteous people shivering at the door of your

  dwelling, in the cold and swirling wind, and

  torrents of rain that lash their faces.

  “When one enters here; one does not leave again.”

  Père Mathurin. L’Oeuvre de miséricorde.

  At present, the Trou-d’Enfer is a hideous quarter of Cambrai: tortuous streets, paltry house, a stinking atmosphere, a filthy and narrow arm of the Escaut.10

  It has never enjoyed a heyday, and when she has to traverse that reprobate quarter, an honest woman hastens her steps, not raising her eyes, and only breathes easily when it is safely behind her.

  I can well believe it! One sees no one at the doors of black hovels but infamous prostitutes crouched on the step; one meets no one there but old women torn from the decrepitude of prostitution, who engage drunken soldiers and men in rags in execrable battles of words.

  On certain days of the week a meager and badly-tuned orchestra strikes up in the Trou-d’Enfer; that adds a further sinister note to the unwelcoming place. If you feel brave, go into the open sewer where the fiddlers are playing, and upon my soul, you’ll see a strange spectacle. You’ll see a cabaret of evil appearance. I’ve seen it myself, and shivered in disgust and horror.

  One can only breathe an air laden with tobacco-smoke there, darkening by coal ash and the reddish dust that is produced and kicked up everywhere by the friction hundreds of pairs of shoes on the bricks with which the main room is paved. Add to that the nauseating odor of beer, the voices that mutter and yap, the screech of violins and the nasal cries of the clarinet. Imagine yourself, then, in the yellow light of sparse Argand lamps, a confused movement of men, women and soldiers, coming, going, mingling, circulating, forming groups, dispersing, long tables garnished with drinkers, the rattle of pewter tankards and the clink of glasses, and you’ll have an almost precise idea if the appearance of a cabaret: an appearance that dazzles and strikes the indecisive sight of the spectator with a sort of vertigo.