Chiara C. Rizzarda's Blog, page 15

#WerewolvesWednesday: The Wolf-Leader (4)

A werewolf story by Alexandre Dumas père.

An illustration by Frank Adams to the British edition.Chapter IV: The Black Wolf

Thibault’s first thought was to get himself some supper, for he was terribly tired. The past day had been an eventful one for him, and certain things that had happened were evidently enough to produce a craving for food. His supper, it must be said, was not quite as savory as he had promised himself when setting out to kill the buck. But, as we know, the animal had not been killed by Thibault, and the ferocious hunger that now consumed him made his black bread taste almost as delicious as venison.

He had hardly, however, begun his frugal repast, when he became conscious that his goat of which I think we have already spoken was uttering the most plaintive bleatings. Thinking that she, too, was in want of her supper, he went into the lean-to for some fresh grass, which he then carried to her, but as he opened the little door of the shed, out she rushed with such precipitancy that she nearly knocked Thibault over, and without stopping to take the provender he had brought her, ran towards the house. Thibault threw down the bundle of grass and went after her, with the intention of re-installing her in her proper place; but he found that this was more than he was able to do. He had to use all his force to get her along, for the goat, with all the strength of which a beast of her kind is capable, resisted all his efforts to drag her back by the horns, arching her back, and stubbornly refusing to move. At last, however, being vanquished in the struggle, it ended by the goat being once more shut up in her shed, but, in spite of the plentiful supper which Thibault left her with, she continued to utter the most lamentable cries. Perplexed, and cross at the same time, the shoemaker again rose from his supper and went to the shed, this time opening the door so cautiously that the goat could not escape. Once inside he began feeling about with his hands in all the nooks and corners to try and discover the cause of her alarm. Suddenly his fingers came in contact with the warm, thick coat of some other animal. Thibault was not a coward, far from it, none the less, he drew back hastily. He returned to the house and got a light, but it almost fell from his hand, when, on re-entering the shed, he recognised in the animal that had so frightened the goat, the buck of the Lord of Vez; the same buck that he had followed, had failed to kill, that he had prayed for in the devil’s name, if he could not have it in God’s; the same that had thrown the hounds out; the very same in short which had cost him such hard blows. Thibault, after assuring himself that the door was fastened, went gently up to the animal; the poor thing was either so tired, or so tame, that it did not make the slightest attempt to move, but merely gazed out at Thibault with its large dark velvety eyes, rendered more appealing than ever by the fear which agitated it.

“I must have left the door open,” muttered the shoe-maker to himself, “and the creature, not knowing where to hide itself, must have taken refuge here.” But on thinking further over the matter, it came back to him that when he had gone to open the door, only ten minutes before, for the first time, he had found the wooden bolt pushed so firmly into the staple that he had had to get a stone to hammer it back; and then, besides, the goat, which, as we have seen, did not at all relish the society of the new-comer, would certainly have run out of the shed before, if the door had been open. What was, however, still more surprising was that Thibault, looking more closely at the buck, saw that it had been fastened up to the rack by a cord.

Thibault, as we have said, was no coward, but now a cold sweat began to break out in large drops on his brow, a curious kind of a shiver ran through his body, and his teeth chattered violently. He went out of the shed, shutting the door after him, and began looking for his goat, which had taken advantage of the moment when the shoe-maker had gone to fetch a light, and ran again into the house, where she was now lying beside the hearth, having evidently quite made up her mind this time not to forsake a resting place, which, for that night at least, she found preferable to her usual abode.

Thibault had a perfect remembrance of the unholy invocation he had addressed to Satan, and although his prayer had been miraculously answered, he still could not bring himself to believe that there was any diabolic intervention in the matter.

As the idea, however, of being under the protection of the spirit of darkness filled him with an instinctive fear, he tried to pray; but when he wished to raise his hand to make the sign of the cross on his forehead, his arm refused to bend, and although up to that time he had never missed a day saying his Ave Maria, he could not remember a single word of it.

These fruitless efforts were accompanied by a terrible turmoil in poor Thibault’s brain; evil thoughts came rushing in upon him, and he seemed to hear them whispering all around him, as one hears the murmur of the rising tide, or the laughing of the winter wind through the leafless branches of the trees.

“After all,” he muttered to himself, as he sat pale, and staring before him, “the buck is a fine windfall, whether it comes from God or the Devil, and I should be a fool not to profit by it. If I am afraid of it as being food sent from the nether regions, I am in no way forced to eat it, and what is more, I could not eat it alone, and if I asked anyone to partake of it with me, I should be betrayed; the best thing I can do is to take the live beast over to the Nunnery of Saint-Remy, where it will serve as a pet for the Nuns and where the Abbess will give me a good round sum for it. The atmosphere of that holy place will drive the evil out of it, and I shall run no risk to my soul in taking a handful of consecrated crown pieces.

What days of sweating over my work, and turning my auger, it would take to earn even the quarter of what I shall get by just leading the beast to its new fold! The devil who helps one is certainly better worth than the angel who forsakes one. If my lord Satan wants to go too far with me, it will then be time enough to free myself from his claws: bless me! I am not a child, nor a young lamb like Georgine, and I am able to walk straight in front of me and go where I like. He had forgotten, unhappy man, as he boasted of being able to go where and how he liked, that only five minutes before he had tried in vain to lift his hand to his head.

Thibault had such convincing and excellent reasons ready to hand that he quite made up his mind to keep the buck, come whence it might, and even went so far as to decide that the money he received for it should be devoted to buying a wedding dress for his betrothed. For, strange to say, by some freak of memory, his thoughts would keep returning towards Agnelette; and he seemed to see her clad in a long white dress with a crown of white lilies on her head and a long veil. If, he said to himself, he could have such a charming guardian angel in his house, no devil, however strong and cunning he might be, would ever dare to cross the threshold. “So,” he went on, “there is always that remedy at hand, and if my lord Satan begins to be too troublesome, I shall be off to the grandmother to ask for Agnelette; I shall marry her, and if I cannot remember my prayers or am unable to make the sign of the cross, there will be a dear pretty little woman, who has had no traffic with Satan, who will do all that sort of thing for me.”

Having more or less re-assured himself with the idea of this compromise, Thibault, in order that the buck should not run down in value, and might be as fine an animal as possible to offer to the holy ladies, to whom he calculated to sell it, went and filled the rack with fodder and looked to see that the litter was soft and thick enough for the buck to rest fully at its ease. The remainder of the night passed without further incident, and without even a bad dream.

The next morning, my lord Baron again went hunting, but this time it was not a timid deer that headed the hounds, but the wolf which Marcotte had tracked the day before and had again that morning traced to his lair.

And this wolf was a genuine wolf, and no mistake; it must have seen many and many a year, although those who had that morning caught sight of it while on its track had noted with astonishment that it was black all over. Black or grey, however, it was a bold and enterprising beast, and promised some rough work to the Baron and his huntsmen. First started near Vertefeuille, in the Dargent covert, it had made over the plain of Meutard, leaving Fleury and Dampleux to the left, crossed the road to Ferte-Milou, and finally begun to run cunning in the Ivors coppices. Then, instead of continuing in the same direction, it doubled, returning along the same track it had come, and so exactly retracing its own steps that the Baron, as he galloped along, could actually distinguish the prints left by his horse’s hoofs that same morning.

Back again in the district of Bourg-Fontaine, he ranged the country, leading the hunt right to the very spot where the mis-adventures of the previous day had had their start, the vicinity of the shoe-maker’s hut.

Thibault, we know, had made up his mind what to do in regard to certain matters, and as he intended going over to see Agnelette in the evening, he had started work early.

You will naturally ask why, instead of sitting down to a work which brought in so little, as he himself acknowledged, Thibault did not start off at once to take his buck to the ladies of Saint-Remy.
Thibault took very good care to do nothing of the sort; the day was not the time to be leading a buck through the forest of Villers-Cotterets; the first keeper he met would have stopped him, and what explanation could he have given? No, Thibault had arranged in his own mind to leave home one evening about dusk, to follow the road to the right, then go down the sandpit lane which led into the Chemin du Pendu, and he would then be on the common of Saint-Remy, only a hundred paces or so from the Convent.

Thibault no sooner caught the first sound of the horn and the dogs, than he immediately gathered together a huge bundle of dried heather, which he hastily piled up in front of the shed, where his prisoner was confined, so as to hide the door, in case the huntsmen and their master should halt in front of his hut, as they had the day before. He then sat down again to his work, applying to it an energy unknown even to himself before, bending over the shoe he was making with an intentness which prevented him from even lifting his eyes. All at once he thought ha detected a sound like something scratching at the door; he was just going through from his lean-to to open it when the door fell back, and to Thibault’s great astonishment an immense black wolf entered the room, walking on its hind legs. On reaching the middle of the floor, it sat down after the fashion of wolves, and looked hard and fixedly at the sabot-maker.

Thibault seized a hatchet which was within reach, and in order to give a fit reception to his strange visitor, and to terrify him, he flourished the weapon above his head.

A curious mocking expression passed over the face of the wolf, and then it began to laugh.

It was the first time that Thibault had ever heard a wolf laugh. He had often heard tell that wolves barked like dogs, but never that they laughed like human beings. And what a laugh it was! If a man had laughed such a laugh, Thibault would verily and indeed have been scared out of his wits.

He brought his lifted arm down again.

“By my lord of the cloven foot,” said the wolf, in a full and sonorous voice, “you are a fine fellow! At your request, I send you the finest buck from His Royal Highness’s forests, and in return, you want to split my head open with your hatchet; human gratitude is worthy to rank with that of wolves.” On hearing a voice exactly like his own coming forth from a beast’s mouth, Thibault’s knees began to shake under him, and the hatchet fell out of his hand.

“Now then,” continued the wolf, “let us be sensible and talk together like two good friends. Yesterday you wanted the Baron’s buck, and I led it myself into your shed, and for fear it should escape, I tied it up myself to the rack. And for all this you take your hatchet to me!”

“How should I know who you were?” asked Thibault.

“I see, you did not recognise me! A nice sort of excuse to give.”

“Well, I ask you, was it likely I should take you for a friend under that ugly coat?”

“Ugly coat, indeed!” said the wolf, licking his fur with a long tongue as red as blood. “Confound you! You are hard to please. However, it’s not a matter of my coat; what I want to know is, are you willing to make me some return for the service I have done you?”

“Certainly,” said the shoe-maker, feeling rather uncomfortable! “but I ought to know what your demands are. What is it? What do you want? Speak!”

“First of all, and above all things, I should like a glass of water, for those confounded dogs have run me until I am out of breath.”

“You shall have it in a moment, my lord wolf.”

And Thibault ran and fetched a bowl of fresh, clear water from a brook which ran some ten paces from the hut. The eager readiness with which he complied with the wolf’s request betrayed his feeling of relief at getting out of the bargain so cheaply.

As be placed the bowl in front of the wolf, he made the animal a low bow. The wolf lapped up the contents with evident delight, and then stretched himself on the floor with his paws straight out in front of him, looking like a sphinx.

“Now,” he said, “listen to me.”

“There is something else you wish me to do” asked Thibault, inwardly quaking,

“Yes, a very urgent something,” replied the wolf. “Do you hear the baying of the dogs?”

“Indeed I do, they are coming nearer and nearer, and in five minutes they will be here.”

“And what I want you to do is to get me out of their way.”

“Get you out of their way! and how?” cried Thibault, who but too well remembered what it had cost him to meddle with the Baron’s hunting the day before.

“Look about you, think, invent some way of delivering me!”

“The Baron’s dogs are rough customers to deal with, and you are asking neither more nor less than that I should save your life; for I warn you, if they once get hold of you, and they will probably scent you out, they will make short work of pulling you to pieces. And now supposing I spare you this disagreeable business,” continued Thibault, who imagined that he had now got the upper hand, “what will you do for me in return?”

“Do for you in return?” said the wolf, “and how about the buck?”

“And how about the bowl of water?” said Thibault.

“We are quits there, my good sir. Let us start a fresh business altogether; if you are agreeable to it, I am quite willing.”

“Let it be so then; tell me quickly what you want of me.”

“There are folks,” proceeded Thibault, “who might take advantage of the position you are now in, and ask for all kinds of extravagant things, riches, power, titles, and what not, but I am not going to do anything of the kind; yesterday I wanted the buck, and you gave it me, it is true; to-morrow, I shall want something else. For some time past I have been possessed by a kind of mania, and I do nothing but wish first for one thing and then for another, and you will not always be able to spare time to listen to my demands. So what I ask for is, that, as you are the devil in person or someone very like it, you will grant me the fulfilment of every wish I may have from this day forth.”

The wolf put on a mocking expression of countenance. “Is that all?” he said, “Your peroration does not accord very well with your exordium.”

“Oh!” continued Thibault, “my wishes are honest and moderate ones, and such as become a poor peasant like myself. I want just a little corner of ground, and a few timbers, and planks; that’s all that a man of my sort can possibly desire.”

“I should have the greatest pleasure in doing what you ask,” said the wolf, “but it is simply impossible, you know.”

“Then I am afraid you must make up your mind to put up with what the dogs may do to you.”

“You think so, and you suppose I have need of your help, and so you can ask what you please?”

“I do not suppose it, I am sure of it.”

“Indeed! well then, look.”

“Look where,” asked Thibault.

“Look at the spot where I was,” said the wolf. Thibault drew back in horror. The place where the wolf had been lying was empty; the wolf had disappeared, where or how it was impossible to say. The room was intact, there was not a hole in the roof large enough to let a needle through, nor a crack in the floor through which a drop of water could have filtered.

“Well, do you still think that I require your assistance to get out of trouble,” said the wolf.

“Where the devil are you?”

“If you put a question to me in my real name,” said the wolf with a sneer in his voice, “I shall be obliged to answer you. I am still in the same place.”

“But I can no longer see you!”

“Simply because I am invisible.”

“But the dogs, the huntsmen, the Baron, will come in here after you?”

“No doubt they will, but they will not find me.”

“But if they do not find you, they will set upon me.”

“As they did yesterday; only yesterday you were sentenced to thirty-six strokes of the strap, for having carried off the buck; to-day, you will be sentenced to seventy-two, for having hidden the wolf, and Agnelette will not be on the spot to buy you off with a kiss.”

“Phew! what am I to do?”

“Let the buck loose; the dogs will mistake the scent, and they will get the blows instead of you.”

“But is it likely such trained hounds will follow the scent of a deer in mistake for that of a wolf?”

“You can leave that to me,” replied the voice, “only do not lose any time, or the dogs will be here before you have reached the shed, and that would make matters unpleasant, not for me, whom they would not find, but for you, whom they would.”

Thibault did not wait to be warned a second time but was off like a shot to the shed. He unfastened the buck, which, as if propelled by some hidden force, leapt from the house, ran around it, crossing the track of the wolf, and plunged into the Baisemont coppice. The dogs were within a hundred paces of the hut; Thibault heard them with trepidation; the whole pack came full force against the door, one hound after the other.

Then, all at once, two or three gave cry and went off in the direction of Baisemont, the rest of the hounds after them.

The dogs were on the wrong scent; they were on the scent of the buck, and had abandoned that of the wolf.

Thibault gave a deep sigh of relief; he watched the hunt gradually disappearing in the distance, and went back to his room to the full and joyous notes of the Baron’s horn.

He found the wolf lying composedly on the same spot as before, but how it had found its way in again was quite as impossible to discover as how it had found its way out.

…to be continued.

Among the Gnomes: Digging for Light

Chapter 7

I was now tolerably well satisfied. From the abject state of a nobody, existing only as a “subject” for scientific observation, looked upon as a hobgoblin, and doomed to vivisection prisoner of a jumping-jack, I had suddenly become somebody of importance, owing to my cleverness and to the credulity of the king. I saw myself now raised to the highest dignity in the kingdom of the gnomes, and engaged to a most amiable and charming—even if a little green—princess, and there was momentarily nothing to be desired except the discovery of the sun and the completion of my marriage.

This discovery of the sun caused me a certain uneasiness; but I hoped that the king would not continue to insist upon that condition. A considerable time had elapsed, and nothing was heard of the dwarfs or their expedition. It seemed to me not at all improbable that they had fallen into the hands of Professor Cracker, and were now bottled up in alcohol, adorning the shelves of some museum. At all events, I had not the faintest hope that even if they were to return, they would have discovered anything worth speaking of, or be able to describe it, and I therefore thought of means for persuading the king to alter the stipulation in regard to my marriage, and to permit it to take place before the discovery of the sun. This I did not think very difficult, for the king was very changeable and did not seem to know his own mind. Although, whenever he got some idea into his head, he was very stubborn and self-willed, nevertheless he was easily led by the nose by those who knew how to flatter him. His capriciousness was shown by the rashness with which he ordered my execution, and his instability by changing his mind and making me Grand Chancellor of his kingdom.

For this purpose I sought and obtained an interview with the king, and asked his consent that the marriage between myself and the princess should not be delayed. I proved to him by arguments that the sun could not do otherwise but exist, and that it was merely a question of time to discover it; that this event would perhaps not take place as soon as we wished it, but that this would make no difference to the sun. I took especial pains to explain to him that the interests of the state would suffer by my being doomed to live as a bachelor.

But the king had never studied logic, and was inaccessible to my arguments.

“I want the sun!” he cried, growing more than usually red in his face.

To this I replied—

“If your majesty will permit, we all know that life, and light, and heat come from the sun. The sunlight does not penetrate into your kingdom because the rays of the sun are refracted upon the surface of the earth; but the caloric rays of the sun penetrate through these rocks, otherwise there would be no heat and life, and everything would be cold and dead in this place. Now, as you feel the warmth within your residence, you will easily see that there must be a sun.”

“I see nothing,” answered the king. “All that you say may be as you say, but it does not enable me to perceive the sun.”

“And would it not be just as well,” I said, “if your majesty would accept my information that there is a sun? If I tell you so, you will know it, and knowledge is power.”

But the king would not agree. “I perceive,” he said, “that you tell me that there is a sun; but for all that I do not perceive the sun itself, and cannot eat it or have it deposited in my treasury.”

This stubbornness of Bimbam I. irritated me somewhat, and I said—

“All that your majesty says goes to show that the gnomes will have to travel still a long way before they will come up to our standard of science. We, the scientists of the human kingdom, do not need to acquire or possess or even to see anything, much less to eat or absorb it into our own constitution; it is quite sufficient for us to have a theory about it which is believed to be correct. This is what we consider to be real knowledge.”

“What a fools’ paradise this must be,”exclaimed the king. “In our country we enjoy that which we are and possess, and care very little about theories and opinions.”

