The Nyctalope vs Lucifer 3: The Triumph of the Nyctalope

by Jean de La Hire

  Another protagonist is Charles Severac, a misguided militant anarchist and a formidable engineer, who has designed a super-powerful submarine called the Torpedo. As it turns out, Severac is also the Hictaner’s biological father. At the end of the story, Severac betrays Oxus and Fulbert, the Hictaner is restored to normality and marries Moisette, Oxus’ daughter. Together, they retire to live in peace on a small island near Tahiti. Fulbert manages to escape, while Oxus makes a deal with the authorities.

  L’Homme qui peut vivre dans l’eau takes place between February and May of an unspecified year, but several topical references, such as a mention of a King of England as opposed to Queen Victoria, who passed away in 1901, leads us to assume that the story was initially meant to take place contemporaneously, i.e.: in 1908, as was, in fact, the case with most of La Hire’s novels.

  However, with the next book, Le Mystère des XV [The Mystery of the XV], first serialized in Le Matin in 1911, La Hire decided to reuse the characters and events from L’Homme as a springboard for a more ambitious novel.

  Oxus now returns as the leader of a secret society of 15 megalomaniacal scientists calling themselves the XV, who plan to conquer Mars, which they have reached by using technologically-advanced rockets. There, they propose to breed a better race of men using smart, young girls kidnapped from Earth. The story takes place on the same Mars as that in H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, which is presented as historical fact. The XV have discovered ways of thwarting the Martians’ heat ray and black smoke and are at war with the aliens, who are fighting them back with their famous tripods.

  Among the girls taken to Mars by Oxus are Xavière de Ciserat and her younger sister, Yvonne. Xavière is engaged to a bold 33-year-old French explorer named Leo Sainte-Claire, who is nicknamed the Nyctalope, we are told, because of his ability to see in total darkness. Leo also has a younger sister, Christiane, who is adopted. After managing to capture one of the rockets and getting to Mars, Leo confronts the XV and, eventually, proves strong enough to become their new leader. He discovers that Wells’ Martians, beings with huge heads and eight tentacles, are drawing their sustenance from other bipedal humanoid Martians, who are an earlier stage of their evolution.

  Eventually, the Nyctalope restores peace between the XV and the Martians and frees the bipeds from their enslavement. He marries Xavière under a new Martian rite, devised for the circumstances, while Christiane marries Noël de Pierrefort, a former servant of the XV. Oxus renounces his former ways and rejoices in the peace and harmony of the new-found Martian colony.

  Le Mystère des XV takes place from September through November 1910. La Hire now tells us that the events of L’Homme qui peut vivre dans l’eau actually took place 25 years prior, meaning in 1885, despite the topical references that had been contained therein. We are told that Fulbert is now dead, that Leo is the son of Jean Sainte-Claire, who died ten years prior (i.e.: in 1900). Christiane, his adopted younger sister, is revealed to be the daughter of the Hictaner and Moisette–and therefore Oxus’ granddaughter–adopted by Jean Sainte-Claire after a terrible tornado ravaged Tahiti and killed her parents. Xavière and Yvonne de Ciserat are the daughters of Louis de Ciserat from the first novel, who is now retired.

  This abundance of details is a clear indication that La Hire purposefully intended to retroactively move the events of L’Homme qui peut vivre dans l’eau from a presumed 1908 back to 1885. Since La Hire states in Le Mystère des XV that Leo is 33, this means that he was born in 1877. This would also mean that the Nyctalope would have been 69 by the time of his last recorded adventure in 1946, while still looking much younger and vital. This element, as we shall see, was dealt with in the later books.

  After World War I, and an interval of ten years, during which La Hire wrote other novels, the Nyctalope made his return in Lucifer, serialized in Le Matin in late 1921 and early 1922. In it, the megalomaniacal Baron Glô von Warteck of Schwarzrock, aptly nicknamed Lucifer, the last descendent of a line of evil tyrants, proposes to enslave humanity using his devilish “teledynamo” from his secret lair at the North Pole.

  Lucifer takes place contemporaneously, in May and June 1921. Possibly due to some confusion caused by the amount of time that had passed since he had last chronicled his hero’s adventures, La Hire called the Nyctalope “Jean de Sainclair.” Because Leo looked like he had not aged a day since he met his biographer, La Hire claimed that he was 35, even though in reality, he would have been 44. We also learned that his birthday is on May 7, that his mother died of pneumonia about a year and a half before the story began and that he has just returned from the Sudan. In fact, La Hire enumerates a whole series of unrecorded adventures that have taken place since his last encounter with Leo: the Nyctalope is supposed to have subdued rebel tribes in Southern Morocco, freed the King of Spain who had been kidnapped by terrorists, fought a trio of super-villains in China, etc.

