The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th Century (37 page)

‘Here then is my story. It will permit you to understand my system and its various ramifications better than any abstract theorising.’

Except for the slightly emphatic tone of the scholar proclaiming what he believed to be the truth, Roger expressed himself calmly. Now he shifted to a less pedantic, slightly more emotive and much quieter voice, as if he wanted to get it over with:

‘I used to have a close friend. We grew up together and made our way in the world together; but whereas I decided to study medicine, he made up his mind not to follow a career. He had a sizeable income and devoted himself with youthful enthusiasm to dissipation and pleasure. These pleasures, I should say, were always quite civilised and worthy of him. My friend had a singular personality, tremendous pride, a quick mind, and loyalty and sincerity were his watchwords. After a couple of years, he began to grow weary of the vacuity of his existence. Life seemed to him to be not worth the candle, and he became extremely disenchanted. I can still see him clearly, with his long hair, his dark, slightly tired eyes. His smile was sad and mocking. He was living from moment to moment, dissatisfied with the past, without belief in the future. At the time of his greatest scepticism, doubt and discouragement, he was twenty-eight years old.’

From the moment Roger had begun this story, Clementine had listened attentively to him.

‘But,’ she said, ‘that’s exactly what Ernest was like. You could have been describing him.’

‘No,’ said Roger, as if lost in his memories, ‘it’s Martial I am describing. He would soon meet the woman with whom he would fall in love. That woman was very young, twenty-two at the most. Her husband was much older than her, very serious, and she was always slightly afraid of him. There was also something shy and reserved about her. She had charming eyes, well-proportioned and round, which were shaded by long eyelashes. She looked like one of those children who are shown no parental affection and who are always cold even in the sunshine. From the very first time he saw her, Martial felt the cockles of his heart stir. He suddenly became alive to the nobler human emotions – affection, devotion, protection – which he had never experienced before and which he no longer believed himself capable of feeling.’

Ernest, strangely moved, now interrupted Roger in his turn.

‘You remind me of Clementine,’ he said.

‘No, no,’ Roger went on, ‘I was referring to Léonie. They fell in love, and from that moment they were pursued by the knowledge that their true destiny lay with each other. They could think of no worthier goal than to dedicate their lives entirely to each other’s happiness. It was due to this love that Martial completely lost interest in all the spurious pleasures he had once enjoyed; this same love caused all the alluring qualities of contented womanhood to blossom in Léonie. In this way, they arrived at that contented serenity against which external obstacles and the fleeting weaknesses of the soul are powerless. It was a constant struggle for them, however. Martial was barely acquainted with Léonie’s husband, and did not wish to know him. It would have been repugnant to him to pretend to be the friend of the man he was cheating. Léonie and he only saw each other surreptitiously, like a guilty couple; but, at least, they could congratulate themselves on the need for secrecy, which is not always the case with such liaisons. They knew uncertainty and anguish, but they also experienced the supreme joys of passion when they entirely forgot their sufferings. This continued for six years.’

‘Six years!’ exclaimed Ernest worriedly. ‘We fell in love six years ago too.’

‘And for six years,’ added Clementine, ‘we too have been afraid of what the future may hold in store for us.’

‘Ah’ exclaimed Roger. ‘At last, you start to see the point. Now you should be able to understand my surprise when I came across you by chance exactly as if it were six years ago. And as you have been the victim of the same trials and tribulations, you can realised why I am afraid that you will be overtaken by the same misfortune.’

‘What happened to them?’ asked Ernest and Clementine together.

‘What happened was that I betrayed them by accident. I used to know M. Lannoy, that was the husband. One day, Martial asked me to deliver a letter to Léonie for him. I did this in the presence of the husband, but so maladroitly that his suspicions were aroused. He said nothing at the time, but later he got hold of the letter, read its contents, and surprised them together. He challenged Martial to a duel and killed him. Léonie only survived her lover by a few days. M. Lannoy himself died soon afterwards; and, as for me, I went mad. All that happened six years ago, and it is now six years, so you say, since you fell in love and felt for the first time that your destinies were interlocked. Is it not possible, since your lives have paralleled theirs so closely, that it is your turn to die today, just as they did?’