While we were engaged in this conversation Cravatu entered, and brought the news that the three dwarfs had returned, and that everything had come out exactly as I predicted; for these imbeciles, not having sense enough to find their way back, had been found in the vicinity of the place where they had been left. All that could be made out by their incoherent speech was that they had seen something, but what that was nobody knew, for they were totally unable to describe it.

This fulfilment of my prediction raised me still higher in the estimation of the king, who, seeing that I could foretell future events, looked upon me as a kind of supernatural being, and wanted to be instructed in that art.

“It is very easy,” I answered. “If your majesty will only study logic, and, instead of directly looking at a thing, reject the evidence of your senses and begin to argue from the basis of what you assume to be true. Logic is the method of reasoning from particulars to generals, or the inferring of one general proposition from one or several particular ones; which means that instead of looking at a thing as a whole, and afterwards examining its parts and the relations in which they stand to it, we must look at some separate part and imagine the rest. It is a process of demonstrating to our own satisfaction and to the satisfaction of everyone who believes in our judgment——”

Here I was interrupted by the loud snoring of the king who had gone to sleep in his chair. The sudden stopping of my speech had the effect of awakening him. He yawned, and elongating his body to its full length, he stretched his limbs, and then went on to say—

“This is very interesting, and I want to have this method introduced in all the schools of my kingdom; but for the present the most important thing is the discovery of the sun, and I want you to discover it without further delay.”

I suggested that this might be done after my wedding; but the king sternly replied, “No sun, no marriage! That’s all.”

Being so near to the completion of my happiness, I was exceedingly grieved to see my hopes wrecked by their fulfilment being made to depend upon an impossible condition; but a happy thought struck me, and I said—

“I assure your majesty that the sun is right over our heads, and there is nothing to prevent you from seeing it as soon as you will get out of this mountain, except the atmospheric air, which, unfortunately enough, is impenetrable to your sight, while I can easily enough see through it. Under these circumstances, the only thing that can possibly be done will be to cut a hole through the air, and make a tunnel deep enough until you will reach the outer limits of the atmosphere, when there will be nothing to prevent you from seeing the sun.”

This proposal pleased the king exceedingly, and Cravatu could find no words strong enough to express his admiration of my wisdom. They both knew already enough of logic to understand that they would be able to see the sun if there were nothing to hinder them from seeing him. Accordingly orders were immediately issued that the best labourers, miners, and mechanics should be selected for the purpose of cutting a hole in what they called the “sky,” for the sky for them began there where their own element, the earth, ended.

On the very next day the work was begun. They selected a place on the very top of the Untersberg. The Pigmies drilled the holes, the Vulcani did the blasting, the Cubitali furnished the required materials, and the Sagani superintended the work, giving directions. We had the pleasure of seeing that already during the first twenty-four hours a hole of about ten feet depth and with a diameter of ten feet was made as the beginning of the tunnel for enlightenment.

Thus day by day, or, to speak more correctly, night after night, the work went on; for when it is day in our world no work is done by the gnomes, as with the beginning of sunrise they fall into a state of lethargy, from which they awaken only after the night has set in. Every night the king and the queen with her maids, the princess, myself, and the high dignitaries of the kingdom, went out to see the progress made in the work of the tunnel, and every night the hole grew deeper to a certain extent, according to the quality of the material which had to be cut; but when it began to dawn upon the surface of the earth the gnomes went to sleep and slept so well that nothing could have awakened them from their slumber.

In the meantime I considered it my duty to give great attention to the education of the gnomes, and to the development of their power of drawing inferences from things unknown. For the purpose of enabling them to distinguish the true from the false, I established schools of logic all over the country, in which all sorts of lies were taught, so as to give them a chance for using their own common sense and finding out the truth for themselves by overcoming the falsehood. Soon I was in possession of a corps of capable liars for assisting me in this work; but the education of the princess I took into my own charge.

At first Adalga did not enjoy the lessons, which is only natural, as the birth and beginning of everything is painful and difficult, but after a while she became delighted with my instructions. As my method may prove to be interesting and instructive to my compatriots engaged in pedagogical enterprises, I will illustrate it by an example.

First of all I tried to explain to the princess, by practical experiment, that a good scientist can never know anything whatever; he can only know what a thing is not, but not what it is, and from what he perceives that it is not he draws his inferences as to what it may be.

Thus, for instance, taking a stone and handing it to Adalga, I said—

“Queen of my heart! will you tell me what this is?”

“With pleasure!” she answered. “It is a stone.”

“How do you know it?”

“Because I see it.”

“Sight is deceptive,” I said. “It may be a pumpkin.”

“I do not care what it may be; I know it is a stone.”

“How can you prove it?”

“I do not need to prove it. I know it, and so does everybody who knows a stone.”

“You cannot know it,” I said, “unless you can give any rational reason for your belief.”

“I do not need to give any reasons for it. I am satisfied to know what I know.”

I saw that I could not get the better of her in this way, so I said—

“Will you have the kindness to imagine this stone to be a pumpkin?”

“Well, Mr Mulligan!” she answered, “if this gives you pleasure, I shall imagine it to be a pumpkin.”

“Now take a bite of it, my darling,” I said.

“I can’t, and you ought not to ask me anything so absurd.”

“But why can’t you?”

“Because it is too hard.”

“Exactly!” I exclaimed. “And now as you have discovered that it is too hard for being a pumpkin, you have a scientific right to infer that it is not a pumpkin and may possibly be a stone; quod erat demonstrandum.”

This way of making a simple thing very complicated, according to the strict rules of exact science, pleased the princess very much and amused her greatly. It now became necessary to show to her how we may arrive at a knowledge of universals by drawing logical inferences from particulars. For this purpose I told her that we must never trust to our reason, but only put faith into our method of reasoning. Pointing to the stocking which the princess was just knitting, I asked her what it was.

“A stocking,” she said. “I thought you knew that much already.”

“Who is going to wear it?”

“I.”

“And what are you?”

“A princess of this kingdom.”

“Do all the princesses of this kingdom wear stockings?”

“All those whom I know.”

“Very well!” I replied. “The consequence is that all the people who wear stockings are princesses of the kingdom of the gnomes.”

This seemed strange to Adalga, but she could not prove that it was not so, and I proceeded to explain to her that the power to draw logical inferences was the highest power which a scientist could possess, and that by means of logic almost anything could be proved, be it true or false. Thus I proved to her by way of an illustration, first, that white was black; secondly, that black was white; and thirdly, that there was no colour at all.

“White, my dear!” I said, “is, as everybody knows, no colour at all; for it is produced by a combination of all the prismatic colours in the same proportion as they exist in the solar ray, where each colour neutralises the other. Now, if there is no colour, there can be no light, and where no light exists everything is as black as night, and if everything is black, white must be black also, and consequently white is black.”

“Very strange!” exclaimed Adalga.

“If white is black,” I continued, “it follows that black is white, because if there is no difference between two things they must be identical. Moreover, everybody knows that black is no colour at all, but the negation of colour, and it follows that if a thing has no particular colour of any kind, it must necessarily be white.”

“Incredible!” exclaimed the princess.

“There is nothing incredible about it,” I said. “It is all very reasonable. Moreover, there is no such thing as a colour at all, for what we call by that name refers only to a certain sensation which is produced in our brains by means of certain vibrations transmitted through the retina and the optic nerve. If you look at any coloured thing in the dark you will find it to be without any colour at all. The sensations we receive are only due to certain vibrations of something unknown.”

“What is a vibration?” asked Adalga.

“Vibration,” I said, “is nothing but a certain kind of motion, and as motion per se does not exist, vibration is nothing, while that unknown thing which moves must be everything. But the existence of that unknown thing is not admitted by science, and consequently science knows nothing of everything, and of everything nothing, just as you like; and you can make nothing out of everything, and everything out of nothing, at your own pleasure.”

The princess was delighted to hear that she could now make everything out of nothing, although for the beginning it could be done only theoretically, and her repugnance to philosophical hair-splittings faded away. She continued her lessons with great diligence, and very soon I had the pleasure of seeing that she believed nothing and denied everything. A few weeks more, and I was highly gratified to find that she could no longer tell a mock-turtle from a tommy cat without entering into a long series of arguments for the purpose of proving which was which. Unfortunately, in proportion as she lost her power of perceiving the reality, while improving in the practice of logic, her own light grew more and more dim, her luminosity less, and the green colour in her sphere darker; but I considered this as a matter of only secondary importance; for it is said that beauty is a perishable thing, while wisdom remains.

Sometimes she was inclined to worry about the fading of her charms, but I reasoned her out of it, saying: “If everything is nothing, then, as a matter of course, beauty also is nothing, and it is not worth the while to worry about the loss of nothing.”

“But,” objected Adalga, “if beauty is nothing and nothing is everything, beauty is everything, and we must do all we can to preserve it.”

“Beauty,” I replied, “among our people is the outcome of fashion. If it were to become fashionable in our world to wear goitrès and hunchbacks, everybody would find it beautiful and adopt it at once; and even if he did not find it beautiful, he would pretend to find it so. Thus it often happens that everybody wears a most ridiculous article of dress, not because he thinks it beautiful, but because he thinks that others do so. In this way the people act foolish, and silently laugh at each other for being such fools.”

“This I should think to be very immoral,” objected Adalga.

“Human morality,” I replied, “is also a matter of custom. What is considered very moral among one nation or class of people is considered immoral among others. Some, for instance, regard stealing as a disgrace, others as a proof of great ingenuity. But we will not enter into these social questions. We would never come to an end. What you need for the purpose of evoluting into a higher and nobler sort of a being is, first of all, the three steps, or mental operations, by which you will proceed from particulars to generals, and from generals to still higher generalities by means of rejections and conclusions, so as to arrive at those axioms and general laws, from which we may infer, by way of synthesis, other particulars unknown to us, and perhaps placed beyond the reach of direct examination.”

“Oh my!” exclaimed the princess, and I saw that my explanation was not very clear to her; but this is excusable in a gnome, and I did not despair.

There is nothing more certain than that religious speculation without science leads to superstition; but it is also true that scientific speculation in regard to philosophical questions leads to blind materialism and insanity, if it is carried on without any religious basis, which means spiritual perception of truth. Adalga overdid the thing, because she was of an impulsive, fiery nature, and not used to self-restraint, and when I discovered the mistake it was too late to remedy it. I had taught her never to take anything for granted, and the end of it was that she doubted my words, disputed and denied everything, and always did the very contrary of what we expected her to do. It is said that a little learning is a dangerous thing, and I would add that the greater the learning the greater the folly, if at the foundation of all that imaginary knowledge there is no instinctive perception of truth, or what we call intuition.

The head of the princess became developed at the expense of her heart. The vital powers, which ought to have been distributed harmoniously through her system, went almost exclusively to furnish her intellect, and the consequence was that her head increased enormously in size, while her heart began to shrink. Her sight became dim, so that she could no longer distinguish right from wrong; her joyfulness left her; she became dissatisfied with herself and with everything; a continual scowl rested upon her face, and it was no pleasure to spend an hour in her company. Her former friends stampeded when they saw her approach.

I often tried to make her understand that at the basis of all creation there was an universal power, which has no name, but which men call God, and which those who reject that term, because they have formed a false conception of that which is beyond all human conception, might call by some other name, such as Love, Reason, All-consciousness, Divine Wisdom, etc., and that she might feel the manifestation of that power within her own soul, if she would only pay attention to it.

“Prove it,” she cried. “Prove that I have a soul, or that anybody has such a thing, and which has never been discovered by science, neither in the pineal gland nor in the big toe. Show me that soul, and let me examine it, and I will bottle it up and preserve it in the museum.”

“Soul means life,” I replied. “How can you know that you have a life, except by the fact that you are living?”

“Fiddlesticks!” exclaimed the princess. “There is no such thing as life. What seems life to you is only a phenomenon produced by the mechanical action of brain molecules, the result of indigestion.”

I was frightened to see the effects which my premature revelation of the mysteries of science had upon the princess. In vain I reminded her of the sentiments which she formerly used to have, and which were expressed in her song in the cave at the time of our first meeting. She called all these things “childish fancies,” unworthy of the serious attention of science. Alas! her study of the phenomenal side of nature would not have been objectionable if only her spiritual culture had not suffered by that; but while her intellect grew strong by overfeeding, her soul became starved to death; neither would she listen to my admonitions; she could not realise the possession of anything higher than the ever-doubting intellect, and this was probably because she was only a gnome.

One day, when I actually thought her reason was entirely gone, I said to her—

“Adalga, dear, do you know me?”

“Don’t dear me,” was her answer. “How can you ask such a foolish question? I know that I have an image of somebody on my brain, and that its name is said to be Mulligan, but whether your qualities correspond to that image or not I have not yet discovered. For all I know, the Mulligan with whom I fancy myself to be acquainted may be only a product of my own imagination.”

“It seems you love me no more?” I inquired despondently.

“What is love but an effect of the imagination?” she answered. “If I chose to fall in love with a pitchfork, and bestow my affection upon it, it will do me the same service as to love Mr Mulligan.”

“I assure you,” I said, “true love is an entirely different thing. That which you describe is only some kind of fancy.”

“Prove it,” she exclaimed, as usual; but alas! I could not prove to her that whose existence she could not experience.

To make the matter short, Adalga became so scientific as to lose all her loveliness of form and character, and became overbearing, ugly, conceited, and foolish, and the same was the case more or less with all the rest of the gnomes. The whole population became clever and cunning, but, at the same time, lying and hypocritical. Formerly they had been moved, as it were, only by one will, namely, the will of the king; now everybody wanted to rule everybody else, and nobody rule himself or be ruled by another. There was nothing but quarrels, disputes, dissensions, dissatisfaction, and selfishness; the gnomes lost their perception of truth and their light. The kingdom grew dark.

Formerly everything had been peaceful; but now it became necessary to employ force for the purpose of keeping order. Each gnome cared only for his or her own interests, and this caused fights. One of the first requirements was the establishment of a police. I soon found that the employees of the government, including the police, could not be relied upon. I therefore had to establish a corps of detectives, and employ for that purpose the greatest rascals, because it is known that “it requires a thief to catch a thief.” These detectives had again to be watched by others, and from this ensued an universal espionage, which was intolerable. Moreover, everybody seeing himself continually watched, was thereby continually reminded that it was in his power to steal, and the end of it was that the people considered it to be a great and praiseworthy act if one succeeded in stealing without getting caught.

At the time of my arrival it was the custom of the gnomes to believe everything that anybody said, but now it became fashionable never to believe anything whatever. The consequence was that each believed the other a liar; each mistrusted the other; nobody spoke the truth, if it was not in his own interest to do so. Nothing could be accomplished without bribery; crimes became numerous, and it became necessary to establish jails all over the country.

There was one curious feature noticeable, especially among the Sagani, who now constituted the great autocratic body of scientists. The more learned they became the more narrow-sighted they grew. They lost the power to open their eyes, and decided upon every question according to hearsay and fancy. Their limbs became atrophied, and their heads swollen. Some became so big-headed and top-heavy that they often lost their balance and fell down. It was especially funny to see how they tumbled about whenever one forgot himself, and by force of habit elongated his body. Finally, narrow-sightedness became so universal that a gnome without spectacles was quite a curiosity, and it has been reported that even children with spectacles upon their noses were born; but of this I have no positive proof.

To my horror, the head of the princess grew larger and stronger every day, and two hard horn-like excrescences began to appear upon it at the place where the phrenological bump of love of approbation is located. At the same time she grew exceedingly stubborn and vain. She was continually surrounded by flatterers who imposed upon her credulity. She could bear no contradiction, and nevertheless craved for disputes for the purpose of showing off her great learning. She lost her former natural dignity and self-esteem, and in its place she acquired a great deal of false pride; but her love of approbation revolted against the idea that anybody might consider her vain, and for the purpose of avoiding such a suspicion she joined gnomes of doubtful character, and went into bad company.

Let me draw a veil over the history of these sad events. Even now, although having resumed my individuality as Mr Schneider, I can look back only with deep regret upon the change that overcame the charming princess Adalga, owing to the ill-timed instruction of Mr. Mulligan. As to her father, the king, instead of comprehending the sad state of affairs of his kingdom, he took a very superficial view of it. He was delighted with the intellectual progress of the princess, and with the advancement of culture among his subjects, and he overwhelmed me with tokens of favour, calling me a public benefactor for civilising the gnomes.

Bimbam I. did not care to enter himself into the study of logic and elocution, nevertheless he did not wish to be regarded as a fool. He therefore tried to give himself an appearance of being learned, and whenever his arguments failed, he became very irascible, and lost his temper. He was excitable, but too great a lover of comfort to remain long in an excited state, and for this reason he was easily pacified. Often he would get raving mad, bucking his head against the walls; but a moment afterwards he would go to smoke his pipe, as if nothing had happened.

More and more the influence of the green frog was felt spreading through the kingdom, and there were some who claimed to have seen him wandering about the streets, spreading poisonous saliva from his mouth, from which green and red-spotted toad-stools grew. The world of the gnomes became continually more unnatural and perverted; impudence assumed the place of heroism, sophistry the mask of wisdom, lecherousness passed for love, hypocrisy paraded the streets under the garb of holiness; those who succeeded in cheating all the rest were considered the most clever; the most avaricious gnomes were said to be the most prudent; he who made the greatest noise was thought to be the most learned of all. Nor were the ladies exempt from this general degradation, for they assumed the most ridiculous fashions, putting artificial bumps on their backs and wearing tremendous balloons in the place of sleeves; they lost their simplicity, were full of affectations and whims, and to do anything whatever in a plain and natural way was considered vulgar.

But what is the use of continuing to describe conditions which everyone knows who has visited the Untersberg within the last few years? It is sufficient to say that the country of the gnomes at that time resembled to a great extent the human-animal kingdom of our days, and I would have wished to leave it if I had not considered it my duty to remain for the purpose of trying to undo some of the mischief which had ignorantly been caused by my prematurely opening the door of the palace of Lucifer.

#WerewolvesWednesday: The Wolf-Leader (3)

A werewolf story by Alexandre Dumas père.

Illustration by Frank Adams to the British edition.Chapter III: Agnelette

The Baron took the weapon which Engoulevent handed him, and deliberately examined the boar-spear from point to handle, without saying a word. On the handle had been carved a little wooden shoe, which had served as Thibault’s device while making the tour of France, as thereby he was able to recognise his own weapon. The Baron now pointed to this, saying to Thibault as he did so:

“Ah, ah, Master Simpleton! There is something that witnesses terribly against you! I must confess, this boar-spear smells to me uncommonly of venison—by the devil, it does! However, all I have now to say to you is this: You have been poaching, which is a serious crime; you have perjured yourself, which is a great sin. I am going to enforce expiation from you for the one and for the other, to help toward the salvation of that soul by which you have sworn.”

