VISIT…

The Horla
By Guy de Maupassant

May 8. What a lovely day! I have spent all the morning lying on the grass in
front of my house, under the enormous plantain tree which covers and
shades and shelters the whole of it. I like this part of the country; I am fond
of living here because I am attached to it by deep roots, the profound and
delicate roots which attach a man to the soil on which his ancestors were
born and died, to their traditions, their usages, their food, the local
expressions, the peculiar language of the peasants, the smell of the soil, the
hamlets, and to the atmosphere itself.
I love the house in which I grew up. From my windows I can see the Seine,
which flows by the side of my garden, on the other side of the road, almost
through my grounds, the great and wide Seine, which goes to Rouen and
Havre, and which is covered with boats passing to and fro.
On the left, down yonder, lies Rouen, populous Rouen with its blue roofs
massing under pointed, Gothic towers. Innumerable are they, delicate or
broad, dominated by the spire of the cathedral, full of bells which sound
through the blue air on fine mornings, sending their sweet and distant Iron
clang to me, their metallic sounds, now stronger and now weaker, according
as the wind is strong or light.
What a delicious morning it was! About eleven o'clock, a long line of boats
drawn by a steam-tug, as big a fly, and which scarcely puffed while emitting
its thick smoke, passed my gate.
After two English schooners, whose red flags fluttered toward the sky, there
came a magnificent Brazilian three-master; it was perfectly white and
wonderfully clean and shining. I saluted it, I hardly know why, except that
the sight of the vessel gave me great pleasure.
May 12. I have had a slight feverish attack for the last few days, and I feel
ill, or rather I feel low-spirited.
Whence come those mysterious influences which change our happiness into
discouragement, and our self-confidence into diffidence? One might almost
say that the air, the invisible air, is full of unknowable Forces, whose
mysterious presence we have to endure. I wake up in the best of spirits, with
an inclination to sing in my heart. Why? I go down by the side of the water,
and suddenly, after walking a short distance, I return home wretched, as If
some misfortune were awaiting me there. Why? Is it a cold shiver which,
passing over my skin, has upset my nerves and given me a fit of low spirits?
Is it the form of the clouds, or the tints of the sky, or the colors of the
surrounding objects which are so changeable, which have troubled my
thoughts as they passed before my eyes? Who can tell? Everything that
surrounds us, everything that we see without looking at it, everything that
we touch without knowing it, everything that we handle without feeling it,
everything that we meet without clearly distinguishing it, has a rapid,
surprising, and inexplicable effect upon us and upon our organs, and through
them on our ideas and on our being itself.
How profound that mystery of the Invisible is! We cannot fathom it with our
miserable senses: our eyes are unable to perceive what is either too small or
too great, too near to or too far from us; we can see neither the inhabitants of
a star nor of a drop of water; our ears deceive us, for they transmit to us the
vibrations of the air in sonorous notes. Our senses are fairies who work the
miracle of changing that movement into noise, and by that metamorphosis
give birth to music, which makes the mute agitation of nature a harmony. So
with our sense of smell, which is weaker than that of a dog, and so with our
sense of taste, which can scarcely distinguish the age of a wine!
Oh! If we only had other organs which could work other miracles in our
favor, what a number of fresh things we might discover around us!
May 16. I am ill, decidedly! I was so well last month! I am feverish, horribly
feverish, or rather I am in a state of feverish enervation, which makes my
mind suffer as much as my body. I have without ceasing the horrible
sensation of some danger threatening me, the apprehension of some coming
misfortune or of approaching death, a presentiment which is no doubt, an
attack of some illness still unnamed, which germinates in the flesh and in the
blood.
May 18. I have just come from consulting my medical man, for I can no
longer get any sleep. He found that my pulse was high, my eyes dilated, my
nerves highly strung, but no alarming symptoms. I must have a course of
shower baths and of bromide of potassium.
May 25. No change! My state is really very peculiar. As the evening comes
on, an incomprehensible feeling of disquietude seizes me, just as if night
concealed some terrible menace toward me. I dine quickly, and then try to
read, but I do not understand the words, and can scarcely distinguish the
letters. Then I walk up and down my drawing-room, oppressed by a feeling
of confused and irresistible fear, a fear of sleep and a fear of my bed.
About ten o'clock I go up to my room. As soon as I have entered I lock and
bolt the door. I am frightened--of what? Up till the present time I have been
frightened of nothing. I open my cupboards, and look under my bed; I listen-
-I listen--to what? How strange it is that a simple feeling of discomfort, of
impeded or heightened circulation, perhaps the irritation of a nervous center,
a slight congestion, a small disturbance in the imperfect and delicate
functions of our living machinery, can turn the most light-hearted of men
into a melancholy one, and make a coward of the bravest? Then, I go to bed,
and I wait for sleep as a man might wait for the executioner. I wait for its
coming with dread, and my heart beats and my legs tremble, while my
whole body shivers beneath the warmth of the bedclothes, until the moment
when I suddenly fall asleep, as a man throws himself into a pool of stagnant
water in order to drown. I do not feel this perfidious sleep coming over me
as I used to, but a sleep which is close to me and watching me, which is
going to seize me by the head, to close my eyes and annihilate me.
I sleep--a long time--two or three hours perhaps--then a dream--no--a
nightmare lays hold on me. I feel that I am in bed and asleep--I feel it and I
know it--and I feel also that somebody is coming close to me, is looking at
me, touching me, is getting on to my bed, is kneeling on my chest, is taking
my neck between his hands and squeezing it--squeezing it with all his might
in order to strangle me.
