Hugh Lamb – The Invisible Eye: Tales of Terror by Emile Erckmann and Louis Alexandre Chatrian (страница 13)
‘There is no accounting for tastes,’ observed Hippel, finishing the bottle and knocking on the table.
‘Another bottle of the same,’ cried he, ‘and mind, no mixing, lovely hostess – I am a judge!
Hippel threw himself back in his chair; his face seemed to undergo a complete transformation. I emptied the bottle of white wine at a draught, and then my heart felt gay again. My friend’s preference for red wine seemed to me ridiculous but excusable.
We continued drinking, I white and he red wine, till one o’clock in the morning.
One in the morning! It is the hour when Fancy best loves to exercise her influence. The caprices of imagination take that opportunity of displaying their transparent dresses embroidered in crystal and blue, like the wings of the beetle and the dragon-fly.
One o’clock! That is the moment when the music of the spheres tickles the sleeper’s ears, and breathes the harmony of the invisible world into his soul. Then the mouse trots about, and the owl flaps her wings, and passes noiselessly over our heads.
‘One o’clock,’ said I to my companion; ‘we must go to bed if we are to set off early tomorrow morning.’
Hippel rose and staggered about.
The old woman showed us into a double-bedded room, and wished us goodnight.
We undressed ourselves; I remained up the last to put the candle out. I was hardly in bed before Hippel was fast asleep; his respiration was like the blowing of a storm. I could not close my eyes, as thousands of strange faces hovered round me. The gnomes, imps, and witches of Walpurgis night executed their cabalistic dances on the ceiling all night. Strange effect of white wine!
I got up, lighted my lamp, and, impelled by curiosity, I went up to Hippel’s bed. His face was red, his mouth half-open, I could see the blood pulsating in his temples, and his lips moved as if he wanted to speak. I stood for some time motionless by his side; I tried to see into the depths of his soul, but sleep is an impenetrable mystery; like death, it keeps its secrets.
Sometimes Hippel’s face wore an expression of terror, then of sadness, then again of melancholy; occasionally his features contracted; he looked as if he was going to cry.
His jolly face, which was made for laughter, wore a strange expression when under the influence of pain.
What might be passing in those depths? I saw a wave now and then mount to the surface, but whence came those frequent shocks? All at once the sleeper rose, his eyelids opened, and I could see nothing but the whites of his eyes; every muscle in his face was trembling, his mouth seemed to try to utter a scream. Then he fell back, and I heard a sob.
‘Hippel! Hippel!’ cried I, and I emptied a jug of water on his head.
This awoke him.
‘Ah!’ cried he, ‘God be thanked, it was but a dream. My dear Ludwig, I thank you for awakening me.’
‘So much the better, and now tell me what you were dreaming about.’
‘Yes, tomorrow; let me sleep now. I am so sleepy.’
‘Hippel, you are ungrateful; you will have forgotten it all by tomorrow.’
‘
I would not let him off.
‘Hippel, you will have the same dream over again, and this time I shall leave you to your fate.’
These words had the desired effect.
‘The same dream over again!’ cried he, jumping out of bed. ‘Give me my clothes! Saddle my horse! I am off! This is a cursed place. You are right, Ludwig, this is the devil’s own dwelling-place. Let us be off!’
He hurried on his clothes. When he was dressed I stopped him.
‘Hippel,’ said I, ‘why should we hurry away? It is only three o’clock. Let us stay quietly here.’
I opened the window, and the fresh night air penetrated the room, and dissipated all his fears. So he leaned on the window-sill, and told me what follows.
‘We were talking yesterday about the most famous of the Rhingau vineyards. Although I have never been through this part of the country, my mind was no doubt full of impressions regarding it, and the heavy wine we drank gave a sombre tinge to my ideas. What is most extraordinary, in my dream I fancied I was the burgomaster of Welcke’ (a neighbouring village), ‘and I was so identified with this personage, that I can describe him to you as minutely as if I was describing myself. This burgomaster was a man of middle height, and almost as fat as I am. He wore a coat with wide skirts and brass buttons; all down his legs he had another row of small nail-headed buttons. On his bald head was a three-cornered cocked hat – in short, he was a stupidly grave man, drinking nothing but water, thinking of nothing but money, and his only endeavour was to increase his property.