Whereupon, turning to the pricker, he continued: “Marcotte, strip off that rascal’s vest and shirt, tie him to a tree with a couple of the dog leashes, and give him thirty-six strokes across the back with your shoulder belt—a dozen for his perjury and two dozen for his poaching. No, I make a mistake—a dozen for poaching and two dozen for perjuring himself. God’s portion must be the largest.”

This order caused great rejoicing among the menials, who thought it good luck to have a culprit on whom they could avenge themselves for the mishaps of the day.

In spite of Thibault’s protestations, who swore by all the saints in the calender, that he had killed neither buck, nor doe, neither goat nor kidling, he was divested of his garments and firmly strapped to the trunk of a tree; then the execution commenced.

The pricker’s strokes were so heavy that Thibault, who had sworn not to utter a sound, and bit his lips to enable himself to keep his resolution, was forced at the third blow to open his mouth and cry out.

The Baron, as we have already seen, was about the roughest man of his class for a good thirty miles round, but he was not hard-hearted, and it was a distress to him to listen to the cries of the culprit as they became more and more frequent As, however, the poachers on His Highness’s estate had of late grown bolder and more troublesome, he decided that he had better let the sentence be carried out to the full, but he turned his horse with the intention of riding away, determined no longer to remain as a spectator.

As he was on the point of doing this, a young girl suddenly emerged from the underwood, threw herself on her knees beside the horse, and, lifting her large, beautiful eyes—wet with tears—to the Baron, cried:

“In the name of the God of mercy, my Lord, have pity on that man!”

The Lord of Vez looked down at the young girl. She was indeed a lovely child, hardly sixteen years of age, with a slender and exquisite figure, a pink and white complexion, and large blue eyes, soft and tender in expression. A crown of fair hair fell in luxuriant waves over her neck and shoulders, escaping from beneath the shabby little grey linen cap that vainly attempted to imprison them.

All this the Baron took in with a glance, in spite of the humble clothing of the beautiful suppliant, and as he had no dislike to a pretty face, he smiled down on the charming young peasant girl, in response to the pleading of her eloquent eyes.

But, as he looked without speaking, and all the while the blows were still falling, she cried again, with a voice and gesture of even more earnest supplication.

“Have pity, in the name of Heaven, my Lord! Tell your servants to let the poor man go, his cries pierce my heart.”

“Ten thousand fiends!” cried the Grand Master; “you take a great interest in that rascal over there, my pretty child. Is he your brother?”

“No, my Lord.”

“Your cousin?”

“No, my Lord.”

“Your lover?”

“My lover! My Lord is laughing at me.”

“Why not? If it were so, my sweet girl, I must confess I should envy him his lot.”

The girl lowered her eyes.

“I do not know him, my Lord, and have never seen him before to-day.”

“Without counting that now she only sees him wrong side before” Engoulevent ventured to put in, thinking that it was a suitable moment for a little pleasantry.

“Silence, sirrah!” said the Baron sternly. Then, once more turning to the girl with a smile.

“Really!” he said. “Well, if he is neither a relation nor a lover, I should like to see how far your love for your neighbour will let you go. Come, a bargain, pretty girl!”

“How, my Lord?”

“Grace for that scoundrel in return for a kiss.”

“Oh! with all my heart!” cried the young girl. “Save the life of a man with a kiss! I am sure that our good Cure himself would say there was no sin in that.”

And without waiting for the Baron to stoop and take for himself what he had asked for, she threw off her wooden shoe, placed her dainty little foot on the tip of the wolf-hunter’s boot, and, taking hold of the horse’s mane, lifted herself with a spring to the level of the hardy huntsman’s face. There, of her own accord, she offered him her round cheek, fresh and velvety as the down of an August peach.

The Lord of Vez had bargained for one kiss, but he took two; then, true to his sworn word, he made a sign to Marcotte to stay the execution.

Marcotte was religiously counting his strokes; the twelfth was about to descend when he received the order to stop, and he did not think it expedient to stay it from falling. It is possible that he also thought it would be as well to give it the weight of two ordinary blows, so as to make up good measure and give a thirteenth in; however that may be, it is certain that it furrowed Thibault’s  houlders more cruelly than those that went before. It must be added, however, that he was unbound immediately after.

Meanwhile the Baron was conversing with the young girl.

“What is your name, my pretty one?”

“Georgine Agnelette, my Lord, my mother’s name! but the country people are content to call me simply Agnelette.”

“Ah, that’s an unlucky name, my child,” said the Baron.

“In what way my Lord?” asked the girl.

“Because it makes you a prey for the wolf, my beauty. And from what part of the country do you come, Agnelette?”

“From Preciamont, my Lord.”

“And you come alone like this into the forest, my child? that’s brave for a lambkin.”

“I am obliged to do it, my Lord, for my mother and I have three goats to feed.”

“So you come here to get grass for them?”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“And you are not afraid, young and pretty as you are?”

“Sometimes, my Lord, I cannot help trembling.”

“And why do you tremble?”

“Well, my Lord, I hear so many tales during the winter evenings about werewolves that when I find myself all alone among the trees, with no sound but the west wind and the branches creaking as it blows through them, I feel a kind of shiver run through me, and my hair seems to stand on end. But when I hear your hunting horn and the dogs crying, I feel at once quite safe again.”

The Baron was pleased beyond measure with this reply of the girl’s, and stroking his beard complaisantly, he said:

“Well, we give Master Wolf a pretty rough time of it; but, there is a way, my pretty one, whereby you may spare yourself all these fears and tremblings.”

“And how, my Lord?”

“Come in future to the Castle of Vez; no were-wolf, or any other kind of wolf, has ever crossed the moat there, except when slung by a cord on to a hazel-pole.”

Agnelette shook her head.

“You would not like to come? and why not?”

“Because I should find something worse there than the wolf.”

On hearing this, the Baron broke into a hearty fit of laughter, and, seeing their Master laugh, all the huntsmen followed suit and joined in the chorus. The fact was, that the sight of Agnelette had entirely restored the good humour of the Lord of Vez, and he would, no doubt, have continued for some time laughing and talking with Agnelette, if Marcotte, who had been recalling the dogs, and coupling them, had not respectfully reminded my Lord that they had some distance to go on their way back to the Castle. The Baron made a playful gesture of menace with his finger to the girl, and rode off followed by his train.

Agnelette was left alone with Thibault. We have related what Agnelette had done for Thibault’s sake, and also said that she was pretty.

Nevertheless, for all that, Thibault’s first thoughts on finding himself alone with the girl, were not for the one who had saved his life, but were given up to hatred and the contemplation of vengeance.

Thibault, as you see, had, since the morning, been making rapid strides along the path of evil.

“Ah! if the devil will but hear my prayer this time,” he cried, as he shook his fist, cursing the while, after the retiring huntsmen, who were just out of view, “if the devil will but hear me, you shall be
paid back with usury for all you have made me suffer this day, that I swear.”

“Oh, how wicked it is of you to behave like that!” said Agnelette, going up to him.

“The Baron is a kind Lord, very good to the poor, and always gently behaved with women.”

“Quite so, and you shall see with what gratitude I will repay him for the blows he has given me.”

“Come now, frankly, friend, confess that you deserved those blows,” said the girl, laughing.

“So, so!” answered Thibault, “the Baron’s kiss has turned your head, has it, my pretty Agnelette?”

“You, I should have thought, would have been the last person to reproach me with that kiss, Monsieur Thibault. But what I have said, I say again; my Lord Baron was within his rights.”

“What, in belabouring me with blows!”

“Well, why do you go hunting on the estates of these great lords?”

“Does not the game belong to everybody, to the peasant just as much as to the great lords?”

“No, certainly not; the game is in their woods, it is fed on their grass, and you have no right to throw your boar-spear at a buck which belongs to my lord the Duke of Orleans.”

“And who told you that I threw a boar-spear at his buck?” replied Thibault, advancing towards Agnelette in an almost threatening manner.

“Who told me? why, my own eyes, which, let me tell you, do not lie. Yes, I saw you throw your boar-spear, when you were hidden there, behind the beech-tree.”

Thibault’s anger subsided at once before the straightforward attitude of the girl, whose truthfulness was in such contrast to his falsehood.

“Well, after all,” he said, “supposing a poor devil does, once in a way, help himself to a good dinner from the superabundance of some great lord! Are you of the same mind, Mademoiselle Agnelette, as the judges who say that a man ought to be hanged just for a wretched rabbit? Come now, do you think God created that buck for the Baron more than for me?”

“God, Monsieur Thibault, has told us not to covet other men’s goods; obey the law of God, and you will not find yourself any the worse off for it!”

“Ah, I see, my pretty Agnelette, you know me then, since you call me so glibly by my name?”

“Certainly I do; I remember seeing you at Boursonnes, on the day of the fete; they called you the beautiful dancer, and stood round in a circle to watch you.”

Thibault, pleased with this compliment, was now quite disarmed.

“Yes, yes, of course,” he answered, “I remember now having seen you; and I think we danced together, did we not? but you were not so tall then as you are now, that’s why I did not recognise you at first, but I recall you distinctly now. And I remember too that you wore a pink frock, with a pretty little white bodice, and that we danced in the dairy. I wanted to kiss you, but you would not let me, for you said that it was only proper to kiss one’s vis-a-vis, and not one’s partner.”

“You have a good memory, Monsieur Thibault!”

“And do you know, Agnelette, that during these last twelve months, for it is a year since that dance, you have not only grown taller, but grown prettier too; I see you are one of those people who understand how to do two things at once.”

The girl blushed and lowered her eyes, and the blush and the shy embarrassment only made her look more charming still.

Thibault’s eyes were now turned towards her with more marked attention than before, and, in a voice, not wholly free from a slight agitation, he asked:

“Have you a lover, Agnelette?”

“No, Monsieur Thibault,” she answered, “I have never had one, and do not wish to have one.”

“And why is that? Is Cupid such a bad lad that you are afraid of him?”

“No, not that, but a lover is not at all what I want.”

“And what do you want?”

“A husband.”

Thibault made a movement, which Agnelette either did not, or pretended not to see.

“Yes,” she repeated, “a husband. Grandmother is old and infirm, and a lover would distract my attention too much from the care which I now give her; whereas, a husband, if I found a nice fellow who would like to marry me, a husband would help me to look after her in her old age, and would share with me the task which God has laid upon me, of making her happy and comfortable in her last years.”

“But do you think your husband,” said Thibault, “would be willing that you should love your grandmother more than you loved him? and do you not think he might be jealous at seeing you lavish so much tenderness upon her?”

“Oh,” replied Agnelette, with an adorable smile, “there is no fear of that, for I will manage to give him such a large share of my love and attention that he will have no cause to complain. The kinder and more patient he is with the dear old thing, the more I shall devote myself to him, the harder I shall work to make sure nothing is wanting in our little household. You see me looking small and delicate, and you doubt that I should have strength for this, but I have plenty of spirit and energy for work. And then, when the heart gives consent, one can work day and night without fatigue. Oh! how I should love the man who loved my grandmother! I promise you that she, my husband, and I—we should be three happy folks together.”

“You mean that you would be three very poor folks together, Agnelette!”

“And do you think the loves and friendships of the rich are worth a farthing more than those of the poor? At times, when I have been loving and caressing my grandmother, Monsieur Thibault, and she takes me on her lap, clasping me in her poor weak trembling arms, and puts her dear old wrinkled face against mine, I feel my cheek wet with the loving tears she sheds. I begin to cry myself, and I tell you, Monsieur Thibault, so soft and sweet are my tears that no woman or girl, be she queen or princess, has ever, even in her happiest days, known such a real joy as mine. And yet, there is no one in all the country round who is as destitute as we two are.”

Thibault listened to what Agnelette was saying without answering; his mind was occupied with many thoughts, such thoughts as are indulged in by the ambitious; but his dreams of ambition were disturbed at moments by a passing sensation of depression and disillusionment.

He, the man who had spent hours at a time watching the beautiful and aristocratic dames of the Court of the Duke of Orleans as they swept up and down the wide entrance stairs; who had often passed whole nights gazing at the arched windows of the Keep at Vez when the whole place was lit up for some festivity—he, that same man, now asked himself whether what he had so ambitiously desired—a lady of rank and a rich dwelling—would, after all, be worth as much as a thatched roof and this sweet and gentle girl called Agnelette. And it was certain that if this dear and charming little woman were to become his, he would, in turn, be envied by all the earls and barons in the countryside.

“Well, Agnelette,” said Thibault “and suppose a man like myself were to offer himself as your husband, would you accept him?”

It has been already stated that Thibault was a handsome young fellow, with fine eyes and black hair, and that his travels had left him something better than a mere workman. And it must further be borne in mind that we readily become attached to those on whom we have conferred a benefit, and Agnelette had, in all probability, saved Thibault’s life; for, under such strokes as Marcotte’s, the victim would certainly have been dead before the thirty-sixth had been given.

“Yes,” she said, “if it would be a good thing for my grandmother?”

Thibault took hold of her hand.

“Well then, Agnelette,” he said “we will speak again about this, dear child, and that as soon as may be.”

“Whenever you like, Monsieur Thibault.”

“And you will promise faithfully to love me if I marry you, Agnelette?”

“Do you think I should love any man besides my husband?”

“Never mind, I want you just to take a little oath, something of this kind, for instance; Monsieur Thibault, I swear that I will never love anyone but you.”

“What need is there to swear? the promise of an honest girl should be sufficient for an honest man.”

“And when shall we have the wedding, Agnelette?” and in saying this, Thibault tried to put his arm round her waist.

But Agnelette gently disengaged her self.

“Come and see my grandmother,” she said, “it is for her to decide about it; you must content yourself this evening with helping me up with my load of heath, for it is getting late, and it is nearly three miles from here to Preciamont.”

So Thibault helped her as desired and then accompanied her on her way home as far as the forest fence of Billemont, that is, until they came in sight of the village steeple. Before parting, he begged pretty Agnelette so earnestly for one kiss as an earnest of his future happiness that at last she consented. Then, far more agitated by this one kiss than she had been by the Baron’s double embrace, Agnelette hastened on her way, despite the load she was carrying on her head, which seemed far too heavy for so slender and delicate a creature.

Thibault stood for some time looking after her as she walked away across the moor. All the flexibility and grace of her youthful figure were brought into relief as she lifted her pretty, rounded arms to support the burden upon her head, and, silhouetted against the dark blue of the sky, she made a delightful picture.

At last, having reached the outskirts of the village, where the land dipped at that point, she suddenly disappeared, passing out of sight of Thibault’s admiring eyes. He gave a sigh and stood still, plunged in thought. But it was not the satisfaction of knowing that this sweet and good young creature might one day be his that had caused his sigh. Quite the contrary.

He had wished for Agnelette because she was young and pretty, and because it was part of his unfortunate disposition to long for everything that belonged or might belong to another. His desire to possess Agnelette had been quickened by the innocent frankness with which she had talked to him, but it had been a matter of fancy rather than of any deeper feeling—of the mind, and not of the heart.

Thibault was incapable of loving as a man ought to love when, being poor himself, he loves a poor girl. In such a case, there should be no thought, no ambition beyond the wish that his love may be returned. But it was not so with Thibault. On the contrary, the farther he walked away from Agnelette—leaving, it would seem, his good genius farther behind him with every step—the more urgently did his envious longings begin again to torment his soul.

It was dark when he reached home.

…to be continued.

#MerfolkMonday: Herbert James Draper (2)

Last week, I talked about Herbert James Draper and featured his painting A Water Baby. Today’s feature is another one of his works, called The Water Nixie from 1908, sometimes called The Water Nymph.

Herbert James Draper, The Water Nixie (1908)

The painting shares the title with a fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 79 from Hanau in Hesse, Germany, so today you get a double feature: here’s the tale, an Aarne-Thompson type 313A where a girl and a boy employ magic to flee from danger. Enjoy!

A little brother and sister were once playing by a well, and while they were thus playing, they both fell in. A water-nix lived down below, who said, “Now I have got you, now you shall work hard for me!” and carried them off with her. She gave the girl dirty tangled flax to spin, and she had to fetch water in a bucket with a hole in it, and the boy had to hew down a tree with a blunt axe, and they got nothing to eat but dumplings as hard as stones. Then, at last, the children became so impatient that they waited until one Sunday, when the nix was at church, and ran away.

But when church was over, the nix saw that the birds were flown and followed them with great strides.

The children saw her from afar, and the girl threw a brush behind her, which formed an immense hill of bristles with thousands and thousands of spikes, over which the nix was forced to scramble with great difficulty; at last, however, she got over. When the children saw this, the boy threw behind him a comb which made a great hill of combs with a thousand times a thousand teeth, but the nix managed to keep herself steady on them and at last crossed over that. Then the girl threw behind her a looking-glass which formed a hill of mirrors, and was so slippery that it was impossible for the nix to cross it. Then she thought, “I will go home quickly and fetch my axe, and cut the hill of glass in half.”

Long before she returned, however, and had hewn through the glass, the children had escaped to a great distance, and the water-nix was obliged to betake herself to her well again.

Innovation Management: un’occhiata alla nuova ISO

Nel gennaio 2025 è stata pubblicata una nuova versione ISO 56000 sulla gestione dell’innovazione o, meglio, della prima parte della serie ovvero quella dedicata alla definizione dei concetti chiave e alla terminologia. Questa ISO è una norma relativamente giovane, la cui versione precedente risaleva al 2020, e che fa da preambolo e contestualizzazione per altre quattro nome nella serie:

ISO 56001:2024: Innovation management system — Requirements;ISO 56002:2019: Innovation management system — Guidance;ISO 56003:2019: Tools and methods for innovation partnership;ISO 56004:2019: Innovation management assessment;ISO 56007:2023: Tools and methods for managing opportunities and ideas.

Sì, anche in ISO accade come in UNI o come per la metropolitana di Milano: ogni tanto un capitolo va per funghi, rimane indietro, e viene pubblicato solo dopo il successivo.

L’intera serie è uno strumento fondamentale per il BIM manager che non deve chiedere mai “ma io cosa sto facendo?”, sono una grande fan dei suoi contenuti e del suo approccio metodologico anziché prescrittivo. Ma cosa contiene quindi, cosa cambia in questa nuova versione e cosa ci raccontano queste modifiche?

Diamo un’occhiata.

2020 vs. 2025: le differenzeStruttura generale dell’indice

Entrambe le versioni della norma hanno una struttura simile, articolata nei seguenti capitoli principali:

Scope;Normative references;Terms and definitions;Fundamental concepts and innovation management principles;Annexe e Bibliography.

E questa è la buona notizia.
Tuttavia, ci sono alcune differenze chiave che emergono dal confronto tra i due testi. E non sono necessariamente una cattiva notizia.