I struggle, bound by that terrible powerlessness which paralyzes us in our
dreams; I try to cry out--but I cannot; I want to move--I cannot; I try, with
the most violent efforts and out of breath, to turn over and throw off this
being which is crushing and suffocating me--I cannot!
And then suddenly I wake up, shaken and bathed in perspiration; I light a
candle and find that I am alone, and after that crisis, which occurs every
night, I at length fall asleep and slumber tranquilly till morning.
June 2. My state has grown worse. What is the matter with me? The bromide
does me no good, and the shower-baths have no effect whatever. Sometimes,
in order to tire myself out, though I am fatigued enough already, I go for a
walk in the forest of Roumare. I used to think at first that the fresh light and
soft air, impregnated with the odor of herbs and leaves, would instill new
life into my veins and impart fresh energy to my heart. One day I turned into
a broad ride in the wood, and then I diverged toward La Bouille, through a
narrow path, between two rows of exceedingly tall trees, which placed a
thick, green, almost black roof between the sky and me.
A sudden shiver ran through me, not a cold shiver, but a shiver of agony,
and so I hastened my steps, uneasy at being alone in the wood, frightened
stupidly and without reason, at the profound solitude. Suddenly it seemed as
if I were being followed, that somebody was walking at my heels, close,
quite close to me, near enough to touch me.
I turned round suddenly, but I was alone. I saw nothing behind me except
the straight, broad ride, empty and bordered by high trees, horribly empty;
on the other side also it extended until it was lost in the distance, and looked
just the same--terrible.
I closed my eyes. Why? And then I began to turn round on one heel very
quickly, just like a top. I nearly fell down, and opened my eyes; the trees
were dancing round me and the earth heaved; I was obliged to sit down.
Then, ah! I no longer remembered how I had come! What a strange idea!
What a strange, strange idea! I did not the least know. I started off to the
right, and got back into the avenue which had led me into the middle of the
forest.
June 3. I have had a terrible night. I shall go away for a few weeks, for no
doubt a journey will set me up again.
July 2. I have come back, quite cured, and have had a most delightful trip
into the bargain. I have been to Mont Saint-Michel, which I had not seen
before.
What a sight, when one arrives as I did, at Avranches toward the end of the
day! The town stands on a hill, and I was taken into the public garden at the
extremity of the town. I uttered a cry of astonishment. An extraordinarily
large bay lay extended before me, as far as my eyes could reach, between
two hills which were lost to sight in the mist; and in the middle of this
immense yellow bay, under a clear, golden sky, a peculiar hill rose up,
somber and pointed in the midst of the sand. The sun had just disappeared,
and under the still flaming sky stood out the outline of that fantastic rock
which bears on its summit a picturesque monument.
At daybreak I went to it. The tide was low, as it had been the night before,
and I saw that wonderful abbey rise up before me as I approached it. After
several hours' walking, I reached the enormous mass of rock which supports
the little town, dominated by the great church. Having climbed the steep and
narrow street, I entered the most wonderful Gothic building that has ever
been erected to God on earth, large as a town, and full of low rooms which
seem buried beneath vaulted roofs, and of lofty galleries supported by
delicate columns.
I entered this gigantic granite jewel, which is as light in its effect as a bit of
lace and is covered with towers, with slender belfries to which spiral
staircases ascend. The flying buttresses raise strange heads that bristle with
chimeras. with devils, with fantastic animals, with monstrous flowers, are
joined together by finely carved arches, to the blue sky by day, and to the
black sky by night.
When I had reached the summit. I said to the monk who accompanied me:
"Father, how happy you must be here!" And he replied: "It is very windy,
Monsieur"; and so we began to talk while watching the rising tide, which ran
over the sand and covered it with a steel cuirass.
And then the monk told me stories, all the old stories belonging to the place-
-legends, nothing but legends.
One of them struck me forcibly. The country people, those belonging to the
Mornet, declare that at night one can hear talking going on in the sand, and
also that two goats bleat, one with a strong, the other with a weak voice.
Incredulous people declare that it is nothing but the screaming of the sea
birds, which occasionally resembles bleatings, and occasionally human
lamentations; but belated fishermen swear that they have met an old
shepherd, whose cloak covered head they can never see, wandering on the
sand, between two tides, round the little town placed so far out of the world.
They declare he is guiding and walking before a he-goat with a man's face
and a she-goat with a woman's face, both with white hair, who talk
incessantly, quarreling in a strange language, and then suddenly cease
talking in order to bleat with all their might.
"Do you believe it?" I asked the monk. "I scarcely know," he replied; and I
continued: "If there are other beings besides ourselves on this earth, how
comes it that we have not known it for so long a time, or why have you not
seen them? How is it that I have not seen them?"
He replied: "Do we see the hundred-thousandth part of what exists? Look
here; there is the wind, which is the strongest force in nature. It knocks
down men, and blows down buildings, uproots trees, raises the sea into
mountains of water, destroys cliffs and casts great ships on to the breakers; it
kills, it whistles, it sighs, it roars. But have you ever seen it, and can you see
it? Yet it exists for all that."
I was silent before this simple reasoning. That man was a philosopher, or
perhaps a fool; I could not say which exactly, so I held my tongue. What he
had said had often been in my own thoughts.
July 3. I have slept badly; certainly there is some feverish influence here, for
my coachman is suffering in the same way as I am. When I went back home
yesterday, I noticed his singular paleness, and I asked him: "What is the
matter with you, Jean?"
"The matter is that I never get any rest, and my nights devour my days.
Since your departure, Monsieur, there has been a spell over me."
However, the other servants are all well, but I am very frightened of having
another attack, myself.
July 4. I am decidedly taken again; for my old nightmares have returned.
