The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories (44 page)

“You are hungry—here, take my bread; and here is water—eat, drink, but listen.”

“It is unnecessary, Wolfgang; I can listen very well without that.”

He smiled bitterly, and continued:

“We have a soul—a thing admitted from the earliest ages. From plants to man, all living things have souls. Is it necessary for me to attend Hasenkopf’s lectures six years to make you this reply—“All organized beings have at least one soul.” But the more their organization is made more perfect, the more complicated it is, the more the souls multiply. It is this which distinguishes animated beings one from the other. A plant has only one soul, the vegetable soul. Its function is simple, unique; it has to imbibe nourishment from the air by means of its leaves, and from the earth by means of its roots. An animal has two souls—first, the vegetable soul, the functions of which are the same as in the plant, nutrition by means of the lungs and stomach; secondly, the animal soul, properly so-called, which has for its end sensibility, and the organ of which is the heart. Man, who sums up terrestrial creation, has three souls—the vegetable soul, the animal soul, the functions of which are exercised the same as in the brute, and the human soul, which has for its object reason and intelligence—its organ is the brain. The nearer animals approach man, the more perfect is their cerebral organization, the more they participate in this third soul—such as the dog, the elephant, the horse—but men of genius alone possess this soul in its fullest perfection.”

Here Wolfgang paused a few moments, and fixed his glance on me.

“Well,” said he, “what have you to reply?”

“That it is like any other theory, it wants proof.”

A kind of frantic exultation seized Wolfgang at this reply. He jumped up with a bound, and crossing his hands in the air, cried:

“Yes, yes, proof was wanting. It is this that has rent my soul for ten years; it is this that has been the cause of so many vigils, so much moral suffering and privation. For it was on myself, Kaspar, that I first experimented. Fasting only forced on my mind the conviction of this sublime truth, without my being able to establish the proof. But at last it is discovered—the proof is made manifest! You shall hear the three souls manifest themselves—proclaim their own existence. You shall hear them!”

After this explosion of enthusiasm, which was announced with such energy that it made me shiver, he suddenly became cold again, and sitting down with his elbows resting on the table he resumed, pointing to the lofty gable-wall:

“The proof is there, behind that wall. I will show it you by-and-bye; but first of all, you must follow the progressive march of my ideas. You know the opinion of the ancients on the nature of souls. They admitted four united in man.
Caro
, the flesh, a mixture of earth and water, which is dissolved by death;
manes
, the phantom which hovers around the grave—its name comes from
manere
, to rest, to dwell;
umbra
, the shadow, more immaterial than the
manes
; and last of all,
spiritus
, the spirit—the immaterial substance which ascends to the gods. This classification appears to me to be just; the question was to decompose a human being, in order to establish the existence of three souls distinct from the flesh. Reason told me that every man before reaching his last development must have passed through the state of a plant and an animal, or in other words, that Pythagoras had a glimpse of the truth without being able to furnish the demonstration. Well, I determined to resolve this problem. It was necessary that I should successively extinguish in myself the three souls and then reanimate them. I had recourse to rigorous fasting. Unfortunately, the human soul must succumb first to allow the animal soul to act freely. Hunger made me lose the faculty of observing the animal condition. By exhausting myself I made myself powerless to judge of the animal state. After a number of fruitless efforts on my own organization, I became convinced that there was but one means to attain the end I had in view. It was to act on another! But who would resign himself to this species of observation?”

Wolfgang paused. His lips became contracted, and in an abrupt tone he added:

“A subject was necessary to me at any price. I resolved to experiment
in anima vili
!”

I shivered, this man was then capable of anything.

“Do you understand?” said he.

“Very well! You required a victim.”

“To decompose,” he added coldly.

“And you have found one?”

“Yes; I have promised that you shall hear the three souls. It may perhaps be difficult now, but yesterday you might have heard them howl, roar, supplicate and grind their teeth by turns.”

A cold shiver ran through me. Wolfgang, perfectly impassible, lighted a little lamp which he used for his night studies, and approached the vent-hole to the left.

“Look,” said he, extending his arms in the darkness; “approach and look, and then listen!”

In spite of my baleful presentiments, in spite of the cold shiver of terror which agitated me, drawn there by the attraction of mystery, I gazed through the sombre opening. There, under the rays of the lamp, about fifteen feet below the surface of the floor, I saw a kind of pit, without any means of exit excepting that of the garret. I immediately comprehended that it was one of those holes into which butchers throw the skins of slaughtered animals, that they may become green before handing them over to the tanners. It appeared to me to be empty, and for some moments I could distinguish nothing.

“Look well,” said Wolfgang to me in a low voice; “do you not see a bundle of rags heaped up in a corner? It is old Catherine Wogel, the cake-dealer, wh—”

He had not time to finish, for a piercing, savage cry, resembling the lugubrious mewing of a cat whose paw is crushed, was heard at the bottom of the pit. A wild-looking being rose up, and seemed to be trying to climb up the walls with her nails. And I, more dead than alive, my forehead covered with cold perspiration, drew back, exclaiming:

“Oh, it is horrible!”

“Did you hear?” said Wolfgang, his face lighted up with infernal joy. “Was not that the cry of a cat? The old woman before attaining the human condition was either a cat or a panther. Now the beast is awakened. Oh, hunger, hunger, and especially thirst, performs miracles!”

He was so absorbed by his discovery that he did not look at me. An abominable complacency and self-satisfaction could be traced to his look, in his attitude and in his smile.