Vediamo quali.

New Entry: l’Antifragilità

La versione 2025 introduce anche, per la gioia di molti, il concetto di antifragilità, assente nella versione del 2020. Se non vi ricordate cosa si intenda per antifragilità, provate a spulciare il tag sul blog oppure a questo post introduttivo.

Ecco come viene definito il termine nella norma:

3.2.14. antifragile: ability to gain from stressors, uncertainty (3.2.12) and risk (3.2.13)
Note 1 to entry: Stressors can be shocks, failures, disruptions, emergencies, crises, etc.
Note 2 to entry: An antifragile entity (3.2.11) can thrive and/or evolve from unexpected stressors, take advantage of uncertainty and positively assume risk.

 

Collaborazione ed Ecosistemi di Innovazione

Per capire come mai sia stato introdotto il concetto di antifragilità, viriamo un attimo su un’altra nuova definizione, quella di “innovation ecosystem” (3.1.3.4), un’altra novità della versione 2025. L’ecosistema di innovazione è identificato in un sistema di persone oppure di organizzazioni interdipendenti che sviluppano o consentono l’innovazione in modo collaborativo. Questo gruppo può includere organizzazioni pubbliche e private. L’ambito di un ecosistema dell’innovazione può essere definito in termini di piattaforma, insieme di tecnologie, area di conoscenza, insieme di competenze, settore, comunità o area geografica. Può essere un gruppo di partecipanti riunitosi in modo arbitrario oppure una comunità organizzata e diretta, componente più voci e che collabora sulla base di partnership.

La versione 2020 menzionava gli ecosistemi di innovazione nel contesto delle reti di valore e delle collaborazioni tra organizzazioni, ma senza una definizione strutturata. Si faceva riferimento alla collaborazione con partner esterni, ma senza specificare l’idea di ecosistema come un’entità organizzata e sistematica, probabilmente demandando alla ISO 56003: 2019 il compito di articolare e declinare i concetti nell’ambito della partnership. L’introduzione dell’ecosistema di innovazione anche nella parte introduttiva della serie sembra indicare una maturata consapevolezza che non ci possa essere innovazione senza collaborazione, e che ogni innovazione si muova nellì’ambito di un sistema complesso. La norma del 2025 distingue quindi chiaramente l’ecosistema di innovazione da altri sistemi e lo collega esplicitamente a concetti come le reti di valore e i partenariati collaborativi.

La collaborazione è fondamentale per il successo.

Questa tendenza è avvalorata dall’espansione di altri concetti, strettamente legati all’ecosistema di innovazione, tra cui quello di “Open Innovation”.

Il concetto di open innovation era già presente nel 2020, ma decisamente meno dettagliato, mentre il termine “innovation partnership” veniva utilizzato per descrivere sforzi collaborativi tra più organizzazioni, ma senza un quadro sistematico. L’innovazione aperta si aggiunge ora alle modalità tramite le quali si può fare innovazione, insieme all’innovazione interna e all’innovazione collaborativa (sezione 4.2.2.3 Attributes describing how it is innovated, che purtroppo usa le parentesi tonde dentro ad altre parentesi tonde e mi sento male). Ricopre anche un ruolo esplicito nell’esecuzione dei processi di innovazione, forse nel disperato tentativo di evitare che le aziende reinventino ogni volta l’acqua calda pur di essere innovative, senza guardarsi intorno e cercare di capire se là fuori esistano già porzioni di soluzioni.

Nell’ambito della collaborazione, quindi, si inserisce l’espansione di un altro importante concetto, ovvero quello di “Innovation Partnership”, cui in Italia qualcuno si riferisce come “Partenariato per l’innovazione”, che non è esattamente la stessa cosa…

“Una partnership per l’innovazione può comportare l’istituzione di obiettivi congiunti di innovazione, strategie, ruoli, strutture e processi di supporto, inclusa la condivisione di risorse come finanziamenti, conoscenze e persone.”

L’innovazione collaborativa quindi veniva citata, anche nel 2020, ma senza una struttura chiara che la distinguesse dagli altri tipi di innovazione. Ora trova posto in un framework che spinge sempre di più verso concetti come questo. La gestione dell’innovazione è ora trattata come un fenomeno sistemico, con una chiara distinzione tra innovazione interna ed esterna, e la collaborazione con altre entità fa parte della rete di valore generata dall’innovazione.

Questo approccio, quindi, enfatizza alcuni aspetti chiave:

l’interdipendenza: le organizzazioni o gli individui coinvolti non operano in modo isolato, ma si influenzano a vicenda e traggono vantaggio dalle reciproche competenze e risorse;la collaborazione e il coordinamento: gli attori possono operare in modo formale o informale, attraverso partenariati, alleanze strategiche o network aperti;lo sviluppo e l’abilitazione dell’innovazione: l’ecosistema non si limita solo a creare innovazione, ma anche a fornire le condizioni e il supporto affinché l’innovazione possa emergere e diffondersi.

Quando si parla di ecosistemi di innovazione, si immagina spesso una rete di aziende e istituzioni che collaborano, ma il concetto è molto più ricco e sfaccettato, quindi. Un vero ecosistema innovativo funziona come un organismo vivente (anche se più spesso si tratta di un gruppo di aziende che sta cercando di ritornare in vita combinando tra loro le uniche parti ancora funzionanti, ma questa è un’altra storia). Ogni componente dell’ecosistema dovrebbe giocare un ruolo cruciale, richiedendo quindi grande attenzione alle modalità di interazione tra gli attori e alla loro capacità di reazione ai cambiamenti (da cui la necessità di introdurre il concetto di antifragilità).

Collaborano con calma, dignità e classe.

Un ecosistema di innovazione, per rendere tutto più interessante, non è tale se si basa su una sola tipologia di attore: è la diversità a renderlo fertile e dinamico, facendo convivere realtà come:

grandi aziende che possono mettere a disposizione risorse e infrastrutture;startup e PMI, più agili laddove si tratta di testare idee e soluzioni, al contrario delle grandi aziende in cui l’introduzione del cambiamento può essere molto lenta;università e centri di ricerca, che ad esempio possono analizzare i dati a supporto delle soluzioni che stanno venendo sviluppate;istituzioni governative, che regolano e incentivano lo sviluppo;investitori e fondi di venture capital, che scommettono sulle idee più promettenti (o su quelle meno rischiose);utenti finali, che con i loro feedback indirizzano l’evoluzione delle innovazioni.

Un esempio classico che viene portato come ecosistema di innovazione è Silicon Valley, che non avrebbe mai potuto fiorire senza la combinazione di università all’avanguardia come Stanford, aziende tech consolidate (Google, Apple), startup rivoluzionarie e investitori con capitali pronti a essere impiegati.

Un elemento che distingue un ecosistema di innovazione da una semplice collaborazione tra aziende, è la co-creazione, da cui la necessità di definire meglio principi come quello della proprietà intellettuale, che nella versione del 2025 della norma riceve rinnovata attenzione. La co-creazione può assumere diverse forme e passare per diverse modalità, dalla condivisione di risorse alla sperimentazione congiunta, introducendo quindi un importante cambio di paradigma potenziale: chi partecipa alla sperimentazione e alla fase di test è comunque da considerare parte attrice nello sviluppo dell’innovazione.

L’ecosistema è quella cosa che non dovete turbare provocando la morte della democrazia per salire al trono con le vostre iene. Almeno lui si esprimeva con estrema proprietà di linguaggio.Altre novità nella gestione: sfruttare le intuizioni e gestire l’incertezza

Nella ISO 56000:2025, due concetti chiave emergono con maggiore enfasi rispetto alla versione precedente: exploiting insights (sfruttare le intuizioni) e managing uncertainty (gestire l’incertezza), perfettamente in linea con l’attenzione generale alla gestione del rischio in sede ISO. I due principi sono cruciali per garantire che le attività di innovazione siano informate, strategiche e resilienti (o, meglio, antifragili) di fronte a cambiamenti imprevisti.

Innovare implica sempre che accada qualcosa di… inaspettato.Exploiting Insights

Il principio di sfruttare le intuizioni riguarda il modo in cui un’organizzazione può raccogliere, analizzare e utilizzare informazioni pertinenti per guidare l’innovazione.

“Una gamma diversificata di fonti interne ed esterne viene utilizzata per costruire sistematicamente conoscenze approfondite e per sfruttare bisogni dichiarati e non dichiarati.”​

L’idea di base è che le migliori innovazioni non nascano dal nulla, ma dall’identificazione di bisogni latenti o emergenti, e per questo sia essenziale un approccio sistematico per raccogliere informazioni provenienti da una varietà di fonti, inclusi clienti, mercato, ricerche scientifiche e dati aziendali. Un aspetto particolarmente rilevante della nuova versione della norma è che l’uso delle intuizioni non è solo passivo, ma proattivo: non si tratta solo di analizzare il passato, ma anche di utilizzare l’individuazione delle tendenze per effettuare proiezioni per il futuro, con una rinnovata attenzione all’analisi dati.

La norma suggerisce alcune azioni pratiche per sfruttare al meglio le intuizioni:

coinvolgere attivamente utenti, clienti e altre parti interessate per raccogliere informazioni chiave;rendere le intuizioni accessibili a tutte le persone rilevanti all’interno dell’organizzazione;migliorare le competenze nell’analisi delle informazioni, per trasformare i dati in valore pratico​.

Partecipazione, trasparenza e miglioramento continuo, quindi. Concetti che dovrebbero suonare familiari.

Managing Uncertainty

Anche il principio di gestione dell’incertezza assume un ruolo centrale nella ISO 56000:2025, in un’epoca in cui i cambiamenti tecnologici e di mercato sono sempre più rapidi e imprevedibili.

“Le incertezze e i rischi vengono valutati, sfruttati e poi gestiti, apprendendo da sperimentazioni sistematiche e processi iterativi, all’interno di un portafoglio di opportunità.”​

L’incertezza è intrinseca a qualsiasi processo di innovazione. La norma sottolinea come non sia possibile eliminarla del tutto, ma sia possibile gestirla attraverso un approccio sperimentale e una gestione basata su portafogli di opportunità.

Due aspetti fondamentali sono quelli che emergono:

sperimentazione sistematica: testare e imparare rapidamente è la chiave per ridurre l’incertezza nel tempo (un principio che abbiamo già visto parlando di antifragilità nell’ambito dell’innovazione tecnologica);diversificazione: non bisogna investire tutto su un’unica innovazione, ma diversificare le iniziative per bilanciare rischi e opportunità.

Per applicare concretamente questi principii, la norma suggerisce di:

sviluppare processi per gestire l’incertezza attraverso analisi di scenario e previsione dei trend futuri;coltivare una cultura aziendale che accetti il fallimento e l’adattabilità (principi che abbiamo già visto parlando di DevOps e cultura aziendale);implementare sistemi per monitorare e misurare il livello di rischio associato alle diverse iniziative di innovazione. 3 tipologie di cultura aziendaleRelazione con la ISO 56001

La versione 2025 dichiara esplicitamente un allineamento con la norma ISO 56001 (che fornisce requisiti per un sistema di gestione dell’innovazione), un aspetto non presente nella versione 2020. Senza entrare nel merito della 56001, questo rappresenta un passo importante nella standardizzazione della gestione dell’innovazione, fornendo un quadro più coerente per le organizzazioni che vogliono implementare pratiche strutturate di innovazione.

Nella ISO 56000: 2020, in pratica, la norma forniva una base concettuale e terminologica per la gestione dell’innovazione, ma non esisteva ancora un riferimento chiaro a una norma specifica che stabilisse requisiti per l’implementazione di un sistema di gestione dell’innovazione. Questo significava che le aziende potevano adottare i principi della ISO 56000, ma senza una guida chiara su come tradurli in un sistema di gestione certificabile. Meno soldi per alcune tipologie di figuri, quindi.

Con l’introduzione della ISO 56001, la nuova versione della ISO 56000 ne riconosce l’importanza e ne specifica la relazione:

“ISO 56001 provides requirements for organizations to establish, implement, maintain and continually improve an innovation management system.”​

La ISO 56001 si propone come una norma certificabile, che fornisce requisiti chiari e verificabili per implementare un sistema di gestione dell’innovazione (IMS – Innovation Management System). Il suo obiettivo è rendere più efficace il modo in cui le organizzazioni pianificano, sviluppano e implementano l’innovazione, garantendo continuità, misurabilità e miglioramento continuo.

Ora, che fate? Correte tutti a farvi mettere il bollino in fronte? Il mio consiglio sarebbe quello di assorbire i buoni principi della norma e provare a metterli in pratica, prima. Ma, si sa, i miei consigli in merito sono impopolari.

Among the Gnomes: Lucifer

Chapter 6

Adalga, like all the rest of the gnomes, was a spirit, in the same sense as we are spirits ourselves; the term “spirit” implying a centre of consciousness or intelligence, irrespective as to whether the form in which that spiritual power or energy dwells is visible to somebody or everybody or nobody. In this sense the essence of everything is spirit, and every living form is a dwelling-place or vehicle for a conscious spiritual energy, be it latent or active, as it could not otherwise be, if the world, as demonstrated by our best philosophers, is, with all its seen and unseen forms, nothing else but a manifestation of All-consciousness, an attribute of the Divine Mind.

In taking this view I am well aware that I am assuming an attitude directly opposed to that of Professor Thomas Cracker, in his capacity as a representative of that modern science which regards the universe as being made up of dead lumps of matter, in which, in some inexplicable way, life and consciousness are produced by means of mechanical motion, due to the friction caused by their coming accidentally in contact with each other. I am also clairvoyant enough to foresee that Mr Cracker and his learned colleagues will treat this story with contempt, if they should ever condescend to notice it; but this cannot be helped, and I resign myself to my fate.

I will therefore not enter into a discussion concerning the merits of a philosophy resulting from looking at the universe in its spiritual aspect, or compare it with the absurdities resulting from a blind belief in materialism and its superstitions, but proceed to say that Adalga being a spirit, in possession of an intelligence not due to mechanical friction, but due to the presence of an intelligent power in her own constitution, this intelligence of which she was possessed became manifested in her, and as time went on its manifestations increased, as might have been scientifically proved by the observation that she became more clever and intelligent. From this it may be inferred that the princess was in possession of a mind capable of cognizing things by means of her bodily senses, and the facts which I witnessed every day went to corroborate the correctness of this theory. Moreover, there were indications that her mind was capable of cognizing the actuality of spiritual truths or principles; but being only a gnome, she was not capable of intricate reasoning and complicated argumentation.

I often argued with her about the supposed immortality of the soul, and it seemed to me that Adalga was not substantial enough to be more than an ideal, and could therefore not be an enduring reality, because ideals require substance for becoming realised. In other words, the princess often appeared to me like a thought, that may delight the present generation but be forgotten by the next. What she needed was “matter” or firmness, such as results from fixedness or stability of the spirit, and I came to the conclusion that I could supply her with the required material elements by her union with me. I know that I will be accused of making wild statements, unsupported by any well-authenticated scientific theory, but it will be seen that by means of my logical and inductive reasoning I arrived at the end at the same result, which Adalga seems to have perceived instinctively, and without any scientific training of her imagination, merely by her own direct perception.

It may be inferred that Adalga had a soul, because she was alive and capable of having emotions, and in that soul seemed to be dormant a spark of a higher or spiritual life or consciousness, producing in her longings for the unknown, such as were expressed in her song in the cave; longings which she herself could not explain, be it that her mind was not sufficiently developed to understand her own nature, or that she was deficient in a scientific training of her imagination.

The tribe to which Adalga belonged was that of the Sagani, the noblest of all the tribes among the gnomes, whose intellectual capacity was nearest to that of man. Being a Sagana, it was in her power to elongate her body, a circumstance which was at first terrifying, and afterwards somewhat annoying to me; for often while we were sitting side by side, with arms interlinked, and engaged in the sweet occupation of exchanging our sentiments, would she forget herself, and suddenly elongating her body shoot up some twenty-five feet high by sheer force of habit, upsetting me or carrying me up into space before I had time to let go of her arm or take it away from my waist. I begged her to restrain herself, and not to do so again in my presence; but self-restraint is a power entirely unknown among the gnomes. It is only possible for those beings who are in possession of a certain amount of spiritual self-consciousness, or, in other words, who feel or know that they are somehow superior to their own nature, as I am bound to say, even if I risk being accused of believing in the existence of something supernatural. The gnomes do not realise anything higher than their own elemental nature, and can therefore not restrain it. Only man can do or keep from doing certain things from a sense of duty and superiority. It is true that even animals seem to restrain themselves, but it is their fear or other instincts which restrains them, and not the experience of anything higher than their natural animal state; they do not experience any superiority over their animal nature, because no such superiority is existing in them; their motives for action are all to be found in their own natural world, while man’s motives may sometimes spring from something superior than his own animal nature, namely, from a higher and divine nature in him.

To my remonstrances the princess used to answer:

“It is my longing for the high, the sublime, and exalted which causes me to elongate my body involuntarily. I wish to grasp the infinite, and this makes me shoot up involuntarily.”

“This, my dear,” I replied, “is not the proper way, and would not be permitted in polite society among us. Moreover, you cannot reach infinitude in this manner, which reminds me of the performances of certain scientific theologians, who continually keep searching for God by means of a telescope. We cannot reach the infinite by stretching our limbs; we must grow and unfold from within by the power which we accumulate. This power, as it grows and expands, will cause our souls to unfold and develop. Instead of seeking for support outside of ourselves, we ought to be like a storage-battery, filled with a living power, that will radiate all over the world. This power is called love.”

“And can your clever men of science make love?” asked the princess.

“Oh yes!” I answered; “love-making is a favourite occupation with many of our people; but the love they make is not the genuine article, but merely a spurious imitation. Genuine love cannot be made or manufactured, it is eternal; all we can do is to establish the conditions under which it may become manifest.”

“Oh how I wish I could learn all that you know!” exclaimed Adalga. “Will you not instruct me?”

“With the greatest pleasure!” I answered. “The first thing which you will require to learn is to distinguish the true from the false. You gnomes know that which is true, because you perceive it, but you do not distinguish it sufficiently from that which is false, because falsehood is unknown to you. The first requirement for you to attain a higher state of civilisation is therefore to become acquainted with all sorts of falsehoods, deceptions, and lies.”

Adalga seemed to be frightened, and I therefore continued to explain.

“Listen!” I said. “You know that which is, because you perceive it; but you must also learn to know that which is not, so that you may distinguish it from that which actually is, and not mistake mere appearances for realities.”

“But if that which is not has no existence, how can we know it?” asked the princess.