Last night I felt somebody leaning on me who was sucking my life from
between my lips with his mouth. Yes, he was sucking it out of my neck like
a leech would have done. Then he got up, satiated, and I woke up, so beaten,
crushed, and annihilated that I could not move. If this continues for a few
days, I shall certainly go away again.
July 5. Have I lost my reason? What has happened? What I saw last night is
so strange that my head wanders when I think of it!
As I do now every evening, I had locked my door; then, being thirsty, I
drank half a glass of water, and I accidentally noticed that the water-bottle
was full up to the cut-glass stopper.
Then I went to bed and fell into one of my terrible sleeps, from which I was
aroused in about two hours by a still more terrible shock.
Picture to yourself a sleeping man who is being murdered, who wakes up
with a knife in his chest, a gurgling in his throat, is covered with blood, can
no longer breathe, is going to die and does not understand anything at all
about it--there you have it.
Having recovered my senses, I was thirsty again, so I lighted a candle and
went to the table on which my water-bottle was. I lifted it up and tilted it
over my glass, but nothing came out. It was empty! It was completely
empty! At first I could not understand it at all; then suddenly I was seized by
such a terrible feeling that I had to sit down, or rather fall into a chair! Then
I sprang up with a bound to look about me; then I sat down again, overcome
by astonishment and fear, in front of the transparent crystal bottle! I looked
at it with fixed eyes, trying to solve the puzzle, and my hands trembled!
Some body had drunk the water, but who? I? I without any doubt. It could
surely only be I? In that case I was a somnambulist--was living, without
knowing it, that double, mysterious life which makes us doubt whether there
are not two beings in us--whether a strange, unknowable, and invisible being
does not, during our moments of mental and physical torpor, animate the
inert body, forcing it to a more willing obedience than it yields to ourselves.
Oh! Who will understand my horrible agony? Who will understand the
emotion of a man sound in mind, wide-awake, full of sense, who looks in
horror at the disappearance of a little water while he was asleep, through the
glass of a water-bottle! And I remained sitting until it was daylight, without
venturing to go to bed again.
July 6. I am going mad. Again all the contents of my water-bottle have been
drunk during the night; or rather I have drunk it!
But is it I? Is it I? Who could it be? Who? Oh! God! Am I going mad? Who
will save me?
July 10. I have just been through some surprising ordeals. Undoubtedly I
must be mad! And yet!
On July 6, before going to bed, I put some wine, milk, water, bread, and
strawberries on my table. Somebody drank--I drank--all the water and a little
of the milk, but neither the wine, nor the bread, nor the strawberries were
touched.
On the seventh of July I renewed the same experiment, with the same
results, and on July 8 I left out the water and the milk and nothing was
touched.
Lastly, on July 9 I put only water and milk on my table, taking care to wrap
up the bottles in white muslin and to tie down the stoppers. Then I rubbed
my lips, my beard, and my hands with pencil lead, and went to bed.
Deep slumber seized me, soon followed by a terrible awakening. I had not
moved, and my sheets were not marked. I rushed to the table. The muslin
round the bottles remained intact; I undid the string, trembling with fear. All
the water had been drunk, and so had the milk! Ah! Great God! I must start
for Paris immediately.
July 12. Paris. I must have lost my head during the last few days! I must be
the plaything of my enervated imagination, unless I am really a
somnambulist, or I have been brought under the power of one of those
influences--hypnotic suggestion, for example--which are known to exist, but
have hitherto been inexplicable. In any case, my mental state bordered on
madness, and twenty-four hours of Paris sufficed to restore me to my
equilibrium.
Yesterday after doing some business and paying some visits, which instilled
fresh and invigorating mental air into me, I wound up my evening at the
Théâtre Français. A drama by Alexander Dumas the Younger was being
acted, and his brilliant and powerful play completed my cure. Certainly
solitude is dangerous for active minds. We need men who can think and can
talk, around us. When we are alone for a long time, we people space with
phantoms.
I returned along the boulevards to my hotel in excellent spirits. Amid the
jostling of the crowd I thought, not without irony, of my terrors and surmises
of the previous week, because I believed, yes, I believed, that an invisible
being lived beneath my roof. How weak our mind is; how quickly it is
terrified and unbalanced as soon as we are confronted with a small,
incomprehensible fact. Instead of dismissing the problem with: "We do not
understand because we cannot find the cause," we immediately imagine
terrible mysteries and supernatural powers.
July 14. Fête of the Republic. I walked through the streets, and the crackers
and flags amused me like a child. Still, it is very foolish to make merry on a
set date, by Government decree. People are like a flock of sheep, now
steadily patient, now in ferocious revolt. Say to it: "Amuse yourself," and it
amuses itself. Say to it: "Go and fight with your neighbor," and it goes and
fights. Say to it: "Vote for the Emperor," and it votes for the Emperor; then
say to it: "Vote for the Republic," and it votes for the Republic.
Those who direct it are stupid, too; but instead of obeying men they obey
principles, a course which can only be foolish, ineffective, and false, for the
very reason that principles are ideas which are considered as certain and
unchangeable, whereas in this world one is certain of nothing, since light is
an illusion and noise is deception.
July 16. I saw some things yesterday that troubled me very much.
I was dining at my cousin's, Madame Sablé, whose husband is colonel of the
Seventy-sixth Chasseurs at Limoges. There were two young women there,
one of whom had married a medical man, Dr. Parent, who devotes himself a
great deal to nervous diseases and to the extraordinary manifestations which
just now experiments in hypnotism and suggestion are producing.
He related to us at some length the enormous results obtained by English
scientists and the doctors of the medical school at Nancy, and the facts
which he adduced appeared to me so strange, that I declared that I was
altogether incredulous.
