Lucifer

by Maurice Magre

  I had imprudently stopped at a diabolical crossroads. Lilith, the princess of succubi, who caused newborn children to perish, was traversing it almost nude, in a circle of water droplets, lifting above her head an umbrella so small that it could only be a magical object to capture scattered forces. She penetrated into a restaurant, and through the open door I perceived, in the process of eating, Behemoth with his enormous belly and his elephantine face, the demon of stupidity and continual absorption in nourishment. Near to him was Kamosh, the demon of flattery, and the monstrous Ronwe with her daughters, who drew men into beds where they hissed and changed into serpents. An orchestra began to play and I saw a musician striking a tambourine while winking, in order to indicate to initiates that he was delivering himself to the magical operation of Kamlat, by which sensual enjoyments are multiplied tenfold.

  I thought about going away, but there were demons everywhere; they had invaded the earth, they had taken possession of it and they were coupling with the daughters of men as in the first days of the malediction. I saw Abigor, who cherishes uniforms, Andramelech who had peacock plumes because of his pride, the Lamias that adore the particular warmth of the lips of young men and the Lemurs that are believed to be alive but have been dead for a long time.

  I saw Leonard, the great negro, and To, the demon of speed, who once ran on foot through the deserts of Arabia and has engendered so many frightful machines in order to traverse the world rapidly. Samiaxas, enveloped in a pelisse, was sniffing the perfume that emerges from women’s dresses, seeking to unite with them with the ardor that is reported in the book of Enoch.

  White Samael, the messenger of gluttony, was carrying dishes in a basket on his scullion’s hat, and black Samael, preparer of philters and poisons, was emerging from a pharmacist’s shop where the strange flames of jars had just been extinguished.

  Ardarel, the spirit of fire, was blowing into automobile engines. Tallius, the spirit of water, was stretching in the rays of the rain, and the frightful Furlac was crawling on the paving stones, laboring to render the mud living.

  And incessantly, in all the houses, under the doors, in the cafés and the squares, pacts were being signed I saw the three candles being lit, the unrolling of virgin parchments, and I sensed around me the impalpable dust of their ashes.

  And then a verity appeared to me. I was only accursed in the measure that all humans are. All of them had sold themselves to the spirit of evil, some for money, others out of ambition, others for the pleasure of their flesh. Witchcraft was natural. It functioned in the tribunals, in the rites of marriage, in the transactions of banks. The signature of pacts was at the bottom of all contracts, it was reproduced in the newspapers, it was quoted on the Bourse. All of society was diabolical.

  What Lévy had one made me do, everyone did on a daily basis, without knowing it. Mothers, as soon as the first kiss, dedicated their children to Lucifer. Lovers coupled in the infernal manner. Priests, when they lifted the host in a church, were extending to the heavens the symbol of egotism. Humans followed the backward path, and followed it joyfully, having extinguished in themselves even the hope of the divine goal.

  The rain was still falling, and my garments were stuck to my body, but the chill I felt was agreeable, because it was like a bath, after a long soiling. I had run all day from temple to temple, everywhere there were people seeking the truth, and I perceived that I had only had to look around to discover it.

  To the right and left I saw streets hollowed out profoundly between corridors if stone, and then lose themselves I know not where. A tide of darkness rolled over the houses, descending, increasingly menacing, over the vague palpitations of the street-lights. And I walked, slowly. I was a man like all the rest, neither better nor worse, curbed by dread, lifted up by desire, who had only ever been able to love himself sincerely.

  Spring came and was followed by summer. I lived alone. I had dismissed my housekeeper and my valet de chambre, and there had been no other change in my existence. But I knew that if my pact was the resemblance of all of them, I ought, by a striking action, to efface the trace of my signature on Lévy’s parchment.

  What would that action be? It appeared to me one day, and I believe that I sensed immediately that it alone could relieve my soul of its burden, by shaking the fulcrum on which my life rested. It was necessary to realize it without losing a minute.