“We cannot truly know that which is not,” I said, “except by experiencing its nothingness. We must ourselves become liars and cheats, otherwise we will always have only a vague idea of what lying and cheating means. We must be able to perceive that which is not, so that we may get some idea of that which is.”

“But how can I perceive that which is not,” asked Adalga, “if there is nothing to perceive?”

“In the easiest way in the world,” was my answer. “It only requires a scientifically trained imagination. We will then be able to see anything we like, even if there is nothing.”

The princess was delighted. She looked at me with a face expressive of great admiration, and said:

“As the glowing tiny spark of the ruby grows into a large red light when it is joined by the flame, so my admiration of thee grows in beholding thy knowledge. No longer art thou veiled to my eyes, for the secret has been revealed, and I behold in thee not a man, but one of the sons of Lucifer, the god to whom no gnome can approach.”

“Nonsense!” I said. “The story of Lucifer is only a nursery tale, an exploded humbug, annihilated by science. What do you mean? Who is the Lucifer of whom you are speaking?”

“The god of darkness! He who knows that which is not and does not know that which is; he whose temple is beyond the limits of our city, whose portals no gnome can enter without losing his light. Follow me!”

Thus saying, the princess dissolved, and assuming her spherical shape floated away, while I followed her as fast as my legs would carry me, for my curiosity was greatly excited.

Beyond the city of Gnana, the capital of the kingdom of the gnomes, there is a wilderness composed of forests, jungles, and swamps. There you find sandy deserts interspersed with an occasional spot of verdure, and innumerable bogs over which will-o’-the-wisps are aimlessly wandering. Some parts are entirely bare of vegetation, others are covered with a luxuriant growth of curious trees, resembling the Poison Ivy (Atrus toxicodendron), upon which grows a tasteless fruit. There was also a species of crab-apple trees, and another bearing a certain kind of nuts, which were awfully hard to crack, and contained nothing but ashes. In some places the spot was covered with fine-looking but poisonous toad-stools, and the ways were full of entangled vines and briers. The main road was leading to nowhere; for after following it until you were exhausted to death, you would find yourself exactly upon the spot from which you started at the beginning.

In the midst of this labyrinth there stands a curious-looking castle, looking very solid and strong, with many fortifications; built of sandstone. There are thick walls, surrounded by moats, buttresses, and counterforts guarded by banquettes, abuttes, scarps and palisades, fraises and parapets, ditches and trous de loup, all of which look very formidable; but the light has such a peculiar influence upon the material of which the castle is built, as to cause the walls to decompose and rapidly crumble away. The very foundation of the building has so little solidity as to cause the walls slowly but continually to sink, so that it requires a continual repairing and building at the top to cause the castle to remain above the ground and to maintain a respectable appearance.

It was in front of that castle that the princess reassumed her corporeal form, and as I approached nearer I found the walls ornamented with skeletons and skulls, and upon the top of the building waved a flag, consisting of a great many pieces of cloth of many different sizes and colours, sewed together in a haphazard manner, and this flag bore the inscription:

Knowledge is Power.

At the entrance of the fort there was a kind of a temple made of jet-black stone. A few steps led up to a door.

“These walls,” said my companion, “are the remnant of what was once a city built by a now extinct race of demons,” and pointing to the temple, she added, “Here is the temple of him who knows that which is not, and does not know that which is.”

“And what is to be seen in there?” I asked.

“Who knows?” exclaimed the princess. “This place is shunned by every gnome, and no one dares to enter. It is said, however, that it is inhabited by insane spooks, and by the remnant of a certain class of people who have spent their lives in doing many useless things. They are said to follow their accustomed occupations in an automatic manner, doing the same things over and over again without coming to an end.”

“And who were they, when they lived?” I asked.

“Nobody knows,” answered Adalga. “None of these creatures knew himself while he lived; how could anybody know him after he died?”

I expressed my determination to enter, upon which the princess grew very much alarmed, and begged me to desist; but the more she sought to dissuade me from my purpose, the greater grew my curiosity to investigate the mysteries of Lucifer’s temple.

“Do not enter, O Mulligan!” cried the princess. “It will destroy your light.”

“I have no light to lose,” I answered. “I am not a gnome.”

“Woe to me!” she cried. “Shall I lose you and my life even before our union has become completed! Stop this rash undertaking! Stop, O Mulligan, stop!”

“I must see the mystery of Lucifer!” I exclaimed, while tearing myself away from Adalga’s arms and making a rush for the door, which I entered, while the princess remained outside, wringing her hands and filling the kingdom of the gnomes with her lamentations and cries.

The room into which I entered appeared at first perfectly empty and dark; but after a little while I was able to see two luminous spots of a reddish yellow light at a distance, and some dark and voluminous object loomed up. Vague and undefinable nebulous shapes seemed to be flitting before my eyes and moving about. I confess that at first I experienced a feeling of something like fear and repugnancy; but nerving my courage, I went forward, and soon stood before a gigantic figure representing a green frog squatting upon a stone, and from the eyes of the frog shone the phosphorescent lights which I had observed when I entered, looking like two fiery balls. The jaws of the frog were wide open, as if it were ready to devour anything whatever coming within its reach. Gradually my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and I could read an inscription upon the pedestal saying—

Nulla Ratio Sine Phosphore.

Many years after that event I presented this inscription to the Academy, and respectfully asked for an explanation of its meaning. There were a few who claimed that it said it was necessary for the brain to contain phosphorus, so that the principle of mind could become active therein, and make a man capable of reasoning; but the great majority of the Academicians claimed that reason itself was a product of phosphorus, and a mode of motion of its molecules in the brain.

I was no longer afraid. I climbed upon the pedestal and examined the head of the frog, when I found that in the place of a brain there was a large lump of phosphorus enclosed in a film of coloured glass. It was the light of the phosphorus shining through the coloured glass that caused the lurid glow which came from the goggle eyes of the frog.

This discovery made me laugh. “This, then,” I said to myself, “is the celebrated Lucifer of whom the gnomes are afraid. Evidently the scientists of that extinct race attempted to create a living and thinking being in an artificial manner by making a compound of phosphorus to serve for a brain; but for all that they produced nothing but the dead image of a bull-frog.” I felt tempted to smash the frog or to take the phosphorus, but for some cause, which is not quite clear to myself, I made up my mind to let it alone.

I now became also able to see more clearly the nebulous forms that wandered about in space, and to my horror I found among them not only the shades of some prominent people well known in history, but also the apparitions of some persons with whom I was well acquainted. Among them was one who had spent all his life in trying to invent a perpetuum mobile, and who to my knowledge is still living. As I approached him, I found him engaged in his usual occupation. He seemed to be aware of my presence, for he said—

“There is only one little hinge which prevents the instrument from going. When this is overcome it will work all right, and my name will be inscribed in the register of the Academy.”

“And of what benefit,” I asked, “will it be to you to have your name thus inscribed, when you yourself are only a ghost?”

It is said that ghosts, like the gnomes, cannot speak otherwise than as they think, because they have not sense enough to prevaricate. He looked at me in surprise, and merely answered—

“Fool!”

He had become so much emaciated, and his voice sounded so hollow, that I began to doubt whether he actually was the one I had known in our world; I therefore asked him who he was.

“Alas!” replied the ghost mournfully, “I do not know who I am. While I was among the living I knew everything about science and philosophy, medicine and theology, spiritism and psychic research, but unfortunately I never knew myself. It is said that I made many inventions and discoveries, but as I do not know myself, I do not know who invented and discovered these things, and whether it was I or another; moreover I have forgotten them all.”

“But,” I said, “why do you not try to find out who you are?”

Another deep sigh expressed the profundity of his grief as he said—

“Life is short, and I have no time to attend to that matter. First, I will finish this perpetuum mobile, and after that I may have leisure to find out who I am and for what purpose I exist. I have now put these wheels together for the ten thousand six hundred and ninety-fifth time, and there is only one little hinge. After this business has been accomplished I will turn my attention to more serious matters.”

I felt a deep pity for the ghost, in whom I now well recognised my friend, for the words spoken by him I had often heard him express before. I therefore said—

“There is nothing to be said against entering into scientific experiments and increasing one’s store of knowledge in regard to the laws of external nature and its phenomena; but a far more important thing it is to know one’s own self and the object of one’s existence, so that one may act accordingly, and make the best use of life.”

“I know it,” answered the ghost, “and I often said so myself, but I have now no time to attend to philosophical questions; I must finish this wheel.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “you would succeed better if you were first to learn to know your real self and its powers, and construct your wheel afterwards, if you should still think it worth the while to spend your time with such nonsense.”

When I said this the ghost became very angry, and said—

“Avaunt, fool! and do not torment me. Get thee gone!”

So saying, the ghost snapped his jaws at me in a furious manner, and I barely escaped having my ear bitten off.

I mournfully turned away, sadly grieved that such a bright intellect should have been allowed to evaporate in dreams; but I knew that it was of no use to argue with him, for my own experience with the jumping-jack had taught me what a great power a fixed idea has over the mind.

Another ghost, fearfully emaciated, now attracted my attention. He looked more like the shadow of a skeleton than a man, and was evidently at the point of starvation, but engaged in the ludicrous occupation of composing a bill of fare, while he himself had nothing whatever to eat. I looked over his shoulder and saw him write out the following prescription:

Dejeuner à la fourchette:

Huîtres: Consommé tapioca à la Julienne. Potage crême d’asperges. Fruites au bleu; sauce à la Russe.
Bœuf à la mode aux maccaroni a l’Italienne. Selle de mouton Hollandaise. Œufs bruillé aux melettes. Emincé de faiseur à la Windsor. Canard braisé en Bordeaux. Omelette souflée. Plum pudding. Purée de pommes et nocles au natural. Fromage suisse. Glacé panachée aux gaufres cornets. Bordeaux. Champagne. Desert. Café.

“And where are all the good things whose names you have written?” I asked.

“This,” he answered haughtily, “you will have to find out yourself. It is sufficient if I indicate to you the order in which I might eat them if I had them. Does this not satisfy you?”

“It might satisfy my curiosity,” I replied, “but it will not cure your hunger or make you fat. You seem to me to need something more substantial than mere theories.”

“Knowledge is power!” said the ghost. “When you have acquired the knowledge how to eat in good style you may apply it as soon as you get the chance.”

“Look here, my friend,” I answered, “it seems to me that you need very much a chance to get something to eat, even if it were not served up in the style proposed by you. Would it not be better to let this bill of fare alone, and seek for some food?”

“I have no time to attend to that,” replied[192] the ghost. “I must first settle the theory; the practice may wait.”

“But by that time,” I said, “you may be starved to death.”

This remark seemed to annoy the ghost, for it was true, and ghosts never like to hear any truth that goes against their own pet theories. Being themselves made up of delusions, a spark of truth is to them a foreign element, and burns them like fire.

“Go away!” he cried angrily. “Do not waste my time. I shall not permit any scoffing at science.”

As I turned away I saw another ghost of still more pitiful aspect, clothed in rags, the very personification of abject poverty. Want and misery were looking out of his hollow cheeks, and his eyes were buried deep in their sockets. He was making a long calculation.

“What are you calculating?” I asked.

“Do not disturb me,” he said. “I am calculating the interest which I would receive[193] if I were to inherit all of Mr Vanderbilt’s money and estates, and how much, with the compound interest added to it, it would amount to in one hundred years, and I want to see whether this would be enough to enable me to live comfortably in my old age. I have now been over this calculation for many years, but I must begin it again, because the value of the stocks has again changed, and there is a difference in the amount of the interest.”

I was surprised to hear that a person of such a beggarly appearance should have such excellent financial prospects, and I said:

“When do you expect to make that inheritance, and could you not get now some money on credit on the strength of your prospective income?”

To this the ghost replied:

“Alas, no! I have no prospect of making any inheritance whatever, and there is no one who would lend me a penny; but it is such a comfort to know how much money I might[194] enjoy if I had it, and what an amount of interest the capital would bring if I were in possession of it.”

“And could you not do some work for the purpose of earning some money?”

“Alas, no! I have no time for that; I must finish this calculation first.”

“But what good will it do to you,” I asked, “to know all that stuff, as long as you are in such a state of poverty?”

The ghost shivered. He looked at me scornfully, and said in an angry tone—

“Knowledge is power! Do not waste my precious time. Begone!”

Thus going from one to another, I found all these spectres employed in occupations which had no practical purpose, and served at best to amuse their imagination or gratify their curiosity. They all spent what little energy was left in them for the purpose of wasting their time, making themselves believe that they were doing something useful. They[195] were all occupied with that which is not, and did not know that which is. They amused themselves, so to say, in worrying about the question what nothing might be if it were something, and in doing so they turned the only something they had, namely, their energy, into nothing. They were all dreams themselves, products of dreams, existing in dreams, leading a dream-life and doing nothing but dreaming; all they did was imaginary and had its origin in their own imagination. One of the ghosts, becoming angry, flew at me and stumbled and fell down. Thereupon it never occurred to him that he could get up again, but he remained floundering upon the floor, uttering pitiful lamentations. Some ghosts were playing cards, and although their continual losing was a source of annoyance to them, they had not the power to stop; others imagined that they had to imitate everything that they saw another ghost doing. This class was very large. One ghost practised target-shooting,[196] but as he was all the time looking in quite another direction than where the target was, he always missed the mark; but wept bitterly and complained of his want of luck. But it is not possible to mention all the follies which I saw the ghosts commit in the palace of Lucifer; they were like insane people, reasoning cleverly but without being in possession of reason. I pitied them, and sick at heart I turned towards the door.

In the meantime, owing to the cries of distress uttered by the princess, great crowds of gnomes had gathered in front of the temple, but none dared to enter. The king and the queen and all the court had arrived. They were all running and floating to and fro and talking and gesticulating, everybody giving some good advice which nobody followed; they did not know what to do. That anyone could enter Lucifer’s temple and come out again alive, or otherwise than blind or insane, seemed to them an impossibility. The king[197] looked very grave and the princess was in despair.

“After all,” I heard the queen say to the princess, while trying to comfort her, “Mulligan is nothing but a hobgoblin.”

“No!” cried Adalga, “I know he is a man!”

While speaking these words the princess elongated her body to its full length, and looking towards the temple, saw me standing upon the threshold, and in spite of the cries of her mother, who tried to stop her, she flew to me and the next instant she was in my arms. The door had not yet been closed, and from the interior a ray of yellowish light, coming from the eyes of the green frog, fell upon the princess. I sought to shield her with my person, but it was already too late, for that ray mingling with the blue in Adalga’s sphere, immediately produced therein a permanent shade of green.

A shout of joy arose from the multitude[198] when they saw me issue from the temple, and never-ending hurrahs resounded; but this was changed to groans of distress when they beheld the change of colour which had taken place in the princess. The king was very much distressed, and while pulling his hair and beating his sides, he cried:

“Unfortunate was the hour when this magician entered my kingdom. Was it not enough that our beloved daughter had the misfortune of falling in love with this wretch and taint her beautiful silver white with a nasty blue? Having given her the blues, he now causes her to expose herself to the rays of the frog. Oh that I had never been born, or seen the hour of such misery! Let the executioner come immediately and execute the sentence of death.”

A storm of indignation arose, and the vivisectors appeared. However, I was not afraid; I knew now the character of the gnomes and knew what to say.

[199]“May it please your majesty,” I said, “as well as our gracious queen and all the venerated assembly, to behold their beloved princess in this beautiful garment of green, whose splendour surpasses everything that has ever been seen before or may be seen afterwards. I call those present to witness that the princess never was so charming as since she has turned green. Green is the colour of hope, and indicates the beginning of wisdom. In the kingdom of man green is the favourite colour. Green is the grass of the earth, the trees and plants, and even the ocean waves turn green when they come kissing the shore. But why should I waste words in praising a colour whose superiority is acknowledged by everyone who is capable of judging its beauty? Has not her gracious majesty, the queen herself, shown the superiority of her taste by choosing the emerald as the jewel of her heart, and adorning her person with green as the true expression of her excellent qualities? Verily, I am giving only expression to the feeling of every intelligent gnome who loves his dynasty and his country, if I request you to join me in the cry—‘Hurrah for green!’”

And “Hurrah for green!” was shouted by all, over and over again. Owing to my eloquent speech green at once became the fashionable colour, and everyone wanted to become green. They lauded and praised me as the benefactor of gnomekind, and the ladies thronged around me, congratulating me, and begging of me to give them a shade of green. When order was somewhat restored I made a few more remarks, calling everyone a traitor who would not join me in my predilection for green. I said that the princess and I loved each other, and that I would have married her in spite of her being blue; but now, as she had turned green and resembled her mother, she had become a thousand times dearer to my heart.

Here, however, I am bound to confess for the sake of truth that my statements were not strictly correct, for the queen’s colour was of the pure and beautiful hue of the emerald, while the colour of the princess was an impure or dirty green, not at all comparable with the former. However, we all knew that on certain occasions a few little rhetorical liberties must be permitted.

The king was very much pleased; he believed every word I said. He called me his benefactor and saviour of his country. He conferred on me on the spot the office of Grand Chancellor of the Kingdom and Superintendent of Public Schools. He decorated me with the insignia of the Order of the Bull-frog, and consented that the ceremony confirming my engagement to the princess should take place immediately, to be followed by the marriage as soon as the three dwarfs would return with their discovery of the sun.

When the king had finished giving this decision, he embraced me and the princess, and this was also done by the queen and her maids, by the ministers and high dignitaries that were present, and by their wives and daughters, mothers and mothers-in-law; but the rest of the gnomes danced and shouted and stood upon their heads, swinging their legs as a token of joy. The princess was radiant with smiles, and we all were very happy. Cravatu even said that this was the happiest day that had ever been seen in the kingdom.

We returned to the palace, where preparations were made immediately for a great festival. The best mushrooms that could be found were collected and prepared by the best cooks. Some were boiled, others stewed, and some dished up raw. The queen herself assisted in the kitchen work. The court musicians arrived, the palace was decorated in great style, and deputations came, not only from all parts of Bimbam’s country, but also from neighbouring states. I received a fine suite of apartments adjoining those of the king and the princess, together with a lot of attending servants to keep my rooms continually illumined, for which purpose the most radiant gnomes were selected.

But I will not impose upon the patience of the reader by describing the festivities which took place when the still beautiful princess Adalga became Mr Mulligan’s bride. I will only say that during the most solemn moment of the ceremony, when the mutual promises were exchanged, it seemed to me that I distinctly heard the triumphant croaking of a frog; but no one else noticed it, and it may have been only an effect of my own imagination.

#WerewolvesWednesday: The Wolf-Leader (2)

A werewolf story by Alexandre Dumas père.

