Martyrs of Science Page 9

  One winter evening, there was a wedding in Auffin. The dancing went on very late, and night had fallen long ago when Mathias, loading his bass violin, which he had played with so much talent, on to his back, announced that he was going to go. All imaginable efforts were made to dissuade him from that resolution.

  “Stay with us, Père Mathias,” everyone said, “the wind’s blowing cold; there’s a frost fit to crack stones; the forest of Hesdin, which you have to pass through, doesn’t enjoy a good reputation; it’s a haunt of wolves and highwaymen, who are no less dangerous, not to mention witches, who come to hold their Sabbats there.”

  “I have a goblet of excellent wine in my belly,” the stubborn old man replied, “a god fur cloak covers my shoulders, and here’s a stout iron-tipped staff in my hand. With that I can defy the cold, the wolves and the thieves. As for witches and devils, if I meet any, I’ll make them dance to the music of my bass violin. Why, they can tell me whether the fiddlers in Hell can ply the bow as well as Mathias Wilmart of Hesdin!”

  He had scarcely been on the road for a quarter of an hour when the sky, starry until then, was suddenly covered by immense clouds. The darkness became terrifying. Then the fiddler surprised himself by regretting the good bed that he had been offered in Auffin—but it was too late to retrace his steps. Besides which, after the boasts he had made, they would be bound to mock him, saying that fear had brought him back. So he continued walking. To cap his chagrin, it did not take him long to notice that he had gone astray.

  What should he do? To keep going might only be to go further astray. To wrap himself up in his cloak and lie down at the foot of a tree did not appear to be a safe things to do; the wolves would undoubtedly come to rip out his throat; besides which, if he escaped the carnivorous beasts, he would surely perish of the cold. Meanwhile, with both hands gripping his staff, he remained in a state painful anxiety; then a light suddenly appeared in the distance.

  It’s shining in some woodcutter’s hut, he said to himself. Thank God!

  He tried to head in the direction in which the light was shining, but it had disappeared. He struck the ground with his iron-tipped staff and uttered a horrible blasphemy. The guilty words were scarcely out of his mouth when the light reappeared.

  It was not without much difficulty and after a long and perilous journey that Mathias reached the place from which the light toward which he had been marching for so long was coming. His surprise became extreme when he arrived, for he found himself outside a château of magnificent appearance, of which he had never heard mention. Lively music was resounding there in all its parts, and the dancers who were continually passing in front of the windows cast their swift black shadows on the curtains, which were rendered translucent by a red glare.

  He circled around the immense building several times, but in vain, searching for the entrance door. He was despairing of finding it when an old man suddenly appeared and started blowing a horn. A drawbridge, which Mathias had not seen until then, was abruptly lowered, and the fiddler, following the old man, went into the manor.

  He was utterly astonished to find it filled with an inconceivable multitude of people. Some were taking part in a splendid feast, others were playing games of chance, but the largest number were dancing and uttering deafening cries.

  Mathias marched boldly toward a tall man whom he recognized as the master of the abode by the manner in which he was giving orders and the respect with which he was treated.

  “Lord Castellan,” she said, “I’m a poor fiddler lost in the woods; deign to permit me to spend the night in a corner of your manor; I’ll leave tomorrow at daybreak.”

  The individual to whom Mathias was speaking only replied with a benevolent gesture of assent. On his order, a page took the fiddler’s bass violin and hung it on one of the golden nails shining in the rich wall-hanging of the room. While he attended to this task the page smiled in a strange manner, and the place where his hand touched the instrument immediately blackened, as if the hand were made of fire.

