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How I Gave Myself to the Devil
A Fantastic Tale
Don’t be upset, you good-natured and pious souls, at the incendiary title of this little story. I swear to you that I don’t think I’m damned. Rather, it’s only a case of conscience here, and the least “I absolve you” from your village priest would put it to rights nicely. But, after all, I’ve been getting old faster and faster, because the world doesn’t amuse me anymore, and it doesn’t bother me to make a clean breast of the last of my scruples.
So I confess that I have had two great and silly passions in my life, and that they entirely absorbed it.
The first of these two great and silly passions that I’ve had in my life was the wish to find myself the hero of a fantastic story. I wanted to wear the Cap of Fortunatus, or the Ogre’s boots, or to perch foolishly on the Golden Branch, next to the Bluebird. You will tell me that this taste is inexcusable in an intelligent being who’s a good scholar. But that’s what I craved.
The second of these two great and silly passions that I’ve had in my life was the ambition to write, before I died, a nice fantastic story, something very extravagant and very innocent, in the style of Mlle. De Lubert or Mme. d’Aulnoy—M. Perrault’s level was probably too high for me. I wanted to amuse, for some generations, at least, the small posterity of children at play, with roses in their cheeks, and bright eyes, who would remember joyfully my creation during the tedious hours of work, and even during the sweet hours when there’s no work to do!
As for the other kind of posterity that’s known—Academicians who are pale, hollow-cheeked, insignificant, and stupid, the kind who’ll show you into the next room and leave you hanging there, keeping you at arm’s length, ill-favored fellows crowned with laurels done in plaster, I assure you on my honor that I’ve never worried about them.
Anyway, I have to admit that these two frenzies singularly cut me off from my real life and my sad career as a teller of foolish tales. It had to be that way. It wasn’t in me to recite an obvious fact, or tell about things that had happened coram populo, senatu et patribus [in the heart of the people, the senate, and the nation], the kind of story that’s so sincere you’d let the devil take you before you’d complain, “That’s fantasy!” I could talk about three charming women I’ve loved, in good faith and all honor, but I saw them die when they were fifteen years old.—Three women dead at fifteen! But that’s a fable that could put you to sleep on your feet! It’s fantastic!—Hold on, dear reader, please. I’ve been in love seven hundred times in my life, so maybe that rate of mortality may seem a little less hyperbolical. Besides, I told you—intentionally and exclusively—about my departed lovers because telling about the other kind would have been in bad taste when I was young, and I don’t think there’s been that much change in good manners since. There’s a modesty required in these mysteries that you can’t escape from except on the wings of being in mourning or a widower. Then and only then the survivor’s grief is allowed to overflow, respectfully, and delicately, with the feelings hidden for so long! Well, but I had another reason, and it was fantastic, too, by God, fantastic as ever was!
Fantastic, if you like—fantastic, yes, it had to be. Ah me, I couldn’t ask for anything better. I’d have been only too glad to find something fantastic in my memories! Oh, what wouldn’t I give for a little something fantastic, all the more now when I know what’s real in this world, when experience has forced me to see it and absorb it in every pore? Something fantastic, dear God! Why, I would have given ten years of my life, and thought it a great bargain, if I could have met a sylph, or a fairy, or a sorcerer, or a somnambulist who knew what she was saying, or an ideologue who understood what he was saying. Or a meeting with a gnome with hair of flame, or a ghost returned from the land of mist, or a good-sized sprite, or a little devil, as small in body and poor in spirit as ever dashed sleet down on the parsley-crop in the Fable of Pope-Figtree Island. But that’s not possible, dear reader! If there had been anything fantastic going on for three thousand leagues around, it would have happened to me—but there wasn’t any.
And I don’t know what would have become of my poetic faith in the world of the marvelous, if I hadn’t given way one day to the strange idea that I’m trying to tell you about—of giving myself to the devil. That’s admitting frankly to a rather horrifying resolution, but it simplifies the question admirably.
At the time I’m describing, I was a good deal annoyed with myself for not being able to pass for being a bad lot. So I tried to make myself a bad lot, and I granted myself a lot of license, to the great regret of my excellent father, who paid my teachers a great deal to get me to go in for more honorable sorts of license. But I should mention first of all, so as to caution the reader against the inevitable disgust that goes with the fame of being a rake like Lovelace, or M. le chevalier de Faublas—oh! I wasn’t anything like that! I was too careful for that, honestly. You won’t find anywhere in my story three pages that would make you envious of the good luck your valet has, that is, if you have a valet, but I wouldn’t wish that on you, for it’s a great burden. I was a bad lot without prejudice to morality or good feeling, a bad lot who was afraid of everything that might lose people’s respect or shock good manners. I was like the friendly sort of conqueror who invades only the countries where invasions would be welcome. Even so, people knew I was a bad lot, because I was a bad lot who was out in the open about it, with a “libertine” label posted on me. I was a known seducer of anyone who wanted to be seduced, and I considered that an honor. As for this enormous, almost complete failure, I dare to say that no one had firmer principles when it came to morals, and I held to them as strictly as any Orthodox Jew. That was an unbelievable combination, considering my wide range of naughtiness. They didn’t have a name for that sort of thing in my day. Nowadays it might be called eclectic debauchery, a doctrinaire libertinage, but finding a label for it isn’t worth the trouble, because it doesn’t occur anymore. The age has become too bad for it.
To make you understand my philosophy—for it was a philosophy, if you please—an example has to be put next to the definition. The idea of distressing even for a moment an innocent heart denied me by society, the idea of weakening a bond formed by society, even the least bit, by criminal effort, would have been enough to make me undergo an all-too-real anticipation of the tortures of Hell. I was saved from Rousseau’s town of Clarens by the first meaningful smile from any Julie d’Étanges. I was scared that her sweet kisses would bring bitterness. I would have been like Joseph and left my mantle in the hands of Potiphar’s pretty wife, even if it had been the mantle of Elijah, that would turn you into a prophet. But nothing would stop me from tasting a fruit that had lost its bloom and fallen from the branch that ripened it, without having been gathered up by the disdainful gardener’s hand. “By God,” I used to say, “it’d be very nice, and I could enjoy it without harming anyone.” Even if the owner had spotted some of his property there, as things were, I’d be able to reply to his reproaches, “Begging your pardon, Master, but I wasn’t stealing, it was just gleaning.”
And that firm belief would have given me that invaluable peace of mind which is virtue’s first reward.
So that’s how I was a bad lot. I was what you could have called the prince of bad lots, as if I’d been the very prototype of the species.
What I’ve said about myself is so flattering that I’m almost ashamed to add anything more. All the same, I owe it to myself, as the phrase is, to make my account as exact as possible, as it’s about the only thing I’ve ever written in the genre of the marvelous—a single marvelous thing, that’s a different sort of affair, and it depends on people’s taste.
The oddest result of my system was that I had pupils among good and worthy folk of my own age, the ones born with a singular aptitude for perfectibility. Luckily, I was there to turn them away from taking to crime when they saw that vice was so easy, while I waited for my lessons to bear the sweetest fruits and make total converts out of them. Twenty or so years later, they were models of men. Time had not spoiled them, and maybe it was because of me that they were free of remorse—a sweet and precious boon for them in old age.
