Hugh Lamb – The Invisible Eye: Tales of Terror by Emile Erckmann and Louis Alexandre Chatrian (страница 14)
‘“Upon my word,” said the clerk, “between ourselves, he is no great loss to the parish. He was a miser and an ass, and he knew nothing whatever.”
‘“Yes,” added the magistrate, “and yet he found fault with everything.”
‘“Not very surprising either,” said another, “fools always think themselves clever.”
‘“You must send for several porters,” observed the doctor; “they have a heavy burden to carry; this man always had more belly than brains.”
‘“I shall go and draw up the certificate of death. At what time shall we say it took place?” asked the clerk.
‘“Say about four o’clock this morning.”
‘“The skinflint!” said a peasant, “he was going to watch his workmen to have an excuse for stopping a few sous off their wages on Saturday.”
‘Then folding his arms and looking at the dead body: “Well, burgomaster,” said he, “what does it profit you that you squeezed the poor so hard? Death has cut you down all the same.”
‘“What has he got in his pocket?” asked one.
‘They took out of it my crust of bread.
‘“Here is his breakfast!”
‘They all began to laugh. Chattering as they were the groups prepared to quit the ruins; my poor spirit heard them a few moments, and then by degrees the noise ceased. I remained in solitude and silence. The flies came back by millions.
‘I cannot say how much time elapsed,’ continued Hippel, ‘for in my dreams the minutes seemed endless. However, at last some porters came; they cursed the burgomaster and carried his carcass away; the poor man’s spirit followed them plunged in grief. I went back the same way I came, but this time I saw my body carried before me on a litter. When we reached my house I found many people waiting for me, I recognised male and female cousins to the fourth generation! The bier was set down – they all had a look at me.
‘“It is he, sure enough,” said one.
‘“And dead enough too,” rejoined another.
‘My housekeeper made her appearance; she clasped her hands together and exclaimed: “Such a fat, healthy man! who could have foreseen such an end? It only shows how little we are.”
‘And this was my general oration.
‘I was carried upstairs and laid on a mattress. When one of my cousins took my keys out of my pocket I felt I should like to scream with rage. But, alas! spirits are voiceless; well, my dear Ludwig, I saw them open my bureau, count my money, make an estimate of my property, seal up my papers; I saw my housekeeper quietly taking possession of my best linen, and although death had freed me from all mundane wants, I could not help regretting the sous of which I was robbed.
‘I was undressed, and then a shirt was put on me; I was nailed up in a deal box, and I was, of course, present at my own funeral.
‘When they lowered me into the grave, despair seized upon my spirit; all was lost! Just then, Ludwig, you awoke me, but I still fancy I can hear the earth rattling on my coffin.’
Hippel ceased, and I could see his whole body shiver.
We remained a long time silent, without exchanging a word; a cock crowing warned us that night was nearly over, the stars were growing pale at the approach of day; other cocks’ shrill cry could be heard abroad, challenging from the different farms. A watchdog came out of his kennel to make his morning rounds, then a lark, half awake only, warbled a note or two.
‘Hippel,’ said I to my comrade, ‘it is time to be off if we wish to take advantage of the cool morning.’
‘Very true,’ said he, ‘but before we go I must have a mouthful of something.’
We went downstairs; the landlord was dressing himself; when he had put his blouse on he set before us the relics of our last night’s supper; he filled one of my flasks with white wine, the other with red, saddled our hacks, and wished us a good journey.
We had not ridden more than half a league when my friend Hippel, who was always thirsty, took a draught of the red wine.
‘P-r-r-r!’ cried he, as if he was going to faint, ‘my dream – my last night’s dream!’
He pushed his horse into a trot to escape this vision, which was visibly imprinted in striking characters on his face; I followed him slowly, as my poor Rosinante required some consideration.
The sun rose, a pale pink tinge invaded the gloomy blue of the sky, then the stars lost themselves as the light became brighter. As the first rays of the sun showed themselves, Hippel stopped his horse and waited for me.
