n. THE
. UNIV
LIBRARIS
VERSITY

22
SVENTINS
MICHIGA
CAN.SI








Modern Ghosts
Selected and Translated from the Works
of GUY DE MAUPASSANT, PEDRO ANTONIO
DE ALARCÓN, ALEXANDER L. KIELLAND,
LEOPOLD KOMPERT, GUSTAVO ADOLFO BEC-
QUER, and GIOVANNI MAGHERINI - GRAZIANI
THE INTRODUCTION BY
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE


Copyright, 1890, by Harper & Brothers.
All rights reserved.


CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION. By George William
Curtis vii
THE HORLA. From the French of Guy DE
Maupassant. Translated by Jonathan
Sturges I
SIESTA. By Alexander L. Kielland. Trans-
lated from the German version of M. von
Borch, by Charles Flint McClumpha . 59
THE TALL WOMAN. From the Spanish
of Pedro Antonio de Alarc6n. Trans-
lajecl by Rollo Ogden 79
Oif THE RIVER. From the French of GUY
f de Maupassant. Translated by Jona-
than Sturges 113
MAESE PEREZ, THE ORGANIST. From
the Spanish of Gustavo Adolfo Becquer.
Translated by Rollo Ogden . . . .129
FIORACCIO. From the Italian of Giovanni
Magherini - GrAziani. Translated by
Mary A. Craig '. .157
THE SILENT WOMAN. From the German
of Leopold Kompert. Translated by
Charles Flint McClumpha .... 189
279388


一一一​..……
-
-


INTRODUCTION.
In the first paper of the Sketch-Book, which
describes the Atlantic voyage, Irving says
that when the weather, which had been fair,
changed to a wild and threatening aspect,
the passengers gathered towards evening in
the cabin, where the gloom was made ghast-
lier by the dull light of a lamp, and every
one told his tale of shipwreck and disaster.
On the longer voyage, on which we are
embarked, when our thoughts are turned to
the night side of nature, as Robert Dale
Owen called it, we likewise are all apt to
fall to telling the grewsome tales which are
known as ghost stories. They have a strange
and subtle fascination. The imagination,
quickened by suggestions of mysterious
sounds and supernatural presences, fills the
young listener with horror, and his older


viil
INTRODUCTION.
companions with a sense of mystery and awe.
For the child the upward path to bed through
darkened passages and solitary halls is peo-
pled with terrors worse than dragons and
visible monsters, for they are phantoms of
dread against whose malign power there is
no sovereign amulet.
The sufferings of the child sent severely
to encounter all alone such fears and fig-
ments of the fancy are indescribable. They
are recalled through the actual trials of later
years as more grievous and appalling than
they, and many a man and woman pities the
forlorn little figures that once they were, cow-
ering and shivering in that early purgatory
of terror which the ghost story created.
Later they begin to ask whether those har-
rowing apprehensions, that inexplicable awe,
were, after all, only fanciful. The man, of
whom the child is father, as he grows wiser
comes to learn that all he knows is that he
knows little. He sees the succession of the
seasons, the systole and disastole of the
visible heart of beauty, but the secret of its
life still hides from his gaze. If one enlight-
enment conceives the tortoise on which the
'elephant stands, another advances to proto-
plasm, but no further.
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting."


INTRODUCTION.
ix
The most refined psychological speculation
may extend the range of observation. But
the "mocking laughter" of desert places,
the cry of the banshee, the sudden impres-
sion of a presence, the strange and fanciful
popular superstitions, as they are called, in
the same way that unapprehended physical
conditions are sagely called nervous prostra-
tion—what is the key to them all? What is
a hallucination? Who shall say conclusive-
ly that it is the thing that is not? And if it
be, whence is it, and why?
The literature of ghosts is very ancient.
In visions of the night, and in the lurid va-
pors of mystic incantations, figures rise and
smile, or frown and disappear. The Witch
of Endor murmurs her spell, and "an old
man cometh up, and he is covered with a
mantle." Macbeth takes a bond of fate,
and from Hecate's caldron, after the appa-
rition of an armed head and that of a bloody
child, "an apparition of a child crowned,
with a tree in his hand, rises." The wiz-
ard recounts to Lochiel his warning vision,
and Lochiel departs to his doom. There
are stories of the Castle of Otranto and
of the Three Spaniards, and the infinite
detail of "singular experiences," which
make our conscious daily life the frontier


X
INTRODUCTION.
and border-land of an impinging world of
mystery.
But these stories have no conscious law.
They are like fantastic or horrible dreams.
Did the writer suffer from nightmare? Or
are they but fairy tales reversed? For airy
Titania has some evil fate given us the Tall
Woman, and tricksy Ariel have we exchanged
for Caliban? There is indeed a record of
similar recurring phenomena that may seem
to imply some law. There is the persistent
story of the friend who suddenly appears in
the room or at the door, or whom, awaking,
you see by your bedside, only to learn after-
wards that at the same moment in a distant
land he died. There is the family spectre,
whose appearance foretells death to the
luckless member of the family who sees it.
Does some sudden physical pang, some mor-
tal premonition, recall the legend, and in-
stantly he believes that he sees the messen-
ger of doom?
The fascination of this realm of experi-
ence, which is traditional from age to age,
yet always elusive, is undeniable. Few men
have seen ghosts, or will confess that they
have seen them. But almost everybody
knows some one of the few. Haunted houses
are familiar in all neighborhoods, with the


INTRODUCTION.
xl
same story of the roistering sceptic who will
gladly pass the night alone in the haunted
chamber, and give monsieur the ghost a
warm welcome, but who, if not found dead
in the morning, emerges pale and haggard,
with a settled terror in his look, and his lips
sealed forever upon the awful story of the
night.
Mansions in country places are advertised
for sale or hire, with the attraction of a well-
regulated ghost, who contents himself with
driving up at midnight with a great clatter
of outriders, and rumble of wheels, and brisk
letting down of steps, and a bustling entrance
into the house, and then no more. Staid
gentlemen remember in their youth awaking
in a friend's house in the summer night just
in time to see the vanishing through the long
window of a draped figure; a momentary
pausing on the balcony outside; the sense
of a penetrating, mournful look; then a van-
ishing; and at breakfast tha cheery question
of the host, " Did you see the lovely Lady
Rosamond ?" and a following tale of hapless
love and woe.
The delirium of fever, if only we knew
what it is, and an unbalanced mind, and an
excited imagination, are all devices more or
less unsatisfactory, and as mysterious as the


xii
INTRODUCTION.
ghosts themselves, to explain the realm of
ghost or fairy. Where these cannot be as-
sumed, dyspepsia may be invoked as the
witch who mingles and stirs the caldron.
But science loves to speculate upon so an-
cient and strange a system of phenomena,
or statements of alleged phenomena, and to
try to reduce to order and marshal in well-
disciplined ranks these coy and evanescent
hints of something that eludes exactness of
observation and defies acute analysis. The
meritorious effort recalls the line of Shelley
describing the clouds as
"Shepherded by the slow unwilling wind."
Science, indeed, is not unwilling. Her
ministers are ready to try the haunted cham-
ber, and to bring the Lady Rosamond to the
most rigid investigation. But will she smile
upon the philosophers and surrender, who
has only looked sadly upon the poets and
disappeared? The Society for Psychical
Research, however, is not daunted, and does
not despair of helping the sun to rise upon
the night side of nature. Several years since
it began to collect a census of hallucina-
tions, of which the responsibility was as-
sumed last summer by the International Con-
gress of Experimental Psychology at Paris.


INTRODUCTION.
xiii
The object is twofold—to obtain a mass of
facts about hallucination which may serve
as a basis for scientific study of such phe-
nomena, and also to ascertain the number
of persons who have had experience of them.
The question of the census sheet is very
simple: "Have you ever, when completely
awake, had a vivid impression of seeing or
being touched by a living being or an inan-
imate object, or hearing a voice, which im-
pression, so far as you could discover, was
not due to any external physical cause?"
Some eight thousand persons in England,
France, and the United States have already
responded, and the congress hopes that at
its next meeting in England, in 1892, there
may have been not less than fifty thousand
answers collected. Professor William James,
of Harvard University, has been selected to
superintend the American branch of the
census.
No more timely, striking, and interesting
illustration of these phenomena, the intima-
tions, impressions, apparitions, which are
familiarly described as supernatural, can be
found than the collection of little tales in this
volume. It is the most modern and con-
temporary contribution to the literature of
ghosts, selected from authors in various


xiv
INTRODUCTION.
parts of Europe—Norway, France, Spain,
Austria, Italy—all of them masters in their
way, and of that sympathetic and delicate
lightness of touch which is indispensable to
the happiest treatment of such themes. One
of the writers, Guy de Maupassant, is already
well known in this country from the little col-
lection of tales, The Odd Number, and from
Mr. Henry James's charming essay of in-
troduction. Another name which will have
great interest for many readers is that of
Becquer, a Spaniard, who died in 1870, only
thirty-four years old, whose tales are full of
the sentiment and legend of his country,
and some of whose verses, especially the
"Swallows," a tenderly passionate love-song,
breathing the sadness of the poet's life and
temperament, have been very felicitously
translated into English. Another of our
authors, an Italian, Giovanni Magherini-
Graziani, is still a young man, living pleas
antly at a villa near Florence. In 1871 he
published his most important work, a life of
Michael Angelo. He has published, also,
two or three small volumes of tales and es-
says, and is actively engaged in literary
work.
The tales that compose this volume show
how universally the old spell of "the super-


INTRODUCTION.
XV
natural" still lingers. The fair Lady Rosa-
mond, vanishing in the summer moonlight
on the balcony of a New England country-
house, she or some loathlier denizen of the
same uncomprehended sphere, appears on a
river in France or in a street in Spain. The
old man covered with a mantle still cometh
up. The child crowned, with a tree in his
hand, still rises. And still we gaze entranced,
and like the child shuddering through weird-
ly peopled shadows to his solitary chamber,
we are conscious of the uncanny spell, and
of the spectral realm in which we move.
These little tales, like instant photographs,
bring us nearer to the life of other lands,
and apprise us that, in an unexpected sense,
we are all of one blood—a blood which is
chilled by an influence that we cannot com-
prehend, and at a contact of which we are
conscious by an apprehension beyond that
of the senses.
George William Curtis.
September, i8go.











THE HORLA.
BY
GUY DE MAUPASSANT.


*
i


THE HORLA.
May 8th.
What a magnificent day! I spent the
whole morning stretched on the grass, be-
fore my house, under the great plane-tree
which entirely covers, shelters, and shades
it. I love this country, and I love to live
here, because here I have my roots, those
deep, fine roots which attach a man to the
soil where his forefathers were born and
buried, which attach him to what is thought
there and to what is eaten, to its customs as
to its dishes, to its localisms of speech, to the
peculiar intonation of its peasants, to the
smell of its earth, of its villages, of its very
air.


2
MODERN GHOSTS.
I love the house where I have grown up.
From my windows I see the Seine, flowing
by my garden; on the other side of the road,
almost on my own property:—the great, wide
Seine that goes to Havre from Rouen, cov-
ered with the passing boats.
To the left, down there, Rouen—the great
city of blue roofs swarming far and wide be-
low a crowd of pointed Gothic bell-towers.
These, ponderous or slende$ are innumer-
able, overtowered by the cathedral's cast-
iron spire, and filled with bells which ring
in the blue air on fine mornings. Their
sweet and distant iron humming, their bra-
zen chant, reaches out to me, brought by the
breeze, and now louder, now lower, as the
breeze now wakes, now drowses.
How fine it was this morning!
About eleven o'clock, I remember, a long
tow of ships defiled past my garden railings.
They were pulled by a tug the size of a fly;
it groaned and vomited forth a thick, black
smoke.
Just behind two English schooners, whose
red flag waved against the sky, came a su-
perb Brazilian three-master, quite white, ad-


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
3
mirably clean and shining. This ship gave
me so much pleasure that I saluted her, I
don't know why.
May 12th.
For some days I have had a little fever;
I feel unwell, or rather, properly speaking, I
feel depressed.
Whence comj these mysterious influences
which change wbr happiness into discour-
agement and gur confidence into distress?
One would almost say that the air, the invis-
ible air, was full of unknowable Powers, to
whose mysterious proximity we submit. I
awake full of gayety, with desires to sing in
my throat. Why? I go down to the water-
side, and suddenly, after a short walk, re-
turn distressed, as though some misfortune
awaited me at home. Why? Is it a shiver
of cold which, brushing across my skin, has
unsettled my nerves and darkened my soul?
Is it the shapes of the clouds, or the colors
of the day, or the changeable colors of things
which have passed in through my eyes, and
have troubled my thoughts? Do we know?
Everything about us, everything which we
see without observing, everything which we


4
MODERN GHOSTS.
brush against without recognizing, everything
which we touch without feeling, everything
which we encounter without clearly distin-
guishing, may have upon us, upon our senses,
and, through them, upon our minds and upon
our hearts, instant effects which are wonder-
ful and not to be explained.
Ah! but it is deep, this mystery of the In-
visible! No, we may not sound it with our
wretched senses, with our eyes—which can
perceive neither what is too small nor too
great, nor too near nor too far, nor the in-
habitants of a planet nor the inhabitants of
a drop of water. And we may not sound it
with our ears—which deceive us, transmit-
ting air-waves in the form of sonorous notes.
They are the fairies who perform the miracle
of changing movement into sound, and by
this metamorphosis they give birth to music
and to Nature's dumb agitation the power
of singing. No, we may not sound it with
our sense of smell—feebler than that of the
dog; nor with our taste—which can hardly
discern the age of wine!
Ah, if we had only other organs which
would perform in our favor other miracles


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
5
like that miracle of music, what new things
we should discover all about our lives!
May 16th.
I am certainly ill. Last month I was so
well! I have a fever, a dreadful fever, or
rather a feeling of feverish enervation which
causes my mind to suffer as much as my
body. I experience that awful sense of
some menacing danger, that apprehension
of coming misfortune or approaching death,
that curious presentiment which is no doubt
really the stroke of a still unrecognized sick-
ness germinating in body and in blood.
May 18th.
I have just been to consult my physician,
for I was not able to sleep. He found my
pulse rapid, my eye dilated, my nerves dis-
turbed, but no alarming symptoms. I must
take shower-baths and drink a little bro-
V mide of potassium.
May 25th.
No change. My condition is truly curious.
With the approach of evening a strange anx-
iety invades me, as if the night concealed


6
MODERN GHOSTS.
for me some dreadful menace. I dine quick-
ly, then try to read, but I do not comprehend
the words. I barely distinguish the letters'.
Then I pace my drawing-room backward
and forward, under the oppression of a con-
fused and resistless fear, the fear of sleep
and the fear of my bed.
Towards ten o'clock I go up-stairs to my
room. As soon as I get inside the door I
double-lock it and I push the bolts; I am
afraid ... of what ?. . . Hitherto I feared
nothing.... I open my closets, I look under
my bed; I listen.... I listen for what? . . .
Is it not strange that a simple indisposition,
a difficulty in the circulation perhaps, an
irritated nerve, a slight congestion, a little
disturbance of the works of my delicate,
imperfect human machinery, can out of a
merry man make a melancholy one—out of
a brave man make a coward? Then I go to
bed, and I await sleep as one might await an
executioner. I wait with terror for its com-
ing. And my heart beats, and my limbs
quiver, and my whole body trembles under
the warmth of the bedclothes, until the mo-
ment when I fall suddenly into slumber, as


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
7
a man might fall, to drown himself, into a gulf
of stagnant water. I do not feel sleep com-
ing in the "way I used to feel it coming—
calmly. For this sleep, hidden somewhere
near me, is perfidious, and it watches and
will soon seize me by the head, and close
my eyes, and destroy me.
I sleep long—two or three hours—then a
dream—no, a nightmare grips me in its
arms. I feel that I am in bed and that I
am sleeping ... I feel it and I know it. . . .
and I also feel that some one approaches
me, looks at me, touches me, mounts upon
my bed, kneels upon my breast, seizes my
neck in his hands and presses . . . presses
. . . with all his force, to strangle me.
I—I writhe, bound fast by that awful pow-
erlessness which paralyzes us in dreams. I
desire to shout,— I cannot; — to move,— I
cannot;—I try, with fearful efforts, panting,
to turn myself, to throw off this being who
is crushing and suffocating me;—I cannot.
And suddenly I awake, wild, covered with
perspiration. I light a candle. I am alone.
After this crisis, which recurs every night,
I sleep at last calmly until dawn.


8
MODERN GHOSTS.
June 3d.
My condition is still worse. What is the
matter with me? The bromide has no ef-
fect; the shower-baths have no effect. Just
now, in order to tire myself out (though
Heaven knows I am languid enough already!)
I went to walk in the forest of Roumare. I
thought at first that the fresh, buoyant,
balmy air, full of the perfume of herbs and
leaves, was pouring new blood into my
veins, new energy into my heart. I took a
wide glade. Then I turned towards La
Bouille, along a narrow alike, between two
armies of great trees which built a thick,
green, almost black roof between the sky
and myself.
Suddenly a shiver seized me — not a
shiver of cold, but a strange shiver of
anguish.
I quickened my pace, uneasy at being
alone in the wood, terrified without reason,
stupidly, by the profound loneliness. All at
once it seemed to me that I was being fol-
lowed, that some one was treading on my
heels, on the point—on the point—on the
point of touching me.


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
9
1 turned abruptly. I was alone. I saw
behind me only the straight, wide glade—
empty, high, fearfully empty; and in front
of me also it stretched out of sight just the
same—dreadful!
I closed my eyes. Why? And I began
to turn round and round on my heel, quickly,
like a top. I came near falling. I opened
my eyes again; the trees danced j the earth
swam; I was obliged to sit down. Then, of
course, I no longer knew from which di-
rection I had come! Fantastic thought!
Strange! Fantastic thought! I set off to
the right, and happened into the same av-
enue which had led me to the middle of the
forest.
June 3d.
The night was horrible. I shall go away
for a few weeks. A little journey will no
doubt set me on my feet again.
July 3d.
At home again. I am cured; and, be-
sides that, I have made a charming trip. I
have visited Mont Saint Michel, where I
had never been.
What a vision, when one arrives, as I did,


10
MODERN GHOSTS.
at Avranches towards the end of the day!
The city is on a little hill; a guide took me
to the public garden at the end of the town.
A great bay stretched away before me out
of sight, between two lonely shores which
lost themselves far off in the mists; and in
the midst of this immense yellow bay, be-
neath a golden and glittering sky, rose, som-
bre and pointed, a strange mount in the
midst of the sands. The sun had just dis-
appeared, and against the still flaming hori-
zon there was designed the profile of that
fantastic rock which bears upon its summit
a fantastic monument.
By daybreak I was on my way towards it.
The tide was low, as yesterday at evening,
and I watched that wonder-arousing abbey
growing taller and taller before me as I ap-
proached. After several hours of walking I
reached the enormous block of stones which
bears the little town dominated by the great
church. Having ascended the narrow and
steep street, I entered the most admirable
Gothic dwelling which has ever been con-
structed for God on earth, vast as a city,
full of low passages borne down by heavy


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
11
arches, of high galleries borne up by slender
columns. I entered that gigantic granite
jewel, light as a bit of lace, covered with
towers and with slender belfries linked one
to the other by fine-carved arches. They
are climbed by twisting stair-ways, and they
dart into the blue sky of day and into the
black sky of night, their fantastic heads
bristling with chimeras, with Devils, and
with strange Beasts.
When I reached the top I said to the
monk who accompanied me, “Father, you
must be well off here."
He answered: “There's a great deal of
wind, Monsieur;" and we fell into conversa-
tion while we watched the rising sea spread
over the sand and cover it with a steely
cuirass.
And the monk told me stories—all the
old stories of the place — legends, always
legends.
One of them impressed me very strongly.
The country people, those of the mount,
pretend that talking is heard on the sands
by night, then the bleating of two goats, the
one with a voice which is high, the other


12
MODERN GHOSTS.
with a voice which is deep. Unbelievers
maintain it is the sea-birds' crying, which
resembles now a bleat, and now a human
wail; but belated fishermen swear that they
have met, wandering on the sands, between
two tides, about the little city cast out so
far from the rest of the world, an old shep-
herd whose head, shrouded in a cloak, is
always invisible, and who leads behind him
a he-goat with the face of a man, and a she-
goat with the face of a woman. They have
long white hair, and they talk incessantly,
quarrelling together in an unknown tongue;
then suddenly they cease crying and begin
to bleat with all their might.
I said to the monk: "Do you believe it?"
He murmured: "I do not know."
I continued: "If there really existed on
the earth any other beings beside ourselves,
how is it possible that we should not have
known them long ago? How should you
have seen them, you? How should I not
have seen them, I?"
He answered: "Do we see the hundred-
thousandth part of what exists? For in-
stance, take the wind, which is the greatest


GUY DE MAUPASSANT. 13
force in nature, which knocks down men,
lays low buildings, tears up trees by the
roots, heaps the sea into mountains of water,
destroys coasts, and hurls great ships upon
the breakers,—the Wind which kills, which
whistles, which moans, which roars,—have
you ever seen it? Can you see it? It ex-
ists, nevertheless."
I was silent before this simple reasoning.
This man was a wise man or perhaps a fool.
I could not have decided which; but I was
silent. What he had just said I had often
thought.
July 3d.
I have slept badly; there is certainly
something feverish in the air here, for my
coachman suffers from the same complaint
as myself. On my return yesterday I no-
ticed that he was looking curiously pale. I
asked him:—
"What is the matter, Jean?"
"It is that I cannot sleep, Monsieur; my
nights eat up my days. Since Monsieur
went away, it holds me like a charm."
The other servants, however, are well; but
I myself am in great fear of a relapse.


14
MODERN GHOSTS.
July 4th.
Yes, I have had a relapse. My old night-
mares have returned. Last night I felt
some one squatting on my chest with his
mouth to mine, drinking my life out through
my lips. Yes, like a leech he drew it out of
my throat. Then when he was satiated he
arose, and I, I awoke, so nearly murdered,
so exhausted, so broken, that I had no lon-
ger power to move. If this continues many
days more I shall certainly go away again.
July jth.
Have I lost my reason? That which has
happened, that which I saw last night, is
so strange that my head turns when I think
of itl
I had, as I now do every evening, locked
my door; then, being thirsty, I drank half a
glass of water, and I noticed by mere chance
that the water-bottle was full up to the glass
stopper.
After that I went to bed and fell into one
of my dreadful slumbers, from which, two
hours later, I was drawn by a shock more
awful yet.


