The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th Century (32 page)

As for the colour, it was attributed to an imbalance in the bilious system. Nonetheless, the parents tried a number of caustics to moderate the pronounced hue of the skin, eventually managing to change it, as a result of innumerable ointments and lotions, from bottle-green to sea-green to apple-green. At one moment the skin seemed to whiten completely, but the same evening it returned to its usual colour.

The sergeant and the dressmaker were unable to console themselves for the anguish this little monster caused them. He became increasingly wilful, bad-tempered and malicious.

The chagrin they felt led them to a vice only too common among people of their condition. They took to drink.

Only the sergeant refused to drink anything other than wine from bottles with red seals, and his wife wine from bottles with green seals.

Every time the sergeant got dead drunk, he would see in his sleep the woman covered in blood whose apparition had terrified him in the cellar just after he had broken the bottle.

The woman would say to him: ‘Why did you press me against your heart and then smash me – don’t you know how much I loved you?’

Every time the sergeant’s wife over-indulged herself with the bottle sealed in green, she would see in her sleep an enormous devil with a terrifying look on his face who said to her: ‘Why are you so surprised to see me, you drank the bottle? Am I not the father of your child?’

Mystery!

When he reached the age of thirteen, the child disappeared.

His parents, who were inconsolable, continued to drink, but they never managed to recall the terrible apparitions that had formerly haunted their sleep.

This is how the sergeant was punished for his impiety – and the dressmaker for her avarice.

No-one ever knew.

  
1
   
La Rapée.
Famous seventeenth-century brothel.

  
2
   Nerval is mocking the utopian visionary
Charles Fourier
(1772–1837), who elaborated a theory of history that specified sixteen different stages of development through which all civilisations had to pass. Fourier also held unusual views on the subject of metempsychosis, believing that each soul enjoys 1,620 lives, half in this world and half in the next.

It was about this time that, poor as a church rat, I had taken shelter in the roof-loft of an old house in the Rue des Minnesängers, at Nuremberg.

I had made my nest in an angle of the roof. The slates served me for walls, and the roof-tree for a ceiling: I had to walk over my straw mattress to reach the window; but this window commanded a magnificent view, for it overlooked both city and country beyond. From it I watched cats gravely walking along the gutter, storks, with beak-loads of frogs, carrying food to their devouring young ones; pigeons with their tails spread fan-like, whirling above the depths of the streets below.

In the evening, when the church-bells called the people to the Angelus, resting my elbows on the edge of the roof, I listened to their melancholy song, and watched the windows lit up one by one; the good townsmen, smoking their pipes on the pavement; the young girls, in short red petticoats, and with their pitchers under their arms, laughing and chatting about the fountain of Saint Sébalt. Insensibly all these objects faded from my view; the bats came abroad in the dim air, and I lay me down to sleep in the midst of the soft quietude.

The old second-hand dealer, Toubec, knew the road up to my little den as well as I knew it myself, and was not afraid of climbing the ladder. Every week his goat’s head, surmounted by a rusty wig, pushed up the trap-door, his fingers clutched the edge of the floor, and in a noisy tone he cried:

‘Well, well, Master Christian, have we anything new?’

To which I answered:

‘Come in: why the deuce don’t you come in? I’m just finishing a little landscape, and want to have your opinion of it.’

Then his long thin spine lengthened itself out, until his head touched the roof; and the old fellow laughed silently.

I must do justice to Toubec: he never bargained with me. He bought all my pictures at fifteen florins apiece, one with the other, and sold them again at forty. He was an honest Jew.

This kind of existence was beginning to please me, and I was every day finding in it some new charm, when the good city of Nuremberg was agitated by a strange and mysterious event.

Not far from my garret-window, a little to the left, rose the auberge of the
Bœuf-gras
, an old inn much frequented by the country-people. Three or four wagons, loaded with sacks or casks, were always standing before its doors; for before going to market the countrymen used to take their nip of wine there.

