The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th Century (10 page)

‘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
.

About five o’clock the dreadful train arrived. The bodies were cast pell-mell into the tumbrel, the heads pell-mell into the sack.

I used to take out at random one or two heads and one or two bodies; the remainder were thrown into one common grave.

The next day the heads and bodies on which I had tried my experiments the day before were added to the new heap of sufferers. My brother used to assist me almost always in these examinations.

Amidst all this contact with death, my love for Solange increased every day. On her side, the poor child loved me with her whole heart.

Often and often I had thought of making her my wife. We had frequently surveyed in our fancy the joy of such a union; but, in order to become my wife, Solange must have told her name; and her name – being that of an emigrant, of an aristocrat, of an outlaw – would have been fatal to her.

Her father had written to her several times to hasten her departure; but she had told him our love. She had asked his consent to our marriage, and he had granted it. On that side, therefore, all went well.

Meanwhile, amidst all these terrific trials, one still more terrific than the rest had deeply afflicted us both.

It was the trial of the queen, Marie-Antoinette.

Begun on the 4th of October, 1793, this trial had been actively proceeded with. On the 14th of October she had appeared before the revolutionary tribunal; on the 16th, at four in the morning, the ill-fated widow had been condemned; and the same day, at eleven, she was beheaded on the scaffold.

In the morning I had received a letter from Solange, who wrote to say she would not let such a day pass without seeing me.

I arrived about two o’clock at our little apartment in the Rue Taranne, where I found Solange in tears. I was myself most sensibly affected by this execution. The queen had been very kind to me in my youth, and I had never forgotten that indulgence.

I shall ever remember that day; it fell on a Thursday. There was something heavier than sorrow over Paris; there was affright.

As for me, I experienced a strange dejection – something like the presentiment of a great misfortune. I had wished to console Solange, who lay upon my bosom weeping; but no words of comfort could I command, because my own heart was inconsolable.

We passed the night together as usual; it was still sadder than the day had been. I recollect there was a dog locked up in the room over our heads, who kept howling until two in the morning.

Next day we made inquiries. His master had gone out and taken the key; he had been arrested in the street, taken before the bloody tribunal, condemned at three o’clock, and executed at four.

We were forced to separate. Solange’s classes began at nine in the morning. Her boarding-school was situated near the Garden of Plants. I hesitated a long time before I would let her go. She was equally unwilling to leave me; but to stop out for two days together would have exposed her to an investigation, which in her circumstances would have been dangerous.

I ordered a coach, and went with her to the corner of the Rue des Fosses-Saint-Bernard; where I got out. During the whole drive, we had held each other firmly embraced without uttering a word, mingling our tears together, which flowed over our lips, our sweet kisses being embittered by them.

I alighted from the coach; but, instead of going my way, I stood fixed to the spot, looking after the carriage which bore her away. When the coach had gone about twenty yards, it stopped, Solange looked out of the door, as though she had guessed I was still there. I ran up. I got into the vehicle once more; and put up the windows. Again I hugged her in my arms. But nine o’clock struck by the parish church. I wiped the tears from her eyes, closed her mouth with kiss upon kiss, and, springing out of the coach, hastened away running.

I thought that Solange called me back; but these tears, these faltering delays, might be remarked. I had the mournful courage not to return.

I returned home in despair; I spent the whole day in writing to Solange; in the evening I sent her a book.

I had just left my letter at the post-office, when I received one from her.

She had been very much scolded; they had worried her with a host of questions, and threatened to deprive her of her next holiday.

Her next holiday was the following Sunday; but Solange promised me that whatever might come, even though she broke with the schoolmistress, she would see me on that day.

I, too, made the same vow; it seemed to me that if I were to be seven days without seeing her, which would happen if she lost her first holiday, I should go mad.

The more so that Solange expressed some uneasiness, as a letter she had found at the boarding-school on her return, and which was from her father, appeared to her to have been unsealed.

I spent a bad night, and a still worse day on the morrow. I wrote as usual to Solange; and, as it was the day of my experiments, I called upon my brother about three o’clock to take him with me to Clamart.

My brother was not at home; I went off by myself.

The weather was awful; the sky was dissolving into rain – that cold heavy rain which foretells the winter. All the way along, I heard the street-criers howling in a croaking voice the list of the convicts of the day; it was numerous; it contained men, women, and children. The bloody harvest was a plentiful one, and there would be subjects enough for that evening’s experiments.

The days were growing short. When I reached Clamart, at four o’clock, it was almost dark.

The look of that cemetery, with its large tombs recendy closed, its few trees clacking to the wind like skeletons, was gloomy and almost hideous.

