Part 25 (1/2)
It was an uninterrupted succession of sudden wakings and of nightmares.
And these nightmares overpa.s.sed the limits of abomination that the most dangerous madness dreams. They developed themselves in the realm of l.u.s.t; and they were so special, so new to him, that when he woke Durtal remained trembling, almost crying out.
It was not at all that involuntary and well known act, that vision which ceases just at the moment when the sleeper clasps an amorous form; it was as and more complete than in nature, long and accomplished, accompanied by all the preludes, all the details, all the sensations, and the o.r.g.a.s.m took place with a singularly painful acuteness, an incredible spasm.
A strange fact, which seemed to point the difference between this state, and the unconscious uncleanness of night, was, beyond certain episodes and caresses which could only follow each other in reality, but were united at the same moment in the dream, the sensation clear and precise of a being, of a fluid form disappearing, with the sharp sound of a percussion cap, or the crack of a whip close by, on waking. This being was felt near him so distinctly, that the sheet, disarranged by the wind of the flight, was still in motion, and he looked at the empty place in terror.
”Ah,” thought Durtal, when he had lighted his candle, ”this carries me back to the time when I used to visit Madame Chantelouve, and reminds me of the stories of the Succubus.”
He remained sitting up in bed, astonished, and looked with real uneasiness round the cell steeped in shadow. He looked at his watch, it was only eleven o'clock at night. ”G.o.d,” he said, ”if the nights are always like this in monasteries!”
He had recourse to bathing with cold water in order to recover himself, opened his window to change the air, and lay down again, thoroughly chilled.
He hesitated to blow out his candle, uneasy at the darkness which seemed to him inhabited, full of ambushes and threats. He decided at last to extinguish it, and repeated the stanza he had already heard sung that evening in chapel:
Procul recedant somnia Et noctium phantasmata, Hostemque nostrum comprime, Ne polluantur corpora.
He ended by falling asleep and dreamt again of impurity, but he came to himself in time to break the charm, experiencing again the impression of a shadow evaporating before he could seize it in the sheets. He looked at his watch; it was two o'clock.
”If this goes on, I shall be broken down to-morrow,” he thought, but he succeeded somehow or other in dozing, and waking every ten minutes to wait for three o'clock.
”If I fall asleep again, I shall not be able to wake at the moment I wish,” he thought, ”suppose I get up.”
He sprang out of bed, dressed, prayed, reduced his thoughts to order.
Real excesses would have exhausted him less than these sham freaks, but what seemed to him especially odious was the want of satisfaction left by the completed rape of these ghosts. Compared with their greedy tricks, the caresses of a woman only diffused a temperate pleasure, and ended in a feeble shock, but with this Succuba one remained in a fury at having clasped only the void, at having been the dupe of a lie, the plaything of an appearance, of which one could not remember the form or the features. It necessarily brought with it the desire of the flesh, the wish to clasp a real body, and Durtal began to think of Florence; she at least quenched his desires, and did not leave him thus, panting and feverish, in quest of he knew not what, in an atmosphere where he was surrounded, spied upon by an unknown whom he could not discern, by a phantom he could not escape.
Then Durtal shook himself, and would repulse the a.s.sault of these memories. ”At any rate I will go and breathe the fresh air, and smoke a cigarette; we will see afterwards.”
He descended the staircase, whose walls seemed not to keep their place, and danced in the light of his candle, threaded the corridors, blew out his light, placed the candlestick near the auditorium, and rushed out.
It was pitch dark; at the height of the first story a round window in the wall of the chapel cut a hole through the darkness like a red moon.
Durtal took a few whiffs of a cigarette, and then made his way to the chapel. He turned the latch of the door gently; the vestibule into which he entered was dark, but the apse, though it was empty, was lighted by numerous lamps.
He made a step, crossed himself, and fell back, for he had stumbled over a body; and he looked down at his feet.
He had come upon a battle-field.
On the ground human forms were lying, in the att.i.tudes of combatants mowed down by grape shot, some flat on their faces, others on their knees, some leaning their hands on the ground as if stricken from behind, others extended with their fingers clenched on their breast, others again holding their heads or stretching out their arms.
And from this group in their agony rose no groan, no complaint.
Durtal was stupefied as he looked at this ma.s.sacre of monks, and suddenly stopped with open mouth. A shaft of light fell from a lamp which the Father Sacristan had just placed in the apse, and crossing the porch, it showed a monk on his knees before the altar dedicated to the Virgin.
He was an old man of more than four-score years; motionless as a statue, his eyes fixed, leaning forward in such an access of adoration, that the faces in ecstasy in the Early Masters seemed, compared with his, forced and cold.
Yet his features were vulgar, his shaven skull, without a crown, tanned by many suns and rains, was brick-coloured, his eye was dim, covered with a film by age, his face was wrinkled, shrivelled, stained like an old log, hidden in a thicket of white hair, while his somewhat snub nose made the general effect of the face singularly common.
But there went out, not from his eyes, nor his mouth, but from everywhere and nowhere, a kind of angelic look which was diffused over his head, and enveloped all his poor body, bowed in its heap of rags.