Roger fell silent. Ernest and Clementine continued listening to him even after he had finished speaking. They were fascinated by the strangeness of the story he had told; frightened by the bizarre coincidences that existed between their own lives and those of Martial and Léonie. Could not the souls of those unfortunate lovers have passed into their own? As they surrendered their lives, could they not have bequeathed to them the love they had found? Listening to Roger’s incoherent but peculiarly rational ramblings, they were unable to distinguish the truth from the falsehood. They wrestled with his words in vain, just as one fights against the sense of oppression to which a nightmare gives rise. Ernest awoke with a start and regained possession of himself. He drew a long breath and said to Roger with a smile:

‘Really, sir, I was quite alarmed for a moment; but, fortunately, even if, as you believe, this lady and myself are none other than Martial and Léonie, we still don’t run the slightest risk of succumbing to the same danger: neither of us have any friends in a position to give us away by an imprudent action.’

‘How do you know? What if this fatal friend suddenly appeared out of the blue? What if he was me?’

‘You!’

‘Yes, me. What if some mysterious power always compels me to be the cause of the same misfortune? What if I don’t have any more sense or insight the second time around as the first?’

‘You have sent a shiver down my spine,’ said Clementine. ‘Please explain what you mean.’

‘This morning,’ replied Roger, ‘I met M. Lannoy, I call him that because I am still unfamiliar with the name of madam’s husband. But it was undoubtedly the same M. Lannoy who has been dead these last six years that I saw alive and well with my very own eyes. I could not contain my emotions, and I approached him as I did you. He treated me as a lunatic, and I, in a moment of anger and spite, without a thought for the consequences, told him that he was being cuckolded by his wife.’

‘Oh dear! What have you done!’ exclaimed Clementine.

‘Describe what he looked like,’ said Ernest.

Roger described the appearance of the stranger whom he had accosted that morning. He added that he had been carrying a suitcase in his hand.

‘It’s him! It’s definitely him!’ said Clementine.

‘Yes, it certainly sounds like your husband,’ murmured Ernest.

‘Look on the bright side,’ said Roger, naïvely, ‘we have arranged a duel for tomorrow morning, and I certainly hope to kill him. If, on the other hand, I am killed myself, I have partly put right my mistake by telling you what I have done and placing you on your guard.’

‘Ernest,’ said Clementine in an urgent tone, ‘my instincts never deceive me. My husband never left town, he has been looking everywhere for me. I must go home as quickly as possible. You must take me home at once!’

She hastily put on her hat and shawl. Ernest helped her, and Roger watched them sadly.

‘Ah!’ he thought to himself. ‘Not a word of thanks for me. That’s only fair, I suppose, since I have been the cause of all their troubles. They should be heaping me with reproaches, but they don’t.’

At that moment, there was the sound of footsteps and a voice was to be heard in the corridor.

‘That last gentlemen went into number six, didn’t he?’ a waiter was saying.

‘Which one?’ replied one of his colleagues.

‘The bald gentleman who dined on the ground floor.’

‘Yes. Why do you want to know?’

‘This gentleman would like to see him.’

‘But he is engaged. There is another lady and gentleman with him.’

‘I’ve already been told that,’ replied the man politely who had asked to see Roger. ‘I know the lady and gentleman in question. They’re friends of mine.’

The waiter, who had been doubtful until them, hesitated no longer.

‘What name shall I give, sir?’

‘M. de Pernon … but it won’t be necessary.’

On that note, he opened the door of the private room himself, closing it behind him. At the sight of him, Clementine, trembling and pale, retreated into the corner. Ernest stood his ground in front of her, ready to defend her to the last. Roger stood bewildered between this couple and the husband. It was to him that M. de Pernon first addressed himself.

‘You have been by no means easy to find, sir,’ he remarked. ‘However, I was told at your hotel that you had breakfasted here, so I presumed you would dine here this evening as well. I have been looking for you in order to insist that you explain the curious message you so kindly left for me at your hotel. With your permission, this is a matter which must be postponed until later though; I am not aware by what coincidence you find yourself in the company of my wife and this gentleman; but, as you may imagine, this represents a radical change of circumstances as far as I am concerned, and my present business must take precedence over all else.’

