The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th Century

by Terry Hale

  ‘Well, be it so; but stay, Solange, you say you are an aristocrat?’

  ‘If I did not confess as much, you would guess the truth, would you not?’

  ‘And being an aristocrat, you are pursued as such?’

  ‘Something of the kind there is.’

  ‘And you are hiding yourself to escape the search?’

  ‘At No. 24, Rue Ferou, with Mother Ledieu, whose husband was once my father’s coachman. You see, I am quite unreserved with you.’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘My own secrets I discover to you freely, my dear sir; but my father’s secrets are not mine. My father is hiding, on his part, until he finds an opportunity to emigrate. That is all I can let you know.’

  ‘And, with regard to yourself, what do you mean to do?’

  ‘Set out with my father, if possible; if otherwise, let him go alone, and join him afterwards.’

  ‘Tonight, when you were arrested, you had been to see your father?’

  ‘I had.’

  ‘Listen to me, dear Solange.’

  ‘I am doing so.’

  ‘You saw what took place just now?’

  ‘Yes; and it has given me the measure of–’

  ‘Oh, my own credit is nothing at all; but I have friends.’

  ‘I have become acquainted with one of them this evening.’

  ‘And you know that he is not one of the least powerful men of the day.’

  ‘Do you propose to use his influence to favour my father’s flight?’

  ‘No, I reserve it for you.’

  ‘But my father?’

  ‘For him I have thought of another plan.’

  ‘You have a plan to save my father!’ cried Solange, seizing my hands, and looking up earnestly into my face.

  ‘If I save your father, will you bear me in your remembrance?’

  ‘I shall be grateful to you all my life after.’

  She uttered the words with a look of pre-existent gratitude that was perfectly bewitching. Then looking at me, and in a supplicating tone, she said:

  ‘But will that be enough?’

  ‘Yes,’ I answered.

  ‘Come, I was not mistaken; you have a noble heart. I thank you in my father’s name and my own; and even should you not succeed, for the future I shall still be equally obliged to you for what you have done.’

  ‘When shall we meet again, Solange?’

  ‘When you require me next.’

  ‘Tomorrow I hope to have some good news to communicate.’

  ‘Let it be tomorrow, then.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here, if you like.’

  ‘Here! in the street?’

  ‘It is the safest place, you see; we have been talking half an hour at this spot, and nobody has come by the whole time.’

  ‘Why not let me go up to your apartment; or why should you not come to me at mine?’

  ‘Because, were you to visit me, you would implicate the worthy people who have afforded me an asylum; because, were I to go and call upon you, I should run you into the same danger.’

  ‘Well, be it so; I will borrow the card of one of my female relatives.’

  ‘Yes, that she may one day be guillotined, should I chance to be arrested.’

  ‘You are right: I will bring you a card in the name of Solange.’

  ‘Excellent! You will find that Solange will become my only true name after all.’

  ‘At what time shall we meet?’

  ‘At ten tomorrow evening.’

  ‘At ten; be it so, dear Solange.’

  ‘At ten, dear Albert.’

  I offered to kiss her hand – she presented her lovely brow.

  The following night, at half-past nine, I was in the street.

  At a quarter to ten Solange opened the door.

  We had each anticipated the hour.

  I hastened to join her.

  ‘I see you have good news in store for me,’ said she, smiling.

  ‘Capital news; and, first of all, here is your card.’

  ‘No; my father first.’

  She pushed back my hand.

  ‘Your father is saved, if he will.’

  ‘If he will, you say. What must he do?’

  ‘He must confide in me.’

  ‘That is already achieved.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You exposed yourself again!’

  ‘How could I help it? It was inevitable; but God is above us!’

  ‘And did you tell your father every thing?’

  ‘I told him you saved my life yesterday, and would perhaps save his tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow! You have guessed it – tomorrow, if he will, I can save his life.’

  ‘How so? Speak. What a fortunate meeting I shall have had, should all this turn out well!’

  ‘There is one thing, however,’ said I, hesitating.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You cannot go with him.’

  ‘As to that, I believe I told you my resolution was taken.’

  ‘Besides, by and by, I am sure I shall be able to get you a passport.’

  ‘Let us first settle about my father; we will speak of me afterwards.’

  ‘Well! I told you I had friends, did I not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I called upon one of them this morning.’

  ‘Go on!’

  ‘A man whom you know by name, and whose name is a warrant for courage, loyalty, and honour.’

  ‘And that name is –’

  ‘Marceau.’

  ‘General Marceau?’4

  ‘The same.’

  ‘You are right; if that man has made a promise, he will keep it.’

  ‘Well! he has promised.’

  ‘My God! how happy I am! Tell me what it is he has promised?’

  ‘He has promised to serve us.’

  ‘In what manner?’

  ‘In a very simple one. Kleber has just had him appointed commander-in-chief of the army in the west. He leaves Paris tomorrow night.’

  ‘Tomorrow night! We shall have no time to make preparations.’

  ‘We have none to make.’

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘He will take your father with him.’

  ‘My father?’