Illustration by Mahlon Blaine to the US edition.Chapter II: The Seigneur Jean and the Sabot-Maker

As already said, the buck began to dodge and double on reaching Oigny, turning and twisting around Thibault’s hut. The weather was fine, although autumn was well advanced, and the shoemaker was sitting at his work in his open lean-to. Looking up, he suddenly espied the trembling animal, quivering in every limb, standing a few paces in front of him and gazing at him with intelligent and terrified eyes.

Thibault had been for a long time aware that the hunt was circling around Oigny, at one time drawing near to the village, and then receding, only to draw near again.

There was nothing therefore very surprising to him in the sight of the buck, yet he stayed his hand, although he was busy at work, and contemplated the animal.

“Saint Sabot!” he exclaimed. I should explain that the festival of Saint Sabot is the wooden-shoe fête. “Saint Sabot! But that is a dainty morsel and would taste as fine, I warrant, as the chamois at Vienne once did at the grand banquet of the Jolly Shoemakers of Dauphiné. Lucky folk who can dine on the like every day. I tasted such once—it is now nearly four years ago—and my mouth waters even now when I think of it. Oh! these lords! These lords! With their fresh meats and their old wines at every meal, while I have to be satisfied with potatoes to eat and water to drink from one week’s end to the other. And it is a chance if even on Sunday I can feast myself with a lump of rusty bacon, an old cabbage, and a glass of pignolet fit to make my old goat stand on her head.”

It need scarcely be said, that as soon as Thibault began this monologue, the buck had turned and disappeared. Thibault had finished rounding his periods, and had just declaimed his peroration, when he heard himself roughly accosted in forcible terms:

“Ho, there, you scoundrel! answer me.”

It was the Baron, who seeing his dogs wavering, was anxious to make sure that they were not on the wrong scent.

“Ho, there, you scoundrel!” repeated the wolf-hunter, “have you seen the beast?”

There was evidently something in the manner of the Baron’s questioning which did not please our philosophical shoe-maker, for although he was perfectly aware what was the matter, he answered: “what beast?”

“Curse you! why, the buck we are hunting! He must have passed close by here, and standing gaping as you do, you must have seen him. It was a fine stag of ten, was it not? Which way did he go? Speak up, you blackguard, or you shall have a taste of my stirrup-leather!”

“The black plague take him, cub of a wolf!” muttered the shoe-maker to himself.

Then, aloud, with a fine air of pretended simplicity, “Ah, yes!” he said, “I did see him.”

“A buck, was it not? a ten-tiner, eh? With great horns.”

“Ah, yes to be sure, a buck, with great horns, or great corns, was it? yes, I saw him as plain as I see you, my Lord. But there, I can’t say if he had any corns, for I did not look at his feet, anyhow,” he added, with the air of a perfect simpleton, “if he had corns, they did not prevent him running.”

At any other time the Baron would have laughed at what he might have taken for genuine stupidity; but the doublings of the animal were beginning to put him into a regular huntsman’s fever.

“Now, then, you scoundrel, a truce to this jesting! If you are in a humour for jokes, it is more than I am!”

“I will be in whatever humour it may please your Lordship I should be.”

“Well, then, answer me.”

“Your Lordship has asked me nothing as yet.”

“Did the deer seem tired?”

“Not very.”

“Which way did he come?”

“He did not come, he was standing still.”

“Well, but he must have come from one side or the other.”

“Ah, very likely, but I did not see him come.”

“Which way did he go?”

“I would tell you directly; only I did not see him go.”

The Lord of Vez cast an angry look at Thibault.

“Is it some while ago the buck passed this way, Master Simpleton?”

“Not so very long, my Lord.”

“About how long ago?”

Thibault made as if trying to remember; at last he replied:

“It was, I think, the day before yesterday,” but in saying this, the shoe-maker, unfortunately, could not suppress a grin. This grin did not escape the Baron, who, spurring his horse, rode down on Thibault with lifted whip.

Thibault was agile, and with a single bound he reached the shelter of his lean-to, whither the wolf-hunter could not follow, as long as he remained mounted; Thibault was therefore in momentary safety.

“You are only bantering and lying!” cried the huntsman, “for there is Marcassino, my best hound, giving cry not twenty yards off, and if the deer passed by where Marcassino is, he must have come over the hedge, and it is impossible, therefore, that you did not see him.”

“Pardon, my Lord, but according to our good priest, no one but the Pope is infallible, and Monsieur Marcassino may be mistaken.”

“Marcassino is never mistaken, do you hear, you rascal! and in proof of it I can see from here the marks where the animal scratched up the ground.”

“Nevertheless, my Lord, I assure you, I swear…” said Thibault, who saw the Baron’s eyebrows contracting in a way that made him feel uneasy.

“Silence, and come here, blackguard!” cried my lord.

Thibault hesitated a moment, but the black look on the sportsman’s face became more and more threatening, and fearing to increase his exasperation by disobeying his command, he thought he had better go forward, hoping that the Baron merely wished to ask a service of him.

But it was an unlucky move on his part, for scarcely had he emerged from the protection of the shed when the horse of the Lord of Vez, urged by bit and spur, gave a leap that brought his rider swooping down upon Thibault. At the same moment, a furious blow from the butt end of the Baron’s whip fell upon his head.

The shoe-maker, stunned by the blow, tottered a moment, lost his balance and was about to fall face downwards, when the Baron, drawing his foot out of the stirrup, with a violent kick in the chest, not only straightened him again, but sent the poor wretch flying in an opposite direction, where he fell with his back against the door of his hut.

“Take that” said the Baron, as he first felled Thibault with his whip, and then kicked him, “take that for your lie, and that for your banter!”

And then, without troubling himself any further about the man, whom he left lying on his back, the Lord of Vez, seeing that the hounds had rallied on hearing Marcassino’s cry, gave them a cheery note on his horn, and cantered away.

Thibault lifted himself up, feeling bruised all over, and began feeling himself from head to foot to make sure that no bones were broken.

Having carefully passed his hand over each limb in succession, “That’s all right,” he said. “There is nothing broken either above or below, I am glad to find. So, my Lord Baron, that is how you treat people because you happen to have married a Prince’s bastard daughter! But let me tell you, my fine fellow, it is not you who will eat the buck you are hunting today; it will be this blackguard, this scoundrel, this simpleton of a Thibault who will eat it. Yes, it shall be I who eat it, that I vow!” cried Thibault, confirming himself more and more in his bold resolution. “And it is no use being a man if, having once made a vow, one fails to keep it.”

So without further delay, Thibault thrust his bill-hook into his belt, seized his boar-spear, and after listening for a moment to the cry of the hounds to ascertain in which direction the hunt had gone, he ran off with all the speed of which a man’s legs are capable to get the start of them, guessing by the curve which the stag and its pursuers were following what would be the straight line to take so as to intercept them.

There were two ways of doing his deed open to Thibault; either to hide himself beside the path which the buck must take and kill him with his boar-spear, or else to surprise the animal just as he was being hunted down by the dogs, and collar him there and then.

And as he ran, the desire to revenge himself on the Baron for the latter’s brutality, was not so uppermost in Thibault’s mind as the thoughts of the sumptuous manner in which he would fare for the next month, on the shoulders, the back, and the haunches of the deer, either salted to a turn, roasted on the spit, or cut in slices and done in the pan. And these two ideas, moreover, of vengeance and gluttony, were so jumbled up in his brain, that while still running at the top of his speed he laughed in his sleeve, as he pictured the dejected mien of the Baron and his men returning to the castle after their fruitless day’s hunt, and at the same time saw himself seated at table, the door securely fastened, and a pint of wine beside him, tete-a-tete with a
haunch of the deer, the rich and delicious gravy escaping as the knife returned for a third or fourth cut.

The deer, as far as Thibault could calculate, was making for the bridge that crosses the Ourcq between Noroy and Troesne. At the time of which we are now speaking, there was a bridge spanning the river, formed of two joists and a few planks. As the river was very high and very rapid, Thibault decided that the deer would not attempt to ford it. So he hid himself behind a rock, within reach of the bridge, and waited.

It was not long before he saw the graceful head of the deer appear above the rock at some ten paces’ distance; the animal was bending its ears to the wind, in the endeavour to catch the sound of the enemy’s approach as it was borne along the breeze. Thibault, excited by this sudden appearance, rose from behind the rock, poised his boar-spear and sent it flying towards the animal.

The buck, with a single bound, reached the middle of the bridge, a second carried him on to the opposite bank, and a third bore him out of sight.

The boar-spear had passed within a foot of the animal and buried itself in the grass fifteen paces from where Thibault was standing. Never before had he been known to make such an unskilful throw—he, Thibault, of all the company who made the tour of France, the one known to be surest of his aim! Enraged with himself, he picked up his weapon and bounded across the bridge with an agility equal to that of the deer.

Thibault knew the country quite as well as the animal he was pursuing, and so got ahead of the deer and once more concealed himself, this time behind a beech-tree, half-way up, and not too far from a little footpath.

The deer now passed so close to him, that Thibault hesitated as to whether it would not be better to knock the animal down with his boar-spear than to throw the weapon at it; but his hesitation did not last longer than a flash of lightning, for no lightning could be quicker than the animal itself, which was already twenty paces off when Thibault threw his boar-spear, but without better luck than the time before.

And now the baying of the hounds was drawing nearer and nearer. In another few minutes, he felt, it would be impossible for him to carry out his design. But, in honor of his spirit of persistence, be it said that in proportion as the difficulty increased, so too did Thibault’s desire to get possession of the deer.

“I must have it, come what will,” he cried, “I must! and if there is a God who cares for the poor, I shall have satisfaction of this confounded Baron, who beat me as if I were a dog, but I am a man
notwithstanding, and I am quite ready to prove the same to him.” And Thibault picked up his boar-spear and once more set off running. But it would appear that the good God whom he had just invoked, either had not heard him, or wished to drive him to extremities, for his third attempt had no greater success than the previous ones.

“By Heaven!” exclaimed Thibault, “God Almighty is assuredly deaf, itseems Let the Devil then open his ears and hear me! In the name of God or of the Devil, I want you and I will have you, cursed animal!”

Thibault had hardly finished this double blasphemy when the buck, doubling back, passed close to him for the fourth time, and disappeared among the bushes, but so quickly and unexpectedly, that Thibault had not even time to lift his boar-spear.

At that moment, he heard the dogs so near that he deemed it imprudent to continue his pursuit. Looking around, he saw a thickly-leaved oak tree, threw his boar-spear into a bush, swarmed up the trunk, and hid himself among the foliage. He imagined, with good reason, that since the deer had gone ahead again, the hunt would pass by following its track. The dogs had not lost the scent, despite the quarry’s doublings, and they were not likely to lose it now. Thibault had not been seated among the branches for more than five minutes when, first, the hounds came into sight, followed by the Baron, who, despite his fifty-five years, headed the chase as if he were a man of twenty. It must be added that the Lord of Vez was in a state of rage that we will not even attempt to describe.

To lose four hours over a wretched deer and still to be running behind it! Such a thing had never happened to him before.

He stormed at his men, he whipped his dogs, and had so ploughed his horse’s sides with his spurs, that the thick coating of mud which covered his gaiters was reddened with blood.

On reaching the bridge over the Ourcq, however, there had been an interval of alleviation for the Baron, for the hounds had so unanimously taken up the scent, that the cloak which the wolf-hunter carried behind him would have sufficed to cover the whole pack as they crossed the bridge.

Indeed the Baron was so pleased, that he was not satisfied with humming a tirra-la, but, unslinging his hunting-horn he sounded it with his full lung-power, a thing which he only did on great occasions.

But, unfortunately, the joy of my Lord of Vez was destined to be short lived.

All of a sudden, just as the hounds, that were crying in concert in a way which more and more delighted the Baron’s ears, were passing under the tree where Thibault was perched, the whole pack came to a standstill, and every tongue was silenced as by enchantment. Marcotte, at his master’s command, dismounted to see if he could find any traces of the deer, the whippers-in ran up, and they and Marcotte looked about, but they could find nothing.

Then Engoulevent, who had set his heart on a view-halloo being sounded for the animal he had tracked down, joined the others and began to search as well. Everyone was searching, calling out, and trying to rouse the dogs when, above all the other voices, the voice of the Baron was heard, like the blast of a tempest.

“Ten thousand devils!” he thundered.

“Have the dogs fallen into a pit-hole, Marcotte?”

“No, my Lord, they are here, but they are come to a check.”

“How! come to a standstill!” exclaimed the Baron.

“What is to be done, my Lord? I cannot understand what has happened, but such is the fact.”

“Come to a check!” again exclaimed the Baron, “come to a standstill, here, in the middle of the forest, here where there is no stream where the animal could have doubled, or rock for it to climb. You must be out of your mind, Marcotte!”

“I, out of my mind, my Lord?”

“Yes, you, you fool, as truly as your dogs are all worthless trash!”

As a rule, Marcotte bore with admirable patience the insults that the Baron habitually lavished upon everyone at critical moments of the chase. But this word—trash—applied to his dogs, was more than his habitual long-suffering could bear. Drawing himself up to his full height, he answered vehemently, “Trash, my Lord? My dogs, worthless trash? Dogs that have brought down an old wolf after such a furious run that the best horse in your stable was foundered? My dogs, trash!”

“Yes, trash, worthless trash, I say it again, Marcotte. Only trash would stop at a check like that, after hunting one wretched buck so many hours on end.”

“My Lord,” answered Marcotte, in a tone of mingled dignity and sorrow, “My Lord, say that it is my fault, call me a fool, a blockhead, a scoundrel, a blackguard, an idiot; insult me in my own person, or in that of my wife, of my children, and it is nothing to me; but for the sake of all my past services to you, do not attack me in my office of chief pricker, do not insult your dogs.”

“How do you account for their silence, then? tell me that! How do you account for it? I am quite willing to hear what you have to say, and I am listening.”

“I cannot explain it any more than you can, my Lord; the damned animal must have flown into the clouds or disappeared in the bowels of the earth.”

“What nonsense are you talking!” exclaimed the Baron “do you want to make out that the deer has burrowed like a rabbit, or risen from the ground like a grouse?”

“My Lord, I meant it only as a manner of speech. What is a truth, what is the fact, is that there is some witchcraft behind all this. As sure as it is now daylight, my dogs, every one of them, lay down at the same moment, suddenly, without an instant hesitation. Ask anybody who was near them at the time. And now they are not even trying to recover the scent, but there they lie flat on the ground like so many stags in their lair. I ask you, is it natural?”

“Thrash them, man! thrash them, then,” cried the Baron, “flay the skin off their backs; there is nothing like it for driving out the evil spirit.”

The Baron was about to emphasize his exorcisms with a few blows from his own whip, which Marcotte, following orders, was already distributing among the poor beasts, when Engoulevent, hat in hand, drew near to the Baron and timidly laid his hand on the horse’s bridle.

“My Lord,” said the keeper of the kennel, “I think I have just discovered a cuckoo in that tree who may perhaps be able to give us some explanation of what has happened.”

“What the devil are you talking about, with your cuckoo, you ape?” said the Baron.

“If you wait a moment, you scamp, I will teach you how to come chaffing your master like that!”

And the Baron lifted his whip. But with all the heroism of a Spartan, Engoulevent lifted his arm above his head as a shield and continued:

“Strike, if you will, my Lord, but after that look up into this tree, and when your Lordship has seen the bird that is perched among the branches, I think you will be more ready to give me a crown than a blow.”

And the good man pointed to the oak tree in which Thibault had taken refuge on hearing the huntsmen approach. He had climbed up from branch to branch and had finally hoisted himself on to the topmost one.

The Baron shaded his eyes with his hand, and, looking up, caught sight of Thibault.

“Well, here’s something mighty queer!” he cried, “It seems that in the forest of Villers-Cotterets the deer burrow like foxes, and men perch on trees like crows. However,” continued the worthy Baron, “we will see what sort of creature we have to deal with.” And putting his hand to his mouth, he halloed:

“Ho, there, my friend! would it be particularly disagreeable for you to give me ten minutes’ conversation?”

But Thibault maintained the most profound silence.

“My Lord” said Engoulevent “if you like…,” and he made a sign to show that he was ready to climb the tree.

“No, no,” said the Baron, at the same time putting out his hand to hold him back.

“Ho, there, my friend!” repeated the Baron still without recognising Thibault, “will it please you to answer me, yes or no.” He paused a second.

“I see, it is evidently, no; you pretend to be deaf, my friend; wait a moment, and I will get my speaking-trumpet,” and he held out his hand to Marcotte, who, guessing his intention, handed him his gun.

Thibault, who wished to put the huntsmen on the wrong scent, was meanwhile pretending to cut away the dead branches. He put so much energy into this feigned occupation that he did not perceive the movement on the part of the Baron, or, if he did, he only took it as a menace without attaching to it the importance it merited.

The wolf-hunter waited for a little while to see if the answer would come, but as it did not, he pulled the trigger; the gun went off, and a branch was heard to crack!

The branch which cracked was the one on which Thibault was poised; the Baron was a fine shot and had broken it just between the trunk and the shoemaker’s foot.

Deprived of his support, Thibault fell, rolling from branch to branch. Fortunately the tree was thick, and the branches strong, so that his fall was broken and less rapid than it might have been, and he finally reached the ground, after many rebounds, without further ill consequences than a feeling of great fear and a few slight bruises on that part of his body which had first come in contact with the earth.

“By Beelzebub’s horns!” exclaimed the Baron, delighted with his own skill, “if it is not my joker of the morning! Ah! so, you scamp! did the discourse you had with my whip seem too short to you, that you are so anxious to take it up again where we left off?”

“Oh, as to that, I assure you it is not so, my Lord” answered Thibault in a tone of the most perfect sincerity.

“So much the better for your skin, my good fellow. Well, and now tell me what you were doing up there, perched on the top of that oak-tree?”

“My Lord can see himself,” answered Thibault, pointing to a few dry twigs lying here and there on the ground, “I was cutting a little dry wood for fuel.”

“Ah! I see. Now then, my good fellow, you will please tell us, without any beating about the bush, what has become of our deer.”

“By the devil, he ought to know, seeing that he has been perched up there so as not to lose any of its movements,” put in Marcotte.

“But I swear, my Lord,” said Thibault, “that I don’t know what it is you mean about this wretched buck.”

“Ah, I thought so,” cried Marcotte, delighted to divert his master’s ill-humour from himself, “he has not seen it, he has not seen the animal at all, he does not know what we mean by this wretched buck! But look here, my Lord, see, the marks on these leaves where the animal has bitten; it was just here that the dogs came to a full stop, and now, although the ground is good to shew every mark, we can find no trace of the animal, for ten, twenty, or a hundred paces even?”

“You hear?” said the Baron, joining his words on to those of the pricker, “you were up there, and the deer here at your feet. It did not go by like a mouse without making any sound, and you did not see or hear. You must needs have seen or heard it!”

