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.
The Trou-d’Enfer is not a better place to be during the night, Most of the time, plaintive cries, the sounds of stunning blows and raucous voices proffering oaths rise up relentlessly. Then, when a patrol appears, attracted by the tumult, everything disappears; the door slam shut; there is now only one single noise amid that great deceptive calm: the slow and measured tread of the guardsmen. Scarcely have those footsteps faded into the distance like an indistinct murmur, however, than confusion and disorders spring forth noisily from all directions, and insomnia begins again for peaceful folk, if there are any in such a place.
Isn’t it the truth? The Trou-d’Enfer, as I have depicted it, is a hideous quarter.
Well, seven hundred years ago, it was even worse.
There were no streets to be seen there, no houses at all. It was a vast marsh of evil renown, in the middle of which were vast ruins. No Christian ever dared set foot there, because, as its name clearly indicates, the Trou-d’Enfer was haunted by the Evil Spirit, and frightful marvels were recounted in that regard, which probably did not measure up to the verity. Lend me your ears, pay attention, and judge whether I’m telling the truth.
The ruins that lay in the heart of the Trou-d’Enfer were those of a fortified château, inhabited a long time ago by a Seigneur named Truandre, whose mother had sold him in his cradle to the Demon and his power.
The chronicler relates that the miscreant in question worshiped the Father of Evil, and committed a thousand lubricious and impious horrors to please his god. Young women of good lineage were abducted from their families and kept captive in horrible warrens; the throats of infants were cut in order to prepare diabolical unguents from their body-fat, and pilgrims who had the misfortune to ask for shelter at the château found themselves forced to deny the holy name of God or die of starvation in dungeons more frightful than one can describe.
But it was priests in particular, and the bishop most of all, that Truandre hated. He had all the servants of God who were not extremely careful apprehended, and when they refused to tell him where he treasures of the church were hidden and did not want to surrender the rents of their abbeys to him, he whipped them, personally, until they fell dead beneath his blows, or laid them out on hot coals and burned them slowly thereupon.
Heaven finally took pity on the misfortunes of Le Cambrésis,11 and during a violent storm, Truandre was struck by lightning, along with the accomplices of his crimes and all his men-at-arms. Only a few servants were spared.
Those servants went to find the bishop, and offered him large sums of money to bury their dead lord, as befitted a nobleman of high lineage, in holy ground—but the bishop did not even want to listen to them, and ordered that the corpse should be thrown into the moat of Truandre’s château, next to an enormous gibbet. In addition, he declared excommunicate and expelled from the holy church anyone who touched the body other than to spit in its face and damage it.
There was no need for that excommunication, for the body had no sooner been thrown where the bishop had ordered than the earth all around began to catch fire and to emit continuous jets of flame; and, horrible as the rains were that fell during the next four years, they were incapable of extinguishing them. A thousand petty demons were working incessantly, throwing oil and pitch to aliment the fire of that inferno, the approach to which was guarded by a huge dragon.
The clamors of Truandre and the laments of his servants were heard night and day; their souls were seen, trying to flee, and demons armed with pitchforks pitilessly hurling them back into the midst of the flames. Songs such as human mouths could never have produced, such as the human mind could not conceive, and bursts of laughter suggestive of the ripping of thunder mingled with the cries of the damned; often, too, the demons seized them with their burning hands and forced them to join in with their dances and whirl with them in mid-air, from which they suddenly dropped them to the ground.
The worthy bishop, touched with compassion by the sufferings of Truandre’s soul, persuaded a vassal of the dead man to do penitence for him, by relieving the necessities of the poor and giving all the wealth that he had inherited from his master to the church. That pious vassal had no sooner accomplished the bishop’s good advice than the marsh, which had vomited fire for four years and caused to appear everything that Hell, demons and reproofs had of the most hideous, resumed its somber verdure and its still, stagnant waters.
No one, however, had the courage to go and live in a château in which the angels of darkness had held their sabbats, and it remained deserted for a long time.
Nevertheless, little by little, poor people who had no hearth or home became bold enough to take a few stones from the manor house to build houses, and, as no harm came to them, others did more, and built their houses near to the châtel, even in the midst of the ruins, although there was always a kind of reprobation attached to the place.
Such is the origin of the quarter known nowadays as the Trou-d’Enfer, which continues to justify its name by its sinister aspect.