  More surprisingly, no mention is made of the Nyctalope’s marriage to Xavière de Ciserat or of Xavière herself. Leo appears to be single again and very much in love with the young opera singer Laurence Païli, whom he marries at the end of the novel. La Hire states that she bore him three sons. However, neither she nor any of her children ever made a reappearance in the series.

  In Lucifer, Leo is assisted by Raymond de Ciserat, a Navy lieutenant, the son of gynaecologist C.-G. de Ciserat. We can only speculate as to the relationship between the earlier Ciserats (Louis and Xavière) on the one hand, and C.-G. de Ciserat and Raymond on the other. They are probably cousins.

  The next novel in the series is Le Roi de la Nuit [The King of the Night], written in December 1922. In it, the Nyctalope flies to Rhea, a heretofore undiscovered planet of the Solar System, in an anti-gravity-powered spaceship. There, he and his crew settle a war between Rhea’s winged daysiders and its ape-like nightsiders. At the end of the book, Leo is said to marry Véronique d’Olbans, the daughter of the scientist who designed the spacecraft. The action takes place between June and September 1922.

  Le Roi de la Nuit presents us with an unusual problem. The novel was serialized in Le Matin in 1943, then collected in book form that same year. No information about a first publication in 1923 could be found. It is obvious that La Hire rewrote it to some extent to conform with later events, because the 1943 edition features no topical 1920s references and includes as supporting cast Leo’s Japanese friend Gnô Mitang and his two Corsican bodyguards, Vitto and Soca, none of whom he had yet met in 1922! Also, scholar Pierre Versins noted in his Encyclopaedia that the original version made a reference to H. G. Wells’ Professor Cavor’s cavorite–a second Wellsian crossover–being used to propel the spacecraft, but that reference is missing from the 1943 edition, which labels the antigravity substance “Z-4” and credits its discovery to Véronique’s father, Maxime d’Olbans.

  We may therefore safely assume that the 1922 account is the real one, and the 1943 version a somewhat made-up version rewritten by La Hire, possibly at Saint-Clair’s suggestion, to polish his image during the French Occupation. The fact that the book was published by the Editions du Livre Moderne, the “aryanized” successor of J. Ferenczi & fils whom La Hire had been asked to manage, is telling.

  We should therefore feel free to ignore this so-called “marriage” to Véronique d’Olbans–although an affair with her would certainly explain the sudden disappearance of Laurence Païli and her three children. Several times throughout the series, La Hire states that the Nyctalope is what we would call today a “serial womanizer.” One might assume that Laurence divorced Leo because of his infidelities and obtained custody of the boys.

  The next story in the Nyctalope saga was L’Amazone du Mont Everest [The Amazon of Mount Everest], serialized in 1925, and obviously inspired by the then-recent exploits of Alexandra David-Néel in Tibet. In it, the Nyctalope, who has just returned from yet another unrecorded adventure in equatorial Africa, embarks on a Tibetan expedition accompanied by French Navy Captain Jean de Ciserat (another cousin?) and his wife,
Gaelle. Near Mount Everest, Leo discovers a hidden civilization of Amazons and eventually leaves with their Queen Mizzeia Khali, who has become besotted with him.

  L’Amazone takes place in April 1924, and states that Leo is in his early 40ies–he is in fact 47. As always, he appears younger than his biological age. In it, we are told that Leo is already familiar with Tibet, which he has visited before. In fact, La Hire often mentioned Tibet amongst Leo’s unrecorded adventures and claims that he is amongst the men “who have lifted the veils of the mysteries of Tibet.”

  The next novel, La Captive du Démon [The Captive of the Demon], was serialized in Le Matin in 1927. Now, Leo faces an adversary that is even possibly deadlier than Lucifer: Leonid Zattan, Prince of Issyk-Koul, a forbidden city located in the region of Tien-Chan in Central Asia. Zattan is the lord and master of an international empire of criminals, anarchists and evil-doers. He is the Prophet of the Antichrist and stands for pure evil and anarchy. He is opposed by a mysterious mastermind called Mathias Lumen, who lives in a secluded castle located on the island of Ouessant in Brittany. Lumen has unearthed a heretofore undiscovered prophecy of Nostradamus, which predicts that only one man can prevent the coming of the Antichrist and “the heaps of corpses and rivers of blood” that will ensue. That man is, of course, Leo Saint-Clair, the Nyctalope!