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
17
some bread, and some strawberries on my
table.
Some one drank—I drank—all the water,
and a little milk. The wine, the bread, and
the strawberries were not touched.
On the 7th of July I made the same ex-
periment, with the same result.
On the 8th of July I suppressed the water
and the milk. Nothing was touched at all.
Finally, on the 9th of July, I put only the
milk and the water on my table, being care-
ful to wrap up the bottles in cloths of white
muslin and to tie down the stoppers. Then
I rubbed my lips, my beard, my hands, with
black-lead, and I retired.
The invincible slumber seized me, soon
followed by the dreadful awaking. I had
not stirred; my very sheets bore no stains.
I rushed to the table. The cloths covering
the bottles were immaculate. I untied the
cords, trembling with fear. Some one had
drunk all the water! Some one had drunk
all the milk! Oh, my God!...
I leave to-day for Paris.
July 12th.
Paris. I must have lost my head com-
3


i8
MODERN GHOSTS.
pletely these last days. I have been un-
doubtedly the plaything of a nervous
imagination, unless, that is, I am really a
somnambulist, or that I have been subjected
to one of those influences, admitted but not
yet explained, which are called "suggest-
ions." In any case my perturbation came
near insanity, and twenty-four hours of Paris
have sufficed to put me on my feet again.
Yesterday, after taking a drive and making
some visits which caused a new, revivifying
air to pass into my soul, I finished the even-
ing at the Theatre Francais. They were
playing a piece by Alexandre Dumas fils;
and that strong, alert spirit completed my
cure.(^Solitude is certainly dangerous for an
active intelligence. We need around us men
who think and talkT^When we are long
alone, we people the void with phantoms.
I returned to the hotel in great good spir-
its, along the boulevards. Reminded by the
jostling of the crowd, I thought, not without
irony, of my terrors and imaginings of last
week, when I believed, yes, really believed,
that an invisible being was dwelling under
my roof. How easily we lose our heads,


GUY DE MAUPASSANT. 19
how weakly and quickly we become wild
with fear the moment we encounter some
little incident which cannot be explained!
Instead of concluding with the words:
"The reason I do not understand is that
the cause as yet escapes me," we immedi-
ately proceed to imagine some dreadful mys-
tery, some supernatural power.
July 14th.
F£te de la Republique. I took a walk in
the streets. The flags and the fireworks
amused me like a child. Nevertheless, it is
simply an absurdity—this being joyous on
a fixed date, by Government decree. The
people is an imbecile herd, now stupidly pa-
tient, now ferociously rebellious. Some one
says to it: "Make merry." It makes mer-
ry. Some one says to it: "Go and fight
with your neighbors." It goes and fights.
Some one says to it: "Vote for the Emper-
or." It votes for the Emperor. Then some
one says to it: "Vote for the Republic."
And it votes for the Republic.
Those who give it these orders are fools,
also; but instead of obeying men, they obey


20
MODERN GHOSTS.
principles, things whose stupidity, whose bar-
renness, whose falsity appears in the very
name—Principles! Ideas supposed certain
and immutable in this world where one is
sure of nothing, where even light, even sound
are illusions, merely states in the brain,
merely states in the brain!
July 16th.
Yesterday I saw something which disturb-
ed me very much.
I was dining with my cousin Mme. Sable"f
whose husband commands the 76th Chas-
seurs at Limoges. At dinner there were
two young ladies, and the husband of one of
them, a Doctor Parent, a nerve - specialist,
much interested in the extraordinary devel-
opments brought to light by the experiments
now making in Hypnotism and Suggestion.
He gave us a long account of the prodig-
ious results obtained by English scientists
and by the physicians of the school at Nancy.
The facts which he advanced appeared to
me so extremely fantastic that I declared
myself entirely sceptical.
"We are," he maintained, "on the point
of discovering one of Nature's most impor-


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
21
tant secrets—I mean to say, one of her most
important terrestrial secrets; since, of course,
she hides forever others quite as important
up there in the stars. Ever since Man has
been able to think, ever since he has been
able to speak and write his thoughts, he has
from time to time felt brushing against him
the touch of a mystery which is impenetrable
to his gross, imperfect senses; and he has
tried to supplement this weakness of his
bodily organs by an effort of his mind.
While his intelligence remained in the rudi-
mentary state this notion of phenomena, all
about him, yet invisible, took on shapes of
the most vulgar terror. From it were born
popular beliefs in the supernatural, legends
of wandering spirits, of fairies, of gnomes,
of ghosts — I might even add, the vulgar
idea of God; for the ordinary conception
of a workman-creator, in whatever religion it
springs up, is, of all the inventions of the
human brain, the most common, the most
stupid, the most unacceptable. Nothing is
truer than Voltaire's epigram: 'God made
man in his own image, and man has return-
ed the compliment.'


22
MODERN GHOSTS.
"But about a century ago people began
to have dim forebodings of something new.
Mesmer and several others started us on an
unexpected track, and now, and especially in
the last three or four years, we have arrived
at wonderful results."
My cousin, as unbelieving as myself,
smiled. Doctor Parent said to her: "May
I try to hypnotize you, madame?"
"Certainly you may."
She seated herself in an arm-chair, and,
trying to fascinate her gaze, he looked at her
fixedly. As for me, I felt suddenly troubled—
my heart beating, a choking in my throat.
I saw the eyes of Mme. Sable droop, her
mouth work, her breast heave. At the end
of ten minutes she slept.
"Put yourself behind her," said the phy-
sician.
And I seated myself behind her. In her
hands he placed a visiting-card, saying:
"This is a mirror j what do you see in it?"
She answered: "I see my cousin."
"What is he doing?"
"He is twisting his mustache."
"What now?"


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
23
"He is taking a photograph out of his
pocket."
"A photograph of whom?"
"Of himself."
It was true! And the photograph had
been sent home only that evening to my
hotel.
"How does he look in the photograph?"
"He is standing up, with his hat in his
hand."
So then she saw in this card, in this white
card, as well as she would have seen in a
glass!
The young ladies, very much frightened,
cried: "Enough! Enough! Enough!"
But the doctor gave her an order: "You
will rise at eight o'clock to-morrow morning;
and you will go to find your cousin at his
hotel; and you will beg him to lend you five
thousand francs, which your husband has
said he needs, and hopes to get from you
when he comes up shortly to town."
Then he awoke her.
While returning to the hotel I meditated
on this curious seance, and I was assailed by
doubts, riot of the absolute, the indubita-


24
MODERN GHOSTS.
ble good faith of my cousin, whom I have
known like a sister from childhood up, but
of a possible trick on the part of the doctor.
Might he not, at the same time with his vis-
iting-card, have held before the sleeping lady
a mirror hidden in his hand? Professional
prestidigitators perform equally extraordina-
ry feats.
So I went home and to bed.
But this morning, about half after eight,
I was awaked by my man, who said:
"It is Mme. Sable". She asks to speak
with you, sir, immediately."
I dressed in all haste, and I bid him show
her in.
Very much embarrassed, she sat down,
lowering her eyes, not lifting her veil; and
she said:
"My dear cousin, I have to ask you for a
great favor."
"What is it, cousin?"
"I hate to ask you, and yet I must. I
need—I need five thousand francs; I need it
very much."
"Oh, come now!—You?"
"Yes, I. Or, rather, my husband. He


GUY DE MAUPASSANT. 25
says I must get the money for him some-
how."
I was so stupefied that I stammered. I
asked myself if this were not a joke on me
which she was playing with Doctor Parent;
if this were not a simple farce rehearsed in
advance, and very well acted.
But, when I looked at her carefully, all
my doubts vanished. She trembled with
anguish, the proceeding was so painful for
her; and I saw that her throat was full of
sobs.
I knew she was very rich, and I continued:
"What! Your husband has not five thou-
sand francs at his disposal? Come! Think
a little. Are you sure he told you to ask
me for it?"
For some seconds she hesitated as though
making a great effort to remember, then she
answered:
"Yes. ... Yes. ... I am sure of it."
"Has he written?"
Again she hesitated, reflecting. I divined
how she was tortured by the working of her
thoughts. She did not know. She knew
simply that she must borrow from me, for


26
MODERN GHOSTS.
her husband, five thousand francs. But she
gained the courage to lie.
"Yes, he wrote to me."
"When, then? You said nothing to me
of it yesterday."
"I got the letter this morning."
"Can you show it me?"
"No ... no ... no ... it had private
matters in it . . . too personal ... I ... I
burnt it."
"Oh! I suppose then he's been getting
into debt."
Again she hesitated; then murmured:
"I do not know."
I announced, abruptly:
"The fact is at the moment I haven't five
thousand francs to my hand, cousin."
She uttered a kind of suffering cry.
"Oh, oh! I beg you, I beg you to get
it somehow, somehow.". . .
She grew excited, clasped her hands be-
fore me as though she were praying! I
heard her voice change tone; she wept and
stammered; she was tormented, overpower-
ed, dominated by the irresistible order which
had been laid upon her.


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
27
"Oh, oh! I beg you ... if you knew
how I suffer.... I must have it to-day."
I took pity on her.
"You shall have it, and very soon, I
promise."
"Oh, thank you! thank you! You are
good."
I continued:—" Do you remember what
happened at your house last night?"
"Yes."
"Do you remember that Doctor Parent
put you to sleep?"
"Yes."
"Well, he ordered you to come to me this
morning, and borrow five thousand francs.
And at this moment you are obeying his
suggestion."
She reflected for a few seconds, and an-
swered:
"But it's my husband who wants it."
For an hour I tried in vain to convince
her.
As soon as she had gone, I hurried to the
Doctor. He was on the point of going out;
and he listened to me with a smile. Then
he said:—


20
MODERN GHOSTS.
“Do you believe now?”
“Yes, I must.”
“Let us go to your cousin."
She was already dozing in a long chair,
exhausted with fatigue. The physician felt
her pulse, looked at her for a time, his raised
hand pointing towards her eyes. Little by
little she closed them, submitting to the re-
sistless strength of the magnetic power.
When she slumbered :
“Your husband has no longer any need
of five thousand francs. You will therefore
forget that you have asked your cousin to
lend you them; and if he speaks to you of
it, you will not understand him.”
Then he awoke her. I drew out a pock-
et-book.
“Here, my dear cousin, here is what you
asked me for this morning."
She was so surprised that I did not dare
to insist. Nevertheless, I tried to arouse
her memory; but she denied everything with
vehemence, thought I was making fun of
her, and at last came near being angry.


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
29
There it is!—I have just returned; and
I was so disturbed by this experience that
at luncheon I could eat nothing.
July igth.
Several people to whom I have related
this adventure have made fun of me. I
do not know what to think. The wise man
says: "It may be."
July 2isl.
I've been to dine at Bougival; afterwards
I went to the Watermen's Ball. Decidedly
everything depends on circumstance and
place. To believe in the supernatural on
the island of La Grenouilliere would be the
height of folly indeed. . . . But on the top
of Mont St. Michel? . . . But in the Far
East? We are subject fearsomely to the
influence of what surrounds us. Next week
I shall go home.
July 30th.
I arrived yesterday. All well.
August 2d.
Nothing new. Beautiful weather. I pass
my days watching the Seine flow.


3«
MODERN GHOSTS.
August 4th.
Quarrels among the servants. They say
that some one breaks the glass at night in
the closets. My man accuses the cook, who
accuses the laundress, who accuses the two
maids. Which one is guilty? It would
take a wise man to say.
August 6th.
This time I am not mad. I have seen.
... I have seen!. . . I have seen! . . . I can
doubt no more. ... I have seen! ... I am
still chilled to my very finger-nails. ... I
am still afraid to the very marrow. . . . I,
have seen!. . .
I was taking a walk about two o'clock, in
broad daylight, in my rose-garden,... along
a row of autumn roses which are already
beginning to bloom.
Pausing to look at a Ge"ant des Batailles,
which bore three magnificent buds, I saw,
I distinctly saw, quite near me the stem of
one of these roses bend as though twisted
by an invisible hand, then break, as though
that hand had plucked it! Then the flower
lifted itself, following the curve which would
have been described by an arm carrying it


GUY DE MAUPASSANT. 3!
to a mouth; and it remained hanging in the
empty air, alone, motionless, a terrifying red
stain three paces from my eyes.
Maddened, I threw myself forward to seize
it! I found nothing; it had disappeared.
Then I was overcome with violent anger
against myself, since a man who is serious
and reasonable should not allow himself to
have such hallucinations as this.
But was it really an hallucination? I turned
to look for the stem, and I discovered it
almost immediately, on the plant, freshly
broken, between the two other roses which
remained upon the tree.
So I went back to the house with a
troubled soul; for now I am certain that
near me there exists an invisible being who
lives on milk and on water; who can touch
objects; can take them up and change their
places; whose nature, therefore, though im-
perceptible to our sense, is material, and who,
like myself, dwells under my roof....
August yth.
I slept quietly. He drank all the water
in my bottle, but did not disturb my sleep.


3*
MODERN GHOSTS.
I ask myself if I am mad. While walk-
ing just now along the river, doubts about
my reason came to me; not vague doubts
such as I have hitherto experienced, but
doubts precise and absolute. I have seen
lunatics, I have known some who remained
intelligent, clear-headed, lucid on every sub-
ject save one. They talked clearly, easily,
profoundly, then suddenly their intelligence,
striking on the rock of their monomania,
there ground itself to pieces, was broken up
and foundered in that terrible, furious sea,
full of heaving waves and mists and squalls,
the sea which we call "Madness."
I should certainly believe that I was mad,
quite mad, if I were not so entirely self-con-
scious, if I did not recognize my condition
so perfectly, if I were not always sounding
it by an analysis which is so completely
clear. I am, then, only a man who suffers
from an hallucination, but who is in full pos-
session of his reason? Some trouble has
occurred in my brain, one of those troubles
which psychologists nowadays endeavor to
note and particularize? And this trouble
has induced a profound lapse in my intellect,


GUY DE MAUPASSANT. 33
in the order and logic of my thoughts? A
similar phenomenon occurs in dreams, where
we are led through the most improbable of
phantasmagoria without feeling a shadow of
surprise, simply for the reason that the veri-
fying apparatus, our sense of control, is
asleep, while our imaginative faculty wakes
and is active. May it not be, therefore, that
one of the invisible keys of my cerebral
piano is paralyzed? People very often, in
consequence of an accident, lose their mem-
ory of proper names, or of verbs, or of fig-
ures, or simply of dates. That the various
little bundles of thought are specially local-
ized is now considered proved. Hence what
is there surprising if my power of controlling
the unreality of certain hallucinations finds
itself at the present moment torpid?
I pondered on all this as I followed the
bank of the river. The sun covered the
stream with radiance, made the earth deli-
cious, filled my eyes with love for life, for
the swallows whose swift motions are a joy to
look at, for the grasses by the water's edge
whose rustling is a joy to me when I listen.
Little by little, however, I was penetrated
3


34
MODERN GHOSTS.
by a strange uneasiness. It seemed to me
that a force, an occult force, benumbed me,
checked me, prevented me from going far-
ther, called me back. I experienced a
mournful feeling that I must return, a feel-
ing like that which oppresses us when, hav-
ing left at home some sick person whom we
love, we are suddenly seized by a presenti-
ment that she is worse.
So I turned back, against my will, certain
that I should find bad news at home, a let-
ter, or a telegram. There was nothing, and
I remained more surprised and uneasy than
if I had again seen some fantastic vision.
August 8th.
I passed a dreadful evening yesterday.
He no longer makes his presence evident,
but I feel him near me, spying, watching,
penetrating me, dominating me, more terri-
ble while thus concealed than if he mani-
fested by supernatural phenomena his invis-
ible and constant presence.
I slept, however.
August gth.
Nothing. But I am afraid.


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
35
August ioth.
Nothing. What will happen to-morrow?
August nth.
Still nothing; I cannot stay at home any
longer with this fear and these thoughts in
my soul; I shall go away.
August 12th: 10 p. m.
All day I have wanted to be off; I could
not go. I wished to perform an act of free-
will, very easy and very simple:—going out
of my door—getting into my carriage—driv-
ing to Rouen. I was not able. Why?
August rjth.
When one is attacked by certain maladies
all the powers of the physical being seem
broken, all the energies destroyed, all the
muscles relaxed, the bones becoming soft as
flesh and the flesh liquid as water. I experi-
ence this in my moral state after a strange
and appalling fashion. I have no longer any
strength, courage, self-control, no power to
put in motion my own will. I can no longer
will; but some one wills for me, and I obey.


36
MODERN GHOSTS.
August 14th.
I am lost! Some one is in possession of
my soul and governs it. Some one orders
all my acts, all my movements, all my
thoughts. I am no longer anything in my-
self; I am nothing but an enslaved and ter-
rified spectator of the things which I accom-
plish. I desire to go out; I cannot—he
does not wish it, and I remain, frightened,
trembling, in the arm-chair where he holds
me seated. I desire simply to rise, to get
up, so as to prove that I am still my own
master. I cannot! I am riveted to my seat,
and my seat adheres to the ground with
such force that no power could lift us up.
Then, on a sudden, I must, I must, I
must go to the end of the garden and pick
some strawberries and eat them. And I go.
I pick the berries and I eat them. Oh, my
God!—my God! If there be a God, deliver
me, save me, help me! Pardon! Pity!
Grace! Save me! Oh, what suffering!
what torture! what horror!
August ijtA.
Yes, this is the way in which my poor


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
cousin was possessed and dominated when
she came to me to borrow five thousand
francs. She submitted to a strange will
which had entered into her like a new soul
-like a new parasite and dominant soul.
Is the world ending?
But this being who governs me—what is
he, this invisible? Who is he, this unknow-
able, this prowler of a supernatural race?
And so the Invisibles exist! How is it,
then, that since the beginning of the world
they have never manifested themselves as
they have to me? I never read of any such
things as have happened here in my house.
Oh, if I could leave it !—if I could go away
-flee and never return-I should be saved !
But I cannot
August 16th.
I was able to make my escape to-day for
two hours, like a prisoner who finds the
door of his dungeon, by chance, open. I
suddenly felt that I was free, and that he
was far away. I ordered the carriage in-
stantly, and I got as far as Rouen. Oh,
what joy to say to a man who obeys you-
s Go to Rouen.”


3»
MODERN GHOSTS.
I had myself driven to the library, and I
took out Hermann Herestauss's great treat-
ise, The Unrecognized Inhabitants of the An-
cient and Modern World.
Then, as I was getting back into my
brougham I wanted to say: "To the sta-
tion!" but cried—I did not say, I shouted—
with a voice so loud that the people in the
street turned round—" Home !" and I fell,
mad with despair, on the cushions of the
carriage. He had found and captured me
again.
August ifth.
Ah! what a night!—what a night! And
yet it occurs to me that I ought to rejoice.
I read till one o'clock in the morning. Her-
mann Herestauss is a doctor of philosophy
and of theogony; he has written a complete
history of the manifestations of those beings
which wander mostly invisible about man-
kind, or are imagined by him as so doing;
he treats exhaustively of their origin, of their
domain, of the power which they exercise;
and not one of them resembles the one who
haunts me. One would say that ever since
man could think he has had dim forebod-


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
39
ings and fears of a new being, stronger than
himself, his successor in the world; and
that, feeling him near at hand, and being un-
able to foresee the real nature of this new
master, he has in terror created all that fan-
tastic crowd of occult beings—vague phan-
toms born of fear.
But to continue. Having read till one
o'clock, I went and seated myself at an open
window to refresh brow and brain in the
calm air of darkness.
The night was gentle and warm. How I
should have loved this kind of a night long
ago!
No moon. The stars at the back of the
black sky glittered and trembled. Who
dwell in those worlds up there? What
forms? what living things? what animals?
what plants? That which thinks in those
distant universes, what knows it more than
we? What power has it more than we?
What sees it that we know not? And some
day or another will not one of those beings,
traversing space, appear upon the earth and
conquer it, just as the Normans of old crossed
the sea to subdue more feeble races?