I don’t know just how it happened, but all the women in good society loathed us.
The first of my acolytes was Amandus. He was my lieutenant, my twin Menaechmus, my alter ego in every project I had at heart—where my heart wasn’t in it. My affairs grew in number by a single act of the will. All it took was involving a little courteous condescension, and it would have reduced even a pasha to war-weariness inside a week, and with no assistance. Amandus was really a fine fellow all around. He was handsome enough to paint in a portrait, he could talk you deaf, he was enough to overwhelm anyone, he played all games to perfection, and never played without losing. He was a very St. George with a sword, and always came out of a duel with his arm in a sling. He was the heir to a pretty good fortune, but he spent it all in six months. Now, that shows a brave spirit, and he kept on running up still more debt, which shows even more bravery. There was only one thing people had to say when he went through a salon—that Amandus was charming.
Amandus never had common sense.
Amandus had had an excellent education, but it had been neglected in one area that commonplace fellows thought important. Well, even the sun has spots. Whether it was because he couldn’t, or because he was busy with other things, Amandus had never learned to write. I’m inclined to think that it was because he never saw any necessity for it, a disdain that concealed a very philosophical idea. It wasn’t that Amandus couldn’t have written if he’d wanted to, but he thought it was better worth his while not to write at all. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do any handwriting. He could manage as much of that as he needed. He did it so well that no one could find any fault—although as for finding him at it twice, well, I wouldn’t go that far. If I told you that his handwriting was just like M. Marle’s, who was elected to the Academy the following year, no doubt you might tell me that it doesn’t take much to write like an Academician, especially if you’re a member of the Academy yourself. That’s something that might happen to anybody. But it wasn’t the Academy’s handwriting, it was Amandus’s own handwriting, a miraculous handwriting! Amandus was of the opinion, unlike M. Marle, that genius in writing consisted in hiding the plain word under all the fancy figures of speech he’d spotted scattered through his syllabary. He used all the articles, all the pronouns, all the particles, all the useless little letters that get added to the third-person-plurals of verbs. He used every accent-mark on silent or unstressed vowels, every diaeresis on a diphthong to show it should be two syllables, every apostrophe in the middle of a word, every fine curlicued capital letter, and as for commas—my God! commas everywhere!—you’ve never seen so many commas!
Even when it came to the kind of low-bred love I’ve been talking about, it made no difference. Most of our heroines didn’t know how to read, but if they had known how to read, they wouldn’t have been much the wiser! And sometimes we ran into problems, when there were chances for gallantries with the wellborn. On those occasions, I became immensely useful, with my plain handwriting, which I’d never gone in for fancying up with all those magnificent curlicues. I’m the only one of Amandus’s friends who had stayed faithful to him since the time when he was ruined, and I devoted myself bravely to the interpretation of those hieroglyphics of his. They were of such an impenetrable obscurity as to make even the learned spirit of Champollion, who read the Rosetta stone, tremble before them. I’d just given up studying Hebrew, and I set myself to the interpretation of Amandus, and I succeeded in reading it pretty fluently by the end of three or four months. Eventually, I went so far as to put my own ideas in, instead, where a tricky or difficult passage defeated my erudition or wore my patience out. Translators often do just the same when they don’t understand their author. Amandus, deprived of his grammatical luxuriance, then would copy out my text word for word and letter for letter, like Homer in the Anthology taking dictation from Apollo. The comparison may be a little presumptuous, but it’s not too far out of proportion. This time, I must say, was not wasted in terms of my studies, for I learned how to turn out a pretty good love-letter, and until then I’d stubbornly resisted writing any. These writings are still extant.
We didn’t go into what you might call bad society, but the nature of our activities was such that we rarely got into what you could call good society, either. We were nomads traveling through life. Every night we put up our adventuresome tents in between two domains that we took part in equally. We were drawn to the one by the bonds of education and habit, but at every moment we felt drawn to the other by the convenient pleasures there and conquests that wouldn’t get us in trouble. The topography of these dual hemispheres may not be entirely familiar to you, but I have the advantage of being able to inform you that the contingent spot is occupied by the theater. To localize the place a little further, it’s up in the balcony at the premieres in the best provincial towns.
The curtain would hardly have finished going up, when a dozen or so black eyes or blue (I’m talking about ensemble scenes) would turn to search us out on our bench, welcoming us with delightful reproaches or seductive promises. A furtive glance spied us out from a beauty who gave a sigh in the wings before making her entrance, from behind the Harlequin-curtains that mask the sides. Or her glance shot out like lightning through the great gap where the curtain-frames didn’t quite meet, between two tufts of roses painted on the canvas. Then finally she made her entrance, displaying the riches of her throat like a nightingale’s, or any other throat you might like to put there instead. She entered to the appreciative murmurs of the audience who seemed to be applauding for us, for a good half of all the ovations seemed to be meant for us. It seems to me that we even had a share in the hisses, accommodating ourselves to whatever went on around us.
I even felt sure that of the pair of us I was the more involved in a rejection, because I was so impatient and volatile that I was swayed by any change. But we shared it all like brothers, Amandus and I, and we didn’t keep score. I remember, without having to look any further, that my bad luck had brought me one month a certain Dugazon, five feet seven inches high and correspondingly plump, in a well-cut costume covered with gold. It looked more like a Swiss drum-major’s uniform than like a shepherdess’s corset. When she played Babet (my God, what a Babet!) she might happen to run the sweet flashing of her eyes over me. Digging up a basket of ugly flowers with her big hands, she’d sing in a voice that was happily thinner than her formidable person,
It’s for you that I gather them,
and oh! believe me! I would have blessed any kindly dagger that came to stab me in the breast! But what can you do? That was one of the essential conditions of my good fortune, because it was one of the impregnable safeguards of my innocence. I forgot to mention that she was very ugly, and she had a horrid squint.
The rest of the world was seated in the boxes, as should be crystal-clear if you’ve been kind enough to follow my metaphor. As for the boxes, our morality kept us from looking at them, but it didn’t stop us from seeing them. And when you’ve seen something that’s good to see, you can’t help looking at it. What there was, there, in one of the boxes in that little theater, in that little town—and I’m not going to tell you just what town it was, except that you’re perfectly free to look for it in the west—well, as I was saying, in the third box on the right there was someone sitting. She had the kind of angel-figure that drives men to damnation and saints to dreaming. I don’t know how to paint, myself, but you could go ahead and do a marvelous painting, if you get hold of a palette. Make it someone 16 years old, about as tall as a reed, with white skin, but a lively expression. The blood came and went in her cheeks like the spirit of life, giving color to her, but never a blush. Her blonde hair curled down in clouds about her shoulders. My gaze ran over her, as my hand would have done. And then you must add to that a certain something celestially pure that can’t be described, with features that would have forced the sculptor of Venus to cut his throat with his chisel. Her eyes were as big and blue and enchanting as the sky, but bright as the sun. But you still have no idea of even the thousandth part of all the perfections of Marguerite.