  In order to fulfill the prophecy and defeat Zattan, Leo must marry the “golden virgin” and father a child with her. The girl turns out to be young Sylvie Mac Dhul, the only daughter of the late millionaire Gregor Mac Dhul, one of Lumen’s associates. Zattan, who is equally familiar with the Prophecy, is naturally intent on getting his hands on Sylvie and using her for his own, evil purposes. In the course of the story, Leo teams up with Gnô Mitang, a Japanese who was Gregor Mac Dhul’s dedicated assistant. Zattan, on the other hand, is assisted by Diana Ivanovna Krasnoview, the self-styled “Red Princess,” a merciless villainess who was once Lumen’s lover and now dreams of marrying the Monarch of Issyk-Koul. The novel ends on a less than conclusive note: Zattan is dethroned and exiled to a tiny island in the South Pacific; Diana succeeds in killing Lumen and escapes. Leo marries Sylvie, as required by the Prophecy. La Hire tells us that the grim fate that threatened the world has now been averted. But has it?...

  The events of La Captive du Démon take place in March and April of 1926. (Some sloppy editing in the book version occasionally slips in the date of 1919 instead, but that is obviously an error.) When Sylvie first meets Leo, she recognizes him as the man “who defeated the monster known as Lucifer” and “the hero behind the exploration of planet Mars.” In that book, Leo uses the alias of Pedro del Campo and poses as a Spanish gypsy. We are also told that he earned the rank of Colonel in the French Army during the Great War, during which he met both Zattan and Lumen and became aware of their interest in the prophecies of Nostradamus; while in Madrid, he heard about Lumen’s recent activities, and that information is what propelled him into the story.

  Diana Krasnoview returned in Titania, which was serialized in Le Matin in 1929. In it, she kidnapped Pierre, the newly-born son of Leo and Sylvie. This time, the Red Princess is allied with an evil engineer named Korridès who has invented a death ray and a futuristic, sun-powered helicopter. Together, they try to take over the world, but fail. Diana is ultimately stabbed to death by a young gypsy girl and Korridès commits suicide while in prison. Titania takes place soon after La Captive du Démon, in May and June 1927.

  The next story, Belzebuth, serialized in Le Matin in 1930, reveals that Korridès and Titania had a son years prior to their encounter with the Nyctalope. He is the savage, yet brilliant, scientist Hughes Mézarek, a.k.a. Belzebuth. Mézarek injects himself, Sylvie and Pierre with a cataleptic serum, programmed to awaken them all 172 years later, i.e.: in the year 2100. The Nyctalope and Gnô Mitang (now a regular sidekick) follow him, using the same method, and discover a future world divided into two blocs: one under Mézarek’s control, the other under Leo’s. Eventually, the Nyctalope defeats Mézarek, who is stabbed to death by a girl. Interestingly, in the future, the Nyctalope meets a friendly descendent of Oxus. Belzebuth starts and ends in June 1928.

  Jean de La Hire never tells us how Leo and his family and friends returned from the year 2100 to the present. Instead, he ends the novel by having Leo waking up in bed–as if the entire adventure had been nothing but a dream. But was it? It is possible that the story did take place, but that some as-yet-unknown time traveling entity rescued the Nyctalope and his family from the future, and even tampered with their memories. La Hire, not knowing what to write, filled in the gaps as best he could.

  The next novel, Gorillard, serialized in Le Matin in 1932, takes place in March and April 1931. In it, the Nyctalope fights yet another mysterious super-villain who, despite his plethora of colorful identities, Gorillard, the Mastodon, Ourga, Dan Arlem, etc., is in reality Dominique de Soto, an arch-enemy of the Saint-Clairs, who has become the master of the Seven Living Buddhas. The self-styled Gorillard uses their secret Oriental science and psychic powers to threaten the West, but is defeated.

  Gorillard is the first novel which reveals that, thanks to Sylvie’s immense fortune, Leo has founded the C.I.D.–Committee of Information and Defense–an international organization to combat crime, a veritable army of do-gooders at his beck and call. The characters of the two loyal Corsican bodyguards Vitto and Soca are introduced.

