Là-bas by J.-K. Huysmans
CHAPTER VI
Next morning Durtal woke later than usual. Before he opened his eyesthere was a sudden flash of light in his brain, and troops of demonworshippers, like the societies of which Des Hermies had spoken, wentdefiling past him, dancing a saraband. "A swarm of lady acrobats hanginghead downward from trapezes and praying with joined feet!" he said,yawning. He looked at the window. The panes were flowered with crystalfleurs de lys and frost ferns. Then he quickly drew his arms back underthe covers and snuggled up luxuriously.
"A fine day to stay at home and work," he said. "I will get up and lighta fire. Come now, a little courage--" and--instead of tossing the coversaside he drew them up around his chin.
"Ah, I know that you are not pleased to see me taking a morning off," hesaid, addressing his cat, which was hunched up on the counterpane at hisfeet, gazing at him fixedly, its eyes very black.
This beast, though affectionate and fond of being caressed, was crabbedand set in its ways. It would tolerate no whims, no departures from theregular course of things. It understood that there was a fixed hour forrising and for going to bed, and when it was displeased it allowed ashade of annoyance to pass into its eyes, the sense of which its mastercould not mistake.
If he returned before eleven at night, the cat was waiting for him inthe vestibule, scratching the wood of the door, miaouing, even beforeDurtal was in the hall; then it rolled its languorous green-golden eyesat him, rubbed against his trouser leg, stood up on its hind feet likea tiny rearing horse and affectionately wagged its head at him as heapproached. If eleven o'clock had passed it did not run along in frontof him, but would only, very grudgingly, rise when he came up, and thenit would arch its back and suffer no caresses. When he came later yet,it would not budge, and would complain and groan if he took the libertyof stroking its head or scratching its throat.
This morning it had no patience with Durtal's laziness. It squatted onits hunkers, and swelled up, then it approached stealthily and sat downtwo steps away from its master's face, staring at him with anatrociously false eye, signifying that the time had come for him toabdicate and leave the warm place for a cold cat.
Amused by its manoeuvres, Durtal did not move, but returned its stare.The cat was enormous, common, and yet bizarre with its rusty coatyellowish like old coke ashes and grey as the fuzz on a new broom, withlittle white tufts like the fleece which flies up from the burnt-outfaggot. It was a genuine gutter cat, long-legged, with a wild-beasthead. It was regularly striped with waving lines of ebony, its paws wereencircled by black bracelets and its eyes lengthened by two greatzigzags of ink.
"In spite of your kill-joy character and your single track mind youtesty, old bachelor, you are a very nice cat," said Durtal, in aninsinuating, wheedling tone. "Then too, for many years now, I have toldyou what one tells no man. You are the drain pipe of my soul, youinattentive and indulgent confessor. Never shocked, you vaguely approvethe mental misdeeds which I confess to you. You let me relieve myselfand you don't charge me anything for the service. Frankly, that is whatyou are here for. I spoil you with care and attentions because you arethe spiritual vent of solitude and celibacy, but that doesn't preventyou, with your spiteful way of looking at me, from being insufferable attimes, as you are today, for instance!"
The cat continued to stare at him, its ears sticking straight up as ifthey would catch the sense of his words from the inflections of hisvoice. It understood, doubtless, that Durtal was not disposed to jumpout of bed, for it went back to its old place, but now turned its backfull on him.
"Oh come," said Durtal, discouraged, looking at his watch, "I've simplygot to get up and go to work on Gilles de Rais," and with a bound hesprang into his trousers. The cat, rising suddenly, galloped across thecounterpane and rolled itself up into the warm covers, without waitingan instant longer.
"How cold it is!" and Durtal slipped on a knit jacket and went into theother room to start a fire. "I shall freeze!" he murmured.
Fortunately his apartment was easy to heat. It consisted simply of ahall, a tiny sitting-room, a minute bedroom, and a large enoughbathroom. It was on the fifth floor, facing a sufficiently airy court.Rent, eight hundred francs.
