The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th Century

by Terry Hale

  ***

  This time Constant Guignard renounced his role of Good Samaritan and swore that from now on in order to do good he would content himself with preventing evil.

  Shortly afterwards, he accidentally got wind of a crime that one of his friends was contemplating. He should have denounced him to the police; but he preferred to foil the crime without causing the criminal’s downfall. He assisted his friend in his preparations, familiarising himself with every detail, waiting for the right moment to put a spoke in the wheel and make everything turn out as he wanted. But the rogue he was trying to help saw straight through his game and managed the affair so adroitly that the crime was committed, the criminal escaped, and Constant Guignard arrested.

  ***

  The attorney general’s arraignment of Constant Guignard was a master-piece of logic. He passed in review the defendant’s entire life, recalling his lamentable childhood, his punishments, his ejection from the examination hall, the audacity of his first attempted theft, his deplorable involvement in the prison riot, his escape from Cayenne, his return to France under an assumed name. At this point, the orator’s judicial eloquence attained its zenith. He berated the charitable hypocrite, the corrupter of honest households who, in order to sate his passions, sent the menfolk off to the grogshop to drink at his expense, the false benefactor who unhealthily sought to purchase popularity by bestowing harmful presents on people, the monster who hid behind a mask of philanthropy. He demonstrated at length the refined perversity of this criminal who took in rabid dogs in order to set them on honest people, this devil incarnate who loved evil for the sake of evil, who even risked maiming himself in stopping a runaway horse out of the wicked delight he would gain from seeing it dash into a crowd of people, killing innocent children and the elderly. Ah! A wretch like this was capable of anything! Indeed, he had almost certainly committed crimes which would never come to light. There was every reason to believe that he had been an accessory to the betrayal of his country by the substitute whose place he had purchased. As for the orphan he had raised and whose dead body had been found at his door, who was better placed to have murdered her? This crime was no doubt just the bloody epilogue to another lurid sex scandal which one hardly dared to begin to probe. After such a catalogue of crime, it was hardly necessary to dwell on the present matter. In this case, despite the impudent denials of the accused, the evidence was conclusive. The full rigour of the law should be applied. No mercy should be shown. No punishment could be too great. Not only were they dealing with an utter villain, but also a criminal genius, a monster of hypocrisy and depravity whose actions called into question the very notion of virtue and made one despair of the human race.

  Faced with a peroration of this kind, Constant Guignard’s lawyer had no choice but to plead diminished responsibility. He did his best. He described similar pathological cases, delivered a learned dissertation on the neurosis of evil, presented his client as not responsible for his actions, a sort of unconscious Papavoine,2 and concluded by saying that abnormalities of this kind were better treated at the Charenton hospital rather than on the place de la Roquette.3

  Constant Guignard was sentence to death by a unanimous verdict.

  ***

  Honest men whose hatred of crime had rendered them ferocious went delirious with joy and shouted bravo.

  ***

  The death of Constant Guignard was like his childhood: exemplary but sad. He climbed on the scaffold without fear and without posturing, his face as calm as his conscience, and with the serenity of a martyr – which was misinterpreted by all as brutal indifference. As the moment of his apotheosis approached, knowing the executioner’s straightened circumstances and that he was the head of a family, he discreetly informed him that he had left his entire fortune to him. The executioner was so moved that he required three attempts to sever the wrong-doer’s neck.

  ***

  Three months later, one of Constant Guignard’s friends, returning from a long trip, learnt of the sad fate suffered by this most honest man of whom he knew nothing but good. In order to mitigate as best he could the injustice of fate, he bought the freehold of a plot in a cemetery, ordered an impressive marble tombstone, and composed an epitaph for his friend. He died the next day of a stroke. Nonetheless, the price having been paid in advance, the guillotined man had his sepulchre. But the workman responsible for engraving the epigraph took it on himself to correct a badly-written letter on the manuscript. And the poor benefactor of humanity, this homme de bien, misunderstood throughout his entire life, lies in an eternal slumber beneath this epitaph:

  Here lies Constant Guignard

  Homme de rien.