40
MODERN GHOSTS.
We are so weak, so defenceless, so igno-
rant, so little, we here on this revolving
speck of mud and water.
Thus dozing in the fresh evening breeze.
I drowsed off.
But after I had slept about forty minutes,
I opened my eyes, making no other move-
ment, awoke by some confused fantastical
emotion. At first I saw nothing; then, on
a sudden, it seemed to me that a page of
the open book lying on my table had just
turned by itself. No breath of air came
through the window. I was surprised, and
I waited. At the end of about four minutes
I saw, I saw, yes, I saw with my eyes another
page lift itself and fold over down on the
preceding one as though a finger had turned
it. My arm-chair was empty, seemed emp-
ty; but I understood that he was there, he,
seated in my place, and that he was reading.
With one furious leap, with the bound of a
beast who has rebelled at last, and fallen on
his master to tear him open, I crossed the
room to seize, to grip him in my hands, to
kill him! . . . But my chair, before I had
reached it, was overturned, as though some


GUY DE MAUPASSANT. 41
one fled before me ... my table tottered, my
lamp fell and was extinguished, and my win-
dow shut itself as though a detected thief
had leaped out into the night by catching
both the sashes in his hands.
So, he fled! He was afraid, he was afraid
of me!
Then . . . then . . . to-morrow ... or the
day after... or some day... I shall be able
to get him down under my hands, and to
crush him against the earth! Do not dogs
sometimes bite and throttle their masters?
August 18th.
I have reflected all day. Oh yes, I shall
obey him, follow his suggestions, accomplish
all his desires, appear humble, submissive,
cowardly! He is the strongest. But an
hour will come. . . .
August igth.
I know ... I know ... I know all! I
have read as follows in the Revue du Monde
Scientifique: "Information of a curious nat-
ure comes to us from Rio de Janeiro. An
epidemic of madness, comparable to those
contagious crazes which attacked the Euro-


42 MODERN GHOSTS.
pean peoples during the Middle Ages, is, it
seems, at present, raging in the province of
San Paulo. The inhabitants are leaving their
houses in dismay, deserting their villages,
and abandoning their crops, maintaining
that they are being pursued, taken posses-
sion of, governed like a human herd of cat-
tle, by certain invisible but tangible beings,
resembling vampires, who suck upon their
life-blood during their sleep, and who, be-
sides that, take water and milk, but no oth-
er nourishment.
"Professor Don Pedro Henriquez, accom-
panied by several other scientists of the
medical profession, is on his way to the prov-
ince of San Paulo, to study on the spot the
causes and the manifestations of this curious
mania; he will then propose to the Emperor
whatever measures he decides best for re-
calling these unhappy lunatics to their rea-
son."
Ah! Ah! I remember, I remember the
beautiful Brazilian three-master which pass-
ed up the Seine under my windows on the
8th of last May! I thought it so beau-
tiful, so white, so gay! The Being was


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
43
aboard it, coming from that distant country
where his race was born! And he saw me!
He saw that my dwelling was white, like-
wise; and he leaped from the ship to the
river-banks. Oh, my God!
And now, I know, I divine. The king-
dom of man is ended.
He has come. He whom primitive peo-
ples dreaded with a naive terror, He who
was exorcised by anxious priests, He whom
sorcerers invoked in vain on sombre nights,
He to whom the forebodings of man, the tran-
sitory master of the earth, have given the
monstrous or gracious forms of gnomes and
ghosts, of genii, of fairies, and of familiar
spirits. After the vulgar conceptions of
primitive fear came the clearer presenta-
tions of more highly developed minds. Mes-
mer first divined Him; and the doctors, as
long as ten years ago, discovered the exact
nature of His power before He himself had
ever used it. They have played with this
weapon of the new Lord, this domination of
a mysterious will over a human soul made
captive. They have called it magnetism,
hypnotism, suggestion... what not? 1 have


44
MODERN GHOSTS.
seen them, like careless children, amusing
themselves with that dreadful power! Woe
to us! Woe to Man! He is come, the ...
the ... how calls he himself ... the ... it
seems to me that he is crying out his name,
and that I cannot hear it ... the ... yes...
he is crying it ... I am listening ... I can-
not ... I repeat ... the ... Horla ... I
heard ... the Horla ... it is he... the Horla
... he has come !....
Ah! the vulture has devoured the dove,
and the wolf has devoured the sheep, the
lion has devoured the buffalo with the
pointed horns; and the man has slain the
lion by arrows and by his knife and by pow-
der. But the Horla will make of man what
man has made of the horse, and of the ox:
his thing, his servant, his food, by the sole
power of his will. Woe unto us!
Nevertheless, the animal sometimes revolts
and kills his master ... and I, too, I wish
... I shall be able ... but I must first know
what he is like, I must touch him, see him !
Scientists say that the eyes of animals are
different from ours, and do not distinguish
things as ours do. . . . Just so my eyes can-


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
*5
not distinguish this new-comer who oppress-
es me.
Why? Oh! now I remember the words
of the monk of Mont St. Michel: "Do we
see the hundred - thousandth part of what
exists? For instance, take the wind, which
is the greatest force in nature, which knocks
down men, lays low buildings, tears up trees
by the roots, heaps the sea into mountains
of water, destroys coasts, and hurls great
ships upon the breakers,—the Wind which
kills, which whistles, which moans, which
roars,—have you ever seen it? Can you
see it? It exists, nevertheless."
And I continued to reflect: "My eye is
so feeble, so imperfect, that it does not even
distinguish solid bodies, if they are transpar-
ent—such as glass!... And if a mirror with-
out a quicksilver back bars the way, my eye
allows me to throw myself up against it like
a bird which, straying into a room, dashes its
head to pieces against the window-panes. A
thousand things beside deceive and confuse
it. Then what wonder if it cannot see this
new transparent body?"
A new being! Why not? Inevitably he


46
MODERN GHOSTS.
must have arisen! Why should we be the
last? We cannot see him as we do other
beings created before ourselves? That is
simply because his nature is more perfect,
because his body is more subtilely and high-
ly developed than ours, than ours so feeble,
than ours conceived so roughly, encumbered
with organs like over-complex springs, always
fatigued, and always straining. For our
body lives like a plant and like a beast,
gaining a painful sustenance from air, from
grasses, and from flesh. A living machine,
the prey to sickness, to deformity, and to
decay, it is of dust; a work at once coarse
and delicate, irregular, pitifully simple, fan-
tastic, and ill-made ingeniously; the first
rough sketch of a being which might some-
time be developed into something intelligent
and perfect.
There are, after all, from the oyster up to
the man, so few of us here on the earth.
Why not one more, once the period which
separates the appearances of different suc-
cessive species has been accomplished?
Why not one more? Why not other trees
with immense flowers dazzling and suffusing


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
47
entire regions with their perfume? Why
not other elements besides Fire, Air, Earth,
and Water? They are four, only four, these
nursing fathers of being! What a pity!
Why are they not forty, four hundred, four
thousand? How poor, how mean, how
wretched is everything! Granted, but not
freely; conceived, but without genius; exe-
cuted, but with no lightness of touch! The
elephant, forsooth, the hippopotamus, how
graceful! The camel, how elegant!
But what say you of the butterfly, that
flying flower? I dream of one large as a
hundred worlds, with wings whose shape,
whose beauty, whose color, and whose man-
ner of motion I cannot even describe. But
I see it ... it is going from star to star
refreshing and perfuming each with the
light and harmonious breathing of its
course! . . . And whole peoples, high up
there, watch, in ecstasy and ravishment, its
passing! . . .
What is the matter with me? It is he,
he, the Horla, who haunts me and makes


48
MODERN GHOSTS.
me dream such follies! He is within me.
He has become my soul; I shall kill him!
August 20th.
I shall kill him. I have seen him. I sat
down last night at my table, and I pretended
to be absorbed in writing. I knew very well
that he would come and prowl round me,
very near, so near that perhaps I should be
able to touch him, to seize him. And then!
. . . then I should have the strength of des-
peration; I should have hands and knees,
breast, and brow, and teeth, to strangle, to
crush, to bite, to tear.
And, straining every sense, I watched for
him.
I had lit my two lamps and the eight can-
dles on my mantel, exactly as though the
light would help me to discover him!
Before me was my bed, an old oak bed-
stead with columns. On my right the chim-
ney-piece. On my left the door, which I
had carefully shut, after leaving it open for
a while in order to attract him. Behind me,
a tall wardrobe, with a looking-glass which
I used every day for shaving and for dress-


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
49
ing, and in which, every time I passed it, I
had a habit of looking myself over from
head to foot.
So I pretended to write in order to deceive
him; for he, too, was watching. And sud-
denly I felt, I was certain, that he was read-
ing over my shoulder, that he was there al-
most brushing my ear.
I jumped up with out-stretched hands, and
turned round so quickly that I almost fell.
Well? In my chamber it was as light as
day, but I did not see myself in the glass!
... It was empty, clear, deep, full of light!
My image was not in it . . . and I stood
there right in front of it, I! The great glass
was clear from top to bottom. And with
wild eyes I stared at this thing; and I did
not dare to advance, I did not dare to move,
feeling indeed that he was there, but that he
would escape me, he, whose invisible body
had absorbed the reflection of mine.
What fear I suffered! Then, all of a sud-
den, I began to perceive myself in a mist at
the back of the mirror, in a mist as though
through a sheet of water; and it seemed to
me that this water glided from left to right,
4


5°
MODERN GHOSTS.
slowly, making my figure clearer, from sec-
ond to second. It was like the ending of an
eclipse. That which concealed me did not
appear to possess sharp outlines, but merely
a kind of opaque transparence, rarefying it-
self little by little.
At last I could distinguish my whole fig-
ure, just as I do each day when I look.
I had seen him! The terror of it remains
still on me, causing me still to shiver.
August 21st.
Kill him? How? Since I cannot reach
him? Poison? But he would see me mix-
ing it in the water; and, besides, would our
poisons have any effect on his supersensual
body? No ... no ... of course not. . . .
What then ?.. . what then ?. . .
August 22d.
I have had up a locksmith from Rouen,
and I have ordered for my room some iron
shutters like those which certain private
houses in Paris have on the ground-floor
as a protection against robbers. He is
also to make me an iron door. I am ap-


GUY DE MAUPASSANT. SI
pearing like a great coward, but at that I
laugh!. . .
Sept. ioth.
Rouen. Hotel Continental. It is accom-
plished ... it is accomplished . . . but is
he dead? My soul is overwhelmed by what
I have seen.
Yesterday the locksmith, having fitted my
shutters and my iron door, I left everything
open until midnight, although it began to be
very cold.
All of a sudden I felt that he was there,
and a joy, a mad joy seized me. I rose
gently, and I walked up and down for a long
time in order to put him off his guard. Then
I carelessly took off my boots and put on
my slippers. Then I closed my iron shut-
ters, and, returning tranquilly to the door, I
closed that also and double-locked it. Again
returning to the window, I secured the shut-
ter with a padlock, and put the key in my
pocket.
All of a sudden I understood that he was
stirring anxiously round me; that, in his


MODERN GHOSTS.
turn now, he was afraid; that he was com-
manding me to open. I came near yield-
ing; I did not yield, but, setting my back
against the door, I opened it on a crack just
wide enough for me to pass through back-
ward; and as I am very tall, my head
touched the lintel. I was sure that he could
not have escaped, and I shut him in all
alone—all alone! What happiness! I had
him fast! Then I went down-stairs, run-
ning. In the drawing-room under my bed-
chamber I took the two lamps, and I poured
oil over the carpet, over the furniture, over
everything; then I set fire to it and I escaped
from the house after having double-locked
on the outside the great hall door.
And I hid myself at the bottom of the
garden in a thicket of laurels. How long
it was! How long it was! All remained
black, silent, immobile; not a breath of
air, not a star in the great mountains of
clouds which I could not see, but which
rested on my soul so heavily, so heavily.
I watched my house and I waited. How
long it was! I had begun to think that the
fire had gone out of itself, or that he—He


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
53
had extinguished it. Then one of the win-
dows on the ground floor cracked under the
pressure of the inner conflagration, and a
tongue of flame—a great tongue of red and
yellow flame-long and soft and caressing,
climbed up along the white wall and kissed
the very roof. A glow ran over the trees,
the branches, the leaves, and a shiver-a
shiver of fear also! The birds awoke ; a
dog began to howl; it seemed to me that
the day itself was getting up! Soon two
other windows burst open, and I saw that
the whole ground-floor of my house was
nothing but a dreadful brazier. But a cry
-an awful cry-sharp, heart - rending-a
woman's shriek-came out into the night,
and two windows in the garret opened! I
had forgotten my servants ! I saw their
wild faces, their waving arms!...
Then, mad with horror, I set off running
to the village, shouting “Help! -- help!
Fire !—fire !" I met people already hasten-
ing to the scene, and I returned with them
-to look!
The house was now simply a horrible and
magnificent stake-a monstrous stake-illu-


54 MODERN GHOSTS.
minating all the country—a stake at which
men were burning, and at which he burned
also—He, He, my prisoner, the new Being,
the new master, the Horla!
Suddenly the entire roof fell in between
the walls, and a volcano of flame shot up-
ward to the sky. Through the windows
open upon the furnace I saw the fiery vat,
and I thought: he is there in that burning
oven—dead....
Dead? Perhaps. . . . But his body? His
body, which the light of day could pass
through, is it not perhaps indestructible by
such means as destroy our bodies?
What if he be not dead? . . . Time alone,
perhaps, has power over the Being Invis-
ible, the Being Terrible. Why a transparent
body? why an imperceptible body? why the
body of a Spirit, if he too must fear mis-
fortunes, wounds, infirmities, premature de-
struction?
Premature destruction? All human ter-
ror springs from the idea of that After
Man, the Horla. After him who can die
any day, any hour, any moment, by any acci
dent, has come He who shall die only on his


GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
appointed day, at his appointed hour, at his
appointed minute, having touched the ap-
pointed limit of existence !
No ... no ... there is no doubt, there
is no doubt. ... I have not killed him. ...
Then ... then ... I see ... it is plain ...
yes, it is plain that I must ... kill ... my-
self!....
. . . . . . . . . . . .


t
!
i
I
t
I
1


SIESTA.
BY
ALEXANDER L. KIELLAND.





SIESTA.
In one of those elegant bachelors' lodg-
ings in Rue Castiglione a merry company
lingered over the dessert.
Senor Jose' Francisco de Silvis was a Por-
tuguese, short in stature, black as a coal. He
was one of those Brazilians who are wont
to cross the ocean with incredible fortunes,
to lead incredible lives in Paris, and to dis-
tinguish themselves, above all things, by
making the most incredible acquaintances.
At this little dinner-party there was hardly
one who was acquainted with his neighbor
on the right, or on the left; excepting, of
course, those coming together. The host
himself had met them either at a ball, or at
table-d'hote, or in the street.


6o
MODERN GHOSTS.
Sefior de Silvis laughed loudly, talked
loudly, wherever he went, as rich foreigners
always do. Not being able to gain entree
into the Jockey Club, he collected around
himself whatsoever he happened upon. He
immediately asked for the address. The
next day he sent an invitation for a small
dinner-party.
He spoke all languages — indeed, even
German. One could see that he was not a
little proud when he called across the ta-
ble, "Mein lieber Herr Doktor !—wie gehfs
Ihnen t"
And there was, too, a real bodily German
doctor in the party, with an exuberant beard,
as red as fire, and that smile of Sedan, worn
by all Germans in Paris.
The temperature of the entertainment rose
with the champagne. Fluent French and
murdered French alternated with Spanish
and Portuguese. The ladies leaned back
in their chairs and laughed. The party was
soon sufficiently acquainted to cast aside all
embarrassment. Jesting and witty words
flew over the table from mouth to mouth.
The "lieber Doktor" alone discussed seri-


ALEXANDER L. KIELLAND. 6l
ously with his neighbor—a French journal-
ist, with a red ribbon in his button-hole.
And there was still another present who
did not allow himself to be carried away
with the general gayety. He sat at the
right of Mademoiselle Adele. On her left
sat her new admirer, the corpulent Anatole,
who had been eating excessively of the truf-
fles.
During the meal Mademoiselle Adele had
attempted, by many harmless little devices,
to enliven her neighbor on the right. But
he remained quiet, answered courteously,
but shortly and in a low voice.
She thought at first that he was a Pole;
one of those most wearisome of creatures,
who travel about and play the despised.
But she soon discovered that she had erred.
That annoyed Mademoiselle Adele.
It was one of her many accomplishments
to be able to distinguish, at the first glance,
the many foreigners whom she encountered.
And she was wont to declare that she could
guess the nationality of a man as soon as
he had exchanged ten words with her.
But this taciturn stranger was the source


62
MODERN GHOSTS.
of much perplexity to her. If he had only
been blond! Then she would at once have
made him an Englishman, for he spoke like
one. But he had black hair, a heavy dark
mustache, and a fine petit figure. His fin-
gers were remarkably long, and he had a
peculiar way of crumbling the bread and
playing with the dessert-fork.
"He is a musician," whispered Mademoi-
selle Adele to her corpulent friend.
"Ah," replied Monsieur Anatole, " I fear
that I have eaten too many truffles."
Mademoiselle Adele again whispered some
good advice into his ear, whereupon he laugh-
ed and appeared smitten with love.
Meanwhile, however, she could not neglect
the interesting stranger. After she had en-
ticed him to drink several glasses of cham-
pagne, he became livelier and more talkative.
"Oh," she suddenly cried out, "I perceive
by your speech that you are certainly an Eng-
lishman I"
The stranger blushed and hastily replied,
"No, madam!"
Mademoiselle Adele laughed.
"Pardon me," she said; "I know, Amer-


ALEXANDER L. KIELLAND.
63
-
icans are always vexed when one takes them
for English."
“I am not an American either,” returned
the stranger.
This was too much for Mademoiselle Adele.
She bent over her plate and seemed very
much embarrassed. Then, indeed, she ob-
served that Mademoiselle Louison, sitting
opposite to her, was delighted with her blun-
der.
The strange gentleman understood this,
and added, half aloud: “I am an Irishman,
madam."
“Ah,” uttered Mademoiselle Adele, with a
grateful smile, for she was easily reconciled.
“Anatole - Irishman! What is that?"
she whispered.
“They are the poor in England,” he whis-
pered in reply.
“So !-hem !" Mademoiselle Adele raised
her eyebrows and cast a sly glance at her
neighbor on the right. With one stroke he
had completely swept away her interest in
him.
De Silvis's dinner was excellent. They
had been long sitting at the table. When


64
MODERN GHOSTS.
Monsieur Anatole remembered the oysters,
which had introduced the menu, they were
to him like a pleasant dream. The truffles,
on the contrary, continued to be to him a
lasting reality.
The dinner proper was ended. Now and
then some one lifted his glass again, or cull-
ed from the dish one of the choice fruits or
little bon-bons.
Tender • hearted, blond Mademoiselle
Louison was lost in deep reverie over a grape
which she had dropped into her champagne
glass.
"Look," cried Mademoiselle Louison,turn-
ing her great, liquid eyes towards the jour-
nalist; "see how the white angels bear a
sinner towards heaven!"
"Ah, charming! mademoiselle. What a
sublime idea!" cried the enraptured jour-
nalist in return.
Mademoiselle Louison's sublime idea made
the circuit of the table, and was generally
applauded. The frivolous Adele alone whis-
pered to her corpulent admirer: "Really,
'twould take a whole host of angels to carry
you to heaven, Anatole!"


ALEXANDER L. K1ELLAND. 65
The journalist, in the interim, knew how
to grasp the opportunity and arrest the gen-
eral attention of the company. Further-
more, he was happy at the prospect of escap-
ing a wearisome political discussion with the
German. And since he wore the red ribbon
in his button-hole, and, in addition, had the
matchless, important tone of a journalist,
the entire party gave him audience.
He explained how small forces, when com-
bined in operation, can bear such great bur-
dens. And then he passed to the topic of
the day: The magnificent collections of the
press for sufferers from the floods in Spain
and for the destitute in Paris.
He had much to relate. Every moment
he spoke of the press as "we," while in the
heat of his eloquence he talked of "these
millions which we have raised with such
enormous sacrifices."
But each of the others also had his story
to tell. Innumerable traits, small or noble,
were revealed on these days of festivities
and pleasures. And all of them savored
somewhat of self-sacrifice.
Mademoiselle Louison's best friend, an
5


66
MODERN GHOSTS.
unimportant lady, whose place was almost
at the foot of the table, related, despite Loui-
son's protest, how three poor sewing-girls
had come to her own lodgings, and how
she had made them sew the whole night on
her gown for the celebration at the Hippo-
drome. Moreover, in addition to their wages,
she had generously given these poor girls
coffee and cake!
Mademoiselle Louison became suddenly
an important personage at the table, and the
journalist began to show her the most mark-
ed attentions.
These many noble incidents of benevo-
lence and Louison's liquid eyes inspired the
entire company with a feeling of repose, sat-
isfaction, and sympathy for mankind, which
was most eminently fitting to the weariness
following the fatigue of the meal.
Indeed, this feeling of comfort mounted
even a few degrees higher, when they came
to rest themselves in the soft arm-chairs of
the little cool salon.
There was no other light here than the
glow from the open fireplace. Its ruddy
brightness stole softly across the English


ALEXANDER L. KIELLAND.
67
carpet and ascended to the golden cornices
of the hangings; it played upon the gilded
frames of the paintings, touched the piano
which stood near the chimney; here and
there it fell also upon a face, wonderfully
illumining and reclaiming it from the dark-
ness. Otherwise nothing was visible except
the red, glowing tips of cigars and cigarettes.
The entertainment began to flag; only a
whisper now and then, or the clink of a cof-
fee-cup disturbed the silence.
Every one seemed inclined to surrender
himself undistracted to the still enjoyment
of his digestive powers and his philanthropic
temperament. Even Monsieur Anatole for-
got his truffles, while he stretched himself
out in the low easy-chair near the sofa, on
which Mademoiselle Adele had seated her-
self.
“Is there no one present who can give us
a little music?” inquired Señor de Silvis.
“You are always wont to be so obliging,
Mademoiselle Adele.”
“Oh dear, no-no!” cried Mademoiselle.
“I've been eating too heartily!” at the same
time, leaning back upon the sofa, she drew


68
MODERN GHOSTS.
up her little feet, and, with a satisfied air,
folded her hands across her breast.
But the stranger, the Irishman, emerged
from his corner, and advanced to the piano.
"Oh! you're going to play something for
us! Many thanks—Monsieur—hem, Mon-
sieur—" Senor de Silvis had forgotten the
name, a thing happening very often, indeed,
with his guests.
"You see, he is a musician!" said Madem-
oiselle Adele to her friend. Anatole an-
swered with a grunt of admiration.
There was something else. The others
also perceived it at once, noticing the man-
ner in which he sat down and struck a few
chords here and there to awaken the instru-
ment, as it were.
He then began to play—sportively, flight-
ily, frivolously—just as the mood was upon
him.
The melodies of the day whirled away
into gay waltzes and tuneful glees; all those
insignificant popular tunes hummed by all
Paris for the past week he snatched up and
executed with spirit and fluency.
The ladies cried out with astonishment,


ALEXANDER L. KIELLAND. 69
sang a few bars in accompaniment, beat
time softly on the floor. The entire com-
pany followed him with intense interest.
He had gained their sympathy, and carried
them away with him from the very begin-
ning. The " lieber Herr Doktor " alone list-
ened with that Sedan smile. Such things
were too simple for him.
But soon there was something for even
the German. He nodded now and then
somewhat approvingly.
A bit of Chopin burst forth and wonder-
fully accorded with the general temperament
—the pungent fragrancy filling the air, the
gay women, the men so frank, so uncon-
cerned, each strange to the other, lost in the
obscurity of the dusky salon, each following
his own most secret thoughts, borne along by
the mysterious, half-distinct, half-confused
music, while the light of the open fireplace
brightened now, now sank back again, caus-
ing everything golden to glimmer with a
faint, trembling glow.
And now there was still more for the doc-
tor. From time to time he turned towards
De Silvis and motioned to him whenever the


7°
MODERN GHOSTS.
harmonious sounds suggested "our Schu-
mann," "our Beethoven," or, indeed, "our
famous Richard."
Meanwhile the stranger continued play-
ing, slightly inclined to the left, though with-
out effort, in order to put more force into
the bass. It sounded as if he had twenty
fingers—all of steel. He knew how to as-
semble a multitude of tones, so that the
instrument itself produced one powerful,
united, distinct sound. Not stopping, not
marking the transitions, by ever newly re-
curring surprises, imitations, happy combi-
nations he fixed their attention so firmly
that even the most unmusical person was
forced to follow him with rapture.
Wholly unnoticed, the music changed its
character. The artist played the deep tones
uninterruptedly. He then inclined himself
more and more upon the left, and there arose
a wonderful commotion in the bass. The
anabaptists of the Prophet approached with
heavy steps; a knight from the Damnation
de Faust mounted from the depths below
with that desperate, hobbling, diabolical
gallop.