"We are," he declared, "on the point of discovering one of the most
important secrets of nature, I mean to say, one of its most important secrets
on this earth, for assuredly there are some up in the stars, yonder, of a
different kind of importance. Ever since man has thought, since he has been
able to express and write down his thoughts, he has felt himself close to a
mystery which is impenetrable to his coarse and imperfect senses, and he
endeavors to supplement the feeble penetration of his organs by the efforts
of his intellect. As long as that intellect remained in its elementary stage, this
intercourse with invisible spirits assumed forms which were commonplace
though terrifying. Thence sprang the popular belief in the supernatural, the
legends of wandering spirits, of fairies, of gnomes, of ghosts, I might even
say the conception of God, for our ideas of the Workman-Creator, from
whatever religion they may have come down to us, are certainly the most
mediocre, the stupidest, and the most unacceptable inventions that ever
sprang from the frightened brain of any human creature. Nothing is truer
than what Voltaire says: `If God made man in His own image, man has
certainly paid Him back again.'
"But for rather more than a century, men seem to have had a presentiment of
something new. Mesmer and some others have put us on an unexpected
track, and within the last two or three years especially, we have arrived at
results really surprising."
My cousin, who is also very incredulous, smiled, and Dr. Parent said to her:
"Would you like me to try and send you to sleep, Madame?"
"Yes, certainly."
She sat down in an easy-chair, and he began to look at her fixedly, as if to
fascinate her. I suddenly felt myself somewhat discomposed; my heart beat
rapidly and I had a choking feeling in my throat. I saw that Madame Sablé's
eyes were growing heavy, her mouth twitched, and her bosom heaved, and
at the end of ten minutes she was asleep.
"Go behind her," the doctor said to me; so I took a seat behind her. He put a
visiting-card into her hands, and said to her: "This is a looking-glass; what
do you see in it?"
She replied: "I see my cousin."
"What is he doing?"
"He is twisting his mustache."
"And now?"
"He is taking a photograph out of his pocket."
"Whose photograph is it?"
"His own."
That was true, for the photograph had been given me that same evening at
the hotel.
"What is his attitude in this portrait?"
"He is standing up with his hat in his hand."
She saw these things in that card, in that piece of white pasteboard, as if she
had seen them in a looking-glass.
The young women were frightened, and exclaimed: "That is quite enough!
Quite, quite enough!"
But the doctor said to her authoritatively: "You will get up at eight o'clock
to-morrow morning; then you will go and call on your cousin at his hotel
and ask him to lend you the five thousand francs which your husband asks
of you, and which he will ask for when he sets out on his coming journey."
Then he woke her up.
On returning to my hotel, I thought over this curious séance and I was
assailed by doubts, not as to my cousin's absolute and undoubted good faith,
for I had known her as well as if she had been my own sister ever since she
was a child, but as to a possible trick on the doctor's part. Had not he,
perhaps, kept a glass hidden in his hand, which he showed to the young
woman in her sleep at the same time as he did the card? Professional
conjurers do things which are just as singular.
However, I went to bed, and this morning, at about half past eight, I was
awakened by my footman, who said to me: "Madame Sablé has asked to see
you immediately, Monsieur." I dressed hastily and went to her.
She sat down in some agitation, with her eyes on the floor, and without
raising her veil said to me: "My dear cousin, I am going to ask a great favor
of you."
"What is it, cousin?"
"I do not like to tell you, and yet I must. I am in absolute want of five
thousand francs."
"What, you?"
"Yes, I, or rather my husband, who has asked me to procure them for him."
I was so stupefied that I hesitated to answer. I asked myself whether she had
not really been making fun of me with Dr. Parent, if it were not merely a
very well-acted farce which had been got up beforehand. On looking at her
attentively, however, my doubts disappeared. She was trembling with grief,
so painful was this step to her, and I was sure that her throat was full of sobs.
I knew that she was very rich and so I continued: "What! Has not your
husband five thousand francs at his disposal? Come, think. Are you sure that
he commissioned you to ask me for them?"
She hesitated for a few seconds, as if she were making a great effort to
search her memory, and then she replied: "Yes--yes, I am quite sure of it."
"He has written to you?"
She hesitated again and reflected, and I guessed the torture of her thoughts.
She did not know. She only knew that she was to borrow five thousand
francs of me for her husband. So she told a lie.
"Yes, he has written to me."
"When, pray? You did not mention it to me yesterday."
"I received his letter this morning."
"Can you show it to me?"
"No; no--no--it contained private matters, things too personal to ourselves. I
burned it."
"So your husband runs into debt?"
She hesitated again, and then murmured: "I do not know."
Thereupon I said bluntly: "I have not five thousand francs at my disposal at
this moment, my dear cousin."
She uttered a cry, as if she were in pair; and said: "Oh! oh! I beseech you, I
beseech you to get them for me."
She got excited and clasped her hands as if she were praying to me! I heard
her voice change its tone; she wept and sobbed, harassed and dominated by
the irresistible order that she had received.
"Oh! oh! I beg you to--if you knew what I am suffering--I want them to-
day."
I had pity on her: "You shall have them by and by, I swear to you."
"Oh! thank you! thank you! How kind you are."
I continued: "Do you remember what took place at your house last night?"
"Yes."
"Do you remember that Dr. Parent sent you to sleep?"
"Yes."
"Oh! Very well then; he ordered you to come to me this morning to borrow
five thousand francs, and at this moment you are obeying that suggestion."
She considered for a few moments, and then replied: "But as it is my
husband who wants them--"
For a whole hour I tried to convince her, but could not succeed, and when
she had gone I went to the doctor. He was just going out, and he listened to
me with a smile, and said: "Do you believe now?"