  1 Maurice Bouchor. Director of the Petit Théâtre des Marionnettes in the Galerie Vivienne, which was extremely popular among such men-of-letters of the time as Alfred Jarry. Oscar Wilde attended a performance of The Tempest there in 1892, and wrote enthusiastically of the experience.

  2 Papavoine. The murderous activities of Papavoine occurred in the mid-1820s and were still a watchword half-a-century later.

  3 The Charenton hospital was a lunatic asylum (the Marquis de Sade staged his famous plays there at the beginning of the century); the Place de la Roquette was where executions took place.

  The Hanged Man

  Charles Cros

  He grips himself by the neck, making a grimace1

  Pay no attention! – It’s a tic, a mannerism that I’ve been left with ever since my misadventure.

  What misadventure? Ah! That’s right. I didn’t tell you that I’d been hanged. Yes, hanged … It’s to do with the fact that I’ve never been lucky.

  Look! When I was a kid, I’d be given pieces of bread which were either buttered or had jam on – that would depend on the time of day. Well, you see! I would always drop my piece of bread on the ground, and it would always fall on the wrong side, or the right side rather (the side with the butter or the jam on it), and there was always dust on the ground! All that points to my being unlucky. Tic.

  And then? Well so it went on. At school, I was promised third prize in gymnastics. (I’d never won a prize.)

  To work for my prize, one night I leave the dormitory and go down a drainpipe into the gymnastics yard and start working on the trapeze. I try to do a somersault and, whoops, I fall on my belly (like my slices of bread). I call out, the watchman arrives and takes me back to my bed. I had a fortnight of colics and three hundred lines to write out every day in my … (he rubs his belly) … free moments. As for the prize, see what I mean? After that escapade, psst. (His hand slices the air.)

  All that points to me not having any luck! Tic. And yet, when I was twenty, everything smiled upon me! I was well off, talented, no, not talented, but dashing. I smelt of flowers! And when I saw a woman go by (oh! any woman), I felt, tic, happy to be alive.

  Oh! Women! … That’s why I worked hard at dancing: I worked terribly hard at dancing. – But I have never danced. I should never have dared with my bad luck.

  Oh! I’ve seen plenty of charming young girls! But I’ve never spoken to them. It’s funny! They never spoke to me either.

  I couldn’t get over my bad luck! So, to try and forget, I abandoned myself to debauchery. With money, you can have anything you want … Well now! I for one got nothing for my money, or, if I got something, it was no joke. My friends would break windows, and I was always the one who paid the fines.

  It cost me a packet, all those fines! So I got myself made a member of the Dumbclucks Club (it’s the most serious one) to make up for my losses at debauchery with gambling. Tic.

  I’m very much a gambling man – I get fixations, have fetishes. I said to myself: unlucky in love, so lucky at gambling. Do you see? I turned the saying round. – So I gamble. I lose. Anatole tells me: keep going, you’ll hit a lucky streak! I keep going, I lose. Anatole eggs me on: I double, I triple, I quadruple my bets and finally. … I’ve lost everything, or pretty much.

  All I had left was my millstone quarry at La Fe
rté-sous-Jouarre! … I was crazy … Anatole said: poor boy! It’s easy enough to see that he’s got no hangman’s noose in his pocket.

  With these words, I go back home. I cash in my stock. I send Jean, my valet de chambre, to pay off this ghastly debt, and I start thinking things over. I often think things over because of my bad luck. The hangman’s noose … that’s a fixation! A fetish! It should work, it will work for me.

  I had two francs fifty left in my pocket. I rush out like a mad dog. I walked, I ran! I see a shop: Martin, ropemaker. I go in. Give me two francs fifty worth of hangman’s noose.

  Martin smiles; he jokes: I don’t have any, but here’s some good merchandise to make one with.