Marguerite had lost her father and her mother when she was very young. The poor little thing was left with a fortune of twenty-four thousand francs in rents in the care of her maternal aunt, who was an annoying widow, only a little past 40 or so, so little that it’s hardly worth mentioning. No one could have accused her of being insensible to the sighs of a heart that was smitten. I’d found myself considerably—in fact, significantly—in love with her a year or two earlier (the aunt, I mean). It had cost me I don’t know how many mortal hours of planning, and anguish, and hope, but without any other result, because this passion had begun on the eve of the day that marked the start of my philosophical love-affairs. Since then I hadn’t thought about it once, not even in those ecstatic moments when the soul lulls itself back to sleep after a moment’s wakefulness. As I wasn’t being troubled about it, my memory, even though it is so exact as to the names of every little fly and butterfly, might have omitted even a mention of the aunt, if the aunt hadn’t had a niece. I scarcely need to say that the youth and innocence of that charming child (it’s the niece now that I’m talking about) threw an unbridgeable gap between her and me. Twenty-four thousand francs in rents—well, too bad! I had almost that much capital myself—in debts.
“You’re not following our rules,” Amandus said to me one day. “You’re staring at the boxes.”
“Yes, as children do, who died before they were baptized, staring up at the sky from Limbo,” I told him, “and without expecting any answering gaze from on high. Anyhow, I have my reasons, and I won’t hide them from you. Time marches on, pitilessly, while we wait thinking we can make an eternity out of some hours of folly. Even fine fellows like us, we’re running a great risk of growing as old as the Seven Sages of Greece. You always have in prospect a pleasant enough life that would flow along between the enjoyable activities of doing nothing much and the gallant exercise of hunting foxes in the thickets of the Foxwood. That’s assuming that your uncle, when he gets put out of commission by the rigors of life, cares to leave you at the time of his death, probably not far in the future, his ramshackle manor-house, his dovecote, and his brushwoods. As for me, I don’t have any uncle, much less a manor-house or a dove-cote or brushwoods or foxes to hope for. When my creditors divide my poor little belongings among them, I’ll be more than happy if I can find a public in a good enough mood to read my novels—and buy them, too! So I need to get myself inspired with something that will live forever in my memory, to dream about, and cherish, and nourish in my thought, some adorable figure—and when I find it, I’ll take it.”
“Oh, little Marguerite,” said Amandus. He put on his eyeglasses and shamelessly turned his gaze on the divine figure before which I’d lowered my eyes, in admiration and respect. “Yes, she’s really something, isn’t she! Thanks for having drawn my attention to her. Yes, as you say, there’s something there to exalt the imagination and yet soothe the heart. Sort of a Raphaelesque delicacy of line, don’t you think? Seeing her makes you feel purer—you feel you’re the better for thinking about her. That’s the ravishing privilege of innocence. What a strange sympathy there is between fine souls! Alas, my virtuous friend, what a pearl, what a diamond, to attract all the milliners—or every passer-by! Blind fortune has spoiled everything, but fortune never offers anything else. It has to be admitted that destiny is bitterly stupid, making that delightful darling go ride in a carriage, instead of showing her to us tonight between the two oil-lamps over the exit into the wings.”
I shook with indignation. The exit into the wings was the fourth on the left.
“Oh, well, then, start thinking about a plan,” said Amandus, leaning his head on my shoulder, and making it obvious that he was doing so. I was scandalized, because Marguerite could see us. “Thinking about Marguerite should help you make a plan, if you choose, for I need you to be coming up with ideas more than ever. Write novels, Maxime, write novels! As for me, if I’m not mistaken, my fate is heading for a happy ending. My uncle has always meant well by me, and I know he plans to settle his modest fortune on me on the day when I finally do something wise and get myself honorably married.”
“Get honorably married! You?” I cried. “Are you thinking about doing that, Amandus? Are you really planning to get married?”
“Why not?” he said, bursting out laughing. “Do you think I’m incapable of getting a serious idea and making a firm resolution?—My God, but Aglaea is looking her worst today, and her make-up is so awful it’d go well on a grinning elephant!—When you run out of money, Maxime, it’s time to call it quits and look for a reasonable way to try, a serious way, a really serious way. That’s my uncle’s advice, and wisdom says the same. Now, you—you don’t know what wisdom is, but someday it’ll come to you.—Oh, look, now she’s singing off-key!—So start thinking about turning out a nice clear declaration of love for me to use, something passionate and sincere, with a straightforward avowal of my weaknesses, my errors, anything you like—I don’t care. Edit it! Shape it—make it long if you can, or short if you dare! You’re my brain, you’re my heart. You know all the tenderness and touching sentiments that rest in my breast, beating fraternally against yours!—Take a look at that madwoman Laura, who hasn’t taken her eyes off me tonight. But it won’t do her any good to purse up her lips at me! I know she’s missing two teeth.”
“It’d be just as well,” I said, without paying attention to his digressions, “if I had some idea who the lucky girl is you’ve chosen, to get my composition to fit the fine points of your proposal. Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines, you know—there’s measure in everything, and limits you can’t go beyond. And, anyway, I can’t guess—”
“None of your limits and things, Maxime. As for guessing who she is—you’d need to know a lot more about the future than I do about where I’m going to fling myself head-first to save myself from the present. If you could guess, I’d beg you to tell me who I’m dreaming of, and who the object is of the first sensible sort of love that’s going to possess me. I’m not asking you to guess for me, devil take it! I’m asking you for a delicate, gracious letter for general distribution, beautifully phrased, like Télémaque, or The Princess of Clèves—something I can use to introduce myself no matter who it’s addressed to. A sort of epistolary pass-key, something drawn out of your imagination that I can drop on any square to place my bets in the lottery of marriage. It should talk about candor, virtue, beauty—don’t worry about the color of her hair, because that could get me into all kinds of trouble, if we get it wrong. I’ll copy it out, word for word. The mailman and my lucky star will take responsibility for my hopes. As for my worthy uncle, who wants me to take a wife, he won’t be able to blame me when I can show him that I’ve been turned down by fifty. Or with luck, maybe two or three will come answer me, or a dozen—I don’t know how many! And then you can choose the very next one after me, and maybe you’ll choose better than I do, with your lucky hand!—Oh, that traitor!—Aglaea should be singing now.”
“Me! Oh, go on!” I said sourly. “I don’t rule that Foxwood of yours!”
“What? Is that feeble hope of mine making you jealous? I’ll bet it against your horse, or against Aglaea, in the first raffle.”
“I sold my horse yesterday, and I’d give you Aglaea tonight, if you like. As for your letter, I’ll do it if I can think of one.”
The letter followed in good time, for, to my great surprise, and Amandus’s surprise, too, I’m sure, all it took was to go ahead and try. I couldn’t tell, though, how he was getting along with it, except when he pestered me about it, because he’d become discreet, and I’d never been curious. When we were with his grandparents, I was amazed to see that they weren’t putting any difficulties in his way anymore. I felt bowled over by the idea that he’d found a woman daring and determined enough to believe in Amandus’s unbelievable promises.
We still used to go to the theater, but rarely, because Amandus, just as he’d said he’d do, had started paying attention to maintaining a sort of dignity and respectability. I was unfortunately held back, as might be guessed, by another tie. My colossal shepherdess had not yet collapsed through the stage-floor, and no man had come along bold enough to drive me away, although it was good weather for the cavalry to pass by. I thought I might be at a disadvantage when a regiment of dragoons showed up, shining with their epaulettes, their powder, and their glory, and their horses’ hooves stamping just out the window. But I hoped in vain!
