Werewolf of Paris (2 page)

I have a faint notion that I kept following her all about and trying to make her see reason and reminding her of her mother and father. And I have the same notion that my friend of the mimicry discussion kept following me and talking to me all the time about insect mimicry.

I tried to get into the taxi with Eliane and her friend, but he pushed me out gently, she less gently. Well, such is the world.

And my friend was saying: “Unless you taste insects, you can have no clear conception of how far this mimicry goes: there's a butterfly of the Euphoadra family that tastes just like one of the Aletis, without looking like it.”

“Haven't you got things a little mixed?” I said. We had walked up to the Tower of Saint Jacques and were proceeding toward the Seine.

Just then a young girl stopped us and invited us to partake of her. My friend asked at once: “How much?”

She mentioned a sum. “That's too much,” he said. She came down. Still he shook his head.

“Come,” she said finally, with a weary expression on her sallow face. “I don't want any money. I just want you.”

Whereupon he took his watch out and said: “It's too late. Sorry, some other day, if you don't mind.” And taking me by the arm he started to move off. She caught and held me.

“For nothing,” she repeated with despair in her deep-sunk eyes. “For nothing,” she breathed. “For nothing. I don't want any money. See, I'm rich.” She opened her purse and pulled out a roll of bills. Rolls of bills mean nothing much in France, but indeed she might have been rich. She was well dressed, I noticed. Nothing extravagant, but certainly not poorly. Her whole body trembled as if in fever. And the tremors coursed through her hand and communicated themselves to me.

My friend tore me away. As we hastened on, I looked back and saw her standing where we had left her, her hands covering her face.

“Why did you do that?” I asked. The action of my new acquaintance had disgusted me. He had meant only to tease her.

“I wanted to see how far down she would come. I've had them come down to two francs, but never to nothing. But her case can't count because she wasn't after money. She's a pathological case.”

“I think that sort of sport is pretty cruel,” I said. I thought to myself: I'll be glad to get rid of you.

“It's a disease,” he went on to say. “They are as if possessed by a beast. Did you know that there is a new school of psychology that is returning to the old belief in possession?”

He waited for an answer so I said briefly: “No.” It would have done no good to say yes, he would have continued to impart his information to me anyhow.

“You've heard of Hyslop, of course?” he said. “Well, I should think he would have thought the two examples we saw tonight evidences of possession by the spirits of beasts.”

“Are you sure you're right?” I asked. I was slightly skeptical of the security of his knowledge. It threatened like the Tower of Pisa.

“That was the ancient psychology, too. The Romans, for example, thought of insatiable sexual appetite as due to possession by a wolf.”

“I thought the billygoat was the symbol of sexual insatiability.”

“You are wrong,” he answered. “The word
wolf
is to be recognized in the Latin vulva, and in the word
lupanar
, a brothel,
lupus
being Latin for wolf. You know the Roman festival of the Lupereales. It would correspond to our carnival and was characterized by a complete abandonment of morals.”

“Wasn't Lupercus another name for the god Pan?” I asked.

“So it was, but the name means the protector against the wolves. It had something to do with the nursing of Romulus and Remus by a she-wolf, but its sexual significance is shown by the fact that at the sacrifice of goats during this festival, the women who wished to be fruitful allowed themselves to be beaten with bloody strips cut out of the goat's hide.”

“I find those theories usually built on too shallow a foundation,” I objected. “It sounds like Frazer and there's nothing I care for less. Besides, there are theories for which I don't care no matter how good they are.”

“You mistake me,” he returned, and went on to fill my ears with a lot of arguments which I have forgotten. I wasn't particularly interested, and a one-sided discussion always annoys me. Moreover, I was thinking of Eliane. When would I see her again? What would she say to me then? As a matter of fact I didn't see her until some years later and then she was married, I think to the man who drew her out of the restaurant. But I could not ask either of them. Delicacy forbade. It would have been a romantic conclusion to that night's adventure, but I'm not sure I dare set it down as true.