  I take the parcel of rope, I go back home and have dinner. I tell Jean: tomorrow, at five past eleven, you’re to wake me, or I’ll give you the sack!

  That’s how I talk to him, besides he’s very devoted. Tic.

  After dinner, I think things over and … I go to bed. I slept! Like a log.

  Misfortune makes you sleep.

  The next morning, I wake up – it was ten o’clock. I set about thinking things over. My millstone quarry at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, that will bring in, that will bring in … I don’t know how much that will bring in … My notary knows. I don’t think it’s very much. And then I can’t live in a quarry. And what about eating? You can’t eat a quarry.

  The parcel of rope was there on the pouffe. Not a moment to lose. Jean was meant to come in at five past eleven!

  I climb up on the pouffe, I unhook from the centre of the ceiling a Venetian lantern which serves as my night light; I loop the rope through the ring of this ceiling rose, I get back down off the pouffe and I think things over … I often think things over because of my bad luck. Tic.

  It was three minutes past eleven. I do a slip knot, no, a reef knot. At school, I was particularly good at netting and knotting – reef knots. I glance quickly over my attire and my past life.

  It was four minutes past eleven; I get back on the pouffe.

  I loop the reef knot around my neck, and, with one eye on the clock, I think things over.

  My heart was beating as if I had had fifty louis tied up on the green baize table.

  Four and a half minutes past eleven. I hear Jean’s heavy step as he comes to wake me. Jean approaches, he’s about to turn the handle of the door …

  Pouff! A kick at the pouffe, and …

  Well now! People usually have the wrong idea about hanging.

  I felt as if … as if some kind of … I mean I had the feeling … not exactly, I can’t really explain to you. The thing is, for you to understand me you yourself would have to … but you wouldn’t want to.

  To cut a long story short, when I came to, I was on my bed, covered in melissa cordial.

  I tried to shout out: where’s the rope? but I couldn’t, because I was very hoarse. It’s peculiar, this hoarseness! Tic.

  This is what happened.

  Hardly was I in the air when Jean came in, saw me twitching about and immediately unhooked me.

  I wanted to get up to go and fetch the rope, but what a backache I had! That’s something doctors don’t know! What mysterious connections join the neck to the small of the back!

  I treated myself to a rub down, and that night I went back, all crippled as I was, to the club. I had my rope in my pocket.

  They were playing for big stakes. I bet my millstone quarry at baccarat, and … I win!

  I staked everything: the money and the quarry, and I won again.

  In the end I bet five times. I had won back all of my fortune, except for a meadow and ten cows in the West. I felt it was sensible to call a halt there, besides there was nobody who would take me on any more.

  Well then! Does that look like luck to you?

  Not at all. From that day to this I’ve gambled here, there and everywhere, but whatever I do I can’t manage either to win or lose a thing. I’ve got no happiness, nor any unhappiness. That’s not what I call luck!

  I was forgetting to tell you how I became engaged – convinced of the power of my rope. Tomorrow I’m marrying someone very suitable whom I certainly don’t dislike, I even have some regard for her. But that isn’t love, the yearning kind of love!

  When I was telling all this to Anatole, he said something very striking: you’re not a real hanged man, you weren’t legally hanged, in the name of the law, according to the Penal Code, for a real crime. Your rope has only half worked.

  It’s true what he said; and he added that if I wanted to get the better of my bad luck, I’d have to get married and become …

  Well then! Do you see what a funny situation I’m in! Going by my fiancée’s quiet, upright nature, there’s no way that can happen. Tic.

  I’m going to order the carriages. Goodnight.

  1 It was considered lucky in nineteenth-century France to own a length of rope with which someone had hanged themselves.

  Monsieur Mathias

  Jules Lermina

  When news came of the death of Monsieur Mathias there was widespread surprise in the little town of Lyre-sur-Ys. This was a man of scarcely forty-five, hail and hearty, his bearing straight as a die, and who – would you believe the misfortune – scarcely three years since had married a young girl of twenty, the niece of the tax collector, a charming woman with whom he was head over heels in love!