"Yes, I cannot help it."
"Let us go to your cousin's."
She was already resting on a couch, overcome with fatigue. The doctor felt
her pulse, looked at her for some time with one hand raised toward her eyes,
which she closed by degrees under the irresistible power of this magnetic
influence. When she was asleep, he said:
"Your husband does not require the five thousand francs any longer! You
must, therefore, forget that you asked your cousin to lend them to you, and,
if he speaks to you about it, you will not understand him."
Then he woke her up, and I took out a pocket-book and said: "Here is what
you asked me for this morning, my dear cousin." But she was so surprised,
that I did not venture to persist; nevertheless, I tried to recall the
circumstance to her, but she denied it vigorously, thought that I was making
fun of her, and in the end, very nearly lost her temper.
There! I have just come back, and I have not been able to eat any lunch, for
this experiment has altogether upset me.
July 19. Many people to whom I have told the adventure have laughed at
me. I no longer know what to think. The wise man says: Perhaps?
July 21. I dined at Bougival, and then I spent the evening at a boatmen's ball.
Decidedly everything depends on place and surroundings. It would be the
height of folly to believe in the supernatural on the Ile de la Grenouillière.
But on the top of Mont Saint-Michel or in India, we are terribly under the
influence of our surroundings. I shall return home next week.
July 30. I came back to my own house yesterday. Everything is going on
well.
August 2. Nothing fresh; it is splendid weather, and I spend my days in
watching the Seine flow past.
August 4. Quarrels among my servants. They declare that the glasses are
broken in the cupboards at night. The footman accuses the cook, she accuses
the needlewoman, and the latter accuses the other two. Who is the culprit? It
would take a clever person to tell.
August 6. This time, I am not mad. I have seen--I have seen--I have seen!--I
can doubt no longer--I have seen it!
I was walking at two o'clock among my rose-trees, in the full sunlight--in
the walk bordered by autumn roses which are beginning to fall. As I stopped
to look at a Géant de Bataille, which had three splendid blooms, I distinctly
saw the stalk of one of the roses bend close to me, as if an invisible hand had
bent it, and then break, as if that hand had picked it! Then the flower raised
itself, following the curve which a hand would have described in carrying it
toward a mouth, and remained suspended in the transparent air, alone and
motionless, a terrible red spot, three yards from my eyes. In desperation I
rushed at it to take it! I found nothing; it had disappeared. Then I was seized
with furious rage against myself, for it is not wholesome for a reasonable
and serious man to have such hallucinations.
But was it a hallucination? I turned to look for the stalk, and I found it
immediately under the bush, freshly broken, between the two other roses
which remained on the branch. I returned home, then, with a much disturbed
mind; for I am certain now, certain as I am of the alternation of day and
night, that there exists close to me an invisible being who lives on milk and
on water, who can touch objects, take them and change their places; who is,
consequently, endowed with a material nature, although imperceptible to
sense, and who lives as I do, under my roof --
August 7. I slept tranquilly. He drank the water out of my decanter, but did
not disturb my sleep.
I ask myself whether I am mad. As I was walking just now in the sun by the
riverside, doubts as to my own sanity arose in me; not vague doubts such as
I have had hitherto, but precise and absolute doubts. I have seen mad people,
and I have known some who were quite intelligent, lucid, even clear-sighted
in every concern of life, except on one point. They could speak clearly,
readily, profoundly on everything; till their thoughts were caught in the
breakers of their delusions and went to pieces there, were dispersed and
swamped in that furious and terrible sea of fogs and squalls which is called
madness.
I certainly should think that I was mad, absolutely mad, if I were not
conscious that I knew my state, if I could not fathom it and analyze it with
the most complete lucidity. I should, in fact, be a reasonable man laboring
under a hallucination. Some unknown disturbance must have been excited in
my brain, one of those disturbances which physiologists of the present day
try to note and to fix precisely, and that disturbance must have caused a
profound gulf in my mind and in the order and logic of my ideas. Similar
phenomena occur in dreams, and lead us through the most unlikely
phantasmagoria, without causing us any surprise, because our verifying
apparatus and our sense of control have gone to sleep, while our imaginative
faculty wakes and works. Was it not possible that one of the imperceptible
keys of the cerebral finger-board had been paralyzed in me? Some men lose
the recollection of proper names, or of verbs, or of numbers, or merely of
dates, in consequence of an accident. The localization of all the avenues of
thought has been accomplished nowadays; what, then, would there be
surprising in the fact that my faculty of controlling the unreality of certain
hallucinations should be destroyed for the time being?
I thought of all this as I walked by the side of the water. The sun was shining
brightly on the river and made earth delightful, while it filled me with love
for life, for the swallows, whose swift agility is always delightful in my
eyes, for the plants by the riverside, whose rustling is a pleasure to my ears.
By degrees, however, an inexplicable feeling of discomfort seized me. It
seemed to me as if some unknown force were numbing and stopping me,
were preventing me from going further and were calling me back. I felt that
painful wish to return which comes on you when you have left a beloved
invalid at home, and are seized by a presentiment that he is worse.
I, therefore, returned despite of myself, feeling certain that I should find
some bad news awaiting me, a letter or a telegram. There was nothing,
however, and I was surprised and uneasy, more so than if I had had another
fantastic vision.
August 8. I spent a terrible evening, yesterday. He does not show himself
any more, but I feel that He is near me, watching me, looking at me,
penetrating me, dominating me, and more terrible to me when He hides
himself thus than if He were to manifest his constant and invisible presence
by supernatural phenomena. However, I slept.