  I found in a drawer, on an old piece of paper, the address of the housemaid who had been Laurence’s confidante and I drafted a pneumatique to her in which I asked her to come to see me without delay. I went to put the pneumatique in the post myself, but I did not have to make a detour to avoid Saint-François-de-Sales. The stone archbishop had long ago resumed his place above the portal of the church.

  Then I waited with the same impatience that I had once experienced in other days when I was waiting for a mistress whose arrival was uncertain.

  The afternoon was reaching its end when the doorbell rang and I saw Madame Honorine come in.

  Her nose was redder than usual. She was wearing, like the uniform of a poor woman, a gray shawl crossed over her bosom, and was holding a net that contained an object of greasy nature wrapped in newspaper.

  “I’d just come from doing my shopping,” she said, lifting the net, “when I got the...”

  The pronunciation of the word stopped her, and as I was searching myself for the beginning of my speech she embarked on recriminations. She knew that the valet de chambre had a grudge against her. She had not been astonished that she hadn’t been brought back after Madame had left. First of all, she had been warned that Madame was going to leave. Madame had told her so herself. The valet de chambre thought her too common. She was proud of being of the people. One can wear clogs and be more honest than those who wear shoes.

  I hastened to tell her that that was of no importance, and that it was another matter.

  “Does Monsieur know that the tariff per hour went up by twenty-five centimes three months ago?”

  I indicated to her that I knew that and asked her to sit down. She did not. I perceived then that she was trailing her finger over my table and tracing a primitive design in the accumulated dusk. Her gaze wandered over the furniture, observing the disorder. Through the open door she could see, on the other side of the antechamber, the dining room where the remains of the lunch remained that I had prepared for myself. An obscure professional faculty doubtless permitted her to measure the sum of labor that my apartment, left to abandon, required.

  A gleam of pride passed through her dull gaze, at the same time as a desire to for servitude.

  People found her when they had need of her. Work had never frightened her. Oh, she knew how difficult it is to procure a housekeeper nowadays.

  “No, Honorine,” I told her, “I’m not looking for a housekeeper. I thought of you because of the eulogies I’ve heard in your regard. I know that you’re full of merit, that you’ve been abandoned by your husband, that you’ve worked all your life to feed your children. I want to make you a gift, or rather a donation.”

  Honorine’s eyes were suddenly most, for no one can ever hear an allusion to the misfortunes they have suffered without being moved by self-pity. But at the last words I pronounced, her face took on a bewildered impassivity.

  “I want to quit Paris and lead an entirely different life from the one I’ve lived thus far. This apartment and all it contains will be useless to me henceforth. I don’t want to sell it. I thought of making a donation to the person who, of all those I know, is most worthy of it.”

  The impassive Honorine remained silent and nodded her head as a sign of approval. In the end, she said: “I don’t understand what Monsieur means by a donation.”

  “I mean that I’m giving you everything in this apartment, and the apartment itself, or which I’ll engage myself to pay the rent. The furniture, the carpets, everything that is here is yours. You can sell it or keep it, as you wish.”

  Honorine started to laugh, as one laughs at an i
ncomprehensible pleasantry.

  “Monsieur is joking.”

  I assured her that there was no joke, that my resolution was serious and irrevocable. She could take away whatever she pleased right away, including the silver cutlery. I cited the tableware because I knew what prestige they exercise over the simple.

  Honorine was obstinate in repeating: “Monsieur is joking.”

  But her face expressed the most vivid anxiety. “People have told me in the neighborhood that since Madame left, Monsieur was...but I’m not a woman to profit from...”

  I thought that she was about to point at her forehead with her finger, but she stopped.

  I assured her that I had all my common sense and that my resolution was made. But Honorine had also made a resolution not to take advantage of it. If I was not mad she was wounded in a hidden self-esteem, and she repeated: “So there’s nothing else to say.”