“He has killed the deer,” said Marcotte “and hidden it away in a bush, that’s as clear as the day.”

“Oh, my Lord,” cried Thibault, who knew better than anyone how mistaken the pricker was in making this accusation, “My Lord, by all the saints in paradise, I swear to you that I have not killed your deer! I swear it to you on the salvation of my soul, and may I perish on the spot if I have given him even the slightest scratch. And besides, I could not have killed him without wounding him, and if I had wounded him, blood would have flowed. Look, I pray you, sir,” continued Thibault, turning to the pricker, “and, God be thanked, you will find no trace of blood. I, kill a poor beast? And, my God, with what? Where is my weapon? God knows I have no other weapon than this bill-hook. Look yourself, my Lord.”

But unfortunately for Thibault, he had hardly uttered these words, before Maitre Engoulevent, who had been prowling about for some minutes past, re-appeared, carrying the boar-spear which Thibault had thrown into one of the bushes before climbing up the tree.

He handed the weapon to the Baron.

There was no doubt about it Engoulevent was Thibault’s evil genius.

…to be continued.

#MerfolkMonday: Herbert James Draper (1)

A Water Baby (c. 1900) by Herbert James Draper

Herbert James Draper (1863-1920) was an English Neoclassical painter and illustrator whose career spanned the Victorian era and the first two decades of the 20th century.

He was born in Covent Garden, London, on November 26, 1863 and was the only male son and seventh child of fruit merchant John James Draper and his wife, Emma. He received his education at Bruce Castle School in Tottenham before studying art at the Royal Academy, where he was awarded the Royal Academy Gold Medal and Traveling Studentship in 1889. This allowed him to further his artistic education with trips to Rome and Paris between 1888 and 1892. In 1891, he married Ida Williams, and they had a daughter named Yvonne.

Draper’s most productive period began in 1894, and he is known for his sensuous portrayals of nudes with a focus on mythological themes from ancient Greece. His 1898 painting The Lament for Icarus won the gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900 and was purchased by the Chantrey Trustees for the Tate Gallery. I’m sure you’ve seen it.

Herbert James Draper, The Lament for Icarus (1898)

Other notable works include The Gates of Dawn (1899), The Water Nixie (1908), Ulysses and the Sirens (1909), and The Kelpie (1913), which I’ll feature during the upcoming weeks. He also decorated the ceiling of the Drapers’ Hall in the City of London. Although he participated in the annual expositions of the Royal Academy from 1890 onwards, he was never elected to membership. Draper’s work fell out of favour with the public as tastes changed. He died at age 56 of arteriosclerosis in his home in Abbey Road.

Among the Gnomes (2)

Chapter 5

We arrived at the king’s palace, a description of which will undoubtedly interest the reader, and I only regret my inability to do full justice to this subject.

The palace consisted of an extensive building of white alabaster upon a rose-coloured marble foundation, and with a gilded dome-shaped roof over the main portion of the building, while the adjoining parts were shaped in various ways. The whole represented a mixture of Grecian and Moorish styles; there was a high portal whose columns were of white marble with veins of gold. Entering through the main door we came into a spacious courtyard, filled with works of art, representing antediluvian monstrosities of the various ages of the world. There we saw the Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus, and Megatherium, and similar animals unknown in history; enormous snakes, turtles, and crocodiles, in what is supposed to have been their original size and shape, and besides these there were represented such failures of nature as may have existed in the earliest time of the world’s history—women with fish-tails, human bodies with animal heads, and animal bodies with human heads or limbs, fauns, mermaids, satyrs, centaurs, flying snakes, dragons, etc. Curiously enough, the gnomes claimed that these were the representations of their ancestors, and they paid great respect to them. This courtyard extended all around the palace, surrounding it like a ring.

From this court we entered into an entrance hall built of yellow stone, at the door of which were standing two gigantic umbrella-shaped mushrooms of scarlet colour with white filaments, resembling the finest kind of lace.

This hall was exquisitely furnished and ornamented with various mushrooms, all of an edible kind, affording at once comfort and food; for while resting upon a lounge or sitting at a table, if one wanted to eat, all he had to do was to eat a piece of the furniture. There was the Agaricus deliciosus, procerus, campestris, prunulus, Boletus edulis, Polyporus confluens, Hydrum repandum and imbriatum, the Clavaria Botrytis, Morchella esculenta, Helvella crispa, Bovista nigrescens, and many others, whose names I have forgotten, and still others which even Professor Cracker has not yet classified. They were serving either as tables, couches, or chairs; and there was not a single toadstool or poisonous fungus among them. There were no chandeliers, lamps, or candlesticks of any kind, for the gnomes lived in a natural manner and needed no artificial lights. Each gnome was himself a light more or less luminous according to the degree of his or her intelligence. But to me, having no light of my own and no power to illuminate anything, it was a source of continual annoyance that I always needed the company of some gnome to keep me enlightened, as otherwise I would have been left in utter darkness and nothingness. Moreover, the light in which a thing appeared to me always depended on the colour of the light of this or that gnome who happened to be in my presence, which caused me to experience a continual change of opinions regarding the qualities of the objects I saw.

From this hall a flight of seven marble steps led into the main building of the palace. This consisted of eight divisions, each made of a different quality; while the whole was built in a star-shaped form; so that each division with its sub-divisions was connected directly with the central chamber occupied by the king. But what was most curious about it was, that in each division some special invisible genii or spirit seemed to preside; for in each a peculiar influence differing from the rest could be felt by anyone whose nerves were not made of cast-iron or who was not a blockhead.

Thus the hall of the mushrooms on the north side breathed an air of luxury and enjoyment; while the room to the left of it was pervaded by a spirit of anxiety and dissatisfaction, and was visited only by those who by force of habit had become attracted to it, and who, so to say, found satisfaction only in being always dissatisfied; chronic grumblers, misanthropes, people discontented with themselves and with everything. On the other hand, there were two rooms to the east, in which nobody could remain without being overcome by a feeling of awe, reverence, generosity, sublimity, and a deep religious sentiment. They were visited by the brightest of the gnomes, and served as places for contemplation. These rooms seemed to be empty, but they were not empty; because, while they were bare of all objects, they were filled with an overwhelming abundance of that spirit which is the creator or producer of forms.

The south-eastern portion of the palace contained the sleeping apartments of the royal family, and whoever entered there would sink into a state of torpor and forgetfulness; but the hall next to that, lying directly towards the south, inspired its inhabitants with a deep melancholy easily turned into anger. Another division towards the west was called the chamber of cunning, and used on certain occasions for the purpose of concocting schemes of revenge and intrigue. It was very seldom used at the time of my arrival, but became a favourite meeting-room later on. As to the hall upon the north side, which was dedicated to all sorts of sensual enjoyment, it was the most attractive, but also the most dangerous of them all, and I am bound by promise not to divulge any of its mysteries.

All these rooms were free of access to every gnome of good standing; but the division in the centre, where the king resided, was open only to those who gained admission there. It was always guarded by a selected number of female soldiers, corresponding to our Amazons, and it was said that female soldiers were always chosen in preference, because they were more faithful and reliable than the males among the gnomes.

At the entrance of the king’s chamber there were statues of gigantic size, reminding me of the ones at the British Museum which were brought there from Easter Island. They represented that prehistoric race of beings which the gnomes used to call “Man,” or “Homo divinus,” and of which they claimed that it existed no more upon the planet earth, having emigrated to other spheres, and abandoned their country to hobgoblins, devils, and spooks. I must confess that in our country I never met with any human beings of such a superhuman aspect as was represented here. There were images of men and women of such noble mien and so awe-inspiring, that they looked much more like gods than like specimens of the genus homo bipex, and a resemblance to them can be found only among the statuary of the ancient Greeks. Here the king in person resided, and nobody dared to approach him without his consent, and without being admitted by the Amazons; but the apartments of the princess were next to those of the king, and as I spent a great deal of time in her company, I also came very frequently in contact with her father the king.

The most remarkable thing among the gnomes was that they could not distinguish falsehood from truth. They were incapable of saying anything else than what they themselves thought and believed, and they could not conceive of the possibility of telling a lie. This state of affairs was sometimes somewhat annoying, for it is not always agreeable to hear some one state his opinion about you right to your face; but on the other hand it was advantageous in many respects. For instance, whenever I wanted to enter the chamber of the king, all I had to do was to tell the Amazons that the king wanted to see me; and I believe if anyone had told the treasurer of the kingdom that he was entitled to take the treasure away, the guardian would have delivered it up without hesitation. This, however, was only at the time of my arrival, and before an attempt of civilising the gnomes was made. Time passed away rapidly, and I do not know how long I remained at the palace enjoying the hospitality of the queen and the company of the princess; but each day I learned more to admire Adalga’s character; the simplicity of her way of thinking, and the purity of her affection. It is true that her want of modern education, her inability to hide her true sentiments, and her inexperience in the habits of modern civilisation—especially in what refers to conventionalities—sometimes created a feeling of dissatisfaction in my mind. She did not know how to pretend sentiments which she did not experience; she knew nothing about logical quibbles and tergiversation, nor of the many sweet little lies that make life supportable among mankind. It never occurred to her to say anything just for the sake of using a little flattery or tickling one’s vanity, or for the purpose of teasing; and of all such things which are much admired among people of culture she knew nothing. This I regretted, but I could not keep myself from admiring her naturalness and sincerity. We passed a great deal of our time in the hall at the north end, and the princess asked me a thousand questions in regard to the constitution, customs and habits of the human kingdom, the manners of its inhabitants, their object of living and occupation, and the immortality of their souls.

“I know, love of my heart!” she used to say, “that if I could only become fully identified with you, we would both be as one immortal being, and it is only the dark aspect of your nature which prevents this unification and identity.”

“But why, dearest one!” I asked, “can you not become immortal without this unification that would destroy your identity? Have you not within yourself all the elements necessary for that purpose?”

“Alas, no!” answered the princess. “These elements are within us, but they are capable of development only in the constitution of man, and therefore we strive to become human just as you strive to become gods. But the race of real human beings has disappeared, and only a spurious imitation is left. These are the ghosts and hobgoblins with whom intercourse is forbidden, and we are now doomed to be left for ages without any prospect of real progress, until a race of real men appears again upon the earth.”

I answered her questions as well as I could, assuring her that there were still a great many honest and noble-minded people among what she called hobgoblins and ghosts, and that they would be glad to contract marriages with gnomes and sylphs, if they knew that they could thereby be useful to them. I said that there were among us millions of people who did not know that they were immortal, but that thousands of clergymen were engaged in the occupation of making them believe it. I also said that new systems of ethics, morals, and philosophy were being invented almost every day, and that the world of humanity would soon become very much improved.

“Oh, I wish I were a man!” exclaimed Adalga.

“This will be impossible in your present incarnation,” I said. “But I will do all I can to develop in you a human mind and teach you all that men know.”

“Oh, do please!” cried the princess, embracing me in the exuberance of her joy.

“First of all,” I said, “you must learn the rules of logic, syntax and induction, illation, postulation, assumption and inference. You must learn to doubt everything you see and feel, and deny all you hear. Never believe anything unless you already know all the whys and wherefores, and never take anything for granted unless it comes from an authority which you believe to be respectable, and which is recognised as such by the crowd. Deny everything that you do not understand, consider everybody a liar until he has irrefutably proved his veracity; never let anybody get the advantage of you by showing yourself to him such as you are, and never do anything without getting a personal profit.”

I stopped, because I saw that these maxims were all gibberish to the princess, and that she did not understand what I said; but I resolved to try my best to instruct her, and to bring intellectual culture among the gnomes.

During these happy days, and while waiting for the return of the three imbeciles, I highly enjoyed the novelty of my situation. My liberty was not restricted, and I had ample opportunity for studying the character and the habits of the gnomes, in which occupation I was liberally aided by the princess. Arm in arm we wandered or floated through the villages, visited the mines and observed the gnomes at their labour, and I was astonished at the untold amount of treasures in the Untersberg, the existence of which is little suspected.

The gnomes on the whole were at that time an unsophisticated lot; because, owing to their simple nature, a gnome could only think one thought at a time. They were therefore not given to reasoning and argumentation, and lived fully contented. In fact, they were rather deficient in intellectuality, but in spite of that, or perhaps on account of it, they had a great deal of spiritual power. Falsehood, lying, hypocrisy, scheming, and wilful deception were unknown to them, and as stated above, they always meant what they said, and took it for granted that everyone except a hobgoblin or spook meant what his words implied; nor would it have been possible for a gnome to tell a wilful lie without experiencing therefrom immediately a detrimental effect upon his constitution; for as it was the light of truth that made them luminous, the telling of a falsehood, or even the thinking of one, would have immediately diminished the amount of his or her luminosity, which would have at once become visible to the rest; or it might have extinguished their light for ever. Thus they were, by the necessity of their nature, always open and sincere, and followed their impulses for good or evil without being guided by the reasoning intellect. Whatever was done by them was done in good faith, even if it was foolish; there never was any malicious intent.

Being capable of perceiving the truth directly and without reasoning, by the power of pure reason or instinct, they could solve the most difficult mathematical problems by merely looking at the final result, and nearly every one of them could thus have made a fortune among us by giving exhibitions of his power as a mathematical phenomenon, without the least knowledge of mathematics; but they could not even make the smallest calculation or draw any inferences from given factors. They knew what they knew because they perceived it, and there was no guessing about what they saw.

I found them to be exceedingly impressible by my thoughts and emotions. I often amused myself with the lower orders of gnomes by making them act out what I thought. When I, for instance, imagined myself to be afraid of them, they would become immediately afraid of me and run away. When I became angry at them, they became angry at me, even if I said not a word nor showed it by my manners. I think that if I had secretly determined to kill a gnome, he would have unknowingly followed the impulse and killed me. This made me think of the story of Burkhart of Tollenstein, and that perhaps many suicides may be thus due to the ire aroused in those semi-intelligent forces of nature which we find objectified in the kingdom of gnomes.

There was one class of gnomes called Pigmies, whose office it was to direct the currents of vital electricity in the earth to all places where the roots of the plants that grew upon the surface required it. This they did while they were in their disembodied state, when each of them was, so to say, like a magnetic current; but whenever they assumed corporeal forms they were very small, and perhaps for this reason they had a dislike against appearing in corporeal bodies, and did so only for the purpose of taking food, or for some other object which required material organs. They were composed of some substantial but bodiless active force, which they could cause to crystallise into a nucleus of latent energy. In such a condition they were very lazy; but when liberated they were very active. They were strong, and it was surprising to see what an amount of active force could be developed from a comparatively insignificant spark of energy.

Next, there were the Vulcani, who were principally occupied with mineral life, having in their charge the growth and transformation of metals. Their substance consisted of a certain force for which we have no name, but which might be called an electro-magnetic fire. By an exercise of their will they were able to send a current of such vital electricity into a mineral vein, and cause gold and silver, iron and copper, to grow; for it is a sign of short-sightedness if one believes that metals have no life and do not grow, because their growth is not so rapid and perceptible as that of the plants.

Then there were the Cubitali, and the substance of which they were formed was a kind of explosive force, which means that they could contract their fluidic bodies and expand them very rapidly, when the quick expansion caused a kind of explosion with a destructive effect. Whenever they assumed a form they were about two feet high, well built, and showing great muscular strength. They were, so to say, the hard-working class, and their principal occupation was the blasting of air and the cutting of rocks; and, in spite of their robust appearance, they had a great deal of artistic talent, as was proved by the products of their labour that could be seen in the palace of the king.

Furthermore, there were the Acthnici, constituted of “Acthna,” an invisible subterranean fire, who, whenever they manifested themselves in forms and became visible, appeared like fiery globes and balls of lightning. They were, on the whole, stupid and dangerous, and it was said that on more than one occasion some of them had entered dreamland—as they called our world—and been seen by the spooks and returned no more; all of which may, perhaps, have been only a fable, believed only by the children of the gnomes. The Acthnici were said to create heat and cause upheavings of the earth, and some of our ancient philosophers believed them to cause explosions in our mines. However that may be, I never saw them at work, for they were uncouth fellows, and I loved to avoid their society.

There were also the Sagani, and they were the cleverest of all. They were tall and well-formed, resembling the human shape in stature and form whenever they assumed a body. They were from three to five feet high, but they had the power to elongate themselves from the normal size up to a length of twenty-five feet and more. Their principal occupation was to construct the astral models of plants after a certain type for each species, which they did by the power of their imagination (I have no other suitable word); and here I beg to add in parenthesis that, according to my observation among the gnomes, every plant, stone, or tree upon the Untersberg had its “Leffahs,” as it is called by the gnomes, or astral type within the astral body of that mountain; each being in some way which I am unable to explain, connected with the physical part of the corresponding organism; so that the physical and (to us) visible product was always the exact image and  corporeal representation of its ethereal progenitor and counterpart that is invisible to us but visible to the gnomes.

All the gnomes could at all times and at their own pleasure live in their ethereal states without any definite form, comparable to air or clouds or mists; or they could by an effort of will assume material and corporeal forms, each one according to his or her innate qualities. In their ethereal shape they could travel with the velocity of a thought, and penetrate through the most solid rocks like a current of electricity passing through a bar of iron; but in their corporeal state their locomotion was comparatively slow, and the atmospheric air, not being their own element, caused great obstacles to their locomotion. For the purpose of passing through air, they had to employ cutting and blasting and other methods similar to those which we use for tunnelling rocks.

It is believed by some people that when our bodies are asleep, our spirits are free to roam consciously through space, and experience things which we do not remember when we awake, but which appear to us at best as a dream. Something similar was the case with the gnomes. In their ethereal states they were individual powers, as distinct from each other as electricity is distinct from light, or heat from sound, and as such they were in possession of consciousness and perception of a spiritual kind, and capable of remembering all they had experienced while condensed into a corporeal form. But whenever they assumed corporeal bodies, they had no distinct recollection of what they had been doing while in a state of dissolution, and this was explained to me by the fact that while in their ethereal state their brains were not solidified enough to register and retain the impressions which they received; but the higher impressions which they received while in their corporeal forms they remembered also in their ethereal state, and whenever a gnome entered into the ethereal state he knew all that he had been doing in the same state before. Moreover, there was a state in which they lived in a semi-corporeal and semi-ethereal condition, and this was when they had not fully dissolved their forms, but merely assumed the shape of a globe of light.

From all this it will appear that it is as difficult for a gnome to penetrate into our world as it is for us to penetrate into theirs, and even, as it often may happen, a gnome, while in his incorporeal form, visits mankind, he will not remember anything about it when he returns, or it will appear to him like a dream, and this may be the reason that our world has gained the reputation among the gnomes as being a dreamland, and nothing more. It may be a dreamland to them as theirs is to us. But they appeared to me to live and exist in their own sphere as much as we in ours. As to the rest, they were born, ate, drank, slept, married, and evaporated after death.