The gable of this auberge was conspicuous for the peculiarity of its form: it was very narrow, sharply pointed, and its edges were cut like the teeth of a saw; grotesque carvings ornamented the cornices and framework of its windows. But what was most remarkable was that the house which faced it reproduced exactly the same carvings and ornaments; every detail had been minutely copied, even to the support of the signboard, with its iron volutes and spirals.

It might have been said that these two ancient buildings reflected one another; only that behind the inn grew a tall oak, the dark foliage of which served to bring into bold relief the forms of the roof, while the opposite house stood bare against the sky. For the rest, the inn was as noisy and animated as the other house was silent. On the one side was to be seen, going in and coming out, an endless crowd of drinkers, singing, stumbling, cracking their whips; over the other, solitude reigned.

Once or twice a day, at most, the heavy door of the silent house opened to give egress to a little old woman, her back bent into a half-circle, her chin long and pointed, her dress clinging to her limbs, an enormous basket under her arm, and one hand tightly clutched upon her chest.

The physiognomy of this old woman had struck me more than once; her little green eyes, her skinny, pinched-up nose, the large flower-pattern on her shawl, dating back a hundred years at least; the smile that wrinkled her cheeks, and the lace of her cap hanging down upon her eyebrows – all this appeared to me strange, interested me, and made me strongly desire to learn who this old woman was, and what she did in her great lonely house.

I imagined her as passing there an existence devoted to good works and pious meditation. But one day, when I had stopped in the street to look at her, she turned sharply round and darted at me a look the horrible expression of which I know not how to describe, and made three or four hideous grimaces at me; then dropping again her doddering head, she drew her large shawl about her, the ends of which trained after her on the ground, and slowly entered her heavy door, behind which I saw her disappear.

‘That’s an old mad-woman,’ I said to myself; ‘a malicious, cunning old mad-woman! I ought not to have allowed myself to be so interested in her. But I’ll try and recall her abominable grimace – Toubec will give me fifteen florins for it willingly.’

This way of treating the matter was far from satisfying my mind, however. The old woman’s horrible glance pursued me everywhere; and more than once, while scaling the perpendicular ladder of my lodging-hole, feeling my clothes caught in a nail, I trembled from head to foot, believing that the old woman had seized me by the tails of my coat for the purpose of pulling me down backwards.

Toubec, to whom I related the story, far from laughing at it, received it with a serious air.

‘Master Christian,’ he said, ‘if the old woman means you harm, take care; her teeth are small, sharp-pointed, and wonderfully white, which is not natural at her age. She has the Evil Eye! Children run away at her approach, and the people of Nuremberg call her Flédermausse!’
¹

I admired the Jew’s clear-sightedness, and what he had told me made me reflect a good deal; but at the end of a few weeks, having often met Flédermausse without harmful consequences, my fears died away and I thought no more of her.

Now, it happened one night, when I was lying sound asleep, I was awoke by a strange harmony. It was a kind of vibration, so soft, so melodious, that the murmur of a light breeze through foliage can convey but a feeble idea of its gentle nature. For a long time I listened to it, my eyes wide open, and holding my breath the better to hear it.

At length, looking towards the window, I saw two wings beating against the glass. I thought, at first, that it was a bat imprisoned in my chamber; but the moon was shining clearly, and the wings of a magnificent night-moth, transparent as lace, were designed upon its radiant disc. At times their vibrations were so rapid as to hide them from my view; then for a while they would lie in repose, extended on the glass pane, their delicate articulations made visible anew.

This vaporous apparition in the midst of the universal silence opened my heart to the tenderest emotions; it seemed to me that a sylph, pitying my solitude, had come to see me; and this idea brought the tears into my eyes.

‘Have no fear, gentle captive – have no fear!’ I said to it; ‘your confidence shall not be betrayed. I will not retain you against your wishes; return to heaven – to liberty!’

And I opened the window.

The night was calm. Thousands of stars glittered in space. For a moment I contemplated this sublime spectacle, and the words of prayer rose naturally to my lips. But judge of my amazement when, looking down, I saw a man hanging from the iron stanchion which supported the signboard of the
Bœuf-gras
; the hair in disorder, the arms stiff, the legs straightened to a point, and throwing their gigantic shadow the whole length of the street!