August 9. Nothing, but I am afraid.
August 10. Nothing; but what will happen to-morrow?
August 11. Still nothing. I cannot stop at home with this fear hanging over
me and these thoughts in my mind; I shall go away.
August 12. Ten o'clock at night. All day long I have been trying to get away,
and have not been able. I contemplated a simple and easy act of liberty, a
carriage ride to Rouen--and I have not been able to do it. What is the reason?
August 13. When one is attacked by certain maladies, the springs of our
physical being seem broken, our energies destroyed, our muscles relaxed,
our bones to be as soft as our flesh, and our blood as liquid as water. I am
experiencing the same in my moral being, in a strange and distressing
manner. I have no longer any strength, any courage, any self-control, nor
even any power to set my own will in motion. I have no power left to will
anything, but some one does it for me and I obey.
August 14. I am lost! Somebody possesses my soul and governs it!
Somebody orders all my acts, all my movements, all my thoughts. I am no
longer master of myself, nothing except an enslaved and terrified spectator
of the things which I do. I wish to go out; I cannot. He does not wish to; and
so I remain, trembling and distracted in the armchair in which he keeps me
sitting. I merely wish to get up and to rouse myself, so as to think that I am
still master of myself: I cannot! I am riveted to my chair, and my chair
adheres to the floor in such a manner that no force of mine can move us.
Then suddenly, I must, I must go to the foot of my garden to pick some
strawberries and eat them--and I go there. I pick the strawberries and I eat
them! Oh! my God! my God! Is there a God? If there be one, deliver me!
save me! succor me! Pardon! Pity! Mercy! Save me! Oh! what sufferings!
what torture! what horror!
August 15. Certainly this is the way in which my poor cousin was possessed
and swayed, when she came to borrow five thousand francs of me. She was
under the power of a strange will which had entered into her, like another
soul, a parasitic and ruling soul. Is the world coming to an end?
But who is he, this invisible being that rules me, this unknowable being, this
rover of a supernatural race?
Invisible beings exist, then! how is it, then, that since the beginning of the
world they have never manifested themselves in such a manner as they do to
me? I have never read anything that resembles what goes on in my house.
Oh! If I could only leave it, if I could only go away and flee, and never
return, I should be saved; but I cannot.
August 16. I managed to escape to-day for two hours, like a prisoner who
finds the door of his dungeon accidentally open. I suddenly felt that I was
free and that He was far away, and so I gave orders to put the horses in as
quickly as possible, and I drove to Rouen. Oh! how delightful to be able to
say to my coachman: "Go to Rouen!"
I made him pull up before the library, and I begged them to lend me Dr.
Herrmann Herestauss's treatise on the unknown inhabitants of the ancient
and modern world.
Then, as I was getting into my carriage, I intended to say: "To the railway
station!" but instead of this I shouted--I did not speak; but I shouted--in such
a loud voice that all the passers-by turned round: "Home!" and I fell back on
to the cushion of my carriage, overcome by mental agony. He had found me
out and regained possession of me.
August 17. Oh! What a night! what a night! And yet it seems to me that I
ought to rejoice. I read until one o'clock in the morning! Herestauss, Doctor
of Philosophy and Theogony, wrote the history and the manifestation of all
those invisible beings which hover around man, or of whom he dreams. He
describes their origin, their domains, their power; but none of them
resembles the one which haunts me. One might say that man, ever since he
has thought, has had a foreboding and a fear of a new being, stronger than
himself, his successor in this world, and that, feeling him near, and not being
able to foretell the nature of the unseen one, he has, in his terror, created the
whole race of hidden beings, vague phantoms born of fear.
Having, therefore, read until one o'clock in the morning, I went and sat
down at the open window, in order to cool my forehead and my thoughts in
the calm night air. It was very pleasant and warm! How I should have
enjoyed such a night formerly!
There was no moon, but the stars darted out their rays in the dark heavens.
Who inhabits those worlds? What forms, what living beings, what animals
are there yonder? Do those who are thinkers in those distant worlds know
more than we do? What can they do more than we? What do they see which
we do not? Will not one of them, some day or other, traversing space, appear
on our earth to conquer it, just as formerly the Norsemen crossed the sea in
order to subjugate nations feebler than themselves?
We are so weak, so powerless, so ignorant, so small--we who live on this
particle of mud which revolves in liquid air.
I fell asleep, dreaming thus in the cool night air, and then, having slept for
about three quarters of an hour, I opened my eyes without moving,
awakened by an indescribably confused and strange sensation. At first I saw
nothing, and then suddenly it appeared to me as if a page of the book, which
had remained open on my table, turned over of its own accord. Not a breath
of air had come in at my window, and I was surprised and waited. In about
four minutes, I saw, I saw--yes I saw with my own eyes--another page lift
itself up and fall down on the others, as if a finger had turned it over. My
armchair was empty, appeared empty, but I knew that He was there, He, and
sitting in my place, and that He was reading. With a furious bound, the
bound of an enraged wild beast that wishes to disembowel its tamer, I
crossed my room to seize him, to strangle him, to kill him! But before I
could reach it, my chair fell over as if somebody had run away from me. My
table rocked, my lamp fell and went out, and my window closed as if some
thief had been surprised and had fled out into the night, shutting it behind
him.
So He had run away; He had been afraid; He, afraid of me!
So to-morrow, or later--some day or other, I should be able to hold him in
my clutches and crush him against the ground! Do not dogs occasionally
bite and strangle their masters?
August 18. I have been thinking the whole day long. Oh! yes, I will obey
Him, follow His impulses, fulfill all His wishes, show myself humble,
submissive, a coward. He is the stronger; but an hour will come.