‘As I had taken the outward appearance of the burgomaster, so had I his disposition also. I, Hippel, should have despised myself could I have recognised myself, what a beast of a burgomaster I was. How far better it is to lead a happy life, without caring for the future, than to heap crowns upon crowns and only distil bile! Well, here I am, a burgomaster.
‘When I leave my bed in the morning the first thing which makes me uneasy is to know if the men are already at work among my vines. I eat a crust of bread for breakfast. A crust of bread! what a sordid miser! I who have a cutlet and a bottle of wine every morning! Well, never mind, I take – that is, the burgomaster takes his crust of bread and puts it in his pocket. He tells his old housekeeper to sweep the room and have dinner ready by eleven. Boiled beef and potatoes I think it was – a poor dinner. Well, out he goes.
‘I could describe the road he took, the vines on the hillside, to you exactly,’ continued Hippel; ‘I see them before me now.
‘How is it possible that a man in a dream could conceive such an idea of a landscape? I could see fields, gardens, meadows, and vineyards. I knew this belongs to Pierre, that to Jacques, that to Henri; and then I stopped before one of these bits of ground and said to myself: “Bless me, Jacob’s clover is very fine.” And farther on, “Bless me, again, that acre of vines would suit me wonderfully.” But all the time I felt a sort of giddiness, an indescribable pain in the head. I hurried on, as it was early morning. The sun soon rose, and the heat became oppressive. I was then following a narrow path which crossed through the vines towards the top of the hill. This path led past the ruins of an old castle, and beyond it I could see my four acres of vineyard. I made haste to get there; as I was quite blown when I reached the ruins, I stopped to recover breath, and the blood seemed to ring in my ears, while my heart beat in my breast like a hammer on an anvil. The sun seemed on fire. I tried to go on again, but all at once I felt as if I had received a blow from a club; I rolled under a part of a wall, and I comprehended I had a fit of apoplexy. Then the horror of despair took possession of me. “I am a dead man,” said I to myself; “the money I have amassed with so much trouble, the trees I have so carefully cultivated, the house I have built, all, all are lost – all gone into the hands of my heirs. Now those wretches to whom in my lifetime I refused a kreutzer will become rich at my expense. Traitors! how you will rejoice over my misfortune! You will take the keys from my pockets, you will share my property among yourselves, you will squander my gold; and I – I must be present at this spoilation! What a hideous punishment!”
‘I felt my spirit quit the corpse, but remain standing by it.
‘This spiritual burgomaster noticed that its body had its face blue, and yellow hands.
‘It was very hot, and some large flies came and settled on the face of the corpse. One went up his nose. The body stirred not! The whole face was soon covered with them, and the spirit was in despair because it was impotent to drive them away.
‘There it stood. There, for minutes which seemed hours. Hell was beginning for it already. So an hour went by. The heat increased gradually. Not a breath in the air, nor a cloud in the sky.
‘A goat came out from among the ruins, nibbling the weeds which were growing up through the rubbish. As it passed my poor body it sprang aside, and then came back, opened its eyes with suspicion, smelt about, and then followed its capricious course over the fallen cornice of a turret. A young goatherd came to drive her back again; but when he saw the body he screamed out, and then set off running towards the village with all his might.
‘Another hour passed, slow as eternity. At last a whispering, then steps were heard behind the ruins, and my spirit saw the magistrate coming slowly, slowly along, followed by his clerk and several other persons. I knew every one of them. They uttered an exclamation when they saw me: “It is our burgomaster!”
‘The medical man approached the body, and drove away the flies, which flew swarming away. He looked at it, then raised one of the already stiffened arms, and said with the greatest indifference: “Our burgomaster has succumbed to a fit of apoplexy; he has probably been here all the morning. You had better carry him away and bury him as soon as possible, for this heat accelerates decomposition.”