ALEXANDER L. KIELLAND.
71
More and more it rumbled and thundered
in the deeper tones, and Monsieur Anatole
began to feel the truffles anew. Mademoi-
selle Adele leaned half forward from the
sofa; the music would not allow her to rest
in peace.
Here and there the chimney-fire was re-
flected in a pair of black eyes staringly fixed
upon the player. He had bewitched them;
they could now no longer detach themselves
from him; he led them ever deeper down,
down, down, where the sound was muffled
and gloomily muttered with lamentations
and threats.
“He manages his left hand marvellously,”
said the doctor. But De Silvis did not hear
him; like the others, he sat in breathless
suspense.
A mysterious, oppressive fear stole out
from the music and brooded over the whole
assembly
The artist seemed to clinch his left hand
into a fist, which could never again relax,
while with his right he cast hither and
thither descants of sounds leaping aloft like
sparkling flames. It sounded as if some-


72
MODERN GHOSTS.
thing dismal, horrible had been committed
in the cellar, while those up-stairs were
dancing, laughing, and amusing themselves
under the resplendent candelabra.
There was heard a sigh, a low cry from
one of the ladies who felt unwell, but no one
took notice of it. The performer was now
wholly occupied with the bass, on which he
was playing with both hands. His tireless
fingers rapidly mingled the sounds together,
so that cold chills ran up and down the
backs of his hearers.
There was, however, a gradual ascen-
sion from the threatening, tumultuous lower
sounds to the higher notes. The tones ran
into each other, over each other, past each
other, upward, ever upward, but never seem-
ing to advance. There arose a wild tumult,
a struggle to reach the top. They swarmed
like little black demons, fighting, wrangling,
full of raging wrath, feverish hurry, climbing,
clinging, clinching with hands and teeth,
each kicking, crushing the other with its
feet, cursing, shrieking, praying—and, mean-
while, his hands glided along the keys so
slowly, oh, so painfully slowly!


ALEXANDER L. KIELLAND. 73
"Anatole," whispered Mademoiselle Adele,
as pale as a ghost, "he is playing the ' Pov-
erty!'"
"Oh, dear!—those truffles!" moaned An-
atole, beginning to writhe with pain.
The salon suddenly became as bright as
day. Two servants entered from behind
the portiere with lamps and candelabra.
At the same moment the strange musician
stopped playing, with all the might of his
steeled fingers striking a discord so impos-
sible, so startling that the entire party in-
stantly sprang to their feet.
"Away with the lamps !" cried De Silvis.
"No, no !" shrieked Mademoiselle Adele;
"come in with the light. I'm afraid in the
dark. Oh, the horrible creature!"
"Who was he?—yes,—who was he?"
And they involuntarily thronged round their
host. Nor did they notice that the stranger
had slipped out behind the servants.
De Silvis tried to laugh it off by saying:
"I think it was the devil. Come, let us go
to the opera!"
"To the opera? Not for the world,"
cried Louison. "I won't listen to any music


74
MODERN GHOSTS.
for a fortnight. Ugh! think of that crowd
on the opera stair-way!"
"Oh, my truffles!" howled Anatole.
The company broke up. They all sud-
denly realized that they were strangers in a
strange place. Each one desired to steal
away home and be alone by himself.
On accompanying Mademoiselle Louison
to her carriage the journalist said: "There,
you see, that's the result of allowing one's
self to be persuaded to accept the invita-
tions of one of those half-barbarians. One
never knows what sort of a crowd one will
meet."
"Oh, dear, yes! He has quite put me out
of humor," replied Louison, plaintively, all
the time lifting her liquid eyes appealingly
to him. "But won't you accompany me to
Trinity? I know that a quiet mass will be
read there at midnight."
The journalist bowed acquiescence, and
took his place beside her in the carriage.
While Mademoiselle Adele and Monsieur
Anatole, on the other hand, were passing the
English apothecary in Rue de la Paix, the lat-
ter bade the coachman stop, and said, "No,"


ALEXANDER L. KIELLAND. 75
beseechingly to her, "I think I must be put
down here and have them give me some-
thing for my truffles. You won't be angry
with me? But, you see—the music—"
"Please do not let it trouble you in the
least, my friend. To be frank, I think that
neither of us is in a specially happy mood
to-night. Well, good-night! Auf Wiedersehen
to-morrow!"
She leaned back in the cushions of the
carriage. She felt relieved. She was alone.
And the frivolous creature wept, as if she had
been whipped! She was then driven home.
Of course Anatole was suffering extreme-
ly from the truffles, but it seemed to him that
he felt better the moment the carriage rolled
away.
Since the time that they had become ac-
quainted they were never so satisfied with
one another as at this very moment of
parting.
But the one who had best recovered
from the affair was the "lieber Herr
Doktor," for, being a German, he had be-
come inured as far as the music was con-
cerned.


MODERN GHOSTS.
Notwithstanding this, however, he re-
solved to stroll off to the brasserie Müller
in Rue Richelieu, to drink over it a good
square pint of German beer, with a bit of
ham, perhaps.


THE TALL WOMAN.
BY
PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARCÓN.





THE TALL WOMAN.
I.
"How little we really know, my friends;
how little we really know."
The speaker was Gabriel, a distinguished
civil engineer of the mountain corps. He
was seated under a pine-tree, near a spring,
on the crest of the Guadarrama. It was
only about a league and a half distant from
the palace of the Escurial, on the boundary
line of the provinces of Madrid and Segovia.
I know the place, spring, pine-tree and all,
but I have forgotten its name.
"Let us sit down," went on Gabriel, "as
that is the correct thing to do, and as our
programme calls for a rest here—here in
this pleasant and classic spot, famous for


8o
MODERN GHOSTS.
the digestive properties of that spring, and
for the many lambs here devoured by our
noted teachers, Don Miguel Bosch, Don
Maximo Laguna, Don Augustin Pascual,
and other illustrious naturalists. Sit down,
and I will tell you a strange and wonderful
story in proof of my thesis, which is, though
you call me an obscurantist for it, that su-
pernatural events still occur on this terra-
queous globe. I mean events which you
cannot get into terms of reason, or science,
or philosophy—as those 'words, words,
words,' in Hamlet's phrase, are understood
(or are not understood) to-day."
Gabriel was addressing his animated re-
marks to five persons of different ages.
None of them was young, though only one
was well along in years. Three of them
were, like Gabriel, engineers; the fourth was
a painter, and the fifth was a litterateur in a
small way. In company with the speaker,
who was the youngest, we had all ridden up
on hired mules from the Real Sitio de San
Lorenzo to spend the day botanizing among
the beautiful pine groves of Pequerinos,
chasing butterflies with gauze nets, catching


PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARCON. 81
rare beetles under the bark of the decayed
pines, and eating a cold lunch out of a ham-
per which we had paid for on shares.
This took place in 1875. ^ was
height of the summer. I do not remember
whether it was Saint James's day or Saint
Louis's; I am inclined to think it was Saint
Louis's. Whichever it was, we enjoyed a
delicious coolness at that height, and the
heart and brain, as well as the stomach, were
there in much better working order than
usual.
When the six friends were seated, Gabriel
continued as follows:
"I do not think you will accuse me of
being a visionary. Luckily or unluckily, I
am, if you will allow me to say so, a man of
the modern world. I have no superstition
about me, and am as much of a Positivist
as the best of them, although I include
among the positive data of nature all the
mysterious faculties and feelings of the soul.
WellJ then, apropos of supernatural, or ex-
tra-natural, phenomena, listen to what I have
seen and heard, although I was not the real
hero of the very strange story I am going to
6


82
MODERN GHOSTS.
relate, and then tell me what explanation of
an earthly, physical, or natural sort, however
you may name it, can be given of so wonder-
ful an occurrence.
"The case was as follows. But wait!
Pour me out a drop, for the skin-bottle must
have got cooled off by this time in that bub-
bling, crystalline spring, located by Provi-
dence on this piny crest for the express pur-
pose of cooling a botanist's wine."
0^
"Well, gentlemen, I do not know whether
you ever heard of an engineer of the ro^ds
corps named Telesforo X ;he died in
i860."
"No; I haven't."
"But I have."
"So have I. He was a young fellow from
Andalusia, with a. black mustache; he was
to have married the Marquis of Moreda's
daughter, but he died of jaundice."
"The very one," said Gabriel. "Well,
then, my friend Telesforo, six months before
his death, was still a most promising young


PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARCON. 83
man, as they say nowadays. He was good-
looking, well built, energetic, and had the
glory of being the first one in his class to be
promoted. He had already gained distinc-
tion in the practice of his profession through
some fine pieces of work. Several different
companies were competing for his services,
and many marriageable women were also
competing for him. But Telesforo, as you
said, was faithful to poor Joaquina Mo-
reda.
"As you know, it turned out that she died
suddenly at the baths of Santa Agueda, at
the end of the summer of 1859. I was in
Pat. when I received the sad news of her
death, which affected me very much on ac-
count of my close friendship with Telesforo.
With her I had spoken only once, in the
house of her aunt, the wife of General Lo-
pez, and I certainly thought her bluish pal-
lor a symptom of bad health. But, however
that may be, she had a distinguished man-
ner and a great deal of grace, and was, be-
sides, the only daughter of a title, and a title
that carried some comfortable thousands
with it; so I felt sure my good mathemati-


84
MODERN GHOSTS.
cian would be inconsolable. Consequently,
as soon as I was back in Madrid, fifteen or
twenty days after his loss, I went to see him
very early one morning. He lived in ele-
gant bachelor quarters in Lobo Street—I do
not remember the number, but it was near
the Carrera de San Jerdnimo.
"The young engineer was very melan-
choly, although calm and apparently master
of his grief. He was already at work, even
at that hour, laboring with his assistants
over some railroad plans or other. He was
dressed in deep mourning.
"He greeted me with a long and close em-
brace, without so much as sighing. Then he
gave some directions to his assistants about
the work in hand, and afterwards led me to
his private office at the farther end of the
house. As we were on our way there he
said, in a sorrowful tone and without glan-
cing at me:
"' I am very glad you have come. Several
times I have found myself wishing you were
here. A very strange thing has happened
to me. Only a friend such as you are can
hear of it without thinking me either a fool


PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARCON. 85
or crazy. I want to get an opinion about it
as calm and cool as science itself.
'"Sit down,' he went on when we had
reached his office,' and do not imagine that
I am going to afflict you with a description
of the sorrow I am suffering—a sorrow which
will last as long as I live. Why should I?
You can easily picture it to yourself, little
as you know of trouble. And as for being
comforted, I do not wish to be, either now,
or later, or ever! What I am going to speak
to you about, with the requisite deliberation,
going back to the very beginning of the
thing, is a horrible and mysterious occur-
rence, which was an infernal omen of my
calamity, and which has distressed me in a
frightful manner.'
'"Go on,' I replied, sitting down. The
fact was, I almost repented having entered
the house, as I saw the expression of abject
fear on my friend's face.
"' Listen, then,' said he, wiping the perspi-
ration from his forehead."


86
MODERN GHOSTS.
III.
"41 do not know whether it is due to some
inborn fatality of imagination, or to having
heard some story or other of the kind with
which children are so rashly allowed to be
frightened, but the fact is, that since my
earliest years, nothing has caused me so
much horror and alarm as a woman alone,
in the street, at a late hour of the night.
The effect is the same whether I actually
encounter her, or simply have an image of
her in my mind.
"' You can testify that I was never a cow-
ard. I fought a duel once, when I had to,
like any other man. Just after I had left
the School of Engineers, my workmen in
Despenaperros revolted, and I fought them
with stick and pistol until I made them sub-
mit. All my life long, in Jaen, in Madrid,
and elsewhere, I have walked the streets at
all hours, alone and unarmed, and if I have
chanced to run upon suspicious-looking per-
sons, thieves, or mere sneaking beggars, they


PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARCON. 87
have had to get out of my way or take to
their heels. But if the person turned out to
be a solitary woman, standing still or walk-
ing, and I was also alone, with no one in
sight in any direction—then (laugh if you
want to, but believe me) I would be all cov-
ered over with goose-flesh; vague fears would
assail me; I would think about beings of
the other world, about imaginary existences,
and about all the superstitious stories which
would make me laugh under other circum-
stances. I would quicken my pace, or else
turn back, and would not get over my fright
in the least until safe in my own house.
"' Once there I would fall a-laughing, and
would be ashamed of my crazy fears. The
only comfort I had was that nobody knew
anything about it. Then I would dispassion-
ately remind myself that I did not believe
in goblins, witches, or ghosts, and that I
had no reason whatever to be afraid of that
wretched woman driven from her home at
such an hour by poverty, or some crime, or
accident, to whom I might better have offer-
ed help, if she needed it, or given alms.
Nevertheless, the pitiable scene would be


88
MODERN GHOSTS.
gone over again as often as a similar thing
occurred—and remember that I was twenty-
four years old, that I had experienced a great
many adventures by night, and yet that I
had never had the slightest difficulty of any
sort with such solitary women in the streets
after midnight! But nothing of what I have
so far told you ever came to have any im-
portance, since that irrational fear always
left me as soon as I reached home, or saw
any one else in the street, and I would scarce-
ly recall it a few minutes afterwards, any
more than one would recall a stupid mistake
which had no result of any consequence.
"' Things were going on so, when, nearly
three years ago (unhappily, I have good rea-
son for knowing the date, it was the night of
November 15-16, 1857), I was coming home
at three in the morning. As you remember,
I was living then in that little house in
Jardines Street, near Montera Street. I had
just come, at that late hour, a bitter, cold
wind blowing at the time, out of a sort of a
gambling-house—I tell you this, although I
know it will surprise you. You know that I
am not a gambler. I went into the place,


PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARCON. 89
deceived by an alleged friend. But the fact
was, that as people began to drop in about
midnight, coming from receptions or the
theatre, the play began to be very heavy,
and one saw the gleam of gold in plenty.
Then came bank-bills, and notes of hand.
Little by little I was carried away by the
feverish and seductive passion, and lost all
the money I had. I even went away owing
a round sum, for which I had left my note
behind me. In short, I ruined myself com-
pletely; and but for the legacy that came to
me afterwards, together with the good jobs
I have had, my situation would have been
extremely critical and painful.
"' So I was going home, I say, at so late an
hour that night, numb with the cold, hungry,
ashamed, and disgusted as you can imagine,
thinking about my sick old father more than
about myself. I should have to write to
him for money, and this would astonish as
much as it would grieve him, since he thought
me in very easy circumstances. Just before
reaching my street, where it crosses Peligros
Street, as I was walking in front of a newly
built house, I perceived something in its


MODERN GHOSTS.
door-way. It was a tall, large woman, stand-
ing stiff and motionless, as if made of wood.
She seemed to be about sixty years old. Her
bold and malignant eyes, unshaded by eye-
lashes, were fixed on mine like two daggers.
Her toothless mouth made a horrible gri-
mace at me, meant to be a smile.
"' The very terror or delirium of fear which
instantly overcame me gave me somehow a
most acute perception, so that I could dis-
tinguish at a glance, in the two seconds it
took me to pass by that repugnant vision,
the slightest details of her face and dress.
Let me see if I can put together my impres-
sions in the way and form in which I re-
ceived them, as they were engraved inef-
faceably on my brain in the light of the
street-lamp which shone luridly over that
ghastly scene. But I am exciting myself too
much, though there is reason enough for it,
as you will see further on. Don't be con.
cerned, however, for the state of my mind.
I am not yet crazy!
"'The first thing which struck me in that
woman, as I will call her, was her extreme
height and the breadth of her bony shoul-


PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARCON. 91
ders. Then, the roundness and fixity of her
dry, owl-eyes, the enormous size of her pro-
truding nose, and the great dark cavern of
her mouth. Finally, her dress, like that of a
young woman of Avapie's—the new little
cotton handkerchief which she wore on her
head, tied under her chin, and a diminutive
fan which she carried opened in her hand,
and with which, in affected modesty, she was
covering the middle of her waist.
"' Nothing could be at the same time more
ridiculous and more awful, more laughable
and more taunting, than that little fan in
those huge hands. It seemed like a make-
believe sceptre in the hands of such an old,
hideous, and bony giantess! A like effect
was produced by the showy percale handker-
chief adorning her face by the side of that
cut-water nose, hooked and masculine; for a
moment I was led to believe (or I was very
glad to) that it was a man in disguise.
"' But her cynical glance and harsh smile
were those of a hag, of a witch, an enchant-
ress, a Fate, a—I know not what! There
was something about her to justify fully the
aversion and fright which I had been caused


92
MODERN GHOSTS.
all my life long by women walking alone in
the streets at night. One would have said
that I had had a presentiment of that en-
counter from my cradle. One would have
said that I was frightened by it instinctively,
as every living being fears and divines, and
scents and recognizes, its natural enemy be-
fore ever being injured by it, before ever
having seen it, and solely on hearing its
tread.
"' I did not dash away in a run when I
saw my life's sphinx. I restrained my im-
pulse to do so, less out of shame and manly
pride than out of fear lest my very fright
should reveal to her who I was, or should
give her wings to follow me, to overtake me
—I do not know what. Panic like that
dreams of dangers which have neither form
nor name.
"' My house was at the opposite end of the
long and narrow street, in which I was alone,
entirely alone with that mysterious phantom
whom I thought able to annihilate me with
a word. How should I ever get home? Oh,
how anxiously I looked towards that dis-
tant Montera Street, broad and well lighted,


PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARCON. 93
where there are policemen to be found at all
hours! I decided, finally, to get the better
of my weakness; to dissemble and hide that
wretched fear; not to hasten my pace, but
to keep on advancing slowly, even at the
cost of years of health or life, and in this
way, little by little, to go on getting nearer
to my house, exerting myself to the utmost
not to fall fainting on the ground before I
reached it.
"' I was walking along in this way—I must
have taken about twenty steps after leaving
behind me the door-way where the woman
with the fan was hidden, when suddenly a
horrible idea came to me—horrible, yet very
natural nevertheless—the idea that I would
look back to see if my enemy was following
me. One thing or the other I thought, with
the rapidity of a flash of lightning: either
my alarm has some foundation or it is mad-
ness; if it has any foundation, this woman
will have started after me, will be overtaking
me, and there is no hope for me on earth.
But if it is madness, a mere supposition, a
panic fright like any other, I will convince
myself of it in the present instance, and for


94
MODERN GHOSTS.
every case that may occur hereafter, by see-
ing that that poor old woman has stayed in
that door-way to protect herself from the
cold, or to wait till the door is opened; and
thereupon I can go on to my house in per-
fect tranquillity, and I shall have cured my-
self of a fancy that causes me great mortifi-
cation.
"' This reasoning gone through with, I
made an extraordinary effort and turned my
head. Ah, Gabriel!—Gabriel! how fearful
it was! The tall woman had followed me
with silent tread, was right over me, almost
touching me with her fan, almost leaning
her head on my shoulder.
"' Why was she doing it ?—why, my Ga-
briel? Was she a thief? Was she really a
man in disguise? Was she some malicious
old hag who had seen that I was afraid of
her? Was she a spectre conjured up by my
very cowardice? Was she a mocking phan-
tasm of human self-deception?
"' I could never tell you all I thought in a
single moment. If the truth must be told, I
gave a scream and flew away like a child of
four years who thinks he sees the Black


PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARCÓN.
95
Man. I did not stop running until I got
out into Montera Street. Once there, my
fear left me like magic. This in spite of
the fact that that street also was deserted.
Then I turned my head to look back to Jar-
dines Street. I could see down its whole
length. It was lighted well enough for me
to see the tall woman, if she had drawn
back in any direction, and, by Heaven! I
could not see her, standing still, walking, or
in any way! However, I was very careful
not to go back into that street again. The
wretch, I said to myself, has slunk into
some other door-way. But she can't move
without my seeing her.
“ Just then I saw a policeman coming up
Caballero de Gracia Street, and I shouted
to him without stirring from my place. I
told him that there was a man dressed as a
woman in Jardines Street. I directed him
to go round by the way of Peligros and Adu-
ana streets, while I would remain where I
was, and in that way the fellow, who was
probably a thief or murderer, could not es-
cape us. The policeman did as I said. He
went through Aduana Street, and as soon


96
MODERN GHOSTS.
as I saw his lantern coming along Jardines
Street I also went up it resolutely.
"' We soon met at about the middle of the
block, without either of us having encoun-
tered a soul, although we had examined door
after door.
"'" He has got into some house," said the
policeman.
"'That must be so, I replied, opening my
door with the fixed purpose of moving to
some other street the next day.
"'A few moments later I was in my room;
I always carried my latch-key, so as not to
have to disturb my good Jose. Neverthe-
less, he was waiting for me that night. My
misfortunes of the 15th and 16th of Novem-
ber were not yet ended.
'"What has happened? I asked him, in
surprise.
"'" Major Falcon was here," he replied,
with evident agitation," waiting for you from
eleven till half-past two, and he told me that,
if you came home to sleep, you had better
not undress, as he would be back at day-
break."
"' Those words left me trembling with grief


PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARCON. 97
and alarm, as if they had predicted my own
death to me. I knew that my beloved father,
at his home in Jaen, had been suffering fre-
quent and dangerous attacks of his chronic
disease. I had written to my brothers that,
if there should be a sudden and fatal termi-
nation of the sickness, they were to telegraph
Major Falcon, who would inform me in some
suitable way. I had not the slightest doubt,
therefore, that my father had died.
"' I sat down in an arm-chair to wait for
the morning and my friend, and, with them,
the news of my great misfortune. God only
knows what I suffered in those two cruel
hours of waiting. All the while, three dis-
tinct ideas were inseparably joined in my
mind; though they seemed unlike, they took
pains, as it were, to keep in a dreadful group.
They were: my losses at play, my meeting
with the tall woman, and the death of my
revered father.
"' Precisely at six Major Falcon came into
my room, and looked at me in silence. I
threw myself into his arms, weeping bitterly,
and he exclaimed, caressing me:
"'" Yes, my dear fellow, weep, weep."
7


9*
MODERN GHOSTS.
IV.
"My friend Telesforo," Gabriel went on,
after having drained another glass of wine,
"also rested a moment when he reached this
point, and then he proceeded as follows:
"' If my story ended here, perhaps you
would not find anything extraordinary or su-
pernatural in it. You would say to me the
same thing that men of good judgment said
to me at that time: that every one who has
a lively imagination is subject to some im-
pulse of fear or other; that mine came from
belated, solitary women, and that the old
creature of Jardines Street was only some
homeless waif who was going to beg of me
when I screamed and ran.
"' For my part, I tried to believe that it
was so. I even came to believe it at the
end of several months. Still, I would have
given years of my life to be sure that I was
not again to encounter the tall woman. But,
to-day, I would give every drop of my blood
to be able to meet her again.'


PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARC6N. 99
"What for?
"' To kill her on the spot.*
"I do not understand you.
"'You will understand me when I tell you
that I did meet her again, three weeks ago,
a few hours before I had the fatal news of
my poor Joaquina's death.'
"Tell me about it, tell me about it!
"' There is little more to tell. It was five
o'clock in the morning. It was not yet fully
light, though the dawn was visible from the
streets looking towards the east. The street-
lamps had just been put out, and the police-
men had withdrawn. As I was going through
Prado Street, so as to get to the other end
of Lobo Street, the dreadful woman crossed
in front of me. She did not look at me, and
I thought she had not seen me.
"' She wore the same dress and carried the
same fan as three years before. My trepi-
dation and alarm were greater than ever. I
ran rapidly across Prado Street as soon as
she had passed, although I did not take my
eyes off her, so as to make sure that she did
not look back, and, when I had reached the
other end of Lobo Street, I panted as if I


100
MODERN GHOSTS.
had just swum an impetuous stream. Then
I pressed on with fresh speed towards home,
filled now with gladness rather than fear, for
I thought that the hateful witch had been con-
quered and shorn of her power, from the
very fact that I had been so near her and
yet that she had not seen me.
“But soon, and when I had almost reach-
ed this house, a rush of fear swept over me,
in the thought that the crafty old hag had
seen and recognized me, that she had made
a pretence of not knowing me so as to let
me get into Lobo Street, where it was still
rather dark, and where she might set upon
me in safety, that she would follow me, that
she was already over me.
“Upon this, I looked around—and there
she was! There at my shoulder, almost
touching me with her clothes, gazing at me
with her horrible little eyes, displaying the
gloomy cavern of her mouth, fanning herself
in a mocking manner, as if to make fun of
my childish alarm.
"I passed from dread to the most furious
anger, to savage and desperate rage. I
dashed at the heavy old creature. I fung


PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARCON. IOI
her against the wall. I put my hand to her
throat. I felt of her face, her breast, the
straggling locks of her gray hair, until I was
thoroughly convinced that she was a human
being—a woman.
"' Meanwhile she had uttered a howl
which was hoarse and piercing at the same
time. It seemed false and feigned to me,
like the hypocritical expression of a fear
which she did not really feel. Immediately
afterwards she exclaimed, making believe
cry, though she was not crying, but looking
at me with her hyena eyes:
"'" Why have you picked a quarrel with
me?"
'"This remark increased my fright and
weakened my wrath.
"' Then ypu remember, I cried, that you
have seen me somewhere else.
'""I should say so, my dear," she replied,
mockingly. "Saint Eugene's night, in Jar-
dines Street, three years ago."
"' My very marrow was chilled.
"' But who are you? I asked, without let-
ting go of her. Why do you follow me?
What business have you with me?


102
MODERN GHOSTS.
""' I am a poor weak woman," she an-
swered, with a devilish leer. "You hate me,
and you are afraid of me without any rea-
son. If not, tell me, good sir, why you were
so frightened the first time you saw me."
"' Because I have loathed you ever since
I was born. Because you are the evil spirit
of my life.
"'" It seems, then, that you have known
me for a long time. Well, look, my son, so
have I known you."
"' You have known me? How long?
"'" Since before you were born! And
when I saw you pass by me, three years ago,
I said to myself, that's the one."
"' But what am I to you? What are you
to me?
"'" The devil I" replied the hag, spitting
full in my face, freeing herself from my grasp,
and running away with amazing swiftness.
She held her skirts higher than her knees,
and her feet did not make the slightest noise
as they touched the ground.
"'It was madness to try to catch her.
Besides, people were already passing through
the Carrera de San Jerdnimo, and in Pra-


PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARCdN. 103
do Street, too. It was broad daylight. The
tall woman kept on running, or flying, as
far as Huertas Street, which was now light-
ed up by the sun. There she stopped to
look back at me. She waved her closed
fan at me once or twice, threateningly, and
then disappeared around a corner.
'"Wait a little longer, Gabriel. Do not
yet pronounce judgment in this case, where
my life and soul are concerned. Listen to
me two minutes longer.
"' When I entered my house I met Colo-
nel Falcon, who had just come to tell me
that my Joaquina, my betrothed, all my hope
and happiness and joy on earth, had died
the day before in Santa Agueda. The un-
fortunate father had telegraphed Falcdn to
tell me—me, who should have divined it an
hour before, when I met the evil spirit of
my life! Don't you understand, now, that
I must kill that born enemy of my happi-
ness, that vile old hag, who is the living
mockery of my destiny?
"' But why do I say kill? Is she a wom-
an? Is she a human being? Why have I
had a presentiment of her ever since I was


104 MODERN GHOSTS.
born? Why did she recognize me when she
first saw me? Why do I never see her ex-
cept when some great calamity has befallen
me? Is she Satan? Is she Death? Is
she Life? Is she Antichrist? Who is she?
What is she ?'"
V.
"I will spare you, my dear friends," con-
tinued Gabriel, "the arguments and remarks
which I used to see if I could not calm Tel-
esforo, for they are the same, precisely the
same, which you are preparing now to ad-
vance to prove that there is nothing super-
natural or superhuman in my story. You
will even go further; you will say that my
friend was half crazy; that he always was
so; that, at least, he suffered from that
moral disease which some call 'panic terror,'
and others 'emotional insanity;' that, even
granting the truth of what I have related
about the tall woman, it must all be referred
to chance coincidences of dates and events;
and, finally, that the poor old creature could
also have been crazy, or a thief, or a beggar,


PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARC<5n. IO5
or a procuress—as the hero of my story said
to himself in a lucid interval."
"A very proper supposition!" exclaimed
Gabriel's comrades; "that is just what we
were going to say."
"Well, listen a few minutes longer, and
you will see that I was mistaken at the time,
as you are mistaken now. The one who
unfortunately made no mistake was Teles-
foro. It is much easier to speak the word
'insanity' than to find an explanation for
some things that happen on the earth."
"Speak, speak!"
"I am going to; and this time, as it is the
last, I will pick up the thread of my story
without first drinking a glass of wine."
VI.
"A few days after that conversation with
Telesforo I was sent to the province of
Albacete in my capacity as engineer of
the mountain corps. Not many weeks had
passed before I learned, from a contractor
for public works, that my unhappy friend
had been attacked by a dreadful form of


106 MODERN GHOSTS.
jaundice; it had turned him entirely green,
and he reclined in an arm-chair without
working or wishing to see anybody, weep-
ing night and day in the most inconsolable
and bitter grief. The doctors had given up
hope of his getting well.
"This made me understand why he had
not answered my letters. I had to resort to
Colonel Falcdn as a source of news of him
i
and all the while the reports kept getting
more unfavorable and gloomy.
"After an absence of five months I re-
turned to Madrid the same day that the tel-
egraph brought the news of the battle of
Tetuan. I remember it as if it were yester-
day. That night I bought the indispensable
Correspondencies de Espaha, and the first thing
I read in it was the notice of Telesforo's
death. His friends were invited to the fu-
neral the following morning.
"You will be sure that I was present.
As we arrived at the San Luis cemetery,
whither I rode in one of the carriages near-
est the hearse, my attention was called to
a peasant woman. She was old and very
tall. She was laughing sacrilegiously as she


PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARCÓN.
107
saw them taking out the coffin. Then she
placed herself in front of the pall-bearers in
a triumphant attitude and pointed out to
them with a very small fan the passage-way
they were to take to reach the open and
waiting grave.
“At the first glance I perceived, with
amazement and alarm, that she was Teles-
foro's implacable enemy. She was just as
he had described her to me-with her enor-
mous nose, her devilish eyes, her awful
mouth, her percale handkerchief, and that
diminutive fan which seemed in her hands
the sceptre of indecency and mockery.
“She immediately observed that I was
looking at her, and fixed her gaze upon me
in a peculiar manner, as if recognizing me,
as if letting me know that she recognized
me, as if acquainted with the fact that the
dead man had told me about the scenes in
Jardines Street and Lobo Street, as if defy-
ing me, as if declaring me the inheritor of
the hate which she had cherished for my
unfortunate friend.
“I confess that at the time my fright
was greater than my wonder at those new


Io8 MODERN GHOSTS.
coincidences and accidents. It seemed evident
to me that some supernatural relation, ante-
cedent to earthly life, had existed between
the mysterious old woman and Telesforo.
But for the time being my sole concern was
about my own life, my own soul, my own
happiness—all of which would be exposed
to the greatest peril if I should really inherit
such a curse.
"The tall woman began to laugh. She
pointed at me contemptuously with the fan,
as if she had read my thoughts and were
publicly exposing my cowardice. I had to
lean on a friend's arm to keep myself from
falling. Then she made a pitying or dis-
dainful gesture, turned on her heels, and
went into the cemetery. Her head was
turned towards me. She fanned herself and
nodded to me at the same time. She sidled
along among the graves with an indescriba-
ble, infernal coquetry until at last she disap-
peared forever in that labyrinth of tombs.
"I say forever, since fifteen years have
passed and I have never seen her again. If
she was a human being she must have died
before this; if she was not, I rest in the con-


PEDRO ANTONIO DE ALARC0N. I09
viction that she despised me too much to
meddle with me.
"Now, then, bring on your theories!
Give me your opinion about these strange
events. Do you still regard them as entire-
ly natural?"





ON THE RIVER.
BY
GUY DE MAUPASSANT.


-:
I


ON THE RIVER.
I had rented, last summer, a little country
house on the banks of the Seine a few miles
from Paris, and I used to go down there ev-
ery night to sleep. In a few days I made
the acquaintance of one of my neighbors, a
man between thirty and forty, who was cer-
tainly the most curious type that I had ever
met. He was an old rowing man, crazy
about rowing, always near the water, always
on the water, always in the water. He must
have been born in a boat, and he would cer-
tainly die in a boat at last.
One night, while we were walking togeth-
er along the Seine, I asked him to tell me
some stories about his life upon the river;
and at that the good man suddenly became
8


ii4
MODERN GHOSTS.
animated, transfigured, eloquent, almost po-
etical! In his heart there was one great
passion, devouring and irresistible — the
river.
"Ah!" said he to me, "how many mem-
ories I have of that river which is flowing
there beside us. You people who live in
streets, you don't know what the river is. •
But just listen to a fisherman simply pro-
nouncing the word. For him it is the thing
mysterious, the thing profound, unknown,
the country of mirage and of phantasmago-
ria, where one sees, at night, things which
do not exist, where one hears strange noises,
where one trembles causelessly, as though
crossing a graveyard. And it is, indeed,
the most sinister of graveyards—a grave-
yard where there are no tombstones.
"To the fisherman the land seems lim-
ited, but of dark nights, when there is no
moon, the river seems limitless. Sailors
have no such feeling for the sea. Hard she
often is and wicked, the great Sea; but she
cries, she shouts, she deals with you fairly,
while the river is silent and treacherous. It
never even mutters, it flows ever noiselessly,


GUY DE MAUPASSANT. 115
and this eternal flowing movement of water
terrifies me far more than the high seas of
ocean.
"Dreamers pretend that the Sea hides in
her breast great blue regions where drowned
men roll to and fro among the huge fish, in
the midst of strange forests and in crystal
grottos. The river has only black depths,
where one rots in the slime. For all that,it
is beautiful when it glitters in the rising sun
or swashes softly along between its banks
where the reeds murmur.
"The poet says of the ocean:
"' Oh seas, you know sad stories! Deep
seas, feared by kneeling mothers, you tell
the stories to one another at flood tides!
And that is why you have such despairing
voices when at night you come towards us
nearer and nearer.'
"Well, I think that the stories murmured
by the slender reeds with their little soft
voices must be yet more sinister than the
gloomy dramas told by the howling of the
high seas.
"But, since you ask for some of my
recollections, I will tell you a curious ad-


Il6 MODERN GHOSTS.
venture which I had here about ten years
ago.
"I then lived, as I still do, in the house
of the old lady Lafon, and one of my best
chums, Louis Bernet, who has now given up
for the Civil Service his oars, his low shoes,
and his sleeveless jersey, lived in the vil-
lage of C , two leagues farther down.
We dined together every day—sometimes at
his place, sometimes at mine.
"One evening as I was returning home
alone and rather tired, wearily pulling my
heavy boat, a twelve-footer, which I always
used at night, I stopped a few seconds to
take breath near the point where so many
reeds grow, down that way, about two hun-
dred metres before you come to the railroad
bridge. It was a beautiful night; the moon
was resplendent, the river glittered, the air
was calm and soft. The tranquillity of it all
tempted me; I said to myself that to smoke
a pipe just here would be extremely nice.
Action followed upon the thought; I seized
my anchor and threw it into the stream.
"The boat, which floated down again with
the current, pulled the chain out to its full


GUY DE MAUPASSANT. I17
length, then stopped; and I seated myself in
the stern on a sheepskin, as comfortable as
possible. One heard no sound—no sound;
only sometimes I thought I was aware of a
low, almost insensible lapping of the water
along the bank, and I made out some groups
of reeds which, taller than their fellows,
took on surprising shapes, and seemed from
time to time to stir.
"The river was perfectly still, but I felt
myself moved by the extraordinary silence
which surrounded me. All the animals—
the frogs and toads, those nocturnal singers
of the marshes—were silent. Suddenly on
my right, near me, a frog croaked; I started;
it was silent; I heard nothing more, and I
resolved to smoke a little by way of a dis-
traction. But though I am, so to speak, a
regular blackener of pipes, I could not
smoke that night; after the second puff I
sickened of it, and I stopped. I began to
hum a tune; the sound of my voice was
painful to me; so I stretched myself out in
the bottom of the boat and contemplated
the sky. For some time I remained quiet,
but soon the slight movements of the boat


Il8 MODERN GHOSTS.
began to make me uneasy. I thought that it
was yawing tremendously, striking now this
bank of the stream, and now that; then I
thought that some Being or some invisible
force was dragging it down gently to the
bottom of the water, and then was lifting it
up simply to let it fall again. I was tossed
about as though in the midst of a storm; I
heard noises all around me; with a sudden
start I sat upright; the water sparkled, ev-
erything was calm.
"I saw that my nerves were unsettled,
and I decided to go. I pulled in the chain;
the boat moved; then I was conscious of
resistance; I pulled harder; the anchor did
not come up, it had caught on something at
the bottom of the river and I could not lift
it. I pulled again—in vain. With my oars
I got the boat round up-stream in order to
change the position of the anchor. It was
no use; the anchor still held. I grew angry,
and in a rage I shook the chain. Nothing
moved. There was no hope of breaking the
chain, or of getting it loose from my craft,
because it was very heavy, and riveted at the
bow into a bar of wood thicker than my


GUY DE MAUPASSANT. Iig
arm; but since the weather continued fine,
I reflected that I should not have to wait
long before meeting some fisherman, who
would come to my rescue. My mishap had
calmed me; I sat down, and I was now able
to smoke my pipe. I had a flask of bran-
dy with me; I drank two or three glasses,
and my situation made me laugh. It was
very hot, so that, if needs must, I could
pass the night under the stars without in-
convenience.
"Suddenly a little knock sounded against
the side. I started, and a cold perspiration
froze me from head to foot. The noise
came, no doubt, from some bit of wood
drawn along by the current, but it was
enough, and I felt myself again overpow-
ered by a strange nervous agitation. I
seized the chain, and I stiffened myself in a
desperate effort. The anchor held. I sat
down exhausted.
"But, little by little, the river had covered
itself with a very thick white mist, which
crept low over the water, so that, standing
up, I could no longer see either the stream
or my feet or my boat, and saw only the


120
MODERN GHOSTS.
tips of the reeds, and then, beyond them, the
plain, all pale in the moonlight, and with
great black stains which rose towards heav-
en, and which were made by clumps of Ital-
ian poplars. I was as though wrapped to
the waist in a cotton sheet of a strange
whiteness, and there began to come to me
weird imaginations. I imagined that some
one was trying to climb into my boat, since
I could no longer see it, and that the river,
hidden by this opaque mist, must be full of
strange creatures swimming about me. I
experienced a horrible uneasiness, I had a
tightening at the temples, my heart beat to
suffocation; and, losing my head, I thought
of escaping by swimming; then in an instant
the very idea made me shiver with fright.
I saw myself lost, drifting hither and thither
in this impenetrable mist, struggling among
the long grass and the reeds which I should
not be able to avoid, with a rattle in my
throat from fear, not seeing the shore, not
finding my boat. And it seemed to me as
though I felt myself being drawn by the feet
down to the bottom of this black water.
"In fact, since I should have had to swim


GUY DE MAUPASSANT. 121
up stream at least five hundred metres be-
fore finding a point clear of rushes and reeds,
where I could get a footing, there were nine
chances to one that, however good a swim-
mer I might be, I should lose my bearings
in the fog and drown.
"I tried to reason with myself. I realized
that my will was firmly enough resolved
against fear; but there was something in me
beside my will, and it was this which felt
afraid. I asked myself what it could be that
I dreaded; that part of me which was cou-
rageous railed at that part of me which was
cowardly; and I never had comprehended
so well before the opposition between those
two beings which exist within us, the one
willing, the other resisting, and each in turn
getting the mastery.
"This stupid and inexplicable fear grew
until it became terror. I remained motion-
less, my eyes wide open, with a strained and
expectant ear. Expecting—what? I did
not know save that it would be something
terrible. I believe that if a fish, as often
happens, had taken it into its head to jump
out of the water, it would have needed only


122
MODERN GHOSTS.
that to make me fall stark on my back into
a faint.
"And yet, finally, by a violent effort, I
very nearly recovered the reason which had
been escaping me. I again took my brandy-
flask, and out of it I drank great draughts.
Then an idea struck me, and I began to
shout with all my might, turning in succes-
sion towards all four quarters of the horizon.
When my throat was completely paralyzed,
I listened. A dog howled, a long way off.
"Again I drank; and I lay down on my
back in the bottom of the boat. So I re-
mained for one hour, perhaps for two, sleep-
less, my eyes wide-open, with nightmares all
about me. I did not dare to sit up, and yet
I had a wild desire to do so; I kept putting
it off from minute to minute. I would say
to myself: "Come! get up!" and I was
afraid to make a movement. At last I raised
myself with infinite precaution, as if life de-
pended on my making not the slightest sound,
and I peered over the edge of the boat.
"I was dazzled by the most marvellous, the
most astonishing spectacle that it can be
possible to see. It was one of those phan-


GUY DE MAUPASSANT. 123
tasmagoria from fairy-land; it was one of
those visions described by travellers returned
out of far countries, and which we hear with-
out believing.
"The mist, which two hours before was
floating over the water, had gradually with-
drawn and piled itself upon the banks.
Leaving the river absolutely clear, it had
formed, along each shore, long low hills about
six or seven metres high, which glittered un-
der the moon with the brilliancy of snow,
so that one saw nothing except this river of
fire coming down these two white mountains;
and there, high above my head, a great, lu-
minous moon, full and large, displayed her-
self upon a blue and milky sky.
"All the denizens of the water had awaked;
the bull-frogs croaked furiously, while, from
instant to instant, now on my right, now on
my left, I heard those short, mournful, monot-
onous notes which the brassy voices of the
marsh-frogs give forth to the stars. Strange-
ly enough, I was no longer afraid; I was in
the midst of such an extraordinary landscape
that the most curious things could not have
astonished me.


124
MODERN GHOSTS.
"How long the sight lasted I do not
know, because at last I had grown drowsy.
When I again opened my eyes the moon
had set, the heaven was full of clouds.
The water lashed mournfully, the wind
whispered, it grew cold, the darkness was
profound.
"I drank all the brandy I had left; then
I listened shiveringly to the rustling of the
reeds and to the sinister noise of the river.
I tried to see, but I could not make out the
boat nor even my own hands, though I
raised them close to my eyes.
"However, little by little the density of the
blackness diminished. Suddenly I thought
I felt a shadow slipping along near by me;
I uttered a cry; a voice replied—it was a
fisherman. I hailed him; he approached,
and I told him of my mishap. He pulled
his boat alongside, and both together we
heaved at the chain. The anchor did not
budge. The day came on—sombre, gray,
rainy, cold—one of those days which bring
always a sorrow and a misfortune. I made
out another craft; we hailed it. The man
aboard of it joined his efforts to ours, then,


GUY DE MAUPASSANT. 125
little by little, the anchor yielded. It came
up, but slowly, slowly, and weighted down
by something very heavy. At last we per-
ceived a black mass, and we pulled it along-
side.
"It was the corpse of an old woman with
a great stone round her neck."





MAESE PEREZ, THE ORGANIST.
BY
GUSTAVO ADOLFO BECQUER.