It was furnished without luxury. The little sitting-room Durtal hadconverted into a study, hiding the walls behind black wood bookcasescrammed with books. In front of the window were a great table, a leatherarmchair, and a few straight chairs. He had removed the glass from themantelpiece, and in the panel, just over the mantelshelf, which wascovered with an old fabric, he had nailed an antique painting on wood,representing a hermit kneeling beside a cardinal's hat and purple cloak,beneath a hut of boughs. The colours of the landscape background hadfaded, the blues to grey, the whites to russet, the greens to black, andtime had darkened the shadows to a burnt-onion hue. Along the edges ofthe picture, almost against the black oak frame, a continuous narrativeunfolded in unintelligible episodes, intruding one upon the other,portraying Lilliputian figures, in houses of dwarfs. Here the Saint,whose name Durtal had sought in vain, crossed a curly, wooden sea in asailboat; there he marched through a village as big as a fingernail;then he disappeared into the shadows of the painting and was discoveredhigher up in a grotto in the Orient, surrounded by dromedaries andbales of merchandise; again he was lost from sight, and after anothergame of hide-and-seek he emerged, smaller than ever, quite alone, with astaff in his hand and a knapsack on his back, mounting toward a strange,unfinished cathedral.
It was a picture by an unknown painter, an old Dutchman, who had perhapsvisited certain of the Italian masters, for he had appropriated coloursand processes peculiar to them.
The bedroom contained a big bed, a chest of drawers waist-high, and someeasy chairs. On the mantel were an antique clock and coppercandlesticks. On the wall there was a fine photograph of a Botticelli inthe Berlin museum, representing a plump and penitent Virgin who was likea housewife in tears. She was surrounded by gentleman-, lady-, andlittle-boy-angels. The languishing young men held spliced wax tapersthat were like bits of rope; the coquettish hoydens had flowers stuck intheir long hair; and the mischievous cherub-pages looked rapturously atthe infant Jesus, who stood beside the Virgin and held out his hands inbenediction.
Then there was a print of Breughel, engraved by Cock, "The wise and thefoolish virgins": a little panel, cut in the middle by a corkscrew cloudwhich was flanked at each side by angels with their sleeves rolled upand their cheeks puffed out, sounding the trumpet, while in the middleof the cloud another angel, bizarre and sacerdotal, with his navelindicated beneath his languorously flowing robe, unrolled a banderole onwhich was written the verse of the Gospel, "_Ecce sponsus venit, exiteobviam ei_."
Beneath the cloud, at one side, sat the wise virgins, good Flemings,with their lighted lamps, and sang canticles as they turned the spinningwheel. At the other side were the foolish virgins with their emptylamps. Four joyous gossips were holding hands and dancing in a ring onthe greensward, while the fifth played the bagpipe and beat time withher foot. Above the cloud the five wise virgins, slender and etherealnow, naked and charming, brandished flaming tapers and mounted toward aGothic church where Christ stood to welcome them; while on the otherside the foolish virgins, imperfectly draped, beat vainly on a closeddoor with their dead torches.
The blessed naivete of the Primitives, the homely touches in the scenesof earth and of heaven! Durtal loved this old engraving. He saw in it aunion of the art of an Ostade purified and that of a Thierry Bouts.
Waiting for his grate, in which the charcoal was crackling and peelingand running like frying grease, to become red, he sat down in front ofhis desk and ran over his notes.
"Let's see," he said to himself, rolling a cigarette, "we had come tothe time when that excellent Gilles de Rais begins the quest of the'great work.' It is easy to figure what knowledge he possessed about themethod of transmuting metals into gold.
"Alchemy was already highly developed a century before he was born. Thewritings of Albertus Magnus, Arnaud de Villeneuve, an
"For they were written in an impossible jargon of allegories, twistedand obscure metaphors, incoherent symbols, ambiguous parables, enigmas,and ciphers. And here is an example." He took from one of the shelves ofthe library a manuscript which was none other than the Asch-Mezareph,the book of the Jew Abraham and of Nicolas Flamel, restored, translated,and annotated by Eliphas Levi. This manuscript had been lent him by DesHermies, who had discovered it one day among some old papers.
"In this is what claims to be the recipe for the philosopher's stone,for the grand quintessential and tinctural essence. The figures are notprecisely clear," he said to himself, as he ran his eye over the pendrawings, retouched in colour, representing, under the title of "_Thechemical coitus_" various bottles and flasks each containing a liquidand imprisoning an allegorical creature. A green lion, with a crescentmoon over him, hung head downward. Doves were trying to fly out throughthe neck of the bottle or to peck a way through the bottom. The liquidwas black and undulated with waves of carmine and gold, or white andgranulated with dots of ink, which sometimes took the shape of a frog ora star. Sometimes the liquid was milky and troubled, sometimes flamesrose from it as if there were a film of alcohol over the surface.