‘I cannot tell you,’ said he, ‘what gloomy ideas have taken possession of me. This red wine must have some strange properties; it pleases my palate, but it certainly attacks my brain.’
‘Hippel,’ replied I, ‘it is not to be disputed that certain liquors contain the principles of fancy and even of phantasmagoria. I have seen men from gay become sad, and the reverse; men of sense become silly, and the silly become witty, and all arising from a glass or two of wine in the stomach. It is a profound mystery; what man, then, is senseless enough to deny the bottle’s magic power? Is it not the sceptre of a superior incomprehensible force before which we must be content to bow the head, for we all some time or other submit to its influence, divine or infernal, as the case may be?’
Hippel recognised the force of my arguments and remained silently lost in reverie. We were making our way along a narrow path which winds along the banks of the Queich. We could hear the birds chirping, and the partridge calling as it hid itself under the broad vine-leaves. The landscape was superb, the river murmured as it flowed past little ravines in the banks. Right and left, hillside after hillside came into view, all loaded with abundant fruit. Our route formed an angle with the declivity. All at once my friend Hippel stopped motionless, his mouth wide open, his hands extended in an attitude of stupefied astonishment, then as quick as lightning he turned to fly, when I seized his horse’s bridle.
‘Hippel, what’s the matter? Is Satan in ambuscade on the road, or has Balaam’s angel drawn his sword against you?’
‘Let me go!’ said he, struggling; ‘my dream – my dream!’
‘Be quiet and calm yourself, Hippel; no doubt there are some injurious qualities contained in red wine; swallow some of this; it is a generous juice of the grape which dissipates the gloomy imaginings of a man’s brain.’
He drank it eagerly, and this beneficent liquor re-established his faculties in equilibrium.
He poured the red wine out on the road; it had become as black as ink, and formed great bubbles as it soaked in the ground, and I seemed to hear confused voices groaning and sighing, but so faint that they seemed to escape from some distant country, and which the ear of flesh could hardly hear, but only the fibres of the heart could feel. It was as Abel’s last sigh when his brother felled him to the ground and the earth drank up his blood.
Hippel was too much excited to pay attention to this phenomenon, but I was profoundly struck by it. At the same time I noticed a black bird, about as large as my fist, rise from the bushes near, and fly away with a cry of fear.
‘I feel,’ said Hippel, ‘that the opposing principles are struggling within me, one white and the other black, the principles of good and evil; come on.’
We continued our journey.
‘Ludwig,’ my comrade soon began, ‘such extraordinary things happen in this world that our understandings ought to humiliate themselves in fear and trembling. You know I have never been here before. Well, yesterday I dreamt, and today I see with open eyes the dream of last night rise again before me; look at that landscape – it is the same I beheld when asleep. Here are the ruins of the old château where I was struck down in a fit of apoplexy; this is the path I went along, and there are my four acres of vines. There is not a tree, not a streamlet, not a bush which I cannot recognise as if I had seen them hundreds of times before. When we turn the angle of the road we shall see the village of Welcke at the end of the valley; the second house on the right is the burgomaster’s; it has five windows on the first floor and four below, and the door. On the left of my house – I mean the burgomaster’s – you see a barn and a stable. It is there my cattle are kept. Behind the house is the yard; under a large shed is a two-horse wine-press. So, my dear Ludwig, such as I am you see me resuscitated. The poor burgomaster is looking at you out of my eyes; he speaks to you by my voice, and did I not recollect that before being a burgomaster and a rich sordid proprietor I have been Hippel the
Everything was in accordance with what Hippel had described. We saw the village at some distance down in a fertile valley between hillsides covered with vines, houses scattered along the banks of the river; the second on the right was the burgomaster’s.
And Hippel had a vague recollection of every one we met; some seemed so well known to him that he was on the point of addressing them by name; but the words died away on his lips, and he could not disengage his ideas. Besides, when he noticed the look of indifferent curiosity with which those we met regarded us, Hippel felt he was entirely unknown, and that his face, at all events, sufficed to mask the spirit of the defunct burgomaster.