  “Well, think about it!”

  “I’ve thought.” And she made as if to get up in order to leave the extraordinary world into which I had just caused her to penetrate.

  “If Monsieur wants to give me something, I’ll take that little medallion in memory of Madame, whom I liked a lot...and Monsieur too.”

  The medallion that Abbé Durand had given me was resting in the dust, on a cup.

  I gave it to her gladly.

  I spent the evening marveling and glorifying the sanctity of simple hearts. Laurence was right. I had not been able to distinguish under that coarse envelope the pure gold of disinterest.

  It was late. I was about to go to bed when the doorbell rang.

  It was Honorine, who had come back. She had an embarrassed but decided attitude.

  “Monsieur said to me: think about it. So I’ve thought about it—or rather, it wasn’t me. Me, I think it’s necessary not to profit from it...but it’s my daughter. My daughter said to me: you have children. There are several of us...”

  “Then you accept?”

  “Since its Monsieur himself...by the effect of goodness...I accept.”

  “That’s perfect. I maintain what I said. Everything here is yours.”

  Honorine shook her head. “It appears that, at any rate, it needs a regular paper. And for the rent too...”

  “You’ll have a deed of donation, and my business agent will take care of the rent. Help me to pack my valise. I’m going to leave right away.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m no longer at home here.”

  She started to laugh. She had taken on the wily expression of someone who doesn’t want to allow herself to be deceived.

  She watched me put my underwear in my valise almost with regret, but she changed her mind and insisted generously that I should take more. I was grateful to her, for I knew that she also had sons.

  “Monsieur loves books; that will keep him company. Me, I never read.”

  She stuffed my valise at random with all the books within arm’s reach.

  “Would you like to spend the night here?” I asked her.

  She refused swiftly. She would never have dared. Only when she had the papers.

  I gave her the key to the entrance door. She took my valise. The weather outside was fine. I experienced an immense happiness.

  I scarcely took the time to deposit my valise in a little roadside inn of which I had noticed the humility the previous year. Hastily, I savored the rustic odor, the lack of comfort and the difficulty of procuring the water indispensable for washing after a long voyage. I asked the jovial landlady, who had a pink double chin and was standing behind a counter, whether an eccentric still lived in the vicinity of Cap Myrte, in a little house of planks facing the sea, which he had built himself.

  “Poor Jacques!” the woman exclaimed, her face brightening. “Yes, he’s still there, but not for long.”

  “I didn’t know that he was known by his nickname.”

  “Yes, but it’s a nickname that doesn’t suit him at all. It’s messieurs from Paris who gave it to him. I don’t know why.”

  The woman had stood up and I was able to admire a strong build and a copious figure, the potency of feminine maturity.

  I remembered having heard it said once, in a precise fashion, that Poor Jacques had given all that he possessed to the poor before retiring to solitude in order to seek perfection there. His own words had been quoted to me with admiration:

  “As long as we have something of our own we are enchained. The first thing that the person who wants to be pure should do is to break the bonds that attach him.”

  I wanted to consult him about that rupture of bonds. The first step might be easy, but the difficulty of continuing appeared to me to be immense.

  Undoubtedly, I thought, this innkeeper only knows Poor Jacques via rumors.

  I quit her and launched myself on to a by-road that climbed a hill between pines and mimosas.

  It was hot and the air was motionless. It was mid-afternoon. Insects were buzzing. I could see the sea in the distance. My enthusiasm for the beauty of a new life augmented while I was walking.

  As had been indicated to me, I left the road to take a path between vines. I went down one slope, climbed another, and found myself in front of the little house of planks where the sage had come to shelter a soul henceforth devoid of passions.

  Poor Jacques was standing before his door. He was not surprised to see me and he did not manifest any pleasure. I could even have interpreted the crease of his brow as a sign of ill-humor.