MAESE PÉREZ, THE ORGANIST.
“Do you see that man with the scarlet
cloak and the white plume in his hat and
the gold-embroidered vest? I mean the one
just getting out of his litter and going to
greet that lady—the one coming along after
those four pages who are carrying torches ?
Well, that is the Marquis of Mascoso, lover
of the widow, the Countess of Villapineda.
They say that before he began paying court
to her he had sought the hand of a very
wealthy man's daughter, but the girl's fa-
ther, who they say is a trifle close-fisted-
but hush! Speaking of the devil-do you
see that man closely wrapped in his cloak


MODERN GHOSTS.
coming on foot under the arch of San Fe-
lipe? Well, he is the father in question.
Everybody in Seville knows him on account
of his immense fortune.
"Look—look at that group of stately
men! They are the twenty-four knights.
Aha! there's that Fleming, too. They say
that the gentlemen of the green cross have
not challenged him yet, thanks to his influ-
ence with the great ones at Madrid. All he
comes to church for is to hear the music.
"Alas! neighbor, that looks bad. I fear
there's going to be a scuffle. I shall take
refuge in the church, for, according to my
guess, there will be more blows than Pater-
nosters. Look, look! the Duke of Alcala's
people are coming round the corner of Saint
Peter's Square, and I think I see the Duke
of Medinasidonia's men in Dueftas Alley.
Didn't I tell you? There—there! The
blows are beginning. Neighbor, neighbor,
this way before they close the doors!
"But what's that? They've left off.
What's that light? Torches! a litter! It's
the bishop himself! God preserve him in
his office as many centuries as I desire to


GUSTAVO ADOLFO BECQUER. 131
live myself! If it were not for him, half
Seville would have been burned up by this
time with these quarrels of the dukes. Look
at them, look at them, the hypocrites, how
they both press forward to kiss the bishop's
ring!
"But come, neighbor — come into the
church before it is packed full. Some
nights like this it is so crowded that you
could not get in if you were no larger than
a grain of wheat. The nuns have a prize
in their organist. Other sisterhoods have
made Maese Pe"rez magnificent offers; noth-
ing strange about that, though, for the very
archbishop has offered him mountains of
gold if he would go to the cathedral. But
he would not listen to them. He would
sooner die than give up his beloved organ.
You don't know Maese Pe"rez? Oh, I for-
got you had just come to the neighborhood.
Well, he is a holy man; poor, to be sure,
but as charitable as any man that ever lived.
With no relative but a daughter, and no
friend but his organ, he spends all his time
in caring for the one and repairing the other.
The organ is an old affair, you must know;


132 MODERN GHOSTS.
but that makes no difference to him. He
handles it so that its tone is a wonder.
How he does know it! and all by touch,
too, for did I tell you that the poor man
was born blind?
"Humble, too, as the very stones. He al-
ways says that he is only a poor convent or-
ganist, when the fact is he could give lessons
in sol fa to the very chapel master of the
primate. You see, he began before he had
teeth. His father had the same position
before him, and as the boy showed such tal-
ent, it was very natural that he should suc-
ceed his father when the latter died. And
what a touch he has, God bless him! He
always plays well, always; but on a night
like this he is wonderful. He has the great-
est devotion to this Christmas Eve mass, and
when the host is elevated, precisely at twelve
o'clock, which is the time that Our Lord
came into the world, his organ sounds like
the voices of angels.
"But why need I try to tell you about
what you are going to hear to-night? It is
enough for you to see that all the elegance
of Seville, the very archbishop included,


GUSTAVO ADOLFO BECQUER. I33
comes to a humble convent to listen to him.
And it is not only the learned people who
can understand his skill that come; the com-
mon people, too, swarm to the church, and
are as still as the dead when Maese Perez
puts his hands to the organ. And when the
host is elevated, when the host is elevated,
then you can't hear a fly. Great tears fall
from every eye, and when the music is over
a long-drawn sigh is heard, showing how the
people have been holding their breath all
through.
"But come, come, the bells have stopped
ringing, and the mass is going to begin.
Hurry in. This is Christmas Eve for every-
body, but for no one is it a greater occasion
than for us."
So saying, the good woman who had been
acting as cicerone for her neighbor pressed
through the portico of the Convent of Santa
Ines, and elbowing this one and pushing the
other, succeeded in getting inside the church,
forcing her way through the multitude that
was crowding about the door.


134
MODERN GHOSTS.
II.
The church was profusely lighted. The
flood of light which fell from the altars
glanced from the rich jewels of the great
ladies, who, kneeling upon velvet cushions
placed before them by pages, and taking
their prayer-books from the hands of female
attendants, formed a brilliant circle around
the chancel lattice. Standing next that lat-
tice, wrapped in their richly colored and em-
broidered cloaks, letting their green and red
orders be seen with studied carelessness,
/holding in one hand their hats, the plumes
sweeping the floor, and letting the other rest
upon the polished hilts of rapiers or the jew-
elled handles of daggers, the twenty-four
knights, and a large part of the highest no-
bility of Seville, seemed to be forming a wall
for the purpose of keeping their wives and
daughters from contact with the populace.
The latter, swaying back and forth at the
rear of the nave, with a noise like that of a
rising surf, broke out into joyous acclama-


GUSTAVO ADOLFO BECQUER. 135
tions as the archbishop was seen to come
in. That dignitary seated himself near the
high altar under a scarlet canopy, surround-
ed by his attendants, and three times bless-
ed the people.
It was time for the mass to begin.
Nevertheless, several minutes passed be-
fore the celebrant appeared. The multitude
commenced to murmur impatiently; the
knights exchanged words with each other in
a low tone; and the archbishop sent one of
his attendants to the sacristan to inquire
why the ceremony did not begin.
"Maese Pe"rez has fallen sick, very sick,
and it will be impossible for him to come to
the midnight mass."
This was the word brought back by the
attendant.
The news ran instantly through the crowd.
The disturbance caused by it was so great
that the chief judge rose to his feet, and
the officers came into the church, to enforce
silence.
Just then a man of unpleasant face, thin,
bony, and cross-eyed too, pushed up to the
place where the archbishop was sitting.


T36 MODERN GHOSTS.
"Maese Perez is sick," he said; "the cere-
mony cannot begin. If you see fit, I will
play the organ in his absence. Maese Pdrez
is not the best organist in the world, nor
need this instrument be left unused after
his death for lack of any one able to play it."
The archbishop nodded his head in as-
sent, although some of the faithful, who had
already recognized in that strange person an
envious rival of the organist of Santa Ines,
were breaking out in cries of displeasure.
Suddenly a surprising noise was heard in
the portico.
"Maese Pe*rez is here! Maese Perez is
here!"
At this shout, coming from those jammed
in by the door, every one looked around.
Maese PeVez, pale and feeble, was in fact
entering the church, brought in a chair which
all were quarrelling for the honor of carry-
ing upon their shoulders.
The commands of the physicians, the tears
of his daughter—nothing had been able to
keep him in bed.
"No," he had said; "this is the last one,
I know it. I know it, and I do not want


GUSTAVO ADOLFO BECQUER. 137
to die without visiting my organ again, this
night above all, this Christmas Eve. Come,
I desire it, I order it; come, to the church!"
His desire had been gratified. The peo-
ple carried him in their arms to the organ-
loft. The mass began.
Twelve struck on the cathedral clock.
The introit came, then the Gospel, then
the offertory, and the moment arrived when
the priest, after consecrating the sacred wa-
fer, took it in his hands and began to elevate
it. A cloud of incense filled the church in
bluish undulations. The little bells rang
out in vibrating peals, and Maese Perez
placed his aged fingers upon the organ
keys.
The multitudinous voices of the metal
tubes gave forth a prolonged and majestic
chord, which died away little by little, as if
a gentle breeze had borne away its last
echoes.
To this opening burst, which seemed like
a voice lifted up to heaven from earth, re-
sponded a sweet and distant note, which
went on swelling and swelling in volume
until it became a torrent of overpowering


i3»
MODERN GHOSTS.
harmony. It was the voice of the angels,
traversing space, and reaching the world.
Then distant hymns began to be heard,
intoned by the hierarchies of seraphim; a
thousand hymns at once, mingling to form
a single one, though this one was only an
accompaniment to a strange melody which
seemed to float above that ocean of mysteri-
ous echoes, as a strip of fog above the waves
of the sea.
One song after another died away. The
movement grew simpler. Now only two
voices were heard, whose echoes blended.
Then but one remained, and alone sustained
a note as brilliant as a thread of light. The
priest bowed his face, and above his gray
head appeared the host. At that moment
the note which Maese Perez jwas holding
began to swell, and swell, and an explosion
of unspeakable joy filled the church.
From each of the notes forming that mag-
nificent chord, a theme was developed; and
some near, others far away, these brilliant,
those muffled, one would have said that the
waters and the birds, the breezes and the
forests, men and angels, earth and heaven,


GUSTAVO ADOLFO BECQUER. 139
were singing, each in its own language, a
hymn in praise of the Saviour's birth.
The people listened, amazed and breath-
less. The officiating priest felt his hands
trembling; for it seemed as if he had seen
the heavens opened and the host transfig-
ured.
The organ kept on, but its voice sank
away gradually, like a tone going from echo
to echo, and dying as it goes. Suddenly a
cry was heard in the organ-loft—a piercing,
shrill cry, the cry of a woman.
The organ gave a strange, discordant
sound, like a sob, and then was silent.
The multitude flocked to the stairs lead-
ing up to the organ-loft, towards which the
anxious gaze of the faithful was turned.
"What has happened? What is the mat-
ter?" one asked the other, and no one knew
what to reply. The confusion increased.
The excitement threatened to disturb the
good order and decorum fitting within a
church.
"What was that?" asked the great ladies
of the chief judge. He had been one of the
first to ascend to the organ-loft. Now, pale


140 MODERN GHOSTS.
and displaying signs of deep grief, he was
going to the archbishop, who was anxious,
like everybody else, to know the cause of
the disturbance.
"What's the matter?"
"Maese Perez has just expired."
In fact, when the first of the faithful rush-
ed up the stair-way, and reached the organ-
loft, they saw the poor organist fallen face
down upon the keys of his old instrument,
which was still vibrating, while his daughter,
kneeling at his feet, was vainly calling to
him with tears and sobs.
III.
"Good-evening, my dear Dona Baltasara.
Are you also going to-night to the Christmas
Eve mass? For my part, I was intending
to go to the parish church to hear it, but
what has happened—where is Vicente going,
do you ask? Why, where the crowd goes.
And, I must say, to tell the truth, that ever
since Maese P6rez died it seems as if a
marble slab was on my heart whenever I go
to Santa Ines. Poor dear man! He was


GUSTAVO ADOLFO BECQUER. 141
a saint! I know one thing—I keep a piece
of his cloak as a relic, and he deserves it.
I solemnly believe that if the archbishop
would stir in the matter, our grandchildren
would see his image among the saints on
the altars. But, of course, he won't do that.
The dead and absent have no friends, as
they say. It's all the latest thing, nowa-
days; you understand me. What? You do
not know what has happened? Well, it's
true you are not exactly in our situation.
From our house to the church, and from the
church to our house—a word here and an-
other one there—on the wing—without any
curiosity whatever—I easily find out all the
news.
"Well, then, it's a settled thing that the
organist of San Roman—that squint-eye, who
is always slandering other organists—that
great blunderer, who seems more like a
butcher than a master of sol fa—is going to
play this Christmas Eve in Maese Perez's
old place. Of course, you know, for every-
body knows it, and it is a public matter in
all Seville, that no one dared to try it. His
daughter herself would not, though she is a


142
MODERN GHOSTS.
professor of music herself. After her fa-
ther's death she went into the convent as a
novice. Her unwillingness to play was the
most natural thing in the world; accustomed
as she was to those marvellous performances,
any other playing must have appeared bad
to her, not to speak of her desire to avoid
comparisons. But when the sisterhood had
already decided that in honor of the dead
organist, and as a token of respect to his
memory, the organ should not be played to-
night, here comes this fellow along, and says
that he is ready to play it.
"Ignorance is the boldest of all things.
It is true, the fault is not his, so much as
theirs who have consented to this profana-
tion, but that is the way of the world. But,
I say, there's no small bit of people coming.
Any one would say that nothing had changed
since last year. The same distinguished
persons, the same elegant costumes, the
crowding at the door, the same excitement
in the portico, the same throng in the church.
Alas! if the dead man were to rise, he would
feel like dying again to hear his organ played
by inferior hands. The fact is, if what the


GUSTAVO ADOLFO BECQUER. 143
people of the neighborhood tell me is true,
they are getting a fine reception ready for
the intruder. When the time comes for
him to touch the keys, there is going to break
out a racket made by timbrels, drums, and
horse-fiddles, so that you can't hear anything
else. But hush! there's the hero of the oc-
casion going into the church. Goodness!
what gaudy clothes, what a neck-cloth, what
a high and mighty air! Come, hurry up, the
archbishop came only a moment ago, and
the mass is going to begin. Come on; I
guess this night will give us something to
talk about for many a day!"
Saying this, the worthy woman, whom the
reader recognizes by her abrupt talkative-
ness, went into the Church of Santa Ines,
opening for herself a path, in her usual
way, by shoving and elbowing through the
crowd.
The ceremony had already begun. The
church was as brilliant as the year before.
The new organist, after passing between
the rows of the faithful in the nave, and
going to kiss the archbishop's ring, had gone
up to the organ-loft, where he was trying


144 MODERN GHOSTS.
one stop of the organ after another, with an
affected and ridiculous gravity.
A low, confused noise was heard coming
from the common people clustered at the
rear of the church, a sure augury of the com-
ing storm, which would not be long in break-
ing.
"He is a mere clown," said some, "who
does not know how to do anything, not even
look straight."
"He is an ignoramus," said others, "who,
after having made a perfect rattle out of the
organ in his own church, comes here to pro-
fane Maese Perez's."
And while one was taking off his cloak so
as to be ready to beat his drum to good ad-
vantage, and another was testing his timbrel,
and all were more and more buzzing out in
talk, only here and there could one be found
to defend even feebly that curious person,
whose proud and pedantic bearing so strong-
ly contrasted with the modest appearance
and kind affability of Maese PeVez.
At last the looked-for moment arrived,
when the priest, after bowing low and mur-
muring the sacred words, took the host in


GUSTAVO ADOLFO BECQUER. 145
his hands. The bells gave forth a peal, like
a rain of crystal notes; the transparent waves
of incense rose, and the organ sounded.
But its first chord was drowned by a hor-
rible clamor which filled the whole church.
Bagpipes, horns, timbrels, drums, every in-
strument known to the populace, lifted up
their discordant voices all at once.
The confusion and clangor lasted but a
few seconds. As the noises began, so they
ended, all together.
The second chord, full, bold, magnificent,
sustained itself, pouring from the organ's
metal tubes like a cascade of inexhaustible
and sonorous harmony.
Celestial songs like those that caress the
ear in moments of ecstasy; songs which the
soul perceives, but which the lip cannot re-
peat; single notes of a distant melody, which
sound at intervals, borne on the breeze; the
rustle of leaves kissing each other on the
trees with a murmur like rain; trills of larks
which rise with quivering songs from among
the flowers like a flight of arrows to the sky;
nameless sounds, overwhelming as the roar
of a tempest; fluttering hymns,which seemed
10


146
MODERN GHOSTS.
to be mounting to the throne of the Lord
like a mixture of light and sound—all were
expressed by the organ's hundred voices,
with more vigor, more subtle poetry, more
weird coloring, than had ever been known
before.
When the organist came down from the
loft the crowd which pressed up to the stair-
way was so great, and their eagerness to see
and greet him so intense, that the chief
judge, fearing, and not without reason, that he
would be suffocated among them all, ordered
some of the officers to open a path for the
organist, with their staves of office, so that
he could reach the high altar, where the prel-
ate was waiting for him.
"You perceive," said the archbishop, "that
I have come all the way from my palace to
hear you. Now, are you going to be as cruel
as Maese Pe"rez? He would never save me
the journey, by going to play the Christmas
Eve mass in the cathedral."
"Next year," replied the organist," I prom-


GUSTAVO ADOLFO BECQUKR. 147
o
ise to give you the pleasure; since, for all
the gold in the world, I would never play
this organ again."
"But why not?" interrupted the prelate.
"Because," returned the organist, endeav-
oring to repress the agitation which revealed
itself in the pallor of his face—" because it
is so old and poor; one cannot express one's
self on it satisfactorily."
The archbishop withdrew, followed by his
attendants. One after another the litters of
the great folk disappeared in the windings
of the neighboring streets. The group in
the portico scattered. The sexton was lock-
ing up the doors, when two women were per-
ceived, who had stopped to cross themselves
and mutter a prayer, and who were now go-
ing on their way into Duenas Alley.
"What would you have, my dear Dona
Baltasara?" one was saying. "That's the
way I am. Every crazy person with his
whim. The barefooted Capuchins might as-
sure me that it was so, and I would not be-
lieve it. That man never played what we
have heard. Why, I have heard him a thou-
sand times in San Bartolome', his parish


148
MODERN GHOSTS.
church; the priest had to send him away
he was so poor a player. You felt like plug-
ging your ears with cotton. Why, all you
need is to look at his face, and that is the
mirror of the soul, they say. I remember,
as if I was seeing him now, poor man—I
remember Maese Perez's face, nights like
this, when he came down from the organ-
loft, after having entranced the audience
with his splendors. What a gracious smile!
What a happy glow on his face! Old as he
was, he seemed like an angel. But this
creature came plunging down as if a dog
were barking at him on the landing, and all
the color of a dead man, while his—come,
dear Dona Baltasara, believe me, and believe
what I say: there is some great mystery
about this."
Thus conversing, the two women turned
the corner of the alley, and disappeared.
There is no need of saying who one of them
was.


GUSTAVO ADOLFO BECQUER. 149
IV.
Another year had gone by. The abbess
of the Convent of Santa Ines and Maese
Perez's daughter were talking in a low voice,
half hidden in the shadows of the church
choir. The penetrating voice of the bell
was summoning the faithful. A very few
people were passing through the portico,
silent and deserted, this year, and after tak-
ing holy water at the door, were choosing
seats in a corner of the nave, where a hand-
ful of residents of the neighborhood were
quietly waiting for the Christmas Eve mass
to begin.
"There, you see," the mother superior
was saying, "your fear is entirely childish;
there is no one in the church. All Seville
is trooping to the cathedral to-night. Play
the organ, and do it without any distrust
whatever. We are only a sisterhood here.
But why don't you speak? What has hap-
pened? What is the matter with you?"


MODERN GHOSTS.
"I am afraid," replied the girl, in a tone
of the deepest agitation.
"Afraid! Of what?"
"I do not know—something supernatu-
ral. Listen to what happened last night. I
had heard you say that you were anxious
for me to play the organ for the mass. I
was proud of the honor, and I thought I
would arrange the stops and get the organ
in good tune so as to give you a surprise
to-day. Alone I went into the choir and
opened the door leading to the organ-loft.
The cathedral clock was striking just then,
I do not know what hour; but the strokes
of the bell were very mournful, and they
were very numerous-—going on sounding
for a century, as it seemed to me, while I
stood as if nailed to the threshold.
"The church was empty and dark. Far
away there gleamed a feeble light, like a
faint star in the sky; it was the lamp burn-
ing on the high altar. By its nickering
light, which only helped to make the deep
horror of the shadows the more intense, I
saw — I saw — mother, do not disbelieve it
—a man. In perfect silence, and with his


GUSTAVO ADOLFO BECQUER. 151
back turned towards me, he was running
over the organ-keys with one hand while
managing the stops with the other. And
the organ sounded, but in an indescribable
manner. It seemed as if each note were a
sob smothered in the metal tube, which vi-
brated under the pressure of the air com-
pressed within it, and gave forth a low>
almost imperceptible tone, yet exact and
true.
"The cathedral clock kept on striking,
and that man kept on running over the
keys. I could hear his very breathing.
"Fright had frozen the blood in my veins.
My body was as cold as ice, except my head,
and that was burning. I tried to cry out,
but I could not. That man turned his face
and looked at me—no, he did not look at
me, for he was blind. It was my father!"
"Nonsense, sister! Banish these fancies
with which the adversary endeavors to over-
turn weak imaginations. Address a Pater-
noster and an Ave Maria to the archangel,
Saint Michael, the captain of the celestial
hosts, that he may aid you in opposing evil
spirits. Wear on your neck a scapulary


MODERN GHOSTS.
which has been pressed to the relics of
Saint Pacomio, the counsellor against temp-
tations, and go, go quickly, and sit at the
organ. The mass is going to begin, and the
faithful are growing impatient Your father
is in heaven, and thence, instead of giving
you a fright, will descend to inspire his
daughter in the solemn service."
The prioress went to occupy her seat in
the choir in the midst of the sisterhood.
Maese Perez's daughter opened the door of
the organ-loft with trembling hand, sat down
at the organ, and the mass began.
The mass began, and went on without
anything unusual happening until the time
of consecration came. Then the organ
sounded. At the same time came a scream
from Maese Perez's daughter.
The mother superior, the nuns, and some
of the faithful rushed up to the organ-loft.
"Look at him!—look at him !" cried the
girl, fixing her eyes, starting from their
sockets, upon the seat, from which she had
risen in terror. She was clinging with con-
vulsed hands to the railing of the organ-loft.
Everybody looked intently at the spot


GUSTAVO ADOLFO BECQUER. 153
to which she directed her gaze. No one
was at the organ, yet it went on sounding—
sounding like the songs of the archangels in
their bursts of mystic ecstasy.
"Didn't I tell you a thousand times, if I
did once, dear Dona Baltasara—didn't I tell
you? There is some great mystery about
this. What! didn't you go last night to the
Christmas Eve mass? Well, you must know,
anyhow, what happened. Nothing else is
talked about in the whole city. The arch-
bishop is furious, and no wonder. Not to
have gone to Santa Ines, not to have been
present at the miracle—and all to hear a
wretched clatter! That's all the inspired
organist of San Bartolome' made in the ca-
thedral, so persons who heard him tell me.
Yes, I said so all the time. The squint-eye
never could have played that. It was all a
lie. There is some great mystery here.
What do I think it was? Why, it was the
soul of Maese PeVez."





FIORACCIO.
BY
GIOVANNI MAGHERINI-GRAZIANI.





FIORACCIO.
Everybody called him Fioraccio, but his
real name was Antonio, and he kept a little
shop for bread and macaroni just there by
the bridge, where the tobacconist's is now.
He was a little man, short and thick, always
dressed in a striped jacket and low shoes
which were never tied. He never wore a hat,
summer or winter; and when the sun shone
on his head, that was as bare as the back
of your hand, it glittered like a brand-new
tin kettle. He had yellow eyes like a cat's.
He always seemed to be laughing in a sneer-
ing, scoffing fashion; and when he spoke he
whistled, because he had lost his teeth; in
front he had only two left, one on each side.
If there ever was a rascal in this world, Fio-


MODERN GHOSTS.
raccio was one, and one of the first; and in
his own place there was more talk of him
than of Barabbas in the Passion of Our Lord.
I don't mean to speak ill of him, all the
same; he's dead now, and long since gone
to his own place. As I said, Fioraccio had
a shop where he sold bread, wine, and mac-
aroni, and kept a sort of little inn. But the
real shop was behind, where the door opened
into the garden; there he kept a store of all
sorts of things—wood, cloth, old iron, bar-
rels, flasks, oil-jars, grain, wine, oil—for Fio-
raccio was a receiver of stolen goods; and
whatever was stolen sooner or later found
its way to him, and in all the years that he
kept up this trade the police never once got
a single chance to lay hands on him. They
were after him, time and again, and hun-
dreds of times his shop was searched, but
to no purpose. When they came to look
the goods were safely hidden, and Fioraccio
never brought them to light until all danger
was over. If he bought anything he never
paid for it; nobody had ever seen the color
of his money; he paid in oaths. If any one
went to his shop they never got full weight.