The piercing cries of the poor old woman had ceased. The madman, having placed his lamp on the table, added in the form of a commentary:

“She has been without food for four days. I attracted her here under the pretext of selling her a little cask of
kirsch-wasser
. I made her descend into the pit, and then I shut her in. Intemperance is the cause of her ruin. She is expiating for her immoderate thirst. The first two days the human soul was in all its vigor. She supplicated me, she implored me, she proclaimed her innocence, saying that she had done nothing to me, and that I had no rights over her. Then rage took possession of her. She overwhelmed me with reproaches, calling me a monster and a wretch, etc. The third day, which was yesterday, a Wednesday, the human soul completely disappeared. The cat showed its claws—she commenced to mew and to growl. Fortunately, we are in a retired spot. Last night the inhabitants of the Tanner’s quarter must have thought there was a real battle of cats—the cries were enough to make one tremble. Now do you know when the beast shall be exhausted what will be the result? The vegetable soul will have its turn; it is that which will perish last. It has already been remarked that the hair and nails of the dead grow in their graves; there is also formed in the interstices of the skull a sort of human moss, and which is considered as engendered by the animal juices of the brain. At last the vegetable soul itself retires. You see, Kaspar, that the proof of the three souls is complete.”

These words struck my ears like the reasonings of a madman. I seemed to be a victim of the most horrible of nightmares. Catherine Wogel’s cries had pierced me to the very marrow of my bones. I no longer recognized myself—I seemed to have lost my senses. But, suddenly awakening out of this moral stupor, indignation exerted its sway. I rose up. I seized the maniac by the throat and dragged him towards the entrance of the loft.

“Wretch!” said I, “who gave you permission to raise your hand against one of your fellow-creatures—against one of God’s creatures, for the purpose of satisfying your infamous curiosity? I will myself deliver you up to justice!”

He was so surprised at my aggression—his acts had appeared to him so natural, that he at first made no resistance, and allowed me to drag him towards the ladder without making me any reply. But, suddenly, turning with all the suppleness of a wild beast, he, in turn, seized me by the throat, his eyes shooting fire, his lips foaming. His hands, powerful as steel, lifted me from the ground and nailed me to the wall, while with the other he pushed back the bolt of the door which opened into the pit. Fully comprehending his intention, I made a terrible effort to free myself. I fixed myself across the door—but this man was endowed with superhuman strength. After a rapid and desperate struggle, I felt myself raised a second time from the ground, and was launched into space, while above me I heard these strange words:

“So perishes the flesh in revolt—so triumphs the immortal soul!”

And I had scarcely reached the bottom of the pit, bruised and stunned, when the heavy door was closed fifteen feet above me, intercepting from my sight the gray light from the garret.

My consternation at falling to the bottom of the pit, and feeling myself taken like a rat in a trap, was such, that I rose up without uttering a single complaint.

“Kaspar,” said I to myself, with strange calmness, ‘the question now is to devour the old woman or be devoured by her. Choose! As to try to escape from this den it is time lost. Wolfgang holds you under his claws and he will not let you escape—the walls are of flint and the flooring of oak as hard as stone. None of your acquaintances saw you enter the Tanner’s quarter—no one knows you in this part of the city—no one will ever have an idea of searching for you here. It is all up, Kaspar, it is all up. Your last resource is this poor Catherine Wogel—or rather, you are the last resource of each other!”

All this passed through my mind like a flash of lightning. I was seized with a trembling which did not leave me for three years, and when, at the same moment, the pale face of Wolfgang, with his little lamp in his hand, appeared at the vent-hole, and when, with my hands joined together by terror, I wished to supplicate him—I perceived that I stammered in an atrocious manner—not a word issued from my trembling lips. When he saw me thus, he smiled, and I heard him murmur:

“The coward!—he prays to me!”

This was my
coup de grace
. I fell with my face against the ground, and I would have fainted—if the fear of being attacked by the old woman had not brought me to myself. Still she had not yet moved. Wolfgang’s face had disappeared. I heard the maniac walk across his garret, move back the table and clear his throat with a short, dry cough. My hearing was so acute that the slightest sound reached me and made me shiver. I heard the old woman yawn, and turning round, I perceived, for the first time, her eyes glittering in the darkness. At the same time I heard Wolfgang descend the ladder; I counted the steps one by one until the sound was lost in the distance. Where had the wretch gone? But during the whole of that day and the following night he did not appear. It was only the next day, about eight o’clock in the evening, at the moment that the old woman and myself were howling loud enough to make the very walls tremble, that he returned.

I had not closed my eyes. I no longer felt fear or rage. I suffered from hunger—devouring hunger—and I knew that it would increase.

The moment I heard a slight sound in the garret I ceased my cries and raised my eyes. The vent-hole was lighted up. Wolfgang had lighted his lamp. He was, doubtless, coming to look at me. In this hope I prepared a touching speech, but the lamp was extinguished—no one came!

It was perhaps the most frightful moment of my torture. I thought to myself that Wolfgang, knowing that I was not sufficiently reduced, would not deign even to cast a glance on me, that in his eyes I was only an interesting subject, who would not be ripe for science until two or three days had elapsed, when I was between life and death. It seemed to me that I felt my hair slowly whiten on my head. And it was true—it began to turn gray from that moment. At last my terror became so great that I lost my consciousness.

Towards midnight I was awakened by the contact of a body with my own. I bounded from my place with disgust. The old woman had approached me, attracted by hunger. She had hooked her hands onto my clothes; at the same moment the cry of a cat filled the pit and froze me with fear.

I expected a terrible combat, but the poor unfortunate woman could do nothing. She had been there five days.

It was then that Wolfgang’s words returned to my memory—“Once the animal soul is extinct the vegetable soul will manifest itself—the hair and the nails grow in the grave, and a green moss takes root in the interstices of the skull.” I fancied the old woman reduced to this condition—her skull covered with moldy lichen and I lying beside her, our souls spreading out the humid vegetation side by side in the silence!