The hussars followed them, and these butterflies of pleasure and of war, sipping nectar everywhere, weren’t too proud to flutter by Aglaea and brush their wings against her. But it was no use for me to count on the proven courage of the cuirassiers. During this long ordeal, Aglaea maintained all the honors of an unclouded fidelity and asserted all her claims. She was an unassailable woman, with a constancy to die for. Out of all the vexations of love that I’ve known, her virtue was the one that most made me want to blow my brains out.
All I wanted was an excuse to go away from society forever, and it was the purest of my moral sentiments that gave me an excuse, just when I least expected it. I had already noticed that Marguerite was paying more attention to us than I would have liked. For some time, this preoccupation had taken on a character that made me uneasy, an expression of affectionate interest, a dreamy sensibility, a vague something or other I couldn’t pin down, a tenderness and idealism that made obvious the shame-faced look of a girl who was developing a secret preference. “Misfortune! Desolation!” I said to myself. “Has some unlucky star condemned you to love one of the two of us, you poor child? At any rate, I won’t be a party to its cruelty. Exam-time is coming, and I haven’t so much as opened a book to get ready for it. Well, I’m going to give up all those deceiving pastimes that people call pleasures, and stick to work! If I have to, I’ll read all ten volumes of Jacobus Cujacius in Annibal Fabroti’s edition, cum promptuariis [with the volumes of the commentaries]. And I’ll read them—horresco referens [I shudder to say it]—without even thinking about a woman, I swear by the shade of Justinian!” And with that, I left the room and went home to compose a final farewell to Aglaea. I hardly need to tell you that this resolve took a great burden off me.
There was probably something persuasive in what I told my father the next day about my new plan of life, because he made me a present, then and there, in recognition of my sacrifices, of his whole library and the pretty pavilion he’d built to keep it in. Those were the two things he loved best, apart from myself. I spent the day arranging all the books that could help me in my studies or do me good in my voluntary exile. And I noticed, along with the satisfaction that these pleasant tasks heaped on me, that this happiness had more than one aspect. What am I saying!—the pure happiness of a soul at peace with itself outweighs all our imaginary enjoyments, because it’s permanent, as well as worthwhile. I was happy until evening—I’d never done so well.
But by evening I’d started yawning. I checked my watch twenty times in ten minutes. The first strokes of the violin in the orchestra haunted me. The noise, almost a discord, of boxes getting opened and then closed sounded in my ears. My nose was vainly—alas!—trying to detect in air that was too pure for it the heavy aroma of the vapors that the burning oil-lamps give out. I wanted Marguerite’s delightful glances and looked everywhere in my attic-rooms, in every panel on the walls. I looked in every bookshelf of my library, and all I saw was Jacobus Cujacius in Annibal Fabroti’s edition.
“I would very much like to know,” I cried at last, “if she was looking at him—or at me—and seeing as he borrowed a post-chaise this morning, he must have gone on a journey somewhere. I’ll never have a better opportunity to clear up my doubts, and it can’t help but strengthen me in the sensible plans I’ve laid out, no matter what I find out by the experiment. I can work tomorrow!”
This time I wasn’t fooling myself. I can tell you with all the assurance that can inspire a fool who’s the most hopeless when it comes to getting any good out of love—her glances were for me, for me alone! You might point out to me that I was there by myself. And maybe I was like the marvelous fossil with light-loving pores that gleams with some pale atoms of daylight long after sunset, so that perhaps for Marguerite I was a Bologna-stone reflecting Amandus. This idea didn’t cross my mind. And, anyhow, if I knew anything about it—and what man doesn’t think he knows something about it—in that intelligent, meaningful look on that heavenly face, there was a thought that couldn’t have been about anything but me, a thought that was waiting for nothing but to exchange a thought with me. I tried, I trembled to understand, summoned up heroic courage, and I escaped from death in my heart, on the strength of believing myself happy.
“No, no, Marguerite!” I thought, “I won’t violate the sanctuary of your innocent soul to light a passion there or keep one there alit that would destroy us both! No, I won’t transplant into the sterile desert of my life a stem so fresh and delicate, with its sweet-smelling flowers. But even so, who is there but me who could love you as you deserve to be loved! I would have been the altar at your feet, the harp your sighs played on, the vase of your perfume! I would have burned like incense before you! I would have melted away in the light of your eyes like a drop of dew in the heat of noon! Oh! I don’t think I could have even untied the sash of your virginal robe with my hands—a man’s hands! I would have purified myself in the crater of a volcano before approaching you! But you are rich, Marguerite, and there’s no possible event that could strip away those useless possessions from you completely enough to reduce you to the level of my poverty! You would still be far above me, and too good for even a king! No, Marguerite, no, I will never see you again—not unless it’s the devil’s doing!”
Coming to the conclusion of this poetic apostrophe, with a trivial closing line that may have spoiled the fine beginning a bit, I fell back in my armchair. By good luck, its cushion was deep, soft, and yielding. There were three tallow-candles lit on my desk, an unaccustomed luxury for me at night, another proof of my family’s satisfaction, and I was there alone in my studious solitude.
I leaned out on my balcony for a moment. The sky was as clear as a lake, spangled with stars like a prairie with flowers. The breeze in the air could hardly be heard as it rustled through the branches of my young trees. It seemed to me that it only played across them in order to bring me the sweetness of the air. The nightingale was singing out there. The moths brushed gently against the leaves as they flew under them. It was a beautiful evening for some love other than the one I felt. The magnificent empyrean rose above me. I would have liked to soar through its countless spheres, swift as the fires that gleamed on every side, but my soul couldn’t sound those depths any more than my eyes could. I closed all the windows to shut myself off from the immense distractions, and I sat down again, with the intention of getting to work in earnest, after having let fall one last sigh of satisfaction over the admirable layout of my workroom. A description of it is as important here as the map of Latium is in Virgil’s Aeneid.
My father had had this pavilion built, in a happier time, between the courtyard and the garden, over a wide driveway, where there would have been plenty of space along the sides to park the cabriolet I’d never had. The whole building contained a single long chamber, its walls laid out in a parallelogram. On the east and the west, it was lit by ogive-windows. They could be opened by day to look out on a garden, not very wide, but with a nice selection of plants. That was the only way to get into my room, whether you came through the courtyard or through the main garden. Getting to the pavilion wasn’t difficult, for there was a narrow belt surrounding it that led out from all sides, through gates always open, to our neighbors’ large grounds. Our neighbors on both sides were excellent old fellows, who from childhood on had always seen themselves as the philosophical meeting-place of the Academicians and their friends. The double staircase that wound up to the balcony had only six steps, because it went along a rising terrace. The second of the narrow sides to my long room, opposite the entrance, was occupied by my bed, a student’s modest cot. Around it a curtain hung in long folds spreading out in a bell-shape from a gilt rod. As for the rest of the inside walls, all the eye could see was the backs of old books. My black table was small, like a little monoicous edifice, which it still charms me to remember, making just the right environment. It left plenty of space for me to walk, circling around it. I could measure out the four sides in twenty-four or twenty-five steps. The time it took to do that sped up or slowed down to match my feelings as I walked. I’d certainly gone round it that day.