GIOVANNI MAGHERINI-GRAZIANI. 159
There was a saying, "At Fioraccio's some
get eight, and some get nine, but nobody
gets ten." There were not the inspectors
then as there'are now. For that matter, in
his shop nobody stopped to talk, nobody
ever got the right change; and if anybody
made any complaints, they got nothing but
abuse. For this reason nobody who was in
a hurry ever went to Fioraccio, and he trou-
bled himself very little about his customers.
"I don't care if they don't come," he said,
"they only give trouble." For that shop,
you see, was only the cover for the other
one. But if there was anything worth while
going on he was ready enough to put him-
self out, and often stayed up the whole night
long. Otherwise, he sat the whole blessed
day at the door of the shop, and had some-
thing spiteful to say to every one who passed;
young or old, man or woman, married or un-
married, nobody escaped his tongue. He
knew neither Easter nor Lent; one day was
the same as another to him. If the holy
sacrament passed by his door, he didn't even
take the pipe out of his mouth or get off his
stool—he smoked faster than ever, to show


GIOVANNI MAGHERINI-GRAZIANI. l6l
"If you want your supper you must earn
it," he told him.
Near the shop of Fioraccio there was one
belonging to an old aunt of his, who was
nearly blind. Fioraccio used to send the
boy into this shop to rob the till; and as the
boy was little, and there wasn't the paper
money, as there is now, he used to tell him
always to bring the white money, and to
take it while the old woman was at the door,
but not to take too much at a time or peo-
ple would find it out. And when the boy
brought scudi, or other silver money, Fio-
raccio would give him a sou or a toy.
But one day the boy was caught, and
beaten worse than a donkey. To excuse
himself he told the whole story, and how he
had been taught to steal, and by whom.
And Fioraccio, when he heard it, beat him
worse than ever, and turned him out of the
house. So Fioraccio remained alone—alone
in the house, and alone in the shop; and at
last nobody came into the shop any more,
for they didn't like to be sworn at. "Some
day the earth will open under his feet," they
said. They called his shop " Inferno;" and
XI


MODERN GHOSTS.
even now, if any one is heard to swear very
hard, people say, "Holloa! has Fioraccio
come to life?" For he had become a prov-
erb, you know. And so he lived for many
years; but at last his time came, like other
people's. He began to look very old, and
to get up late, and go to bed early. The
shop would be open every other day; then
open two days and shut three days. He
grew to be a perfect skeleton, all skin and
bones, and the scaldino* was never out of
his hands. Everybody said, " Ah! Fioraccio
isn't long for this world." And he wasn't.
The shop was always shut now. Sometimes
he'd come to the window in the middle of
the day, when it was fine, but he looked so
dreadful it was enough to frighten one. It
was old age was the matter with him, and
for that there's no cure. At last he took to
his bed; but instead of repenting and chang-
ing for the better, he went on worse and
worse. He blasphemed like a fiend. The
worse he was the worse he swore. At last
* An earthen pot with charcoal, to warm the hands
and feet by.


GIOVANNI MAGHERINI-GRAZIANI. 163
the old woman, who was the only creature
that went near him, told him that if he
didn't stop swearing she wouldn't come any
more.
"Why not ?" asked Fioraccio.
"Because I'm afraid that some day the
devil will come and carry us both off," said
the old woman.
"Oh, the devil! and the devil! If there
was one really, he'd have made me a visit
long ago," said he.
The priest, when he heard how ill Fiorac-
cio was, said to himself, " I must go to him;
there's no help for it!"
And he went; but they say he made a fast
that day, though it wasn't in the calendar.
He knocked, and went up-stairs. When
Fioraccio recognized the priest's voice, he
said, "What does that fellow want with me?
I won't see him."
"How ? you won't see him !" said the old
woman. "It seems to me it is only polite
of him to make you a visit."
"Oh yes, I dare say, but I don't care for
such politeness; priests are like owls, birds
of ill omen. And—"


164
MODERN GHOSTS.
But the old woman had opened the door
by this time, and beckoned to the priest to
come in.
The priest entered the room.
"But I told you not to come in," howled
Fioraccio.
"Good-morning, Antonio."
Fioraccio only growled.
"I heard you were ill, and—"
"It was something that they didn't say I
was dead."
"And I thought I would come and see
you." So he began to talk; but as soon as
he tried to bring the talk round to the point
he desired, Fioraccio always changed the
subject. At last the priest grew desperate,
and laying his hand on Fioraccio's shoulder:
"Fiore," he said, " you mustn't be angry if
I speak seriously to you. You know that
we haven't only the body to look after—"
"I know what you mean; but when I want
to confess I'll send for you."
"But, of course, whenever you choose—"
"Pray don't trouble yourself—"
But the priest wouldn't be content with-
out preaching a little; so he began to talk


GIOVANNI MAGHERINI-GRAZIANI. 165
of repentance, and restitution, and such
things, you know. When Fioraccio heard
the word "restitution" he flew into a rage,
and called out:
"Did I ever rob you of anything?"
"I don't mean that; I mean—"
"Now, listen, Mr. Rector. You and I do
very well as long as we are apart, but if we
meet we disagree. So, if we're to have
peace, you'd better not come here any more.
Do you hear?" And he turned his back,
and not another word would he say.
"How goes it?" asked the old woman.
"He won't hear of it. If those above
don't take it up, I don't see what is to be
done. To-morrow I'll come, at all events,"
said the priest.
"The Lord and Our Blessed Lady grant
it." But before the next day Fioraccio sud-
denly grew worse, and before the priest could
get to him he was dead.
This happened in 1837, and there are
plenty of people living now that remember
the whole story, and can tell it you better
than I can. Scarcely was he dead when he
turned black all over, so that it was a horror


i66
MODERN GHOSTS.
to look at him. They rang the bell, carried
him to church, and then into the church-yard,
where they buried him.
The next morning, before day (it was
hardly four o'clock), the priest was in bed,
when he heard a knock at the door, and
asked who was there, thinking some sick
person wanted him.
"It's Cecco," * said the servant.
"WhatCecco?"
"Cecco from "(Fioraccio's place).
It was the sexton.
"What, in Heaven's name, does he want
at this hour?"
"Wants to see your reverence."
"Send him in; let's see what it is."
Cecco appeared at the door, hat in hand.
"What's the matter now?"
"Something you'll hardly believe. Didn't
your reverence bury Fioraccio yesterday?"
"Of course I did. What about it?"
"He's got up again."
"What?"
"He's got up again."
* Frank.


168
MODERN GHOSTS.
"You could come before that; the whole
thing won't take more than an hour."
"No, no; mind what I tell you. Go and
bury him again."
« But—"
"Only you put him deep enough, I'll
promise you he won't come above-ground
again."
The sexton turned his hat round and
round. At last:
"Your reverence shall be obeyed," he
said. "I'll go and get the tools." And he
went out; but before he shut the chamber
door the priest called him back.
"Say nothing about this, you know."
"Your reverence may depend upon me.
I won't say anything. Well," said Cecco
to himself, as he drew the door to after him,
"at least I shall have lived to say I've
buried the same man twice."
The next morning there he was again.
The priest called out:
"What now?"
"Same old story."
"What story?"
"Fioraccio."


GIOVANNI MAGHERINI-GRAZIANI. 169
“ Above ground again ?”
“Just that."
“ It doesn't seem possible.”
“But it's so. If you don't believe me
come and see for yourself.”
“I do believe you, but what can I do?
You must just bury him again. Some one
must have,”
“ If you saw the state he's in you wouldn't
think anybody 'd be likely to want to med-
dle with him.”
“I don't know. Sometimes—”.
“Well, I'll bury him this time, and then
we'll see.”
That same day—I remember it as if it were
yesterday—I was taking some tools to the
smith to be mended, when I came upon
Cecco coming away from the burial-ground
with the spade in his hand.
“Been putting somebody to bed?” I asked.
“If you knew !” said he.
“What?"
“I've just buried Fioraccio."
“Only now. What did you keep him
above-ground so long for? Wanted to be
quite sure he was dead ?”


170
MODERN GHOSTS.
"I've buried him over again — twice."
And he tells me the whole story.
I wouldn't believe him, and I remember
saying: "I'm sure somebody helps him to
get above-ground."
"Somebody does, you may be sure, and
it's easy to guess who."
"I know what you mean. Somebody who
has no need of a spade. Look here," I went
on. "Let's you and I come and watch
here to-night, and see who comes. Are you
afraid?"
"No I" he answered; "not with you. I
wouldn't stay alone, though."
"Say nothing to anybody, and at nine
o'clock to-night I'll come for you, and we'll
see if I'm right."
That night at nine o'clock there I was.
"Shall we go?"
"Come along; but we'll take something
in our hands, in case it should be anybody."
So we each took a thick stick, and started
for the cemetery. It was an ugly black
night, promising rain. Outside we couldn't
stay; we should have been seen.
"Where can we go?"


GIOVANNI MAGHERINI-GRAZIANI. 171
"Let's go in."
Cecco opened the gate, and we went in;
but we could not shut the gate when we were
inside.
"Leave it ajar," said I, "if any one comes
it won't be by the gate, but over the wall."
"But here we shall be seen."
"Where's he buried?"
"There, by the dead-house."
"Let's go in there, then."
"In the dead-house?"
"Where else? There's no other place."
There was a bench, and we sat down. I
began to light my pipe.
"What are you doing ?" asked Cecco; "if
they see the light they'll know there's some
one here."
"Oh yes, as if I was going to stay here
all night without even smoking; I should go
to sleep."
We said very little more; neither he nor I
had any wish to talk. We heard nothing
but the bats, which kept flying in and out;
now and then a dog barked.
The clock struck eleven. I thought I
heard steps on the road, but they passed by.


172
MODERN GHOSTS.
"It's Faustino," said Cecco. "I know
his whistle "—for he had begun to whistle
as he passed the gate, as people do when
they feel a little timid. About half an hour
later an owl flew close by my face, and gave
me a great start; but she was afraid of us,
and flew off, and we heard her hoot outside.
"It must be nearly midnight."
"We might go now. Nothing is likely to
happen to-night," said I.
"Wait till the clock strikes."
"Very well, we'll wait."
"Listen, there's the clock. One, two;
three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
eleven—twelve."
I felt him catch me by the arm.
"Look, look there!"
There, where Fioraccio was buried, the
earth began to heave and roll, rising slowly,
slowly, as if it were pushed up from below,
and we saw him rise out of it upright; he
remained so for a moment, and then fell
at full length on the grave. Cecco said not
a word, but strode off across the cemetery
and went out, and I after him. I wanted
to turn back and look if it were really he,


GIOVANNI MAGHERINI-GRAZIANI. 173
but I hadn't the courage; I passed close by
him, but I didn't look. I tell it you as it
happened. Cecco was trembling from head
to foot; I knew by his voice.
"Did you see?" he said.
"I saw it. Won't you shut the gate?"
"I won't touch anything. The rector must
come to-morrow and see for himself—he
wouldn't believe me. I'll go straight to him
now, and you must go with me."
"But we can't go at this hour," said I;
"to-morrow morning early, rather. I'll go
home with you to sleep. I told them at
home that I should be out all night."
In the morning early we went to the priest,
and told him all that happened.
"And what are we to do?" he asked.
"If your reverence doesn't know who
should?" asked Cecco.
"If you tried—"
"Tried what? Burying him again? You
see it's of no use."
"Certainly it is no use," said I; "in holy
ground he won't stay, that's quite plain—
such a rascal as he was."
"Hush!" said the priest. "Don't tell


*74
MODERN GHOSTS.
any one of this—I lay it on your consciences;
and, besides, we have no right to judge the
dead. You, Cecco, go and put him once
more underground."
"Your reverence may command me in
everything, but, saving your presence, I can't
and I won't go back to the cemetery again;
here's the key, but go I won't—that's flat."
"Never mind, I'll send some one with
you, if you're frightened. And you (to me)
go to the convent of , with a note for
the father superior."
In fact he wrote a note, and I took it to
the convent. The superior read it, and said
to me: "I understand; tell the rector that
everything shall be done as he asks."
I took back the answer to the priest.
"Have you got him underground?" I
asked.
"Yes, but I thought we never should man-
age it, I assure you."
"Do you want anything more of me?"
"Not now; to-night, perhaps. If I want
you I'll send for you."
"You will find me at home; I'll come di-
rectly."


GIOVANNI MAGHERINI-GRAZIANI. 175
All the while I was at work I was wonder-
ing what the priest could want of me, but I
thought it must have something to do with
Fioraccio. Just after sunset the priest's
nephew came to tell me I was to go to the
parsonage. I went, and found there two
Capuchin friars, who had come to exorcise
Fioraccio. The priest wanted me to come
with him.
"When?" I asked.
"To-night."
"Then I must go and tell my wife."
"What in the world are you doing always
out at night ?" asked she.
I told her some story or other, and after
supper I went off to the priest. He would
have it that I should sup again with him.
The friars would neither eat nor drink, and
we heard them praying aloud in the next
room, and reciting the office. Just before
midnight one of the friars put his head in
at the door and said:
"It is time now. Let us go."
The priest turned pale, but he was forced
to make a virtue of necessity and to come
with us. We took a lantern, and went out


176
MODERN GHOSTS.
of the house by the garden-door. There
were five of us—the priest, the two friars,
Cecco, and I, all as silent as the grave; in
the dark, that way, we seemed like conspira-
tors. I was in front with the Capuchins;
Cecco and the priest came behind. When
we came to the gate I lit the lantern; plenty
of trouble it gave me, too; I thought it would
never light, but at last I found a match that
would kindle. The priest was the first to
enter the cemetery.
"What did I tell you ?" whispered Cecco;
"there he is again!"
I was in front. The light fell full on the
face of Fioraccio. But why do I call it a
face? It was black as charcoal, with open
mouth and those two yellow teeth, and the
yellow eyes wide open, shining in the dark-
ness. I turned sick and stopped short.
"Heavens! how ugly he is!" I cried.
"Hush!" said the friar who was nearest
me.
Then they put on their stoles, opened
their books, sprinkled the dead with holy
water, and recited the service of exorcism.
I held the light, the priest clung to my sleeve,


178
MODERN GHOSTS.
der the seal of confession with us afterwards.
He said "that he was damned body and
soul." And saying this, he swore a fearful
oath. And then he said:
"Take me away from here."
"Where do you want to go?"
"To the Arno. Under water twenty
braccios* deep. There, where I can hear
no bells."
"You shall have three braccios."
We heard another oath, always in that
voice underground, for Fioraccio's mouth
never stirred. And the friars sprinkled him
again with holy water.
"For the last time; how much water
must you have?"
"Five braccios."
"You shall have three, and no more."
He went on swearing. At last he said:
"Well, if I must I must, but not in too
much of a hurry."
And at that moment we saw something,
dressed all in red, fly up over the wall.
* Braccio, a measure used formerly in central It-
aly—a little more than half a metre long.


GIOVANNI MAGHERINI-GRAZIANI. 179
"We must come back to-morrow," said
the friar. "God have us all in his holy keep-
ing!"
We left the cemetery; you should have
seen the priest how he trembled. The next
day he sent for me and told me: "We must
take him away to-night, and you must make
a coffin for him."
"But I never made a coffin in my life."
"You can manage it somehow. You can
generally get to the end of what you under-
take. And it needn't be such a fine piece
of work, you know, so long as it holds to-
gether."
"Well," said I, " I'll do my best." I went
home, and looked up some chestnut planks
I had, and made the coffin. Then I went
to the parsonage, where I found the Capu-
chin friars and the priest talking together.
"The coffin is done," I said. "Shall I
bring it here?"
"What are you thinking of? To-night,
after dark, you must take it to the ceme-
tery and put him. into it; you can call
Cecco, if he will go with—you, in short, do
the best you can; only get him into the


l8o MODERN GHOSTS.
coffin. Then he must be carried—some-
how—"
"I understand," said I; "I am to look
after the whole business. Very well, I'll see
what I can do. Cecco wouldn't hear of
carrying him; we had better ask some of
the Brotherhood."
"No; because we must keep it as quiet
as we can."
"As quiet as you like. But it is a long
way to the Arno, and that coffin is made of
chestnut. It is heavy, I can tell you."
"Can't you find a cart?"
It was settled that I should borrow my
cousin's cart, and the priest should find
some more men. Then I went for Cecco,
who made no end of difficulty about coming,
and after dark we carried the coffin to the
cemetery. There he was again, uglier than
ever. One could see that he was damned
only to look at him.
"Here, Cecco," said I, "help me to lift
him." I turned round. No Cecco. I ran
out of the gate, and found him in the road.
"Look here," said he, " if you can't man-
age it by yourself, you must get some-


i8a
MODERN GHOSTS.
road God only knows—now we were on this
side of the road, now on that, now among
the trees, never ten paces straight ahead;
and the poor donkey tugged and tugged, as
if the coffin had been made of lead. Every
minute one or the other of the lanterns
went out. From time to time we passed
through a thick fog, so thick that we lost
sight of each other, of the east, of every-
thing. The friars went on muttering prayers
and sprinkling holy water, and we recom-
mended ourselves to God and to the Ma-
donna. Even I lost courage altogether.
As for the poor priest, we had to leave him
at a farm-house on the road, for he could
go no farther. But that was nothing to
what followed. Just as we passed the turn-
ing at the mill of a hurricane burst
over us that uprooted trees, carried off hay-
stacks, tiles off the roofs, all sorts of things.
We were surrounded by a cloud of leaves,
twigs, straw, and dust. I never remember
such a whirlwind. Two hay-stacks flew off
into the air as if they had been locks of
tow; a big pine-tree that two men couldn't
clasp round went rolling over the plain like


GIOVANNI MAGHERINI-GRAZIANI. 183
a twig; and along the banks of the Arno
oaks uprooted, willows twisted together like
yarn. Nothing to be seen of the cart or of
the beast—nothing; we could not tell which
way they had gone. We commended our
souls to Heaven, and went on. I don't
know how we found our way to the bank of
the Arno, just there where it is deepest.
We could hardly recognize the place. We
found the donkey standing there, quite still.
"Here," said the friar.
"No," said the same voice we had heard
in the cemetery. "More water—more wa-
ter!" And then oaths, to make one's hair
stand on end with fright.
"No; there's enough here."
Then more oaths, and more oaths.
"Here," said the friar, "I command you,
in the name of God!"
All of a sudden there was a great rush and
sputter of flame, as if one had thrown sul-
phur on a fire, and we saw a figure like a
galley-slave, all in red, and heard a splash and
a gurgle, and when we looked at the cart it
was empty. I went home, put the beast in
the stall, and turned to go to the house.


184 MODERN GHOSTS.
"Who's that?" cried my wife. "Wait;
IH get up."
I didn't answer; it didn't seem as if it
was me she was speaking to.
"Will you have something to eat?" she
said. "You had no supper yesterday. I'll
make a fire and cook this bit of beef; it
will only take a minute." So saying, she
began to kindle the fire.
I looked on while my wife put a fagot on
the coals, which began to sputter and send
out sparks, and I said, without thinking,
"Just like him."
"Just like who f" said she.
I perceived that I had said too much, and
wanted not to say anything more; but it was
of no use, she had it all out of me. I tried
to eat, but couldn't swallow a mouthful. I
went to bed. When I was nearly asleep I
heard the house door open. I listened, and
heard a noise as if the kettle and the bucket
were rolling over the floor.
"There's somebody there," said my wife.
"Hush," said I, "I hear them," for the
noise began again.
"Get up; there's some one there."


GIOVANNI MAGHERINI-GRAZIANI. 185
I got up and went into the kitchen. No-
body there—the bucket and the kettle each
in its place, the door shut and bolted. I
went back to bed, but couldn't close an eye
until morning. The noise kept on all night
in the kitchen. The next morning, when I
went out, I met the old woman who had
taken care of Fioraccio. She stopped me
and asked me about what had happened in
the night, of which she had heard some-
thing. When I told her about the noise in
the kitchen, she said: “At that same hour
I could not sleep, and I took up my rosary
meaning to say it for him. Hardly had I
begun when I saw him appear, all dressed
in red, and he said to me:
“No need to say it for me; it's of no use.
I'm damned---damned for all eternity.'”


THE SILENT WOMAN.
BY
LEOPOLD KOMPERT.