  The next book written by La Hire was to be the origin story of the Nyctalope–revealed at last! L’Assassinat du Nyctalope [The Assassination of the Nyctalope] was published in 1933. By then, Leo was a somewhat unlikely hero, a 56 year-old man in an unaging 40 year-old body. Perhaps questions were being asked? One might theorize that, in order to protect himself and his family, Leo asked his biographer, La Hire, to write a story which would make him appear younger than his real age, hence L’Assassinat du Nyctalope.

  The novel moves Leo’s life-story forward in time 15 years by stating that he was 20 in 1912, meaning that he would have been born in 1892, not in 1877 as previously established. More surprisingly, the book states that Leo’s father, now called Pierre Saint-Clair (not Jean) is a scientist, who has invented a device called “Radiant Z” capable of recording, storing and manipulating all types of radio transmissions.

  A mysterious Asian mastermind named Sadi Khan shoots Pierre, who is left paralyzed, and steals his plans. Leo and his friends pursue the villains to Lausanne, in Switzerland, where Leo is shot in the face by a gang of Russian “anarchists” (Communists) led by Dr. Serge Ivanof. The bullet grazes his right temporal lobe and he is first blinded, before gaining the power to see in the dark, then eventually regaining his full sight. That is when his eyes acquire their mysterious colors.

  Young Leo falls in love with his nurse, Aurora Malianoff, who is revealed to be in cahoots with the Communists. (Her real name is Katia Irenovna Garcheff.) Leo is captured and tortured–beaten up, burned–and ultimately stabbed in the heart and killed–on March 21. He is rushed to the clinic of Dr. de Villiers-Pagan who removes the blade and restarts his heart by implanting inside it an artificial device made of metal and rubber and powered by electro-magnets–thus turning him into a proto-cyborg.

  One of the unintended consequences of this surgery might have been to extend Leo’s natural life-span, hence the necessity to pretend that he was born later than he really was. In that case, it is more likely that the events of L’Assassinat du Nyctalope really took place in 1897, despite any topical references. In it, we also learned that Leo was captain of his rugby team at school and studied science at the University. His family already seems to have high-ranking contacts with both the French Diplomatic Corps and the various departments of French Military Intelligence.

  L’Assassinat du Nyctalope ends tragically: Sadi Khan is never caught and La Hire hints that he might have been part of a greater criminal empire, perhaps that of Leonid Zattan. The Swiss Communist cell also manages to escape, except for Aurora who commits suicide. Leo’s father remains paraly
zed and dies soon afterwards, unable to complete his wondrous invention.

  As for Leo, he has become the Nyctalope and acquired a sense of his mission. Strangely, as he is about to die, having already suffered from a night of torture, he is said to experience a vision of “eternal life” which may be an expression of religious belief or perhaps a precognitive experience of what the future has in store for him.

  The next book in the series is arguably the last of the Nyctalope’s great battles. Les Mystères de Lyon [The Mysteries of Lyons], serialized in Le Matin in 1933, takes place right after Gorillard, from June to August 1931. In it, Leo fights the beautiful Alouh T’Ho, the leader of a pseudo-satanic cult called the Blood Worshippers which is headquartered in Lyon. Despite looking like a 25-year-old girl, Alouh T’Ho may be, in fact, T’seu Hsi, a former Empress of China who ruled from 1861 to 1908. She maintains her youth and vitality by stealing other people’s blood and life-force. The Nyctalope is again assisted by Gnô Mitang, Vitto and Soca and the local C.I.D. Alouh T’Ho naturally succumbs to Leo’s overwhelming charm, and, at the end of the book, the Nyctalope is satisfied with sending her home and exacting her solemn vow to never return to France.

  Sylvie Mac Dhul plays only a minor role in the novel, but Leo’s son, Pierre Saint-Clair, suddenly takes center stage. Surprisingly, we are told that he is now 19 and studying at the University of Leipzig in Germany, preparing to be a diplomat and statesman. (His father believes in the Franco-German alliance.) How could Pierre, allegedly born in 1927, be 19 in 1931? There really is only one possibility: If Pierre is 19, then he was born in 1912 and he is not Sylvie’s son–but Xavière’s! If Leo’s first wife died in childbirth in 1912, that would explain both her departure from the series, the continued friendly relations between Leo and the Ciserats (who might otherwise have been upset by a divorce) and the presence in 1931 of a 19 year-old Pierre, who of course would call Sylvie “mother” as was the custom.