Each time I sat down, I would casually reach out a hand behind me to the bookshelf my armchair leaned against and try to pull out the first volume of the fine Treatise on Civil Procedure, by Robert-Joseph Pothier, but what came out in front of me was the History of Apparitions, by Dom Calmet. As all the world knows, that is one of the best collections of infernal joking around. The page that fell open was a curious one. I turned the leaf over six times. “It’s a great pity,” I thought, at last, “that a man with a good education would string a whole necklace-worth of bits of nonsense like that—like an old village-woman, dreaming about spirits and demons while she gathers dead leaves and twigs or branches at the edge of the woods! Honestly, I wish the devil would appear to me now. I could call him up easily enough. I have right here the Clavicule of King Solomon and the Enchiridion of Pope Leo in an authentic manuscript that I inherited from a Dominican friar in the family, who used that grimoire a thousand times to free people who’d been possessed. A conversation with the devil in person would have to be as amusing and instructive, I’m sure, as that of Pothier and Cujas on law-history. It might be difficult to get from the devil the favor that the scholars Agrippa and Cardan got from him—at rather too high a price. But at least it would be something worth trying, for someone with a bold spirit.”
In fact, all this depended on a simple act of the will, for I found I actually had that ill-behaved grimoire right under my eyes, between my desk and my hour-glass. I don’t know who the devil had put it there.
I stretched out my trembling fingers, as if just touching the frayed parchment would have allowed some accursed influence to pass into my feelings. But it was only cold, shrunken, and dirty. I opened out its eight folds without breathing in even the smallest atom of brimstone or sulfur. The earth did not shake. The flames of my candles still burnt calm and white—blue at the tips. My books, unshaken, rested peacefully under the learned webs of their bibliophile-spiders. I took courage, and tried to read it. I called out at the top of my voice the solemn formulas of the oracular spirit of the Python. I could feel that spirit starting to awaken in me, until it made the innocent panes of glass in the windows echo, which had never felt the vibrations of such words before.—But it was quite another grimoire from what I’d expected. I had gone through scarcely twelve leaves of that fatal book when I found myself stopped by signs that were unintelligible and downright diabolic, written in impenetrable symbols and letters unknown to the alphabets of the earth, and my utterance was cut short.
Someone else might have lost heart at the sight of those heteroclite initials, those hieroglyphics from another world, which, in the end, couldn’t be anything but the whims of some charlatan of a copyist. Imprudently, but resolutely, I planted myself between my candles and called out energetically, “Come to me, sacred and credulous Sperberus, wise Khunrath, immortal Knorr von Rosenroth! And you, good Gabriel of Collange, who in olden days led so worthy a life that you became the indecipherable translator of the indecipherable Trisyllable! Come, and explain to me those mysteries which frighten us only because we don’t understand them!”
The devil didn’t budge any more than the time before. I should inform my readers—these were not the names of demons that I’d been pronouncing, but simply the names of students of the Kabala.
For the first time, maybe, these worthy authors got to wave their yellowing bookmarks on the pages now opened to the light of the candles. Their tattered corners were crumbling with age. I didn’t feel surprised on realizing, having got to the end of this long labyrinth of mad learning, that all it took was time, patience, and especially determination, to recover all the forgotten languages, even the language of the angels, which is the most difficult. But hard work doesn’t frighten me when it keeps me amused. I got to the end of the section in twenty minutes, which was enough for me to learn all that I needed to know about how to put it to good use. I read over the grimoire, loudly and clearly, and, I go so far as to say, without any mistakes. The clock was striking midnight as I finished, and the devil, who is nothing if not a rebel, the devil hadn’t come. The devil comes so seldom. He no longer comes in the shape that you expect, and yet you can’t count on that, for he has all the cleverness he needs to take on a more seductive shape, when he’s sure there’s something in it for him.
“I have to admit,” I said, throwing myself back into the cushions, “that I’ve played for high stakes in this harebrained experiment. I’d be in for it now if he showed up and asked me, as he’s expected to do, in a voice—hollow and terrible!—what I wanted of him! You can’t call him up at no cost at all. When he asks questions, you have to give answers. When he’s the opposing party, you can’t just get rid of him, like a bungling litigant, with some rotten plea of there not being any grounds for the suit. What favor could I ask for, that his dark power could grant, in exchange for my poor soul, when I’d thrown it as my bet onto damnation’s wheel, though it was hardly worth the lowest chip? Money? What use would that be?” I’d had such luck at cards the week before that I had almost ten times the price of my horse in my purse. An extra piece of gold wouldn’t use it up, and I could have paid off my creditors three times over, if I liked. “Knowledge? I had more of it than I needed, I can say without vanity, for my own use. The honest folk who’ve been good enough to take a little interest in seeing me succeed someday won’t feel annoyed that they predicted that my works, if I ever come to write any, would shine with the glossiness of pedantry in learnedly bad taste. Power? God keep me from it! No one gets power without paying for it in happiness and peace of mind. The gift of foresight, perhaps? It’s a fatal talent. It takes away all of the sweetness of hope and all the delights of uncertainty. Vagueness is what gives charm to life! Women and adventure? That would be making a mockery of his kindness. The poor devil has only too much to bother with under that heading. All the same,” I went on, half drowsing, “if he offered me that young Marguerite, so fresh, so slender, so blonde and rosy—oh, the devil! That’d be another pair of sleeves, as the story about M. de Buffon and his fine lace sleeves has it.—If Marguerite, passionate, trembling, a little disheveled, a lock of hair fallen across her breast, and her breast showing a little through a fichu that wasn’t pinned just so—If Marguerite, beautiful Marguerite, suddenly came creeping shyly up my stairs—if she came to the door and knocked at it with a timid hand, fearing and longing to be heard, with three cautious little knocks—tap, tap, tap!”
I was half asleep, as I’ve said, and I repeated vaguely, “Just tap, tap, tap”—and then I fell asleep completely.
Tap, tap, tap—What an incomprehensible marvel! There it was. No longer drifting through the shadowy regions of my sleeping thought. But I believed it for only a moment. I bit my fingers until I drew blood, trying to convince myself I was awake.
Tap, tap, tap—”Someone’s knocking,” I cried, trembling in every limb. My clock struck one.
Tap, tap, tap—I jumped up and hurried forward. I tried to collect my terrified wits, and pull myself together.
Tap, tap, tap—I armed myself with one of my candles. I went boldly to the side-balcony and opened the shutter. Oh, terror! Never had nature shown me anything more ravishing to the eyes of love—I thought I would die of fear.
It was Marguerite, leaning against the window-panes, a thousand times more beautiful than I could have dreamed, Marguerite, passionate, trembling, a little disheveled, a lock of hair fallen across her breast, and her breast showing a little through a fichu that wasn’t pinned just so. I made the sign of the cross, I commended myself to God, and I opened the window.
It was really her. It was her soft, gentle, delicate hand. It was her trembling hand that I touched—a touch that did not burn. I led her in, even though it was forbidden, and seated her in my armchair. I waited for her to give me a look to tell me that I should sit down a few steps away, on a folding-chair. She propped one arm on the arm of the chair and leaned her head on her hand, her forehead resting on her pretty fingers. I waited for her to speak, but she didn’t say anything. She gave a sigh.