  Mathias began parading his gaze around and examining the place in which he found himself, but he sought in vain to recognize any of the people surrounding him; every time he fixed his eyes on the face of one of them, a kind of light mist veiled the face in question and deceived the old man’s curiosity. While he was trying to fathom this prodigy, he perceived a bass violin, and the instrument seemed to him to be so beautiful that the desire gripped him to make use of it and go to play with the other fiddlers, to whom he would not be sorry to demonstrate his skill. As he raised his eyes to look for the staircase that would take him up to their gallery, however, he was astounded to recognize among them Barnabé Malassart, who had died thirty years before, and who had given him his first lessons on the bass violin,

  “Blessed Virgin, have pity on me!” he exclaimed.

  At the same instant, everything—the musicians, the dancers and the château—vanished before his eyes.

  The next day, the people of Auffin who, more prudent than the fiddler, had deferred the day of their departure for the town, found the poor man lying unconscious at the foot of the gibbet, with a white bow in his hand.

  “Père Mathias,” one of them said, has chosen to sleep in a rather unattractive location.

  “And an even less attractive nail on which to hang his bass violin,” another replied. “Look—the bass violin and the bow are attached to the big toe of the foot of a hanged man.”

  “Was he afraid that the cadaver might be cold?” asked a third. “He’s covered its desiccated shoulders with his cloak.”

  “He’s a careful man, Père Mathias,” added a fourth, who was attempting to revive the old musician. “He’d brought two bows, in order not to be left short if one of them happened to break.”

  Having come round, thanks to the care lavished on him, Mathias put the blame for his accident on the cold, and was careful not to say a word about the infernal visions that he had experienced during the night.

  When he got home, however, he carefully examined the bow of which he had become the possessor in such a strange manner. A frisson of terror followed that examination. The bow was nothing less than the bone of a dead man, carved with extreme care; one could also read in its rich silver ornamentation the name of a resident of Hesdin who was reputed in the town, with good reason, to be a spell-caster and sorcerer.

  Mathias waited for nightfall and then went to the house of the man of ill-repute.

  “Neighbor,” he said, bowing deeply, “This is a bow that belongs to you, I think. I found it by chance and I’m returning it to you.”

  The neighbor went pale at these words, and stood there momentarily without saying a word, so great was his emotion.

  “Uh oh, Mathias!” he finally murmured. “You’ve discovered that singular things happen by night, and a word from you could do me harm.”

  “May God please that I don’t speak it, Neighbor!”

  “You’re a worthy man, Mathias, but you’d do well to keep silent. If I’m burned alive—which they would surely do if they knew that you’d seen me you-know-where—something bad might happen to you.”

  Mathias got up to go, but the owner of the bow made him sit down again, and moved nearer in order to whisper in his ear in a very low voice: “Neighbor, tell me who your enemies are; I’ll cast a spell on their livestock tonight, or I’ll give them some wasting disease that will rid you of them.”

  “I have no enemies, Neighbor, and may God please that I wish no evil on my peers!”

  “In what way can I be useful to you, then?”

  “In none, Neighbor,” the fiddler replied, already wishing that he was outside. “None at all. I’m just glad to have been able to return such a beautiful bow to you.”

  “A very precious bow, to be sure—but it’s necessary that I make you a gift, Père Mathias.”

  “Give him this purse—no matter how hard he tries to empty it, it will always contain six Parisian francs in solid money.”

  These wor
ds had been pronounced by a man with a sinister face, who had certainly not been in the sorcerer’s study when Mathias arrived there. How had he got in? That was incomprehensible, for the doors had been carefully closed by the master of the house, in order that his conversation with Mathias could not be overheard.

  “This is some work of the evil spirit,” exclaimed the fiddler, “and I won’t risk my salvation by accepting it!”

  “It’s a talisman,” replied the unknown individual. “A talisman of which a Christian can make use without fear.” As he pronounced the word “Christian” a frisson ran through all his limbs. He added, laughing bitterly: “If this purse is the Devil’s work, then I’m damned!”

  Half-reassured, Mathias succumbed to the temptation of becoming the possessor of such a treasure.