August 19. I know, I know, I know all! I have just read the following in the
Revue du Monde Scientifique: "A curious piece of news comes to us from
Rio de Janeiro. Madness, an epidemic of madness, which may be compared
to that contagious madness which attacked the people of Europe in the
Middle Ages, is at this moment raging in the Province of San-Paulo. The
frightened inhabitants are leaving their houses, deserting their villages,
abandoning their land, saying that they are pursued, possessed, governed
like human cattle by invisible, though tangible beings, by a species of
vampire, which feeds on their life while they are asleep, and which, besides,
drinks water and milk without appearing to touch any other nourishment.
"Professor Don Pedro Henriques, accompanied by several medical savants,
has gone to the Province of San-Paulo, in order to study the origin and the
manifestations of this surprising madness on the spot, and to propose such
measures to the Emperor as may appear to him to be most fitted to restore
the mad population to reason."
Ah! Ah! I remember now that fine Brazilian three-master which passed in
front of my windows as it was going up the Seine, on the eighth of last May!
I thought it looked so pretty, so white and bright! That Being was on board
of her, coming from there, where its race sprang from. And it saw me! It saw
my house, which was also white, and He sprang from the ship on to the land.
Oh! Good heavens!
Now I know, I can divine. The reign of man is over, and he has come. He
whom disquieted priests exorcised, whom sorcerers evoked on dark nights,
without seeing him appear, He to whom the imaginations of the transient
masters of the world lent all the monstrous or graceful forms of gnomes,
spirits, genii, fairies, and familiar spirits. After the coarse conceptions of
primitive fear, men more enlightened gave him a truer form. Mesmer
divined him, and ten years ago physicians accurately discovered the nature
of his power, even before He exercised it himself. They played with that
weapon of their new Lord, the sway of a mysterious will over the human
soul, which had become enslaved. They called it mesmerism, hypnotism,
suggestion, I know not what? I have seen them diverting themselves like
rash children with this horrible power! Woe to us! Woe to man! He has
come, the--the--what does He call himself--the--I fancy that he is shouting
out his name to me and I do not hear him--the--yes--He is shouting it out--I
am listening--I cannot--repeat--it--Horla--I have heard--the Horla--it is He--
the Horla--He has come! --
Ah I the vulture has eaten the pigeon, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the lion
has devoured the sharp-horned buffalo; man has killed the lion with an
arrow, with a spear, with gunpowder; but the Horla will make of man what
man has made of the horse and of the ox: his chattel, his slave, and his food,
by the mere power of his will. Woe to us!
But, nevertheless, sometimes the animal rebels and kills the man who has
subjugated it. I should also like--I shall be able to--but I must know Him,
touch Him, see Him! Learned men say that eyes of animals, as they differ
from ours, do not distinguish as ours do. And my eye cannot distinguish this
newcomer who is oppressing me.
Why? Oh! Now I remember the words of the monk at Mont Saint-Michel:
"Can we see the hundred-thousandth part of what exists? Listen; there is the
wind which is the strongest force in nature; it knocks men down, blows
down buildings, uproots trees, raises the sea into mountains of water,
destroys cliffs, and casts great ships on to the breakers; it kills, it whistles, it
sighs, it roars,--have you ever seen it, and can you see it? It exists for all
that, however!"
And I went on thinking: my eyes are so weak, so imperfect, that they do not
even distinguish hard bodies, if they are as transparent as glass! If a glass
without quicksilver behind it were to bar my way, I should run into it, just
like a bird which has flown into a room breaks its head against the
windowpanes. A thousand things, moreover, deceive a man and lead him
astray. How then is it surprising that he cannot perceive a new body which is
penetrated and pervaded by the light?
A new being! Why not? It was assuredly bound to come! Why should we be
the last? We do not distinguish it, like all the others created before us? The
reason is, that its nature is more delicate, its body finer and more finished
than ours. Our makeup is so weak, so awkwardly conceived; our body is
encumbered with organs that are always tired, always being strained like
locks that are too complicated; it lives like a plant and like an animal
nourishing itself with difficulty on air, herbs, and flesh; it is a brute machine
which is a prey to maladies, to malformations, to decay; it is broken-winded,
badly regulated, simple and eccentric, ingeniously yet badly made, a coarse
and yet a delicate mechanism, in brief, the outline of a being which might
become intelligent and great.
There are only a few--so few--stages of development in this world, from the
oyster up to man. Why should there not be one more, when once that period
is accomplished which separates the successive products one from the other?
Why not one more? Why not, also, other trees with immense, splendid
flowers, perfuming whole regions? Why not other elements beside fire, air,
earth, and water? There are four, only four, nursing fathers of various
beings! What a pity! Why should not there be forty, four hundred, four
thousand! How poor everything is, how mean and wretched--grudgingly
given, poorly invented, clumsily made! Ah! the elephant and the
hippopotamus, what power! And the camel, what suppleness!
But the butterfly, you will say, a flying flower! I dream of one that should be
as large as a hundred worlds, with wings whose shape, beauty, colors, and
motion I cannot even express. But I see it--it flutters from star to star,
refreshing them and perfuming them with the light and harmonious breath of
its flight! And the people up there gaze at it as it passes in an ecstasy of
delight!
What is the matter with me? It is He, the Horla who haunts me, and who
makes me think of these foolish things! He is within me, He is becoming my
soul; I shall kill him!
August 20. I shall kill Him. I have seen Him! Yesterday I sat down at my
table and pretended to write very assiduously. I knew quite well that He
would come prowling round me, quite close to me, so close that I might
perhaps be able to touch him, to seize him. And then--then I should have the
strength of desperation; I should have my hands, my knees, my chest, my
forehead, my teeth to strangle him, to crush him, to bite him, to tear him to
pieces. And I watched for him with all my overexcited nerves.