So I began, and said, “Could I dare to ask you, mademoiselle, by what unbelievable chance I am indebted to you for an approach that can’t help but astonish me?”
“Why, monsieur,” she said brightly, “how can my approach astonish you? Wasn’t it just as it should be?”
“As it should be, mademoiselle, as it should be—That’s true, but it isn’t what’s called for by convention according to all the rules required in a case like this. It seems far from being as expectable and as appropriate in all justice as you seem to think. It comes from ideas so odd as to have been sent astray by a mind troubled by an imprudent love. After all, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t expecting such happiness at all—it’s overwhelming.” I no longer knew what I was saying.
“I understand you, monsieur. The result isn’t what you had in mind. You’re used to pleasures that are brilliant, but fleeting. You’ve never measured the extent of the sacrifices that genuine love will make.”
“Stop, Marguerite. Don’t insult my heart. The extent of the sacrifices that genuine love will make—I flatter myself I know what they are.” (But I thought I was overdoing it a bit.) “Even so, why hasn’t he come with you? Why hasn’t he accompanied you? At the very least, this exchange of words between us calls for a prerequisite condition, a contract making a balance of demands on both the contractors. I don’t know if you realized that.”
“He carried me away, but he left me at the foot of the staircase, and he won’t come to take me away until daybreak.”
“Take you away? My dear child, I beg you to believe, I made a bargain with him offering only myself—if I really did offer that. I would tell him so if he were here.
“He didn’t dare come up to confront you, because he foresaw your scruples.”
“He didn’t dare, you say? That’s impossible! I wouldn’t have thought he’d be so timid.”
“I suppose he could have been frightened by the sensitivity of your feelings, the delicacy of your principles.”
“Much obliged, I’m sure. That’s all very well, but I really have to see him.”
“At sunrise, three or four hours from now.”
“Three or four hours,” I said enthusiastically, edging closer to her, “three or four hours, Marguerite!”
“And during that time, Maxime,” she went on sweetly, leaning closer to me, “I have no shelter, no protector but you. The gates had to be left open to let his post-chaise go through.”
“Oh!—the gates had to be left open to let his post-chaise go through,” I said, rubbing my eyes, like a man just waking up.
“He would have spared you the worry and responsibility of doing us both this service, if his respectable mother hadn’t died last year of an inflammation of the breast.”
“Wait, mademoiselle,” I cried, and gave my folding-chair a kick that knocked it to the far end of my room. “His mother died of an inflammation of the breast!—Just who are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Amandus, dear Maxime—Amandus, who is so attached to you, the friend you’re so fond of. You weren’t aware of these details, so I should explain that he came to find me tonight, at the hour we’d agreed on, to carry me off from my aunt’s house, because she stubbornly refuses to give him my hand in marriage. So it was the only way, you must agree, to get a more favorable decision from her. But there was a party there tonight, and the courtyard was full of people coming and going. Some of the guests or the servants would have spied our flight, so we took refuge in the gardens. The moment he saw the light in your window, he said to me joyfully, ‘Look, Marguerite, the wise and studious Maxime is still at work. Maxime is like a brother to me, he’s my confidant, my guardian angel. Maxime knows all my secrets, and he’ll be only too happy—I know what’s in his heart—to give you shelter until daybreak. Go up and knock without fear, Marguerite, while I go get everything ready for our flight.’ And with that, he left me, I came up, I knocked several times, and there’s nothing wrong in that—and so now you know all.”
“I know only too much. But taking it all in all, it’s better this way than the alternative. The main thing is for you to be happy. So you’re really in love with Amandus? With Amandus, really and truly?”
“Who else could it be? I’ve only spoken to him a few times, but he wrote to me with such piercing ardor, with such a tender persuasiveness! He explained with such passion and energy what he felt for me, my Amandus, my dear Amandus!”
“Now, hold on there! You’re talking about his letters?” But in the same instant, I stopped short, because what I was about to say would, obviously, be enormously stupid. I considered what I was thinking. Like a character in a melodrama, I took refuge in a mysterious aside. “No, no, my friend,” I told the demon, “you’re not going to get at me through the weakness of love. And you won’t get in, I can tell you, through my vanity, either!”
“So you’ve found that Amandus writes well?” I murmured, with a pretended nonchalance, keeping my tongue well under restraint between my teeth. “In all honesty,” I thought to myself, deep inside, “she’s as sensitive as she is pretty.”
“Some other thought must be distracting you, Maxime. That’s not what you meant to say to me.”
“You’re right, mademoiselle. I want to do what ought to be done for you, allow me to tell you, before letting you take such a risky step.”
“Well, what?”
“I would stop and think. Amandus must be out of his head, that’s what, when he advised you to spend the night, my beautiful and wise Marguerite, in the chamber of a scatterbrain like me, a man without principles, a faithless, lawless fool, who was ready to give himself to the devil, only half an hour ago—a bad lot like me.”
“You’re too hard on yourself, or maybe you’re being ironic. A young man who’s taken a few false steps hasn’t ruined his character, and you’ve done nothing to lower yourself in the judgment of good, honest folk. Amandus has some faults of the same sort to reproach himself with, but he explains them away in his letters with such eloquence that even my aunt herself was touched, although usually she’s extraordinarily strict. A bad lot, Maxime! Oh, no, you don’t look it!”
“I must thank you, mademoiselle, for the good opinion of me you’re so kind as to hold. But this conversation we’re having is long, mysterious, and, not to mince words, excessively embarrassing for the virtue you would suppose me to have. If nothing else, the circumstances would make your innocence suspect in the eyes of common folk, those miserable wretches who would pass a less favorable judgment on my youthful purity. I shudder for you, just thinking of it. For the sake of your reputation, and out of compassion for mine, permit me to go look for some other place for you to stay until morning. It’ll take only a moment, and meanwhile I’ll be leaving you sovereign mistress of anything you choose to do, so long as you don’t leave here alone or let anyone else in.”
I waited for her to give her consent. When she gave it, I did even a little more. I was careful—ne varietus [to prevent any change of plans]—to double-lock the door.
I had already made my resolution, being keen and quick in my ideas, as young men are. There was a party going on at Marguerite’s aunt’s house, as I had just learned, and such parties always kept going, for hours on end. As I drew near, the last carriages were drawing away. I glided in, as light as a bird, between two footmen who were going to close up.
“Where are you going, monsieur?”
“To see Madame.”
“Everyone’s gone home.”
“But I’ve just come.”
“Madame is getting ready for bed.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
To this decisive reply, there could be no objection, and in ten seconds I was in Madame’s bedroom, where I had never set foot before either so late or so early, although I’d thought about it, sometimes.
The noise I made forced her to turn around, just when she was about to unfasten—God forgive me!—the last of the buttons on her dress.
“Oh, horrors!” she cried. “You, monsieur! In my house!—at this hour—in my bedroom!!!—without being announced, with no regard for the common proprieties!”
“Just so, madame. I don’t regard them at all when I’m obeying the impulse of my heart.”