Eliphas Levi explained the symbolism of these bottled volatiles as fullyas he cared to, but abstained from giving the famous recipe for thegrand magisterium. He was keeping up the pleasantry of his other books,in which, beginning with an air of solemnity, he affirmed his intentionof unveiling the old arcana, and, when the time came to fulfil hispromise, begged the question, alleging the excuse that he would perishif he betrayed such burning secrets. The same excuse, which had doneduty through the ages, served in masking the perfect ignorance of thecheap occultists of the present day.
"As a matter of fact, the 'great work' is simple," said Durtal tohimself, folding up the manuscript of Nicolas Flamel. "The hermeticphilosophers discovered--and modern science, after long evading theissue, no longer denies--that the metals are compounds, and that theircomponents are identical. They vary from each other according to thedifferent proportions of their elements. With the aid of an agent whichwill displace these proportions one may transmute mercury, for example,into silver, and lead into gold.
"And this agent is the philosopher's stone: mercury--not the vulgarmercury, which to the alchemists was but an aborted metallic sperm--butthe philosophers' mercury, called also the green lion, the serpent, themilk of the Virgin, the pontic water.
"Only the recipe for this mercury, or stone of the sages, has ever beenrevealed--and it is this that the philosophers of the Middle Ages, theRenaissance, all centuries, including our own, have sought sofrantically.
"And in what has it not been sought?" said Durtal, thumbing his notes."In arsenic, in ordinary mercury, tin, salts of vitriol, saltpetre andnitre; in the juices of spurge, poppy, and purslane; in the bellies ofstarved toads; in human urine, in the menstrual fluid and the milk ofwomen."
Now Gilles de Rais must have been completely baffled. Alone atTiffauges, without the aid of initiates, he was incapable of makingfruitful experiments. At that time Paris was the centre of the hermeticscience in France. The alchemists gathered under the vaults of NotreDame and studied the hieroglyphics which Nicolas Flamel, before he died,had written on the walls of the charnal Des Innocents and on the portalof Saint Jacques de la Boucherie, describing cabalistically thepreparation of the famous stone.
The Marshal could not go to Paris because the English soldiers barredthe roads. There was only one thing to do. He wrote to the mostcelebrated of the southern transmuters, and had them brought toTiffauges at great expense.
"From documents which we posses we can see his supervising theconstruction of the athanor, or alchemists' furnace, buying pelicans,crucibles, and retorts. He turned one of the wings of his chateau into alaboratory and shut himself up in it with Antonio di Palermo, FrancoisLombard, and 'Jean Petit, goldsmith of Paris,' all of whom busiedthemselves night and day with the concoction of the 'great work.'"
They were completely unsuccessful. At the end of their resources, thesehermetists disappeared, and there ensued at Tiffauges an incrediblecoming-and-going of adepts and their helpers. They arrived from allparts of Brittany, Poitou, and Maine, alone or escorted by promoters andsorcerers. Gilles de Sille and Roger de Bricqueville, cousins andfriends of the Marshal, scurried about the country, beating up the gameand driving it in to Gilles de Rais, while a priest of his chapel,Eustache Blanchet, went to Italy where workers in metals were legion.
While waiting, Gilles de Rais, not to be discouraged, continued hisexperiments, all of which missed fire. He finally came to believe thatthe magicians were right after all, and that no discovery was possiblewithout the aid of Satan.
And one night, with a sorcerer newly arrived from Poitiers, Jean de laRiviere, he betakes himself to a forest in the vicinity of the chateaude Tiffauges. With his servitors Henriet and Poitou, he remains on theverge of the wood into which the sorcerer penetrates. The night is heavyand there is no moon. Gilles becomes nervous, scrutinizing the shadows,listening to the muted sounds of the nocturnal landscape; hiscompanions, terrified, huddle close together, trembling and whisperingat the slightest stirring of the air. Suddenly a cry of anguish israised. They hesitate, then they advance, groping in the darkness. In asudden flare of light they perceive de la Riviere trembling and deathlypale, clutching the handle of his lantern convulsively. In a low voicehe recounts how the Devil has risen in the form of a leopard and rushedpast without looking at the evocator, without saying a word.