  He emptied the marvelous purse so often that he soon acquired a nice house, and started to live as the richest townsfolk of Hesdin were able to do. Every day there were parties and feasts that never ended. He continued to play for the dancers at weddings, but he now had a good mule to take him to the homes of the newlyweds, which walked at a brisk place, and a servant to carry his bass violin.

  The fiddler’s new lifestyle excited considerable comment in the town of Hesdin. The most general rumor alleged that Mathias had found an immense treasure, which he kept hidden in some secret place in his house.

  Now, Mathias had four nephews, bad lots of whose conduct no good had ever come. One day, they said to one another: “Uncle Mathias has become rich; there’s no one but us to inherit his great wealth...”

  Apparently, one word suffices for scoundrels to understand one another, for they each went home to fetch an arbalest, and came back to hide at a crossroads in the woods through which Mathias was due to pass that evening.

  The fiddler was unable to avoid his destiny; four arbalest darts struck him dead; his servant, who was luckier, ran away.

  Without giving any thought to the witness to their crime, the four brothers ran to the cadaver to rob it, expecting to share the inheritance. A tall man with a sinister face stopped them, leapt upon the corpse, took a small purse from the dead man’s wallet and disappeared, shouting: “That’s how people profit from my gifts!”

  Execrable laughter followed those words.

  While the murderers stood there, motionless and bewildered, the provost of law and his archers suddenly surrounded them. Mathias’ servant had met them in the woods as he fled and had come back to deliver his master’s murderers to them.

  Given the evidence of the crime, justice was not slow in being rendered to them. The provost had the rascals hanged from the trees behind which they had hidden, arbalests in hand—for which reason the place in question is known today as the Crossroads of the Four Brothers.

  THE ANTIQUE RING

  Oh, tell me that it’s a dream.

  Isn’t it true that all of this

  is a dream?

  Owen

  Poor human reason,

  which cannot distinguish dream

  from wakefulness, or illusion from reality.

  Alfred Mercier12

  My dear Édouard, or fifteen years the most devoted amity has linked us to one another.

  Which is to say that, for fifteen years, you have sustained me and consoled me; which is to say that, for fifteen years, you, so grave, so positive, so superior to the impetuous distractions of our age, have listened patiently and consoled with perseverance the chagrins of an unhappy young man whom a disorderly imagination has dragged incessantly far from the real and the reasonable, whom an irresistible, deadly, extraordinary force never wearies of delivering to the consequences of a Romantic sensibility full of exasperation.

  Édouard, Édouard, now more than ever I have need of that amity.

  Listen, for I shall write to you; I dare not go to find you to tell you in person, so ashamed am I. I shall write you a story in which you will not be able to believe. It gives birth to laughter and scorn on the visage of anyone who hears it; they treat me as a madman. But you, my friend, you won’t laugh, will you? You won’t tell me that I’m a madman, a maniac, a dreamer; that would hurt me a great deal, and you’re so afraid of hurting me.

  Then again, it doesn’t matter that they call me by all those insulting names, which drive me to me despair, which make me clench my firsts in rage and stamp my foot on the ground; it doesn’t matter that they slander my belief; I still experienced what I experienced, and I still saw what I saw. Oh, if it were permissible, for me, to call it into doubt…but the memory of that execrable scene pursues me so relentlessly...

  I can’t get away from it…it’s impossible. It’s there, always there!

  You know, Édouard, when one is suffering as I am suffering, one has every right to lament that no one can believe in his suffering! Yes, yes, one has every right to complain!

  My friend, you don’t know everything about my difficulties. You know about the obstacles that were opposed to my marriage to Laura, and how they became more numerous and more insurmountable every day, but what you don’t know is that the young woman was frightened by seeing love accompanied by so many torments. She raised her eyes with terror toward the future, and then she looked behind her with regret. I read it in her heart; she preferred a negative but peaceful happiness to the bitter intoxication of a sublime and ardent tenderness full of trouble and agitation.