“What! Monsieur, are you going to rake up our former frenzies? I beg you, don’t let yourself make a display of those feelings, felt with such ardor, but forgotten so quickly for a more convenient moment.”
“It would be difficult, madame, to make a better choice, if I’d come here to talk to you on the subject to which you attribute my visit. But I’ve called on you here for reasons that are more serious, and won’t admit of any delay. In heaven’s name,” I went on, seizing hold of her hand, “Clarice, listen to me!”
“More serious reasons—What desperate resolution have you made?—just the sort of thing you’re only too likely to do! You’re frightening me, monsieur—you’re making me terribly afraid! I know how you get carried away, and if you’re going to be violent, monsieur, I’ll ring for help.”
“Don’t do that, madame,” I said, getting hold of her free hand, and roughly forcing her to sit down on her couch. “What takes place between us, madame, must remain a deep secret, far from all other eyes and ears. At your knees, I beg you to listen to me, for a single instant! We have no time to lose!”
“Woe is me!” she sobbed, with a gasp. “I’m going to have to call back my maids!”
“They’d only be in the way, I tell you again. If they were here, I’d order them out again. The least scandal would ruin you.”
“What is this, an ambush, an assassination, some unimaginable crime? You monster, what do you want?”
“Hardly anything. If you’d just listen to me, you’d already know what it is. Be so kind as to tell me where Marguerite is.”
“Marguerite? My niece? What a strange question! What does Marguerite have to do with this outrageous scene you’re making me play? Marguerite goes to bed early, especially when there’s a crowd over. That’s one of the strict rules of the tender but disciplined education I’ve given her. Marguerite is in her room, Marguerite is in her bed, Marguerite is fast asleep—I’m as sure of that as I am of my own existence!”
“God, who is the master of all, could have permitted that, as he could many other inexplicable things, as none can deny, but that one would be strange indeed! As for the rest, that’s the door to her room, if I remember rightly. You can easily convince yourself that she hasn’t gone out, if she really hasn’t gone out. And that would remove from both of us a distressing doubt that has a great deal more to do with your responsibility as her aunt than it has with mine as a neighbor.”
“Now, how could I wake the child up, Maxime—and wake her up when I’ve got a man in my room!”
“Oh! but you don’t have to wake her,” I said, at the same time making sure that my key was still in my pocket. “Good Lord, she’s wide awake, I tell you, as wide awake as could be, and if you find her asleep in her bed, the devil knows more about things today than he did in Dom Calmet’s time.”
She took a candle, went a few steps into the next room, and came back just far enough to faint on her couch.
As I’d expected that, I’d prepared for it, by taking her smelling-salts from her dressing-table. I opened the lid of the salts, I tapped lightly on the ten plump fingers clenched under my hands, and I kissed her hands gently with all the modesty I’m capable of.
I wanted to be careful to avoid an attack of hysterics, because hysteria makes things take longer.
“We don’t have time to give way to useless emotions, my altogether beautiful and adorable Clarice”—(Where the devil did I think that was going?)!—”because with things as they are, we need to decide right away what we’re going to do.”
“Alas! Yes, of course! But who can help me, if not you, Maxime—You already understand this horrible mystery, but perhaps it’s because you’re an accomplice to this outrage, or even the guilty perpetrator!”
“No, on my honor,” I said, with a sigh.
“You know where she is, Maxime! You know, my friend, and you can’t deny it! Bring her back to me!”
“That, madame, I can’t do—it would be breaking my promise. I know her secret, but I must keep it hidden in my heart, and you’d despise me if I broke faith. What I can swear to is that she’s in the care of a man of honor, who will release her only into your hands—but first you must give your consent to let her go from your hands to those of a husband, you must, Clarice! Yesterday it would have been a request, but today it’s a requirement. That’s all I can tell you.”
“A husband! Amandus, no doubt!—that lunatic, debauched spendthrift!—and a fine marriage that would be!”
“A woman doesn’t get married as might be wished, madame, when she’s been carried off. And a man who’d do that, without a moment’s thought, just to get a rich dowry, is a thousand times worse than a lunatic—he’s a scoundrel. Amandus isn’t someone you’d hold up as a good example to others, I have to admit, but honest love will change him. My heart has never really understood before now how simple that metamorphosis can be.—I don’t think he has any major debts. He’s a responsible sort—when he’s out of money, he’s very careful about what he spends! And I have it on good authority—he told me so himself—that his uncle’s fortune is promised to him if he gets married. The estate doesn’t bring in a lot, but it’s good hunting country. As for her dowry, since she’s a minor, it would be easy to secure it against being plundered by an extravagant husband. There must be fifty precautions that you could take, and I’ll make it my duty to find them for you—as soon as I’ve finished studying Cujas. It’s a long job, but I’m almost through it—I’ve been at it day and night. I just need a little more work on it. The marriage is suitable enough otherwise to be a good match. Amandus has his faults, but even so they can’t hide the brilliance of his good qualities. He’s honest, loyal, kindly, and brave!”
“And a fine writer. He can turn out a perfect letter—you have to give him that!”
“He’s what, madame?—Do you really suppose?—or you’re just being indulgent!”
“You don’t agree? I’m afraid, Maxime, that you must be envious of him.”
“On the contrary, madame, I’m quite blindly in agreement with you,” I said, going along with it. “I only hope that you may not find, in the future, that his style is a little uneven. But style isn’t the important thing, if I understand anything about what matters in a good marriage. It’s a question of other kinds of precautions and other kinds of suitability than the ones needed to turn a fine phrase. When you’ve thought about it ten minutes—it’s too urgent for you to take more time than that—you’ll make up your mind what we should do to turn away the scandal that threatens your house. In the first place, it doesn’t change anything about the state of your own fortune. Marguerite has grown up, as you can see, she’s quite mature, in fact, extremely mature for her age! Sooner or later you would have had to decide to get her married—when you saw the girl was getting ready to decide it for herself. Such a sweet child! It’s a good thing, really, that she’s fallen in love with a scatter-brained fellow like Amandus—with his past, he’ll have to be the one to make concessions—instead of throwing herself into the hands of a man of wealth, or a man of law. Her marriage would have meant getting you entangled in legal proceedings, if she’d been unlucky enough to fall in love with a lawyer. You’d have had to put all you owned into it. I don’t mean that a lawyer can’t be someone to fall in love with—I’m just supposing.—With Amandus, there won’t be much to burden you. His affairs go along so smoothly, this worthy Amandus, that you’ll find that for days on end he’ll think he’s had enough of her inheritance if you give him a roll of clipped-down gold louis. Besides, he’ll be the one to pay the notary and leave a good tip for that gentleman the priest. What a sublime character! And, remember, the little dear is growing up. Her girlish beauty is already remarkable. She might even grow so bold as to claim she could rival you in beauty. I’ve already heard some folks whispering to one another, ‘That nice little beauty must have gotten married very young!’—They think you’re her mother!”
“What nonsense, Maxime, I was still at school when she came into the world!”
“You don’t need to tell me! Anyhow, it’s already happened, and it’d help if you’d make up your mind.”
“It’s easy for you to say, ‘It’s happened.’ As for ‘it’s happened,’ no one will know about it if she just comes home. I know I can count on your discretion.”