  Naturally, Monsieur Mathias, now being dead, was held to have possessed, when alive, every virtue under the sun. It would have been a fine thing if people had considered him a usurer and a skinflint, as they had before! Would it have crossed anybody’s mind to trot out a particular story connected to this fine marriage and which did him little credit, and would anyone even have remembered the terror dimly struck in people’s hearts by that sly-looking big fellow, a rich money-grabber who, it was rumoured, made a little hobby of mixing up poisonous substances which he tried out on dogs? What a notion! He was dead, let him rest in peace!

  Besides, when you took the time to think about it, was this death really so unlikely? Monsieur Mathias had obviously had some foreboding. Had he not, quite recently, ordered the building – by workmen called from Paris for the purpose – of the family chapel which awaited his mortal remains in the cemetery? Moreover, for some time it had been noticed that he appeared worried. He would wander about his own house as if in fear of mysterious thieves. He kept his wife shut up and for weeks on end locked himself in the laboratory, its chimney ablaze at night. Were not these things symptoms of some damage to the brain – Doctor Labarre pronounced knowingly – which had resulted in a haemorrhage.

  Well, Monsieur Mathias had been given a splendid funeral. One-third of the entire population had accompanied him to his last resting place and a few eyes were moist when the oak coffin had been lowered into the crypt of the funeral chapel, which was a monument and no mistake, a place where two men of his size might have slept in comfort.

  As people left they were wondering what would become of Monsieur Mathias’ widow.

  *

  Now the truth is that Monsieur Mathias was not dead. Two hours after the ceremony, the latter was to be seen in the vault where the bier had been lowered. There was the sound of two little taps, like the clicking of a spring, and the coffin had opened like a wardrobe, at which Monsieur Mathias had sat up, stretching like a man upon waking. Through a barred opening set high in the wall above him, there fell a ray of light. Monsieur Mathias had got to his feet by now and was slowly rubbing his knees, which had become a little stiff.

  In short, he felt perfectly all right, perfectly comfortable. The drug which he had ingested, after having carefully measured out the dosage, had produced exactly the desired effect. He had been believed dead, he had been buried, everything was going according to plan.

  Monsieur Mathias had made all his preparations well in advance. Things had been very cleverly worked out down there in the vault. There were some proper clothes, some food provisions, a few bottles of good wine, kept nicely chilled,
as everyone can imagine. And since there is nothing like a funeral – even your own – to give you an appetite, Monsieur Mathias, sitting comfortably on his coffin, made his repast and drank to the future.

  For it is time to tell you why Monsieur Mathias was there, six feet under, of his own accord.

  As ever, a woman came into it. Celibate until the age of forty, Monsieur Mathias, formerly a pharmacist who had made a small fortune from his cramp-relieving pills, had been smitten by the charming Anne Piédefer, the niece of the Lyre-sur-Ys tax collector. He had bluntly made his proposal to the young girl who, just as bluntly, had turned him down, which had rendered him utterly besotted … would you believe it! … like a man of forty who takes it into his head to fall in love. Being by nature dishonest, he had ensnared the tax collector in such devious schemes that within a year the poor wretch was seriously contemplating suicide, in the knowledge that government funds were somewhat diminished. At this point Monsieur Mathias came to his rescue, setting some small conditions of his own. The niece sacrificed herself for the sake of the uncle who had been like a father to her, even despite a very close understanding with a notary’s clerk in the next town. Anne, the doleful victim, became Madame Mathias. She had undergone all the consequences of this catastrophe. But Monsieur Mathias, in all fairness to him, was convinced that she hated him. It was but a step from this to the belief that he was cuckolded, as he deserved. This suspicion degenerated into an obsession. His wife never went out, and no one came to visit his wife. What did it matter. Monsieur Mathias accused himself of ineptitude. If he was unable to catch his wife in flagrante it was because he was nothing but a simpleton.