Wherever the mould had been turned over, you saw nothing but grass, thistles, or nettles. And each succeeding day the fresh mould was thrown over the dark grass.

In the midst of all these swellings in the ground, the pit for the day was agape, expecting its prey. They had foreseen the surplus of convicts, and so the pit was larger and deeper than usual.

I drew near to it undesignedly. The bottom was full of water. Poor, cold, naked corpses they were going to throw into that water, as cold as themselves!

On reaching the orifice of the grave, my foot slipped, and I was on the point of falling in; my hair stood up with horror. I was wet, and felt a chill. I went away towards the laboratory.

It was, as I have said, an old chapel; I looked round. What made me look? That I don’t know. I looked on the walls, and on what had once been the altar, for some sign of worship; the wall was bare, the altar was stripped. There, where formerly had stood the tabernacle – that is to say, God and life – was now a fleshless skull without hair: that is to say, death and vacancy.

I lighted my candle, and set it down on the table of operation, covered over with several tools of singular shape, that I had myself invented. I sat down – thinking of what? Of that poor queen, whom I had seen so beautiful, so happy, and so adored; who but yesterday, smitten with the imprecations of a whole people, had been drawn in a cart to the scaffold, and who, at that moment, with head sundered from the body, slept in the coffin of the poor; she who had once slept beneath the gilded canopies of the Tuileries, Versailles, and Saint-Cloud.

Every one knows, in our time, that the coffin in which the widow of Louis XVI was enclosed
cost but seven francs!

Whilst I was sunk in these gloomy reflections, the rain increased, the wind squalled aloud, sweeping its plaintive dole among the branches of the trees, among the blades of grass.

This noise was soon intermingled with another like murmuring thunder; only this thunder, instead of roaring in the sky, was leaping over the ground, and shaking it as it came on.

It was the wheels of the red tumbrel returning from the Place de la Revolution and entering Clamart.

The door of the little chapel was opened, and two men, dripping with water, came in, carrying a sack.

One of these was that very Legros, whom I had visited in prison, the other a grave-digger.

‘See, Monsieur Ledru,’ said the executioner’s assistant to me, ‘here’s what you want; you need not hurry yourself this evening; we are going to leave you the whole batch; they shall be buried tomorrow; it will be light then, they won’t take cold by spending a night in the open air.’

Whereupon, with a ghastly laugh, the two hirelings of death set the sack down in the corner near the old altar opposite me on my left.

After which they went away without shutting the door, which began to beat against its cage, letting in the wind, which made the flame of the candle waver about its long black wick.

I heard them take out the horse, shut the door of the burial-ground, and depart, leaving the tumbrel full of dead trunks.

I felt a longing desire to go with them, but I do not know how it was something held me in my chair – all in a tremor. Certainly it was not fear, but the noise of that howling wind, of that pelting rain, the squealing of those trees, the hissing gusts of air that made my candle waver, all these together shed an indefinite alarm over my mind, and spread through my frame.

Suddenly methought that a mild and sorrowful voice, a voice proceeding from the very bosom of the little chapel, uttered my name.

‘Albert!’

Oh, what a start I gave! Albert! There was but one person in the world who called me by that name.

With bewildering eyes I looked stealthily round the chapel, which, small as it was, my candle lighted but imperfectly, and then rested them on the sack in the corner, its bloody crimpled canvas distinctly indicating its mournful contents.

Just as my eyes settled on the sack, the same voice, but weaker and still more plaintive, repeated the same name.

‘Albert!’

Freezing with dismay I started to my feet. The voice seemed to proceed from the inside of the sack.

I felt myself to see whether I was asleep or awake. Then stiff and stark, and all my body like a mass of stone, with arms outstretched, I went up to the sack, and put in my hand.

Then I felt as if a pair of lips, still tepid and warm, pressed upon my hand.

I had reached that degree of terror when its very excess restores our courage to us. I took the head up, and returning to my chair, into which I sank, I set it on the table.

Oh, the terrific shriek I gave! That head, whose lips were still warm, whose eyes were still but half closed, was the head of my Solange!

I thought I was mad. Three times I cried aloud:

‘Solange! Solange! Solange!’

At the third cry the eyes opened again, looked at me, let fall two tears, and with a humid gleam, as if the soul was escaping, closed again to open no more.

I arose mad – distracted – raving. I wanted to fly from the place, but the skirt of my coat caught hold of the table; the table fell down, extinguishing the candle, the head rolled along the floor, and I was dragged down in bewilderment.

Then it seemed to me, as I lay on the floor, that I saw the head slide over towards mine; its lips touched my lips, an icy shudder came through my whole frame; I groaned, and fell into a swoon.