“My discretion, madame, you could rely on—but Marguerite isn’t going to come home, and the news will be out all over town by tomorrow. Even if Marguerite comes home, and somehow the news doesn’t get out tomorrow, and from here on, it would probably—Let me see,” I said, pretending to count on my fingers, because what was needed here was an effort of the imagination, a plausible argument for the peroration, as rhetoricians recommend.
I leaned down to her ear and whispered two or three words.
“What a horrible idea!” she cried, almost collapsing on her cushion.
“What I’ve taken the liberty of telling you is true. The world goes round so terribly fast!”
“Monsieur,” she said, rising up with dignity, “You know where Marguerite has taken refuge. Go find her, and promise her on my honor that she can be married to Amandus inside two weeks, since that’s what she wants. Now, hurry—why haven’t you left yet?”
“On your honor, madame? Can she really count on your promise for her own happiness, and that of others, too!”
“Go, Maxime, kiss my hand and go—and bring back my niece. No, wait! You’re not leaving without fastening my robe back up, are you? What I must look like to you!”
And I brought Marguerite back, once I’d submitted a formal plea to her to convince her of the sincerity of the promises I’d just been given for her. Her aunt was strict, but reasonable. The little dear was respectful, but resolute. Everything was settled, perfect in every detail. Marguerite kissed me, which I would just as soon have dispensed with.
“You’ve taken care of all these difficulties so quickly,” her aunt told me, showing me out. “You’re an admirable choice to bring an end to these family disputes. I hope we’ll see you at the wedding.”
“Yes, madame, and we can then start tonight’s conversation over again from the beginning.”
“If you like. But you wouldn’t be a loser if we took it up from where it ended!”
That sounded very nice, but there are delightful words that lose a lot of their pleasure if you act them out.
“Still, it has to be admitted,” I said, returning to my pavilion, “that in just a few hours I’ve accomplished some enterprises calling for intelligence and some deeds of heroism that almost rival the labors of Hercules. First, I mastered the Grimoire without missing a word or a letter or a spirit or a seraph. Second, against all hopes, I’ve arranged for the marriage to her lover of a girl I was passionately in love with myself—and for her part, she must have thought pretty well of me, and wished me the best, since she favored me so far as to come spend the night, without a word of protest, in my bedroom. Third, I wooed a woman forty-five years old, or maybe more. Fourth, I gave myself to the devil, which is just about the only way I can explain how I got through all those other marvels!” That last idea shook me up badly at the very moment that I finished turning the key in the lock, so much that I hardly had the strength to take two steps onto the carpet. Just inside the door, I found the folding-chair I’d kicked there when I received that unexpected confidence from Marguerite. I collapsed into it, crossing my legs, and my arms, too, my head hanging down to my chest under the weight of the thought of my sorrow, sighing every moment or two like a lost soul waiting to be judged.
My eyelids were heavy, needing sleep, and weighed down by the anxieties now being relieved, although so slowly. Two of my three candles had gone out. The last one, dying, threw out pale gleams of light, wavering, this way and that. It made everything seem to me strangely in motion, with odd colors and shadows. Suddenly I felt the hair on my head stand on end, and my blood ran cold with horror! My armchair had an occupant—like Banquo’s chair in the tragedy of Macbeth. There was no mistaking it. My first thought was to run straight at the apparition, but my limbs, chained by fear, refused to obey my feeble will. I was reduced to examining with a frightened stare the thin, starved, pale spectre that had taken Marguerite’s place, as if to punish me for my sin with a hideous parody of the illusions that had caused it. Truly, it had to be a woman’s ghost, judging by the long tresses of her black hair. Between them, I could just make out, confusedly, a certain sort of shape, vague and frightening, where there should have been a face. From the place where shoulders should have been in a regular person, two arms of a sort fell down on the two arms of the chair, and clung to it on each side with a pair of pale claws. Their whiteness was relieved by a gleam of morocco leather. The garb of this funereal phantom consisted of a simple apparel which was, as Racine says,
Of the beauty of one just roused from sleep.
“God protect me!” I cried, raising my hands to heaven. “Don’t abandon me in this terrible extremity! Won’t you deign to come, for pity’s sake, down to the unfortunate Maxime, who has—without knowing it and without wanting it, dear God—called up the devil in person into his father’s house!”
“That’s just what I was thinking,” the phantom replied tartly, and rose up to its full height, and then fell again, as if struck by lightning, against the back of the chair. “May heaven take pity on us!”
“What! Dinah, was that your voice? What miracle has brought you here at this hour of the morning?”
I gave Dinah’s name already, but without saying who she was. Half a century ago, she had been my mother’s nurse, and, as long as my mother lived, she had never left her. Since her death, Dinah had stayed on with the family, as the housekeeper, in full charge. I loved Dinah tenderly.
“I didn’t get in by a miracle,” Dinah grumbled. “I got in with the spare key I use to keep watch over all the household duties, and tidy up Monsieur’s room, when Monsieur isn’t here.”
“That’s all very well, but you don’t usually tidy the rooms at two in the morning, and you must let me say,” I added, with a smile, because this sudden turn in the tale had given me back a little confidence, “that with your face still so rosy and your insinuating manner, it’s a singular moment for you to enter the room of a young man who’s given proof of his impudence.”
“You can make naughty jokes, but I had to. You were making too much noise for me to sleep out the night. And what I had to witness, Holy Virgin!—all that din of shuddersome curses! More diabolical words and names than there are saints in the litanies! Lights coming and going all over, spirits black and white falling out of the clouds into the garden, black spirits closing in on both sides, white spirits opening your windows as if to get a breath of air and humming tunes from comic operas, and the most terrible of all, you being carried off before my eyes into some purgatory—I suppose it’s my prayers that drew you safely out of it!—Maxime, what have you done!”
“I can explain all that, every bit of it, my poor Dinah. Dom Calmet himself couldn’t have described these infernal hallucinations more vividly—or more naively. But since it woke you up, and here you are, you have to hear my reply, for you’re a woman with plenty of wisdom, good judgment, and experience, and no one but you could relieve my scruples. So pay attention now, if you aren’t going back to sleep.”
And with that I told her all that I’ve told now in my story. (I don’t suppose that you’re curious enough to want to hear it all gone over again.) Anyhow, I told her, with compunction so deep and anxiety so sincere over the results of my offense, that the devil himself would have been touched if he’d heard me.
When I’d finished, I waited, trembling, for Dinah’s reaction, as if for the final judgment. It took so long that I was afraid Dinah might have fallen asleep while I was telling her my story. Such things can happen.
At last, she took off her glasses, solemnly, having put them on at the start in order to follow the play of expressions on my face, by the light of the candles—she’d taken the trouble to bring in a fresh supply of them since my return.
She rubbed her glasses clean on her sleeve, put them back in their case, and stowed it away in her bag. (These worthy housekeepers who are proud of their foresight and attention to detail always have their bag with them.) Then she stood up and walked straight to the folding-chair where I was sitting.
“Go to bed, funny boy,” she said, tapping me gently on each cheek with little back-handed raps. “Go to bed, Maxime, and sleep in peace, my child. You’re definitely not damned yet, this time, but that’s not the devil’s fault!”