Roger did not reply. It was as if he had not heard; he just muttered an endless stream of words in a low voice to himself and stared at M. de Pernon with a look filled with hatred.

‘As for you, sir,’ said M. de Pernon dryly, ‘I hardly need tell you that I expect satisfaction.’

‘Sir,’ replied Ernest, ‘I am ready whenever you are.’

‘The sooner the better; tomorrow morning, for example. I already have some seconds organised; you need only inform your own.’

‘Sir,’ Roger imposed, stepping forward, ‘I believe that I have the first call on you.’

‘You must understand, sir, that this has now become impossible.’

Roger, who had become extremely agitated, lent towards M. de Pernon. Only the table, over which his hands were hovering aimlessly, separated them.

‘He declines my challenge!’ he said in a dull voice. ‘Just as the other one did. Everything is happening in exactly the same way. Fate is going to get the better of us again unless I do something about it. You refuse me the honour then, do you?’ he said aloud.

‘Yes, sir. Furthermore,’ continued M. de Pernon with disdain, ‘in the light of your present behaviour and the conversation we had this morning, I must decline to fight you until you have convinced me that you are not some escaped lunatic.’

‘Ah ha!’ exclaimed Roger with a laugh. ‘Now you’re claiming I’m mad, are you? That’s it, isn’t it? M. Lannoy thought I was mad too! He provided the very same excuse for refusing to fight me. They believed him too and locked me up. Personally, I don’t care whether I’m mad or not. Aren’t you, all three of you, though your names may be different, the same faces in the same circumstances as last time; aren’t you the friends I loved and the man I hated? No, Martial; no, Léonie – it won’t be said that I let you down twice. As for you, Lannoy, you won’t escape me again. Take this you wretch!’

At the same moment, he fell on M. de Pernon and thrust the knife he had picked up from the table into his stomach. M. de Pernon doubled up and fell to the floor without saying a word. Ernest and Clementine rushed to his side. Roger, meanwhile, leapt on to the table and stood there, trampling the plates and glasses under foot, still brandishing the knife and excitedly chanting:

‘Got him! Got him!’

This tragic event had fewer repercussions than one might have imagined. Doctor Vermond, who had been organising the search for Roger since the preceding day, certified him insane and Roger was not brought before the courts. The magistrate entrusted with the case happened to be a friend of Ernest’s and completely accepted his version of the husband’s arrival at the restaurant and his strange death. One was led to believe that M. de Pernon had just rejoined his wife and Ernest for dinner when Roger, who had been following him since their quarrel earlier in the day, had burst in without warning, mad with rage. The rumour that circulated hinted at an accident rather than anything scandalous. Ernest and Clementine were further apart than ever – there was the blood of M. de Pernon between them now which saw to that. Clementine returned to her family in the country; Ernest travelled. Roger, after several days of delirious frenzy, returned to his normal state of lucid insanity. To this day, he still believes more than ever that his new theory of metempsychosis has logically proved that the soul is immortal. His mind confuses the second incident in which he played such a bloody role with the first. After all, he ended up mad after both of them, didn’t he? As on the first occasion, moreover, no sooner was he cured than he returned to his studies again. Even the death of M. de Pernon gave him no cause for remorse. Since his friend and master, the doctor who used to care for him, had imparted his soul to Roger on his death, together with his aptitude for psychology and all his scientific knowledge, by means of the fusion of their two souls, his former patient, as we know, believed that by killing M. de Pernon he had merely stripped an old man of his outer raiments in order that another man might benefit from his inner vestments. Indeed, Roger came to think of his life as divided into two parts: the former had belonged to the young Roger, impetuous and blind as he was; the latter was the lot of a Roger whose eyes had at last been opened and who was entirely devoted to science. It was the first Roger who had committed the murder; the second Roger thought no more about it than as a youthful error to be considered from a purely speculative standpoint. At the very worst, he considered it an incident about which he sometimes preferred not to speak. In fact, his mind was so confused that he came to believe that M. Lannoy, who had been stabbed to death with a knife, might just as easily have passed away in his sleep after a long illness. Roger did not explain how the same man was able to die in two different ways. If there is any flaw in his theory of the transmigration of souls and like destinies, a theory which Roger would like to be as solid and comprehensible in practice as in theory, that is it.