The next day the sorcerer vanished, but another arrived. This was abungler named Du Mesnil. He required Gilles to sign with blood a deedbinding him to give the Devil all the Devil asked of him "except hislife and soul," but, although to aid the conjurements Gilles consentedto have the Office of the Damned sung in his chapel on All Saints' Day,Satan did not appear.
The Marshal was beginning to doubt the powers of his magicians, whenthe outcome of a new endeavor convinced him that frequently the Devildoes appear.
An evocator whose name has been lost held a seance with Gilles and deSille in a chamber at Tiffauges.
On the ground he traces a great circle and commands his two companionsto step inside it. Sille refuses. Gripped by a terror which he cannotexplain, he begins to tremble all over. He goes to the window, opens it,and stands ready for flight, murmuring exorcisms under his breath.Gilles, bolder, stands in the middle of the circle, but at the firstconjurgations he too trembles and tries to make the sign of the cross.The sorcerer orders him not to budge. At one moment he feels somethingseize him by the neck. Panic-stricken, he vacillates, supplicating OurLady to save him. The evocator, furious, throws him out of the circle.Gilles precipitates himself through the door, de Sille jumps out of thewindow, they meet below and stand aghast. Howls are heard in the chamberwhere the magician is operating. There is "a sound as of sword strokesraining on a wooden billet," then groans, cries of distress, the appealsof a man being assassinated.
They stand rooted to the spot. When the clamour ceases they venture toopen the door and find the sorcerer lying; in pools of blood, hisforehead caved in, his body horribly mangled.
They carry him out. Gilles, smitten with remorse, gives the man his ownbed, bandages him, and has him confessed. For several days the sorcererhovers between life and death but finally recovers and flees from thecastle.
Gilles was despairing of obtaining from the Devil the recipe for thesovereign magist
This man struck awe into Gilles. Barely twenty-three years old, he wasone of the wittiest, the most erudite, and the most polished men of thetime. What had he done before he came to install himself at Tiffauges,there to begin, with Gilles, the most frightful series of sins againstthe Holy Ghost that has ever been known? His testimony in the criminaltrial of Gilles does not furnish us any very detailed information on hisown score. He was born in the diocese of Lucca, at Pistoia, and had beenordained a priest by the Bishop of Arezzo. Some time after his entranceinto the priesthood, he had become the pupil of a thaumaturge ofFlorence, Jean de Fontenelle, and had signed a pact with a demon namedBarron. From that moment onward, this insinuating and persuasive,learned and charming abbe, must have given himself over to the mostabominable of sacrileges and the most murderous practices of blackmagic.
At any rate Gilles came completely under the influence of this man. Theextinguished furnaces were relighted, and that Stone of the Sages, whichPrelati had seen, flexible, frail, red and smelling of calcinated marinesalt, they sought together furiously, invoking Hell.
Their incantations were all in vain. Gilles, disconsolate, redoubledthem, but they finally produced a dreadful result and Prelati narrowlyescaped with his life.
One afternoon Eustache Blanchet, in a gallery of the chateau, perceivesthe Marshal weeping bitterly. Plaints of supplication are heard throughthe door of a chamber in which Prelati has been evoking the Devil.
"The Demon is in there beating my poor Francis. I implore you, go in!"cries Gilles, but Blanchet, frightened, refuses. Then Gilles makes uphis mind, in spite of his fear. He is advancing to force the door, whenit opens and Prelati staggers out and falls, bleeding, into his arms.Prelati is able, with the support of his friends, to gain the chamber ofthe Marshal, where he is put to bed, but he has sustained so merciless athrashing that he goes into delirium and his fever keeps mounting.Gilles, in despair, stays beside him, cares for him, has him confessed,and weeps for joy when Prelati is out of danger.
"The fate of the unknown sorcerer and of Prelati, both gettingdangerously wounded in an empty room, under identical circumstances--Itell you, it's a remarkable coincidence," said Durtal to himself.
"And the documents which relate these facts are authentic. They are,indeed, excerpts from the procedure in Gilles's trial. The confessionsof the accused and the depositions of the witnesses agree, and it isimpossible to think that Gilles and Prelati lied, for in confessingthese Satanic evocations they condemned themselves, by their own words,to be burned alive.