But something did come of this night. As it was beginning to dawn, my friend, whom I hoped never to meet again, found his fountain of words drying up and said that he was going to his rooms in Rue de l'École de Médecine. Was I going that way? I was, or ought to have been, for I lived nearby, but I said no, I was going the other way, and so we separated at last.

I walked along the quai, then toward a little park at the river's edge, and there I sat down on a bench. My mind was vacant, ringing yet with all the myriad sounds that had been poured into it, as one's legs sometimes will tingle when one halts after a long walk.

Two men came along, each with a sack slung across his shoulder, and they began to lay out on the ground the spoils of a morning's tour of inspection of the city's rubbish. They broke electric bulbs, separated the brass base from the glass, and took out the tungsten filament. They had bottles and bits of string, and pieces of rag and buttons, and one of them had a roll of paper bound with a ribbon. He untied the ribbon and spread out the roll. There were several sheets laced together and evidently covered with writing. That was as much as I could see from where I was sitting.

I wondered what might be written on those bound sheets. Some schoolboy's composition, no doubt: the proud effort of a youthful author with high aspirations. Or some commercial report, perhaps even of recent date, for the use of the typewriter is still unknown to many French businessmen. Then again it might be a really valuable production of a famous writer, a manuscript which would fetch a high price.

Bitten with curiosity I arose and walked over to the men. They looked up at me from their squattering position and answered my greeting. I made some general comments on the difficulties of earning a living. It will be recalled that at this time the franc was plunging like a wild horse, and a little reference to this secured me the men's goodwill. There is no beggar so poor but that he likes to think his status involved in international finance, too.

Then I bent and picked up the manuscript, saying apologetically: “What is this machin-là?”

One of the men hastily assured me that sometimes such things brought in a deal of money. The other, seeing which way the wind was blowing, chimed in with a rapid story of one Jean Something-or-other who had retired upon a single find of that nature. The first knew of even a more surprising case. In short, it seemed there was little doubt but that the men had struck it rich that morning and were quite prepared to retire on their prospective earnings.

One look, however, had made me keen to own the manuscript. That look had happened upon the words:
The lupercal temples became the later brothels or lupanars. Still today in Italian, lupa signifies both wolf and wanton.

I offered one franc. The men shrugged their shoulders. They went on separating their bits of metal and rag and exchanged a few rapid remarks, in argot, which I could not catch.

Then I did a brave thing, though my heart pounded in fear. I threw the manuscript down at their feet and saying: “Bonjour, messieurs,” I walked off. I had taken ten steps, and with difficulty had restrained my desire to look back, when I heard one of them cry out:

“On vous le vend pour cinq, monsieur.”

I turned back, took the manuscript and said as calmly as I could: “Va, pour cinq,” and handed them a little bill of five francs.

Thus through Eliane, in a way, I came into possession of the Galliez report: thirty-four sheets of closely written French, an unsolicited defense of Sergeant Bertrand at the latter's court-martial in 1871.

I had thought at first of publishing the defense as it stood and providing this curiosity with the necessary notes to help the reader to an understanding of the case. But on second thought, I determined to recast the whole material into a more vivid form, incorporating all the results of my own investigations. For I confess that the report by Aymar Galliez was of such compelling interest that I set aside my Ph.D. thesis for the moment and concentrated on it.

From its very first words, the manuscript exerts a curious fascination. Its wisdom is as strange as that of the pyramidologists of our day, those strangely learned men who prove at great length that the pyramids of Egypt were built to be a permanent storehouse of a scientific knowledge greater than that which we possess at present.

Galliez begins:

“The vast strides of our generation in the conquest of the material world must not mislead us into thinking that when we have plumbed the physical world to its depths we shall thereby have explained all there is to explain. The scientists of a former day strove mightily to fathom the depth of the spiritual world, and their successes and conquests are all but forgotten.