The immobility of this figure, in the moonlight, had something frightful in it. I felt my tongue grow icy cold, and my teeth chattered. I was about to utter a cry; but by what mysterious attraction I know not, my eyes were drawn towards the opposite house, and there I dimly distinguished the old woman, in the midst of the heavy shadow, squatting at her window and contemplating the hanging body with diabolical satisfaction.

I became giddy with terror; my whole strength deserted me, and I fell down in a heap insensible.

I do not know how long I lay unconscious. On coming to myself I found that it was broad day. The mists of night, entering my garret, had dropped their fresh moisture on my hair. Mingled and confused noises rose from the street below. I looked out from my window.

The burgomaster and his secretary were standing at the door of the
Bœuf-gras
; they remained there a long time. People came and went, stopped to look, then passed on their way. Women of the neighbourhood, sweeping in front of their houses, looked in the direction of the inn and chatted together. At length a stretcher, on which lay a body covered with a woollen cloth, was brought out and carried away by two men, children, on their way to school, following them as they went.

Then every one else disappeared.

The window in front of the house remained open still; a fragment of rope dangled from the iron support of the signboard. I had not dreamed – I had really seen the night-moth on my window-pane – then the suspended body – then the old woman!

In the course of that day Toubec paid me his weekly visit.

‘Anything to sell, Master Christian?’ he cried, as his big nose became visible above the edge of the floor, which it seemed to shave.

I did not hear him. I was seated on my only chair, my hands upon my knees, my eyes fixed on vacancy before me. Toubec, surprised at my immobility, repeated in a louder tone, ‘Master Christian! – Master Christian!’ then, stepping up to me, tapped me smartly on the shoulder.

‘What’s the matter? – what’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘Ah! is that you, Toubec?’

‘Well, it’s pleasant for me to think so! Are you ill?’

‘No – I was thinking.’

‘What the deuce about?’

‘The man who was hung –’

‘Ah ha!’ cried the old broker; ‘you saw the poor fellow, then? What a strange affair! The third in the same place!’

‘The third?’

‘Yes, the third. I ought to have told you about it before; but there’s still time – for there’s sure to be a fourth, following the example of the others, the first step only making the difficulty.’

This said, Toubec seated himself on a box, struck a light with the flint and steel, lit his pipe and sent out a few puffs of tobacco-smoke with a thoughtful air.

‘Good faith!’ said he, ‘I’m not timid; but if any one were to ask me to sleep in that room, I’d rather go and hang myself somewhere else! Nine or ten months back,’ he continued, ‘a wholesale furrier, from Tubingen, put up at the
Bœuf-gras
. He called for supper; ate well, drank well, and was shown up to bed in the room on the third floor which they call the “green chamber”; and the next day they found him hanging from the stanchion of the signboard.

‘So much for number one, about which there was nothing to be said. A proper report of the affair was drawn up, and the body of the stranger was buried at the bottom of the garden. But about six weeks afterwards came a soldier from Neustadt; he had his discharge, and was congratulating himself on his return to his village. All the evening he did nothing but empty mugs of wine and talk of his cousin, who was waiting his return to marry him. At last they put him to bed in the green chamber, and, the same night, the watchman passing along the Rue des Minnesängers noticed something hanging from the signboard-stanchion. He raised his lantern; it was the soldier, with his discharge-papers in a tin box hanging on his left thigh, and his hands planted smoothly on the outer seams of his trousers, as if he had been on parade!

‘It was certainly an extraordinary affair! The burgomaster declared it was the work of the devil. The chamber was examined; they replastered its walls. A notice of the death was sent to Neustadt, on the margin of which the clerk wrote – “Died suddenly of apoplexy”.

‘All Nuremberg was indignant against the landlord of the
Bœuf-gras
, and wished to compel him to take down the iron stanchion of his signboard, on the pretext that it put dangerous ideas in people’s heads. But you may easily imagine that old Nikel Schmidt didn’t listen with the ear on that side of his head.