"If in addition they had declared that the Evil One had appeared tothem, that they had been visited by succubi; if they had affirmed thatthey had heard voices, smelled odours, even touched a body; we mightconclude that they had had hallucinations similar to those of certainBicetre subjects, but as it was there could have been no misfunctioningof the senses, no morbid visions, because the wounds, the marks of theblows, the material fact, visible and tangible, are present fortestimony.
"Imagine how thoroughly convinced of the reality of the Devil a mysticlike Gilles de Rais must have been after witnessing such scenes!
"In spite of his discomfitures, he could not doubt--and Prelati,half-killed, must have doubted even less--that if Satan pleased, theyshould finally find this powder which would load them with riches andeven render them almost immortal--for at that epoch the philosopher'sstone passed not only for an agent in the transmutation of base metals,such as tin, lead, copper, into noble metals like silver and gold, butalso for a panacea curing all ailments and prolonging life, withoutinfirmities, beyond the limits formerly assigned to the patriarchs.
"Singular science," ruminated Durtal, raising the fender of hisfireplace and warming his feet, "in spite of the railleries of thistime, which, in the matter of discoveries but exhumes lost things, thehermetic philosophy was not wholly vain.
"The master of contemporary science, Dumas, recognizes, under the nameof isomery, the theories of the alchemists, and Berthelot declares, 'Noone can affirm _a priori_ that the fabrication of bodies reputed to besimple is impossible.' Then there have been verified and certifiedachievements. Besides Nicolas Flamel, who really seems to have succeededin the 'great work,' the chemist Van Helmont, in the eighteenth century,received from an unknown man a quarter of a grain of philosopher's stoneand with it transformed eight ounces of mercury into gold.
"At the same epoch, Helvetius, who combated the dogma of the spagyrics,received from another unknown a powder of projection with which heconverted an ingot of lead into gold. Helvetius was not precisely acharlatan, neither was Spinoza, who verified the experiment, a creduloussimpleton.
"And what is to be thought of that mysterious man Alexander Sethon who,under the name of the Cosmopolite, went all over Europe, operatingbefore princes, in public, transforming all metals into gold? Thisalchemist, who seems to have had a sincere disdain for riches, as henever kept the gold which he created, but lived in poverty and prayer,was imprisoned by Christian II, Elector of Saxony, and endured martyrdomlike a saint. He suffered himself to be beaten with rods and piercedwith pointed stakes, and he refused to give up a secret which heclaimed, like Nicolas Flamel, to have received from God.
"And to think that these researches are being carried on at the presenttime! Only, most of the hermetics now deny medical and divine virtues tothe famous stone. They think simply that the grand magisterium is aferment, which, thrown into metals in fusion, produces a moleculartransformation similar to that which organic matter undergoes whenfermented with the aid of a leaven.
"Des Hermies, who is well acquainted with the underworld of science,maintains that more than forty alchemic furnaces are now alight inFrance, and that in Hanover and Bavaria the adepts are more numerousyet.
"Have they rediscovered the incomparable secret of antiquity? In spiteof certain affirmations, it is hardly probable. Nobody need manufactureartificially a metal whose origins are so unaccountable that a depositis likely to be found anywhere. For instance, in a law suit which tookplace at Paris in the month of November, 1886, between M. Popp,constructor of pneumatic city clocks, and financiers who had beenbacking him, certain engineers and chemists of the School of Minesdeclared that gold could be extracted from common silex, so that thevery walls sheltering us might be placers, and the mansards might beloaded with nuggets!
"At any rate," he continued, smiling, "these sciences are notpropitious."
He was thinking of an old man who had installed an alchemic laboratoryon the fifth floor of a house in the rue Saint Jacques. This man, namedAuguste Redoutez, went every afternoon to the Bibliotheque Nationale andpored over the works of Nicolas Flamel. Morning and evening he pursuedthe quest of the "great work" in front of his furnace.
The 16th of March the year before, he came out of the Bibliotheque witha man who had been sitting at the same table with him, and as theywalked along together Redoutez declared that he was finally inpossession of the famous secret. Arriving in his laboratory, he threwpieces of iron into a retort, made a projection, and obtained crystalsthe colour of blood. The other examined the salts and made a flippantremark. The alchemist, furious, threw himself upon him, struck him witha hammer, and had to be overpowered and carried in a strait-jacket toSaint Anne, pending investigation.