THE SILENT WOMAN.
The uproarious merriment of a wedding-
feast burst forth into the night from a brill-
iantly lighted house in the "gasse" (narrow
street). It was one of those nights touched
with the warmth of spring, but dark and full
of soft mist. Most fitting it was for a cele-
bration of the union of two yearning hearts
to share the same lot, a lot that may possi-
bly dawn in sunny brightness, but also be-
come clouded and sullen—for a long, long
time! But how merry and joyous they were
over there, those people of the happy olden
times! They, like us, had their troubles and
trials, and when misfortune visited them it
came not to them with soft cushions and ten-
der pressures of the hand. Rough and hard,


190
MODERN GHOSTS.
with clinched fist, it laid hold upon them.
But when they gave vent to their happy
feelings and sought to enjoy themselves,
they were like swimmers in cooling waters.
They struck out into the stream with fresh-
ness and courage, suffered themselves to be
borne along by the current whithersoever it
took its course. This was the cause of
such a jubilee, such a thoughtlessly noisy
outburst of all kinds of soul-possessing gay-
ety from this house of nuptials.
"And if I had known," the bride's father,
the rich Ruben Klattaner, had just said,
"that it would take the last gulden in my
pocket, then out it would have come."
In fact, it did appear as if the last groschen
had really taken flight, and was fluttering
about in the form of platters heaped up with
geese and pastry-tarts. Since two o'clock—
that is, since the marriage ceremony had
been performed out in the open street—un-
til nearly midnight, the wedding-feast had
been progressing, and even yet the sarvers,
or waiters, were hurrying from room to room.
It was as if a twofold blessing had descend-
ed upon all this abundance of food and


LEOPOLD KOMPERT.' 1Q1
drink, for, in the first place, they did not
seem to diminish; secondly, they ever found
a new place for disposal. To be sure, this
appetite was sharpened by the presence of
a little dwarf-like, unimportant-looking man.
He was esteemed, however, none the less
highly by every one. They had specially
written to engage the celebrated " Leb Narr,"
of Prague. And when was ever a mood so
out of sorts, a heart so imbittered as not
to thaw out and laugh if Leb Narr played
one of his pranks. Ah, thou art now dead,
good fool! Thy lips, once always ready
with a witty reply, are closed! Thy mouth,
then never still, now speaks no more! But
when the hearty peals of laughter once rang
forth at thy command, intercessors, as it
were, in thy behalf before the very throne
of God, thou hadst nothing to fear. And
the joy of that "other" world was thine,
that joy that has ever belonged to the most
pious of country rabbis!"
In the mean time the young people had
assembled in one of the rooms to dance. It
was strange how the sound of violins and
trumpets accorded with the drolleries of the


192 MODERN GHOSTS.
wit from Prague. In one part the outbursts
of merriment were so boisterous that the
very candles on the little table seemed to
flicker with terror; in another an ordinary
conversation was in progress, which now
and then only ran over into a loud tittering,
when some old lady slipped into the circle
and tried her skill at a redowa, then alto-
gether unknown to the young people. In
the very midst of the tangle of dancers was
to be seen the bride in a heavy silk wed-
ding-gown. The point of her golden hood
hung far down over her face. She danced
continuously. She danced with every one
that asked her. Had one, however, observed
the actions of the young woman, they would
certainly have seemed to him hurried, agi-
tated, almost wild. She looked no one in the
eye, not even her own bridegroom. He stood
for the most part in the door-way, and evi-
dently took more pleasure in the witticisms
of the fool than in the dance or the lady
dancers. But who ever thought for a mo-
ment why the young woman's hand burned,
why her breath was so hot when one came
near to her lips? Who should have noticed


LEOPOLD KOMPERT. I93
so strange a thing? A low whispering al-
ready passed through the company, a stealthy
smile stole across many a lip. A bevy of
ladies was seen to enter the room suddenly.
The music dashed off into one of its loudest
pieces, and, as if by enchantment, the newly
made bride disappeared behind the ladies.
The bridegroom, with his stupid, smiling
mien, was still left standing on the threshold.
But it was not long before he too vanished.
One could hardly say how it happened.
But people understand such skilful move-
ments by experience, and will continue to
understand them as long as there are brides
and grooms in the world.
This disappearance of the chief person-
ages, little as it seemed to be noticed, gave,
however, the signal for general leave-taking.
The dancing became drowsy; it stopped all
at once, as if by appointment. That noisy
confusion now began which always attends
so merry a wedding-party. Half-drunken
voices could be heard still intermingled with
a last, hearty laugh over a joke of the fool
from Prague echoing across the table. Here
and there some one, not quite sure of his
13


194
MODERN GHOSTS.
balance, was fumbling for the arm of his
chair or the edge of the table. This result-
ed in his overturning a dish that had been
forgotten, or in spilling a beer-glass. While
this, in turn, set up a new hubbub, some one
else, in his eagerness to betake himself from
the scene, fell flat into the very ddbris. But
all this tumult was really hushed the mo-
ment they all pressed to the door, for at that
very instant shrieks, cries of pain, were heard
issuing from the entrance below. In an in-
stant the entire outpouring crowd with all
possible force pushed back into the room,
but it was a long time before the stream
was pressed back again. Meanwhile, painful
cries were again heard from below, so pain-
ful, indeed, that they restored even the most
drunken to a state of consciousness.
"By the living God!" they cried to each
other, "what is the matter down there? Is
the house on fire?"
"She is gone! she is gone!" shrieked a
woman's voice from the entry below.
"Who? who?" groaned the wedding-
guests, seized, as it were, with an icy horror.
"Gone! gone I" cried the woman from


LEOPOLD KOMPERT. 195
the entry, and hurrying up the stairs came
Selde Klattaner, the mother of the bride,
pale as death, her eyes dilated with most
awful fright, convulsively grasping a candle
in her hand. "For God's sake, what has
happened ?" was heard on every side of her.
The sight of so many people about her,
and the confusion of voices, seemed to re-
lease the poor woman from a kind of stu-
por. She glanced shyly about her then, as
if overcome with a sense of shame stronger
than her terror, and said, in a suppressed
tone:
"Nothing, nothing, good people. In
God's name, I ask, what was there to hap-
pen?"
Dissimulation, however, was too evident
to suffice to deceive them.
"Why, then, did you shriek so, Selde,"
called out one of the guests to her, "if noth-
ing happened?"
"Yes, she has gone," Selde now moaned
in heart-rending tones, "and she has cer-
tainly done herself some harm!"
The cause of this strange scene was now
first discovered. The bride has disappeared


196
MODERN GHOSTS.
from the wedding-feast. Soon after that she
had vanished in such a mysterious way, the
bridegroom went below to the dimly-light-
ed room to find her, but in vain. At first
thought this seemed to him to be a sort
of bashful jest; but not finding her here,
a mysterious foreboding seized him. He
called to the mother of the bride:
"Woe to me! This woman has gone!"
Presently this party, that had so admira-
bly controlled itself, was again thrown into
commotion. "There was nothing to do," was
said on all sides, " but to ransack every nook
and corner. Remarkable instances of such
disappearances of brides had been known.
Evil spirits were wont to lurk about such
nights and to inflict mankind with all sorts
of sorceries." Strange as this explanation
may seem, there were many who believed it
at this very moment, and, most of all, Selde
Klattaner herself. But it was only for a
moment, for she at once exclaimed:
"No, no, my good people, she is gone; I
know she is gone!"
Now for the first time many of them,
especially the mothers, felt particularly un-


LEOPOLD KOMPERT. I97
easy, and anxiously called their daughters
to them. Only a few showed courage, and
urged that they must search and search,
even if they had to turn aside the river Iser
a hundred times. They urgently pressed on,
called for torches and lanterns, and started
forth. The cowardly ran after them up and
down the stairs. Before any one perceived
it the room was entirely forsaken.
Ruben Klattaner stood in the hall entry
below, and let the people hurry past him
without exchanging a word with any. Bit-
ter disappointment and fear had almost
crazed him. One of the last to stay in the
room above with Selde was, strange to say,
Leb Narr, of Prague. After all had depart-
ed, he approached the miserable mother,
and, in a tone least becoming his general
manner, inquired:
"Tell me, now, Mrs. Selde, did she not
wish to have 'him '?"
"Whom? whom?" cried Selde, with re-
newed alarm, when she found herself alone
with the fool.
"I mean," said Leb, in a most sympathet-
ic manner, approaching still nearer to Selde,


198
MODERN GHOSTS.
"that maybe you had to make your daugh-
ter marry him."
"Make? And have we, then, made her?"
moaned Selde, staring at the fool with a
look of uncertainty.
"Then nobody needs to search for her,"
replied the fool, with a sympathetic laugh,
at the same time retreating. "It's better
to leave her where she is."
Without saying thanks or good-night, he
was gone.
Meanwhile the cause of all this disturb-
ance had arrived at the end of her flight.
Close by the synagogue was situated the
house of the rabbi. It was built in an angle
of a very narrow street, set in a framework
of tall shade-trees. Even by daylight it was
dismal enough. At night it was almost im-
possible for a timid person to approach it,
for people declared that the low supplica-
tions of the dead could be heard in the
dingy house of God when at night they took
the rolls of the law from the ark to summon
their members by name.
Through this retired street passed, or rath-
er ran, at this hour a shy form. Arriving at


LEOPOLD KOMPERT.
I99
the dwelling of the rabbi, she glanced back-
ward to see whether any one was following
her. But all was silent and gloomy enough
about her. A pale light issued from one of
the windows of the synagogue; it came from
the "eternal lamp" hanging in front of the
ark of the covenant. But at this moment it
seemed to her as if a supernatural eye was
gazing upon her. Thoroughly affrighted, she
seized the little iron knocker of the door and
struck it gently. But the throb of her beat-
ing heart was even louder, more violent, than
this blow. After a pause, footsteps were
heard passing slowly along the hall-way.
The rabbi had not occupied this lonely
house a long time. His predecessor, almost
a centenarian in years, had been laid to rest
a few months before. The new rabbi had
been called from a distant part of the coun-
try. He was unmarried, and in the prime
of life. No one had known him before his
coming. But his personal nobility and the
profundity of his scholarship made up for
his deficiency in years. An aged mother had
accompanied him from their distant home,
and she took the place of wife and child.


200
MODERN GHOSTS.
"Who is there?" asked the rabbi, who
had been busy at his desk even at this late
hour and thus had not missed hearing the
knocker.
"It is I," the figure without responded,
almost inaudibly.
"Speak louder, if you wish me to hear
you," replied the rabbi.
"It is I, Ruben Klattaner's daughter,"
she repeated.
The name seemed to sound strange to the
rabbi. He as yet knew too few of his con-
gregation to understand that this very day
he performed the marriage ceremony of the
person who had just repeated her name.
Therefore he called out, after a moment's
pause, " What do you wish so late at night?"
"Open the door, rabbi," she answered,
pleadingly, " or I shall die at once!"
The bolt was pushed back. Something
gleaming, rustling, glided past the rabbi into
the dusky hall. The light of the candle in
his hand was not sufficient to allow him to
descry it. Before he had time to address
her, she had vanished past him and had dis-
appeared through the open door into the


LEOPOLD KOMPERT. 201
room. Shaking his head, the rabbi again
bolted the door.
On re-entering the room he saw a woman's
form sitting in the chair which he usually
occupied. She had her back turned to him.
Her head was bent low over her breast.
Her golden wedding-hood, with its shading
lace, was pulled down over her forehead.
Courageous and pious as the rabbi was, he
could not rid himself of a feeling of terror.
"Who are you ?" he demanded, in a loud
tone, as if its sound alone would banish the
presence of this being that seemed to him
at this moment to be the production of all
the enchantments of evil spirits.
She raised herself, and cried in a voice
that seemed to come from the agony of a
human being:
"Do you not know me — me, whom you
married a few hours since under the chuppe
(marriage-canopy) to a husband?"
On hearing this familiar voice the rabbi
stood speechless. He gazed at the young
woman. Now, indeed, he must regard her as
one bereft of reason, rather than as a spectre.
"Well, if you are she," he stammered out,


202
MODERN GHOSTS.
after a pause, for it was with difficulty that
he found words to answer, "why are you
here and not in the place where you belong?"
"I know no other place to which I belong
more than here where I now am!" she an-
swered, severely.
These words puzzled the rabbi still more.
Is it really an insane woman before him?
He must have thought so, for he now ad-
dressed her in a gentle tone of voice, as
we do those suffering from this kind of sick-
ness, in order not to excite her, and said:
"The place where you belong, my daugh-
ter, is in the house of your parents, and, since
you have to-day been made a wife, your place
is in your husband's house."
The young woman muttered something
which failed to reach the rabbi's ear. Yet
he only continued to think that he saw be-
fore him some poor unfortunate whose mind
was deranged. After a pause, he added, in
a still gentler tone: "What is your name,
then, my child?"
"God, god," she moaned, in the greatest
anguish, "he does not even yet know my
name!"


LEOPOLD KOMPERT. 203
"How should I know you," he continued,
apologetically, "for I am a stranger in this
place?"
This tender remark seemed to have pro-
duced the desired effect upon her excited
mind.
"My name is Veile," she said, quietly, af-
ter a pause.
The rabbi quickly perceived that he had
adopted the right tone towards his mysteri-
ous guest.
"Veile," he said, approaching nearer her,
"what do you wish of me?"
"Rabbi, I have a great sin resting heavily
upon my heart," she replied despondently.
"I do not know what to do."
"What can you have done," inquired the
rabbi, with a tender look, " that cannot be
discussed at any other time than just now?
Will you let me advise you, Veile?"
"No, no," she cried again, violently, "I
will not be advised. I see, I know what
oppresses me. Yes, I can grasp it by the
hand, it lies so near before me. Is that
what you call to be advised?"
"Very well," returned the rabbi, seeing


204
MODERN GHOSTS.
that this was the very way to get the young
woman to talk—"very well, I say, you are
not imagining anything. I believe that you
have greatly sinned. Have you come here
then to confess this sin? Do your parents
or your husband know anything about it?"
"Who is my husband?" she interrupted
him, impetuously.
Thoughts welled up in the rabbi's heart
like a tumultuous sea in which opposing
conjectures cross and recross each other's
course. Should he speak with her as with
an ordinary sinner?
"Were you, perhaps, forced to be mar-
ried?" he inquired, as quietly as possible,
after a pause.
A suppressed sob, a strong inward strug-
gle, manifesting itself in the whole trembling
body, was the only answer to this question.
"Tell me, my child," said the rabbi, en-
couragingly.
In such tones as the rabbi had never be-
fore heard, so strange, so surpassing any hu-
man sounds, the young woman began:
"Yes, rabbi, I will speak, even though I
know that I shall never go from this place


LEOPOLD KOMPERT.
205
alive, which would be the very best thing for
me! No, rabbi, I was not forced to be mar-
ried. My parents have never once said to
me 'you must,' but my own will, my own de-
sire, rather, has always been supreme. My
husband is the son of a rich man in the
community. To enter his family was to be
made the first lady in the gasse, to sit buried
in gold and silver. And that very thing,
nothing else, was what infatuated me with
him. It was for that that I forced myself,
my heart and will, to be married to him,
hard as it was for me. But in my innermost
heart I detested him. The more he loved
me, the more I hated him. But the gold
and silver had an influence over me. More
and more they cried to me, 'You will be the
first lady in the gasse/'"
"Continue," said the rabbi, when she
ceased, almost exhausted by these words.
"What more shall I tell you, rabbi?" she
began again. "I was never a liar, when a
child, or older, and yet during my whole en-
gagement it has seemed to me as if a big,
gigantic lie had followed me step by step. I
have seen it on every side of me. But to-


206 MODERN GHOSTS.
day, when I stood under the chuppe, rabbi,
and he took the ring from his finger and put
it on mine, and when I had to dance at my
own wedding with him, whom I now recog-
nized, now for the first time, as the lie, and
—when they led me away—"
This sincere confession escaping from the
lips of the young woman, she sobbed aloud
and bowed her head still deeper over her
breast. The rabbi gazed upon her in si-
lence. No insane woman ever spoke like
that! Only a soul conscious of its own sin,
but captivated by a mysterious power, could
suffer like this!
It was not sympathy which he felt with
her; it was much more a living over the
sufferings of the woman. In spite of the
confused story, it was all clear to the rabbi.
The cause of the flight from the father's
house at this hour also required no explana-
tion. "I know what you mean," he longed
to say, but he could only find words to say:
"Speak further, Veile!"
The young woman turned towards him. He
had not yet seen her face. The golden hood
with the shading lace hung deeply over it.


LEOPOLD KOMPERT.
207
"Have I not told you everything?" she
said, with a flush of scorn.
"Everything ?" repeated the rabbi, inquir-
ingly. He only said this, moreover, through
embarrassment.
"Do you tell me now," she cried, at once
passionately and mildly, "what am I to do?"
"Veile I" exclaimed the rabbi, entertain-
ing now, for the first time, a feeling of re-
pugnance for this confidential interview.
"Tell me now!" she pleaded; and before
the rabbi could prevent it the young woman
threw herself down at his feet and clasped
his knees in her arms. This hasty act had
loosened the golden wedding-hood from her
head, and thus exposed her face to view, a
face of remarkable beauty.
So overcome was the young rabbi by the
sight of it that he had to shade his eyes
with his hands, as if before a sudden flash
of lightning.
"Tell me now, what shall I do ?" she cried
again. "Do you think that I have come
from my parents' home merely to return
again without help? You alone in the world
must tell me. Look at me! I have kept


LEOPOLD KOMPERT.
209
rather like a commingling of exultation and
lamentation.
And again he demanded, "Silence! si-
lence !" but this time so imperiously, so forci-
bly, that the young woman lay on the floor
as if conjured, not daring to utter a single
word.
The rabbi paced almost wildly up and
down the room. There must have been a
hard, terrible struggle in his breast. It seem-
ed to the one lying on the floor that she heard
him sigh from the depths of his soul. Then
his pacing became calmer; but it did not
last long. The fierce conflict again assailed
him. His step grew hurried; it echoed
loudly through the awful stillness of the
room. Suddenly he neared the young wom-
an, who seemed to lie there scarcely breath-
ing. He stopped in front of her. Had any
one seen the face of the rabbi at this mo-
ment the expression on it would have filled
him with terror. There was a marvellous
tranquillity overlying it, the tranquillity of a
struggle for life or death.
"Listen to me now, Veile," he began,
slowly, " I will talk with you."
14


210
MODERN GHOSTS.
"I listen, rabbi," she whispered.
"But do you hear me well?"
"Only speak," she returned.
"But will you do what I advise you?
Will you not oppose it? For I am going to
say something that will terrify you?"
"I will do anything that you say. Only
tell me," she moaned.
"Will you swear?"
"I will," she groaned.
"No, do not swear yet, until you have
heard me," he cried. "I will not force
you."
This time came no answer.
"Hear me, then, daughter of Ruben Klat-
taner," he began, after a pause. "You have
a twofold sin upon your soul, and each is
so great, so criminal, that it can only be for-
given by severe punishment. First you per-
mitted yourself to be infatuated by the gold
and silver, and then you forced your heart
to lie. With the lie you sought to deceive
the man, even though he had intrusted you
with his all when he made you his wife. A
lie is truly a great sin! Streams of water
cannot drown them. They make men false


213
MODERN GHOSTS.
made him more than unhappy. He will nev-
ermore have the desire to be happy. Veile,
God in heaven cannot forgive you for that."
"Silence! silence I" groaned the wretched
woman.
"No, Veile," he continued, with a strong-
er voice, "let me talk now. You are cer-
tainly willing to hear me speak? Listen to
me. You must do severe penance for this
sin, the twofold sin which rests upon your
head. God is long-suffering and merciful.
He will perhaps look down upon your mis-
ery, and will blot out your guilt from the
great book of transgressions. But you
must become penitent. Hear, now, what it
shall be."
The rabbi paused. He was on the point
of saying the severest thing that had ever
passed his lips.
"You were silent, Veile," then he cried,
"when you should have spoken. Be silent
now forever to all men and to yourself.
From the moment you leave this house, until
I grant it, you must be dumb; you dare
not let a loud word pass from your mouth.
Will you undergo this penance?"


LEOPOLD KOMPERT. 213
"I will do all you say," moaned the
young woman.
"Will you have strength to do it?" he
asked, gently.
"I shall be as silent as death," she re-
plied.
"And' one thing more I have to say to
you," he continued. "You are the wife of
your husband. Return home and be a
Jewish wife."
"I understand you," she sobbed in reply.
"Go to your home now, and bring peace
to your parents and husband. The time
will come when you may speak, when your
sin will be forgiven you. Till then bear
what has been laid upon you."
"May I say one thing more?" she cried,
lifting up her head.
"Speak," he said.
"Naphtali!"
The rabbi covered his eyes with one hand,
with the other motioned her to be silent.
But she grasped his hand, drew it to her
lips. Hot tears fell upon it.
"Go now," he sobbed, completely broken
down.


MODERN GHOSTS.
She let go the hand. The rabbi had
seized the candle, but she had already
passed him, and glided through the dark
hall. The door was left open. The rabbi
locked it again.
Veile returned to her home, as she had
escaped, unnoticed. The narrow street was
deserted, as desolate as death. The search-
ers were to be found everywhere except
there where they ought first to have sought
for the missing one. Her mother, Selde,
still sat on the same chair on which she had
sunk down an hour ago. The fright had
left her like one paralyzed, and she was un-
able to rise. What a wonderful contrast
this wedding-room, with the mother sitting
alone in it, presented to the hilarity reign-
ing here shortly before! On Veile's en-
trance her mother did not cry out. She
had no strength to do so. She merely said:
"So you have come at last, my daughter?"
as if Veile had only returned from a walk
somewhat too long. But the young woman
did not answer to this and similar ques-
tions. Finally she signified by gesticula-


2l6
MODERN GHOSTS.
night, a sport of these malicious potencies
which pursue men step by step, especially
on such occasions. The living God alone
knows what she must have seen that night.
Nothing good, else one would not become
dumb. Old legends and tales were revived,
each more horrible than the other. Hun-
dreds of instances were given to prove that
this was nothing new in the gasse. Despite
this explanation, it is remarkable that the
people did not believe that the young wom-
an was dumb. The most thought that her
power of speech had been paralyzed by
some awful fright, but that with time it
would be restored. Under this supposition
they called her "Veile the Silent."
There is a kind of human eloquence more
telling, more forcible than the loudest words,
than the choicest diction — the silence of
woman! Ofttimes they cannot endure the
slightest vexation, but some great, heart-
breaking sorrow, some pain from constant
renunciation, self-sacrifice, they suffer with
sealed lips—as if, in very truth, they were
bound with bars of iron.
It would be difficult to fully describe thit


LEOPOLD KOMPERT. 217
long "silent" life of the young woman. It
is almost impossible to cite more than one
incident. Veile accompanied her husband
to his home, that house resplendent with
that gold and silver which had infatuated
her. She was, to be sure, the "first" wom-
an in the gasse; she had everything in abun-
dance. Indeed, the world supposed that she
had but little cause for complaint. "Must
one have everything?" was sometimes que-
ried in the gasse. "One has one thing;
another, another." And, according to all
appearances, the people were right. Veile
continued to be the beautiful, blooming
woman. Her penance of silence did not
deprive her of a single charm. She was so
very happy, indeed, that she did not seem
to feel even the pain of her punishment.
Veile could laugh and rejoice, but never did
she forget to be silent. The seemingly happy
days, however, were only qualified to bring
about the proper time of trials and tempta-
tions. The beginning was easy enough for
her, the middle and end were times of real
pain. The first years of their wedded life
were childless. "It is well," the people in


MODERN GHOSTS.
the gasse said, "that she has no children,
and God has rightly ordained it to be so.
A mother who cannot talk to her child, that
would be something awful!" Unexpectedly
to all, she rejoiced one day in the birth of a
daughter. And when that affectionate young
creature, her own offspring, was laid upon
her breast, and the first sounds were uttered
by its lips—that nameless, eloquent utter-
ance of an infant—she forgot herself not;
she was silent!
She was silent also when from day to day
that child blossomed before her eyes into
fuller beauty. Nor had she any words for it
when, in effusions of tenderness, it stretched
forth its tiny arms, when in burning fever it
sought for the mother's hand. For days—
yes, weeks—together she watched at its bed-
side. Sleep never visited her eyes. But
she ever remembered her penance.
Years fled by. In her arms she carried
another child. It was a boy. The father's
joy was great. The child inherited its moth-
er's beauty. Like its sister, it grew in health
and strength. The noblest, richest mother,
they said, might be proud of such children!


224 MODERN GHOSTS.
Date
declaring that such a one had never before
been listened to. The women at her side
wept; she alone could not. A choking pain
pressed from her breast to her lips. Forces
were astir in her heart which struggled for
expression. The whole synagogue echoed
with buzzing voices, but to her it seemed as
if she must speak louder than these. At
the very moment her son had ended she
cried out unconsciously, violently throwing
herself against the lattice-work:
"God! living God! shall I not now
speak?" A dead silence followed this out-
cry. Nearly all had recognized this voice
as that of the "silent woman." A miracle
had taken place!
"Speak! speak!" resounded the answer of
the rabbi from the men's seats below. "You
may now speak!"
But no reply came. Veile had fallen back
into her seat, pressing both hands against
her breast. When the women sitting beside
her looked at her they were terrified to find
that the " silent woman" had fainted. She
was dead! The unsealing of her lips was
her last moment.