  ‘Yes – as his secretary. On arriving in La Vendée, your father will pledge his word to Marceau not to serve against France; and, after gaining some Vendean camp by night, he will pass over to England. When once he is settled in London, he will send you notice; I will procure a passport for you, and you shall join him in London.’

  ‘Tomorrow!’ cried Solange. ‘Is my father to depart tomorrow?’

  ‘There is no time to be lost.’

  ‘My father has had no notice.’

  ‘You can give it him.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But how, at so late an hour?’

  ‘You have got your card, and here is my arm.’

  ‘True – my card.’

  I then gave it her; she put it in her bosom.

  I offered her my arm, and we set off.

  We went as far as the Place Taranne; that is to say, the spot where I had met her the day before.

  ‘Wait for me here,’ said she.

  I bowed assent.

  She disappeared at the corner; then, a quarter of an hour after, she returned.

  ‘Come,’ said she, ‘my father wishes to see you and thank you.’

  She took my arm again, and we went on as far as the Rue Saint Guillaume.

  When we had arrived, she took a key out of her pocket, opened a small door, took hold of my hand, whilst we went up to the second floor, and gave a peculiar kind of tap at the door.

  A man about eight-and-forty or fifty opened the door. He was dressed like a working man, and appeared to be engaged at his trade as a book-binder.

  But the first words he uttered, the first thanks he expressed to me, betr
ayed the high-born nobleman.

  ‘Sir,’ said he to me, ‘Providence has directed you to us, and I receive you as his delegate. Is it true that you can save me, and are willing to do so?’

  I related every thing to him, and told him that Marceau undertook to take him as his secretary, and would require nothing of him but his promise not to bear arms against France.

  ‘When does Marceau set out?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Ought I to go to his house tonight?’

  ‘Whenever you like – he will expect you.’

  The father and daughter exchanged looks.

  ‘I think it would be more prudent if you were to go tonight, father,’ said Solange.

  ‘Be it so. But if they arrest me, I have no identity card.’

  ‘Here is mine.’

  ‘But you, yourself?’

  ‘Oh! I am known.’

  ‘Where does Marceau reside?’

  ‘In the Rue de l’Université, No. 40, at his sister’s, Mile. Desgraviers Marceau.’

  ‘Are you going with me?’

  ‘I will follow behind to escort the young lady home when you have gone in.’

  ‘But how will Marceau know that I am the man you recommend?’

  ‘You will deliver him this tri-coloured cockade; it is the sign of recognition.’

  ‘What shall I do for my deliverer?’

  ‘Trust me with your daughter’s liberation, as she has trusted me with yours.’

  ‘Let us go.’

  He put on his hat and extinguished the lights.

  We went down the stairs, lighted by the moon. At the street door he took his daughter’s arm, and went out.

  I followed them at a short distance. We reached Marceau’s house without meeting with anyone.

  I drew near to them.

  ‘This omens well,’ said I. ‘Now, shall I wait here, or go up with you?’

  ‘No, you must not run any further risk. Wait here for my daughter.’

  I bowed assent.

  ‘Once more receive my thanks, and farewell,’ said he, giving me his hand. ‘Language has no words to express the feelings I entertain towards you. I hope that God will one day enable me to express to you all my gratitude.’

  I replied by pressing his hand.

  He went in; Solange followed him; but she too, before going in, had pressed my hand.

  Ten minutes after, the door opened again.

  ‘Well?’ said I.

  ‘Well!’ she replied, ‘your friend deserves to be a friend of yours; his delicacy has no bounds. He feels that I shall be happy to stay with my father till the last moment. His sister has ordered a bed to be prepared for me in her own chamber. Tomorrow, by ten at night, my father will be beyond the reach of danger. So, tomorrow night, at ten o’clock, if you think the thanks of a daughter, who will owe a father’s life to you, are worth coming to receive, return once more to the Rue Ferou.’

  Oh! certainly, I will go. Did your father tell you anything for me?’

  ‘He thanks you for your card, which he returns to you now, and begs you to dismiss me to him as soon as possible.’

  ‘Whenever you please, Solange,’ replied I, with a heavy heart.

  I must at least know where to join my father,’ said she; then she added with a smile, ‘Oh, you have not yet got rid of me!’

  I took her hand, and pressed it to my heart.

  But she presented her forehead as before.

  ‘Tomorrow, then,’ said she.

  I put my lips to her forehead; and this time it was not merely her hand I pressed to my heart, but her heaving bosom – her palpitating heart.

  I returned home with a soul full of joy. I had never felt so elated. Was it the consciousness of having done a good action – was it that I began to love the adorable creature?

  I know not whether I slept or not, but I know that all the glad symphony of nature was singing its songs in my heart; I know that the night appeared to me everlasting – the day interminable; I know that whilst I kept urging the time to move on, I wanted to restrain it, so as not to lose one minute of the days I hoped to live.

  The following night I was in the Rue Ferou by nine o’clock.

  At half-past nine Solange appeared.

  She came towards me, and threw her arms round my neck.

  ‘Saved!’ cried she; ‘my father is saved, and to you I owe his preservation. Oh, how I do love you!’