Each family and each tribe of gnomes had its own head and leaders, whom they implicitly obeyed, without even knowing the possibility of disobedience, because they were not given to arguing, and all were ruled by Bimbam I. The administration of the kingdom was very simple; there were no taxes to pay, and everyone had what he wanted, because nobody wanted more than he had. The king took whatever he needed, and never more than he cared to have. Custom-house duties, monopolies, privileges, and corporation nuisances were entirely unknown, and there was no newspaper to disseminate gossip, cause dissensions, and ruin characters for the sake of getting up a sensation. There were no shams. The nobility consisted of gnomes that were truly noble, and not merely pretended to be so; the doctors actually knew something, and did not merely make believe that they were in possession of knowledge; the goodness of the good could be estimated by the amount of light that radiated from their stars, and their character was indicated by the colour of the star. Consequently each individual sphere of light slowly changed when a new emotion or virtue grew in a gnome. Anger made them red, love blue, intelligence yellow, sensuality green, wisdom violet, and so forth.

The ladies of the gnomes occupied positions similar to those of our wives and daughters. The lower classes joined the males in their work; the higher ones were of a more ornamental character, and protectors of arts. The world of gnomes, the same as ours, would have been dreary without female beauty and loveliness. Many of the gnomesses were exceedingly beautiful and ethereal, others were homely; but all of them were very amiable, because they acted in a natural manner, made no attempt of disguising their feelings, and knew of no such thing as deceit; neither did they disfigure their forms by absurd fashions in dress.

Love-making and wooing were carried on among the gnomes as it is with us, only with the exception that the females had the same right as the males to bestow their affection and to make proposals; neither was it considered a disgrace for any lady to do so; on the contrary, it would have been a disgrace for her to pretend to have other sentiments than she had, and it would have injured her beauty and destroyed her light. There was, however, no such thing as what is understood among us as “women’s rights,” for their natural instincts taught them that not everything that becomes a male also becomes a female; these gnomes made no attempt to overstep the limits drawn by nature, for this would have caused them to become degraded and unnatural. On account of their simple-mindedness immorality was entirely unknown, because true morality has its basis in the instinctive perception of truth, and requires no artificially concocted systems and shams. One may be very moral without even knowing that moral doctrines exist, and another may know all the moral prescriptions by heart, and be a rascal for all that.

There was one class of females distinguished from the rest. They were such as, having attained a certain age, were still without children. They corresponded to what is in our world called “old maids”; but they were neither old nor ugly. In fact, they were on the whole very charming, and could sing beautiful songs, as everyone knows who has lived for a certain time in the vicinity of the Untersberg, and heard them sing. Their songs are usually of a sad character, and alluring; they express their loneliness and longing for children. The love for production exists in all departments of nature, and also among the gnomes. A gnome having no knowledge of his own, is always happy to stuff his head with theories belonging to others, and loves them as if they were his own children. The same is the case with the so-called “wild women” of the Untersberg. Their love for offspring sometimes causes them to come out of the Untersberg and appropriate to themselves children of men, such as they find lost or astray within their realm. For this reason they are called “wild,” although I wish to gracious that I would never meet with anything less wild than they. I always found them very lovely, and I now understand the meaning of those popular tales which speak of children of peasants that have been abducted by these spirits, and taken into the Untersberg, where they lived among the “wild women,” who treated them kindly, and played with them; and after a certain time sent them back to their parents loaded with gifts.

 

#WerewolvesWednesday: The Wolf-Leader (1)

A werewolf story by Alexandre Dumas père.

Frontpiece to the US edition, featuring an illustration by Mahlon Blaine.Chapter I: The Grand Master of His Highness’ Wolf Hounds

The Seigneur Jean, Baron of Vez, was a hardy and indefatigable sportsman.

If you follow the beautiful valley which runs between Berval and Longpré, you will see, on your left hand, an old tower, which by reason of its isolated position will appear doubly high and formidable to you.

At the present moment, it belongs to an old friend of the writer of this tale, and everyone is now so accustomed to its forbidding aspect that the peasant passing that way in summer has no more fear of seeking shelter from the heat beneath its walls than the martins with their long, black wings and shrill cries, and the swallows with their soft chirrupings, have of building their nests under its eaves.

But at the time we are now speaking of, somewhere about 1780, this lordly dwelling of Vez was looked upon with different eyes, and, it must be confessed, it did not then offer so safe a place of retreat. It was a building of the twelfth or thirteenth century, rugged and gloomy, its terrifying exterior having assumed no kindlier aspect as the years rolled by. True, the sentinel with his measured tread and flashing steel-cap no longer paced its ramparts, the archer with his shrill-sounding horn no longer kept watch and ward on the battlements; true, the postern was no longer guarded by men-at-arms, ready at the least signal of danger to lower the portcullis and draw up the bridge; but the solitude alone which surrounded this grim giant of granite was sufficient to inspire the feeling of awe-inspiring majesty awakened by all mute and motionless things.

The lord of this old fortress, however, was by no means so much to be dreaded; those who were more intimately acquainted with him than were the peasants, and could do him more justice, asserted that his bark was worse than his bite, and that he caused more fear than harm—that is, among his fellow Christians. With the animals of the forest, it was different, for he was avowedly their mortal and implacable enemy.

He was chief wolf-hunter to his Royal Highness Louis Philippe of Orléans, the fourth of that name, a post which allowed him to gratify the inordinate passion he had for the chase. Although it was not easy, it was yet possible to bring the Baron to listen to reason in other matters; but as regards the chase, if once he had got a fixed idea in his head, nothing would satisfy him until he had carried it out and had achieved his purpose.

His wife, according to report, was the natural daughter of the Prince, which, in conjunction with his title of chief wolf-hunter, gave him almost absolute power throughout the domains of his illustrious father-in-law, a power which no one dared to contest with him, especially after the remarriage of his Royal Highness with Madame de Montesson. This had taken place in 1773, since which date he had almost abandoned his castle at Villers-Cotterêts for his delightful residence at Bagnolet, where he entertained all the first wits of the day and amused himself with play-acting.

And so, whether the sun was shining to rejoice the earth, or the rain was saddening it, whether the winter fields lay hidden beneath a shroud of snow, or the spring had spread her fresh green carpet over the meadows, it was rare, on any day of the year, not to see the great gates of the castle thrown wide open between eight and nine o’clock in the morning, and first the Baron come forth, and immediately after him his chief pricker, Marcotte, followed by the other prickers. Then appeared the dogs, coupled and held in leash by the keepers of the hounds, under the superintendence of Engoulevent, who aspired to become a pricker. Even as the German executioner walks alone, behind the nobles and in front of the citizens, to show that he is the least of the former and the first of the latter, so he walked immediately after the prickers and ahead of the keepers of the hounds, as being the chief of the whippers-in and least of the prickers.

The whole procession filed out of the castle court in full hunting array, with the English horses and the French hounds—twelve horses and forty dogs.

Before we go any farther, let me say that with these twelve horses and forty dogs, the Baron hunted every sort of quarry, but more especially the wolf, in order, no doubt, to do honour to his title.

No further proof will be needed by the genuine sportsman of the fine faith he had in the general quality of his hounds, and in their keenness of scent, than the fact that next to the wolf he gave preference to the boar, then to the red deer, then to the fallow deer, and lastly to the roebuck; finally, if the keepers of the pack failed to sight the animal they had tracked, he uncoupled at random, and went after the first hare that crossed his path. For, as we have already stated, the worthy Baron went out hunting every day, and he would sooner have gone for four-and-twenty hours without food or drink, although he was often thirsty, than have spent that time without seeing his hounds run.

But, as everybody knows, however swift the horses and however keen the dogs, hunting has its bad times as well as its good.

One day, Marcotte came up to where the Baron was awaiting him, with a crestfallen expression of countenance.

“How now, Marcotte,” asked the Baron, frowning, “what is the matter this time? I see by your face we are to expect bad sport today.”

Marcotte shook his head.

“Speak up, man,” continued the Baron with a gesture of impatience.

“The matter is, my Lord, that the black wolf is about.”

“Ah! ah!” exclaimed the Baron, his eyes sparkling; for you must know that this made the fifth or sixth time that the worthy Baron had started the animal in question, but never once had he been able to get within gunshot of him or to run him down.

“Yes,” Marcotte went on, “but the damned beast has employed himself so well all night crossing his track and doubling, that after having traced him over half the forest, I found myself at the place from which I started.”

“You think then, Marcotte, that there is no chance of getting near him?”

“I am afraid not.”

“By all the devils in hell!” exclaimed the Lord of Vez, who had not had his equal in swearing since the mighty Nimrod. “However, I am not feeling well today, and I must have a burst of some kind, to get rid of these bad humours. What do you think we can hunt, Marcotte, in place of this damned black wolf?”

“Well, having been so taken up with the wolf,” answered Marcotte, “I have not traced any other animal. Will my Lord uncouple at random and hunt the first animal that we come across?”

The Baron was about to express his willingness to agree to this proposal when he caught sight of little Engoulevent coming towards them, cap in hand.

“Wait a moment,” he said. “Here comes Engoulevent, who, I fancy, has some advice to give us.”

“I have no advice to give to a noble Lord like yourself,” replied Engoulevent, assuming an expression of humility on his sly and crafty face. “It is, however, my duty to inform you that there is a splendid buck in the neighbourhood.”

“Let us see your buck, Engoulevent,” replied the chief wolf-hunter, “and if you are not mistaken about it, there will be a new crown for you.”

“Where is this buck of yours?” asked Marcotte, “but look to your skin, if you make us uncouple to no purpose.”

“Let me have Matador and Jupiter, and then we shall see.” Matador and Jupiter were the finest among the hounds belonging to the Lord of Vez. And indeed, Engoulevent had not gone a hundred paces with them through the thicket, before, by the lashing of their tails, and their repeated yelping, he knew that they were on the right scent. In another minute or two a magnificent ten-tined stag came into view. Marcotte cried Tally-ho, sounded his horn, and the hunt began, to the great satisfaction of the Lord of Vez, who, although regretting the black wolf, was willing to make the best of a fine buck in its stead. The hunt had lasted two hours, and the quarry still held on. It had first led its pursuers from the little wood of Haramont to the Chemin du Pendu, and thence straight to the back of Oigny, and it still showed no sign of fatigue; for it was not one of those poor animals of the flat country who get their tails pulled by every wretched terrier.

As it neared the low grounds of Bourg-Fontaine, however, it evidently decided that it was being run rather hard, for it gave up the bolder measures which had hitherto enabled it to keep ahead, and began to double.

Its first manoeuvre was to go down to the brook which joins the ponds of Baisemont and Bourg, then to walk against stream with the water up to its haunches, for nearly half a mile; it then sprang on to the right bank, back again into the bed of the stream, made another leap to the left, and with a succession of bounds, as vigorous as its failing strength allowed, continued to out-distance its pursuers. But the dogs of my lord Baron were not animals to be put out by such trifles as these. Being both sagacious and well-bred, they, of their own accord, divided the task between themselves, half going up stream, and half down, these hunting on the right those on the left, and so effectually that they ere long put the animal off its changes, for they soon recovered the scent, rallying at the first cry given by one of the pack, and starting afresh on the chase, as ready and eager as if the deer had been only twenty paces in front of them.

And so with galloping of horses, with cry of hounds and blare of horn, the Baron and his huntsmen reached the ponds of Saint Antoine, a hundred paces or so from the Confines of Oigny. Between these and the Osier-beds stood the hut of Thibault, the sabot-maker.

We must pause to give some description of this Thibault, the shoe-maker, the real hero of the tale.

You will ask why I, who have summoned kings to appear upon the stage, who have obliged princes, dukes, and barons to play secondary parts in my romances, should take a simple shoe-maker for the hero of this tale.

First, I will reply by saying that, in my dear home country of Villers-Cotterets, there are more sabot-makers than barons, dukes and princes, and that, as soon as I decided to make the forest the scene of the events I am about to record, I was obliged to choose one of the actual inhabitants of this forest as hero, unless I had wished to represent such fantastic persons as the Incas of Marmontel or the Abencerages of M. de Florian.

More than that, it is not the author who decides on the subject, but the subject which takes possession of the author, and, good or bad, this particular subject has taken possession of me. I will therefore endeavour to draw Thibault’s portrait for you, plain shoe-maker as he was, as exactly as the artist paints the portrait which a prince desires to send to his lady-love.

Thibault was a man between twenty-five and twenty-seven years of age, tall, well made, physically robust, but by nature melancholy and sad of heart. This depression of spirits arose from a little grain of envy, which, in spite of himself, perhaps unconsciously to himself, he harboured towards all such of his neighbours as had been more favoured by fortune than himself.

His father had committed a fault, a serious one at all times, but more especially in those days of absolutism, when a man was not able to rise above his station as now-a-days, when with sufficient capacity he may attain to any rank. Thibault had been educated above his position; he had been at school under the Abbe Fortier, at Villers-Cotterets, and had learnt to read, write, and cypher; moreover, he knew a little Latin, which made him inordinately proud of himself. Thibault had spent a great part of his time in reading, and his books had been chiefly those which were in vogue at the close of the preceding century. But he had not been a sufficiently clever analyst to know how to separate the good from the bad, or rather he had separated what was bad, and swallowed it in large doses, leaving the good to precipitate itself at the bottom of the glass.

At twenty years of age Thibault had certainly had dreams of being something other than a sabot-maker. He had, for instance, for a very little while, cast his eyes towards the army. But his comrades who had worn the double livery of king and country, had left the service as they entered it, mere soldiers of the ranks, having failed during five or six years of slavery to obtain promotion, even to the not very exalted grade of corporal.

Thibault had also thought of becoming a sailor. But a career in the navy was as much forbidden to the plebeian as one in the army. Possibly, after enduring danger, and storm and battle for fifteen or twenty years, he might be made a boatswain’s mate—that was all. And then! Besides, it was by no means Thibault’s ambition to wear a short vest and sail-cloth trousers, but the blue uniform of the king with a red vest and gold epaulettes. He had moreover known of no single case in which the son of a mere shoe-maker had become Master of a Frigate, or even Lieutenant. So he was forced to give up all idea of joining the King’s Navy.

Thibault would not have minded being a Notary, and at one time thought of apprenticing himself to the Royal Scrivener, Maitre Niquet, as a stepping-stone, and of making his way up on the strength of his own legs and with the help of his pen. But supposing him to have risen to the position of head clerk with a salary of a hundred crowns, where was he to find the thirty thousand francs which would be required for the purchase of the smallest village practice.

There was, therefore, no better chance of his becoming a scrivener than of be coming an officer on sea or land. Meanwhile, Thibault’s father died, leaving very little ready money. There was about enough to bury him, so he was buried, and this done, there remained some thirty or forty francs over for Thibault.

Thibault knew his trade well; indeed, he was a first-rate workman, but he had no inclination to handle either auger or parer. It ended, therefore, with his leaving all his father’s tools in the care of a friend—a remnant of prudence still remaining to him—and selling every vestige of furniture. Having thus realized a sum of five hundred and forty livres, he determined to make what was then called the tour of France.

Thibault spent three years in travelling; he did not make his fortune during that time, but he learnt a great many things in the course of his journey of which he was previously ignorant, and acquired certain accomplishments which he had previously been without.

He learned amongst other things that, although it was as well to keep one’s word on matters of business with a man, it was no use whatever keeping love vows made to a woman.

So much for his character and habits of mind. As to his external accomplishments, he could dance a jig beautifully, hold his own at quarter-staff against four men, and handle the boar-spear as cleverly as the best huntsman going. All these things had not a little served to increase Thibault’s natural self-esteem, and, seeing himself handsomer, stronger, and cleverer than many of the nobles, he would exclaim against Providence, crying, “Why was I not nobly born? Why was not that noble man yonder born a peasant?”

But as Providence took care not to make any answer to these apostrophes, and as Thibault found that dancing, playing at quarter-staff, and throwing the boar-spear only fatigued the body, without procuring him any material advantage, he began to turn his thoughts towards his ancient trade, humble though it was, saying to himself, if it enabled the father to live, it would also enable the son. So Thibault went and fetched away his tools; and then, tools in hand, he went to ask permission of the Steward of his Royal Highness Louis Philippe of Orleans, to build a hut in the forest, in which to carry on his trade. He had no difficulty in obtaining this, for the steward knew by experience that his master was a very kind-hearted man, expending as much as two hundred and forty thousand francs a year on the poor; he felt sure, therefore, that one who gave away a sum like this, would be willing to let an honest workman who wished to ply his trade, have thirty or forty feet of ground.

As he had leave to establish himself in whatever part of the forest he liked best, Thibault chose a spot near the osier-beds, where the roads crossed—one of the most beautiful parts of the woods, less than a mile from Oigny and about three times that distance from Villers-Cotterets. The shoemaker put up his workshop, built partly of old planks given him by M. Panisis, who had been having a sale in the neighborhood, and partly of branches that the steward gave him leave to cut in the forest.

When the building of the hut, which consisted of a bedroom, cosily shut in, where he could work during the winter, and of a lean-to, open to the air, where he could work in the summer, was completed, Thibault began to think of making himself a bed. At first, a layer of fern had to serve for this purpose; but after he had made a hundred pairs of wooden shoes and had sold these to Bedeau, who kept a general shop at Villers-Cotterets, he was able to pay a sufficient deposit to get a mattress, to be paid for in full by the end of three months. The framework of the bed was not difficult to make; Thibault was not the shoe-maker he was without being a bit of a carpenter in to the bargain, and when this was finished he plaited osiers to take the place of sacking, laid the mattress upon them, and found himself at last with a bed to lie upon.

Little by little came the sheets, and then, in their turn, the coverlids. The next purchase was a chafing-dish and earthenware pots to cook in, and finally some plates and dishes. Before the year was out, Thibault had also added to his furniture a fine oak chest and a fine walnut-wood cupboard, both, like the bed, his own handiwork. All the while, he was driving a brisk trade, for none could beat Thibault in turning a block of beech into a pair of shoes or converting the odd chips into spoons, salt-cellars, and natty little bowls.

He had now been settled in his work shop for three years, that is, ever since his return after the completion of his tour round France, and there was nothing for which anyone could have reproached him during this interval except the failing we have already mentioned that he was rather more envious of the good fortune of his neighbour than was altogether conducive to the welfare of his soul. But this feeling was as yet so inoffensive, that his confessor had no need to do more than awaken in him a sense of shame for harbouring thoughts which had, so far, not resulted in any active crime.

To be continued…