"In the sixteenth century, in Luxemburg, initiates were roasted in ironcages. The following century, in Germany, they were clothed in rags andhanged on gilded gibbets. Now that they are tolerated and left in peacethey go mad. Decidedly, fate is against them," Durtal concluded.
He rose and went to answer a ring at the door. He came back with aletter which the concierge had brought. He opened it.
"Why, what is this?" he exclaimed. His astonishment grew as he read:
"Monsieur,
"I am neither an adventuress nor a seeker of adventures, nor am I a society woman
"She has taken her time," murmured Durtal, "it appeared a year ago."
"melancholy as an imprisoned soul vainly beating its wings against the bars of its cage."
"Oh, hell! What a compliment. Anyway, it rings false, like all of them."
"And now, Monsieur, though I am convinced that it is always folly and madness to try to realize a desire, will you permit that a sister in lassitude meet you some evening in a place which you shall designate, after which we shall return, each of us, into our own interior, the interior of persons destined to fall because they are out of line with their 'fellows'? Adieu, Monsieur, be assured that I consider you a somebody in a century of nobodies.
"Not knowing whether this note will elicit a reply, I abstain from making myself known. This evening a maid will call upon your concierge and ask him if there is a letter for Mme. Maubel."
"Hmm!" said Durtal, folding up the letter. "I know her. She must be oneof these withered dames who are always trying to cash outlawedkiss-tickets and soul-warrants in the lottery of love. Forty-five yearsold at least. Her _clientele_ is composed of boys, who are alwayssatisfied if they don't have to pay, and men of letters, who are yetmore easily satisfied--for the ugliness of authors' mistresses isproverbial. Unless this is simply a practical joke. But who would beplaying one on me--I don't know anybody--and why?"
In any case, he would simply not reply.
But in spite of himself he reopened the letter.
"Well now, what do I risk? If this woman wants to sell me an over-ripeheart, there is nothing forcing me to purchase it. I don't commit myselfto anything by going to an assignation. But where shall I meet her?Here? No! Once she gets into my apartment complications arise, for it ismuch more difficult to throw a woman out of your house than simply towalk off and leave her at a street corner. Suppose I designated thecorner of the rue de Sevres and the rue de la Chaise, under the wall ofthe Abbaye-au-Bois. It is solitary, and then, too, it is only a minute'swalk from here. Or no, I will begin vaguely, naming no meeting-place atall. I shall solve that problem later, when I get her reply."
He wrote a letter in which he spoke of his own spiritual lassitude anddeclared that no good could come of an interview, for he no longersought happiness on earth.
"I will add that I am in poor health. That is always a good one, and itexcuses a man from 'being a man' if necessary," he said to himself,rolling a cigarette.
"Well, that's done, and she won't get much encouragement out of it. Oh,wait. I omitted something. To keep from giving her a hold on me I shalldo well to let her know that a serious and sustained liaison with me isimpossible 'for family reasons.' And that's enough for one time."
He folded the letter and scrawled the address.
Then he held the sealed envelope in his hand and reflected.
"Of course I am a fool to answer her. Who knows what situations a thinglike this is going to lead to? I am well aware that whoever she be, awoman is an incubator of sorrow and annoyance. If she is good she isprobably stupid, or perhaps she is an invalid, or perhaps she is sodisastrously fecund that she gets pregnant if you look at her. If she isbad, one may expect to be dragged through every disgusting kind ofdegradation. Oh, whatever you do, you're in for it."
He regurgitated the memories of his youthful amours. Deception.Disenchantment. How pitilessly base a woman is while she is young!
" ... To be thinking of things like that now at my age! As if I had anyneed of a woman now!"
But in spite of all, his pseudonymous correspondent interested him.
"Who knows? Perhaps she is good-looking, or at least not veryill-looking. It doesn't cost me anything to find out."
He re-read her letter. No misspelling. The handwriting not commercial.Her ideas about his book were mediocre enough, but who would expect herto be a critic? "Discreet scent of heliotrope," he added, sniffing theenvelope.
"Oh, well, let's have our little fling."
And as he went out to get some breakfast he left his reply with theconcierge.