“Who can estimate what thanks we owe to those courageous priests of old who went into the forbidding Druidic forests and with bell and book, and swinging censer, exorcised the sylvan spirits, banished the familiars, expelled the elementals, cast out the monsters and devils of old Gaul? Who can estimate the debt we owe to them for helping to slay all the strange and unnatural beasts that formerly cowered in every dark cranny and recess, under ferns and moss-covered rocks, waiting to leap out at the unwary passerby who did not cross himself in time? Not all of these monsters were equally evil, but all constituted unwelcome interferences in the destiny of man.

“If today the lonely traveler can walk fearlessly through the midnight shadows of the silent forests of France, is it because of the vigilance of our police? Is it because science has taught us to be unbelievers in ghosts and monsters? Or is not some thanks due the Church, which after a millennium of warfare succeeded at long last in clearing the atmosphere of its charge of hidden terror and thus allowed for the completer unfolding of the human ego? We who have profited thereby should not allow pride to blind us to our debt. Future clearer thinkers will support my contention.”
*

Before I enter into the further contents of the script, let me tell something of its author. Who was this Aymar Galliez who could champion such a curious theory as is expressed in the above excerpt? The Bibliothèque Nationale failed to enlighten me. By chance I happened to consult a
Tout Paris
of the year 1918. There was an Aymar Galliez, sous-lieutenant, etc., etc. That was all I needed. They must be relatives.

In short, I wrote. I was invited to present myself and seized the opportunity to do so. It isn't very often that the French are so obliging to an American.

I found Aymar Galliez, now a lieutenant, a pleasant dapper little fellow, with a black mustache, dimples, dark eyes framed in sweeping dark eyelashes, a ready smile perpetually revealing fine teeth, the color and texture of blanched almonds. His geniality delayed our getting to the point. Finally, I asked (rather abruptly terminating a sprightly discussion on Carpentier vs. Dempsey):

“Aymar Galliez is an infrequent name, is it not?”

He laughed: “I don't think there has ever been more than one at a time.”

“I mean that I was sure that you must be related to the Aymar Galliez of the last century.”

“I suppose we have the same person in mind. He was my great-uncle. I don't believe there were any other Aymar Galliez'. I would be interested in knowing how you came across his name.”

That was precisely what I didn't wish to tell. “Oh…” I said hesitatingly.

“You have run across some of his work?”

“His work?”

“Yes, his writings.”

“No,” I faltered, thinking rapidly: so his work is known, after all. But the lieutenant's next words reassured me:

“In the Bibliothèque Nationale they have many of his pamphlets but all listed under Anonymous. My mother is rather anxious to have that corrected, and has been on the lookout for signed copies presented to friends. How then did you come across his name?”

“Why…you see, I am editing some correspondence and found his name mentioned.”

“I see.”

“And since I am annotating the material I find it necessary to say at least a word or two about the man.”

“Yes, of course. Well, he was born in eighteen twenty-four and died in eighteen ninety. He was badly wounded in the street fighting in 'forty-eight and my mother rather thinks he was slightly cracked ever thereafter. He did quite a lot of political pamphleteering and then suddenly decided to study for the priesthood. He didn't make a very exemplary priest. He went in for spiritualistic séances and table-tipping and after clerical authorities had long frowned on his penchant, he retired from the Church. He had his parish in Orcières and he lived nearby until his death and lies buried there. That's all I can think of at the moment. My mother remembers a lot more.”

“That's quite enough,” I said. “I'm grateful to you.” I put away the slip of paper on which I had made my notes.

“May I ask in what connection you found his name mentioned? My mother will be sure to ask me that.”

“Well, he appeared as witness at the defense of a man. Did you ever hear of Sergeant Bertrand?”

“Connais pas.”

“Well, this man was tried by court-martial and your great-uncle evidently was interested in helping him out.”

“What was this Sergeant Bertrand being tried for?”