I had lighted my two lamps and the eight wax candles on my mantelpiece, as
if, by this light I should discover Him.
My bed, my old oak bed with its columns, was opposite to me; on my right
was the fireplace; on my left the door, which was carefully closed, after I
had left it open for some time, in order to attract Him; behind me was a very
high wardrobe with a looking-glass in it, which served me to dress by every
day, and in which I was in the habit of inspecting myself from head to foot
every time I passed it.
So I pretended to be writing in order to deceive Him, for He also was
watching me, and suddenly I felt, I was certain, that He was reading over my
shoulder, that He was there, almost touching my ear.
I got up so quickly, with my hands extended, that I almost fell. Horror! It
was as bright as at midday, but I did not see myself in the glass! It was
empty, clear, profound, full of light! But my figure was not reflected in it--
and I, I was opposite to it! I saw the large, clear glass from top to bottom,
and I looked at it with unsteady eyes. I did not dare advance; I did not
venture to make a movement; feeling certain, nevertheless, that He was
there, but that He would escape me again, He whose imperceptible body had
absorbed my reflection.
How frightened I was! And then suddenly I began to see myself through a
mist in the depths of the looking-glass, in a mist as it were, or through a veil
of water; and it seemed to me as if this water were flowing slowly from left
to right, and making my figure clearer every moment. It was like the end of
an eclipse. Whatever hid me did not appear to possess any clearly defined
outlines, but was a sort of opaque transparency, which gradually grew
clearer.
At last I was able to distinguish myself completely, as I do every day when I
look at myself.
I had seen Him! And the horror of it remained with me, and makes me
shudder even now.
August 21. How could I kill Him, since I could not get hold of Him? Poison?
But He would see me mix it with the water; and then, would our poisons
have any effect on His impalpable body? No--no--no doubt about the matter.
Then?--then?
August 22. I sent for a blacksmith from Rouen and ordered iron shutters of
him for my room, such as some private hotels in Paris have on the ground
floor, for fear of thieves, and he is going to make me a similar door as well. I
have made myself out a coward, but I do not care about that!
September 10. Rouen, Hôtel Continental. It is done; it is done--but is He
dead? My mind is thoroughly upset by what I have seen.
Well then, yesterday, the locksmith having put on the iron shutters and door,
I left everything open until midnight, although it was getting cold.
Suddenly I felt that He was there, and joy, mad joy took possession of me. I
got up softly, and I walked to the right and left for some time, so that He
might not guess anything; then I took off my boots and put on my slippers
carelessly; then I fastened the iron shutters and going back to the door
quickly I double-locked it with a padlock, putting the key into my pocket.
Suddenly I noticed that He was moving restlessly round me, that in his turn
He was frightened and was ordering me to let Him out. I nearly yielded,
though I did not quite, but putting my back to the door, I half opened it, just
enough to allow me to go out backward, and as I am very tall, my head
touched the lintel. I was sure that He had not been able to escape, and I shut
Him up quite alone, quite alone. What happiness! I had Him fast. Then I ran
downstairs into the drawing-room which was under my bedroom. I took the
two lamps and poured all the oil on to the carpet, the furniture, everywhere;
then I set fire to it and made my escape, after having carefully double locked
the door.
I went and hid myself at the bottom of the garden, in a clump of laurel
bushes. How long it was! how long it was! Everything was dark, silent,
motionless, not a breath of air and not a star, but heavy banks of clouds
which one could not see, but which weighed, oh! so heavily on my soul.
I looked at my house and waited. How long it was! I already began to think
that the fire had gone out of its own accord, or that He had extinguished it,
when one of the lower windows gave way under the violence of the flames,
and a long, soft, caressing sheet of red flame mounted up the white wall, and
kissed it as high as the roof. The light fell on to the trees, the branches, and
the leaves, and a shiver of fear pervaded them also! The birds awoke; a dog
began to howl, and it seemed to me as if the day were breaking! Almost
immediately two other windows flew into fragments, and I saw that the
whole of the lower part of my house was nothing but a terrible furnace. But
a cry, a horrible, shrill, heart-rending cry, a woman's cry, sounded through
the night, and two garret windows were opened! I had forgotten the
servants! I saw the terror-struck faces, and the frantic waving of their arms!
Then, overwhelmed with horror, I ran off to the village, shouting: "Help!
help! fire! fire!" Meeting some people who were already coming on to the
scene, I went back with them to see!
By this time the house was nothing but a horrible and magnificent funeral
pile, a monstrous pyre which lit up the whole country, a pyre where men
were burning, and where He was burning also, He, He, my prisoner, that
new Being, the new Master, the Horla!
Suddenly the whole roof fell in between the walls, and a volcano of flames
darted up to the sky. Through all the windows which opened on to that
furnace, I saw the flames darting, and I reflected that He was there, in that
kiln, dead.
Dead? Perhaps? His body? Was not his body, which was transparent,
indestructible by such means as would kill ours?
If He were not dead? Perhaps time alone has power over that Invisible and
Redoubtable Being. Why this transparent, unrecognizable body, this body
belonging to a spirit, if it also had to fear ills, infirmities, and premature
destruction?
Premature destruction? All human terror springs from that! After man the
Horla. After him who can die every day, at any hour, at any moment, by any
accident, He came, He who was only to die at his own proper hour and
minute, because He had touched the limits of his existence!
No--no--there is no doubt about it--He is not dead. Then--then--I suppose I
must kill myself!
The End