  A fortnight later Solange received a letter, informing her that her father was in England.

  The next day I brought her a passport. She took it and burst into tears.

  ‘You don’t love me, then?’ said she.

  ‘I love you more than my life,’ I answered her; ‘but I pledged my word to your father, and I must keep it above all things.’

  ‘Then,’ said she, ‘I will break mine. If thou hast the heart to let me go, Albert, I have not the heart to leave thee.’

  Alas! she remained.

  Again there was a short pause in the narrative – a silence still more respected than the former; for all felt conscious that the end of the story was drawing near, and M. Ledru had said that this story was one he might not have a sufficient strength to go through.

  He resumed it almost immediately.

  Three months had passed away since the night Solange had declined to depart, and, since then, not a word had been said about separation.

  Solange had wished to have a lodging in the Rue Taranne. I had taken it in the name of Solange; I knew her by no other, as she herself knew me by that of Albert only. I had obtained for her a situation as junior teacher in a girls’ school, the better to secure her from the pursuit of the revolutionary tribunal, now become more active than ever.

  On Thursdays and Sundays we spent the day together in the small apartment in the Rue Taranne.

  Each day brought us a letter: I wrote to her in the name of Solange; she to me in the name of Albert.

  These three months were the happiest of my life.

  Still I had not abandoned the design I had formed after my interview with the executioner’s assistant. I had asked and obtained permission to make experiments on the tenaciousness of life after capital punishment; and these experiments had proved to me that pain, acute and terrible pain, survived the butchery.

  ‘Ah! that’s what I protest against,’ cried the doctor.

  ‘Come,’ resumed M. Ledru, ‘will you deny that the blade of the guillotine strikes that part of our body which is most fraught with sensation, on account of the many nerves that meet in it? Will you deny that the neck contains all the nerves of the upper limbs: the sympathetic, the vaginal, the frenetic, and lastly, the spinal marrow – the very source of all those that belong to the lower limbs? Will you deny that the severing, the crushing of the vertebral column, must produce one of the most frightful pains that a human being can endure?’

  ‘All this I grant,’ said the doctor; ‘but this pain lasts only a few seconds.’

  ‘That do I deny in my turn,’ exclaimed M. Ledru, with deep sincerity; ‘and even did it last but a few seconds, during that space, consciousness, personal identity, the self, continue alive; the head hears, sees, and judges its own severance from the body; and who will argue that the short duration of the torture compensates for its horrible intensity?’

  ‘So, then, in your opinion, the decree of the Constituent Assembly, which substituted the guillotine for the gallows, was an error in philanthropy, and it was better to be hanged than beheaded?’

  ‘Undoubtedly. Many have hanged themselves, or been hanged, who have been restored to life. Such people have been able to make known the sensations they experienced. It was that of sudden apoplexy – that is to say, a deep sleep, without any particular pain, without any distinct sense of anguish, a sort of flame gushing from the eyes, assuming by degrees a blue colour, then again resolving into utter darkness, as the state of syncope succeeds. And you know this, doctor, better than anyone. If you press your finger on the brain of a man,
where a piece of the skull has been removed, the man feels no pain, but merely falls asleep. Well, the same phenomenon occurs when the brain is compressed by an accession of the blood. Now, a man’s blood rushes up in a flood when he is hanged, and the brain is surcharged with it.’

  ‘True,’ said the doctor; ‘but let us return to your experiments. I long to come to your famous head, that spoke after it was cut off.’

  I fancied I heard something like a sigh issuing from M. Ledru’s chest. As for his face, there was no seeing it. The room was completely dark.

  ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘I wander from my subject, doctor; let us return to my experiments.’

  Unfortunately there was no lack of subjects.

  We were now in the Reign of Terror; they guillotined thirty or forty persons a day; and such a profusion of blood flowed in the Place de la Revolution, that they were obliged to dig a trench round the scaffold three feet in depth.

  This pit was covered over with loose boards.

  One of these boards turned over as a boy of eight or ten years old was standing on it; he fell into that hideous ditch, and was drowned.

  You need hardly be told that I said nothing to Solange as to the employment of my time on the days we did not meet; besides, I must confess that I had felt at first so strong a repugnance for those poor human mutilations, that I trembled to think of the posthumous pain that my experiments might possibly afford to the victims. But at length I had said to myself that the studies which I had given myself up to had been undertaken for the benefit of society at large; inasmuch as, if I should ever succeed to convince a body of legislators of what I myself firmly believed, I might cause the abolition of the punishment of death.

  By the end of two months I had made every imaginable experiment on the tenaciousness of life after execution. I resolved to carry out these experiments still further, if possible, by the application of electricity and galvanism.

  They put at my disposal the cemetery of Clamart, and the heads and bodies of all the sufferers.

  As fast as my experiments produced results worthy of note, I made minutes of them in writing.

  There was a small chapel in one corner of the burial-ground, which had been converted into a laboratory for my use; for you know the republic had driven the priest from his church, as well as the king from his palace.

  Here I had an electrical machine, and three or four of those instruments called stimulators.