  In consequence, I took the decision to suffer alone, and not to associate that frail creature with the bleak destiny that weighs upon me. I wrote to tell her that I was renouncing her, since my love was causing her so much anguish. She replied in a letter moist with tears, in which she accepted my sacrifice.

  Oh, I offered it to her in all sincerity—Heaven is my witness! And yet, Édouard, my dear Édouard, I cannot tell you how much harm she did me by accepting that sacrifice!

  You have often told me that a good deed, a great act of courage, sustains the soul and renders the sacrifices imposed by duty less harsh. I confess, my friend, that that has not been my experience. But at least I have recognized the justice of another of your observations: that study is the only charm that soothes mental troubles. When one identifies with imaginary individuals, when one appropriates their chagrins, when one makes them weep over their misfortunes, when one softens sensations and torments that have become communal to them and us, it seems that one is not alone in suffering, that one is pouring out one’s suffering into the bosom of a friend and that a secret voice is sympathizing, encouraging and consoling.

  Two months ago I was spending the night writing beside a blazing fire. My ideas were flowing rapidly; pages covered in my large untidy scrawl had piled up on my desk. They were full of lugubrious thoughts, bizarre events and inconsequential, conflicting sentences of no interest to anyone but me, or you—you, Édouard, to whom a unique friendship has rendered my extravagant ideas, the impetuosity of my imagination and my fits of despair familiar.

  When morning came, my blood was not refreshed and my head had not become any less heavy, but I had escaped from myself for a whole night, and that was a good deal. The day before, I had ordered that a bath should be prepared for me, Dr. Fernand having recommended me more than ever to make frequent use of it. I only just had time to go into the bathroom because my lamp, for lack of oil, was about to go out, and I was scarcely in the water before it threw off one last gleam and left me in complete darkness.

  Here, my dear Édouard, I renew the plea I made just now: don’t laugh at me, don’t call what you’re about to read into question, for you’d be doing me an injury!

  I didn’t take long to relax into the comfort of the bath. A soft warmth refreshed my limbs, tensed by long sleeplessness, by relaxing them. My forehead, burning with chagrin, was enveloped by a benevolent moisture. My ideas were suspended, without ceasing entirely, and my eyes closed under a gradual drowsiness.

  I had been in a delightful situation for a few moments, when I thought I could hear a vague murmur somewhere in the vicinity. It even seemed that so
me unknown light was visible through my eyelids, although I felt so content that I didn’t have the strength to open my eyes, to move or to stammer a single word; however astonishing the commotion might be that was happening close by, I could not pluck up the resolution to discover the reason for it.

  A shock burst forth like a thunderbolt, but sharper and more harrowing.

  I woke up with a start; in front of me stood a mocking and intimidating individual. He was looking at me as no human eye has ever gazed.

  The sight of him suffocated me; it made me suffer indescribably.

  He advanced his left hand and showed me the antique ring that, as you know, I bought from a Jew.

  Then the specter passed the ring before my eyes, as if to prove to me that it really was mine; he gave me time to consider the fluting of the large ring and the two animal figures engraved on the black stone.

  After that he raised his right hand; he showed me three fingers; he pronounced the word “Three,” struck me hard on the head and disappeared.

  When I recovered consciousness I was in bed, surrounded by people who were caring for me. Attracted by a piercing scream, they had come running; I had been found in the bath, half-drowned; a few seconds later, and it would have been all over. Why, alas, did they bring me back to life?

  My first words were to ask my manservant for the casket in which my jewelry, including the fatal ring, was kept. On receiving that order, he went pale and trembled in every limb. A bitter laugh contracted his features.

  “May Satan strike me dead!” he stammered. “You know everything!”

  I thought that the wretch was referring to the dream I had had shortly before, because I still thought that it was a dream.

  Then, suddenly, another idea—an absurd idea—passed like a flash of lightning through my imagination. I clung to it urgently. The apparition of a little while ago was a joke, played by one of my friends; they must have involved Antoine.