  I was ashamed of troubling his meditation. I explained the goal of my visit to him. I was tempted to imitate him. I wanted to get rid of the evil that every man bears within him. I knew that the first act of liberation must be to distribute everything one has. I had begun and that commencement had been agreeable to me. But I realized that what had pleased me more was the somewhat theatrical character of my generosity. I did not have the courage to go further. An obscure displacement to the profit of a charity of all the titles constituting my fortune was impossible for me. How had he been able to deprive himself completely?

  Poor Jacques stated pacing back and forth. He seemed annoyed by my question. At first he attempted to reply in an evasive fashion.

  “Everyone must act according to his conscience and what he does is no one else’s concern.”

  But I was sitting on a rudimentary bench outside his door and I did not seem disposed to go away without an answer.

  In the end, with a certain impatience, he said: “To give everything away is impossible. No one has the courage. One gives away one’s overcoat and one’s furniture easily, but one’s fortune, never! In any case, money has been excessively decried. It still needs money even to live as a hermit in a cabin of planks like this one. First of all, it’s necessary to pay for the planks. Even if one only eats potatoes and salad, it’s necessary to pay for those potatoes and that salad.”

  “But I thought you lived on the produce of your labor.” I pointed to a charred terrain where there seemed to have been the vestige of an abandoned cultivation.

  “Nothing that I planted has grown. Everything was burned by the sun or rotted by the rain. I’d have been dead a long time ago if I hadn’t had the income that the Crédit Lyonnais sends me regularly.”

  “So you don’t believe a fortune to be incompatible with the life of a sage?”

  He started to laugh and looked me in the face. Only then did I perceive that he was fatter, that he was wearing a new suit, and that he was wearing shoes and socks.

  “Sagacity? First of all, where is it? It’s arbitrary to place it in a cabin of planks near a pine-wood rather than elsewhere. I wonder whether it isn’t wiser to live in a house like everyone else, with one’s fellows.”

  I was disappointed. I gazed at the hills that were ranged and prolonged into rocky capes toward the sea swollen with azure. The sun was about to set and the tranquil air seemed to be gently pushing mute amorous thoughts over motionless trees.

  “You’ve set an example however,” I said.


  Poor Jacques appeared to decide to confess.

  “If you’d come tomorrow you wouldn’t have found me here. This evening will be the last I spend here, and it will probably seem long to me.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve reflected. Nothing makes one reflect as much as interminable hours spent, in winter listening to the rain, and in summer contemplating the sunlight. I’ve changed my opinion. I find that the company of a mole and a snake are insufficient for a sage.”

  “And what company would you prefer?”

  “That of a woman, of course.” He blushed slightly, lowered his eyes, and then raised them toward me proudly. “Why not?” he said. “I’ve made the acquaintance of someone in the locale...someone who shares my ideas.” He paused, shifting the earth with his new shoe.

  “Aren’t you a Buddhist?”

  “The young woman is Catholic, but what does that matter?” He lowered his voice and the pride in his expression was accentuated. “She’s a widow, very pretty and the proprietress of a hotel nearby, which doesn’t spoil anything.”

  I thought, shivering, about the stout innkeeper with whom I had exchanged a few words. A great sadness invaded me.

  “Do you believe in the Devil?” I said, to change the subject.

  Poor Jacques nearly lapsed into anger. He thought that I had divined who his fiancée was and that I was making an insulting connection with the Devil because of the fiery pink color of her cheeks. He looked at me for a long time, saw that I was perfectly innocent, and replied:

  “No, I don’t believe in him. If I had believed in him, I wouldn’t have spent a single night in that cabin. Oh, I understand the temptation of Saint Anthony now. One can’t imagine all the voices that emerged from the woods, all the appeals that are uttered in the fields by errant creatures. I sometimes sense them stuck to the other side of my door, listening to my respiration. I’ve even wondered sometimes whether the proximity of Monsieur Althon has something to do with it.”