The Invisible Eye: Tales of Terror by Emile Erckmann and Louis Alexandre Chatrian - Hugh Lamb

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are these long hours of anguish, hunger, scorn which overwhelmed us in the past? Nothing, sir, nothing! Tears of gratitude wet our eyes. One is proud to have bought through suffering new joys for humanity and to have contributed to its improvement. But however vast, however admirable are the first results of my ‘microeartrumpet’, its advantages are not limited to that alone. There are others more positive, more material in some respects, and which can be translated into figures.

      Just as the telescope causes us to discover myriads of worlds, completing their harmonious revolutions in the infinite, so too my ‘microeartrumpet’ extends the sense of hearing beyond all the limits of possibility. Thus, sir, I shall not stop at the circulation of the blood and vital fluids in the living body; you hear them running with the impulsiveness of cataracts, you perceive them with a distinctness which terrifies you, the slightest irregularity in the pulse, the lightest obstacle strikes you and has on you the effect of a rock against which break the waves of a torrent.

      It is undoubtedly a tremendous conquest for the development of our physiological and pathological knowledge, but it is not on this point that I insist.

      By pressing your ear to the ground you hear the hot springs surging at immeasurable depths, you assess their volume, the currents, the obstacles.

      Would you like to go any further? Enter an underground chamber sufficiently large to pick up a considerable quantity of sounds; then, at night, when all is asleep, when nothing disturbs the inner sounds of our globe, listen!

      Sir, all that it is possible for me to tell you at present, because in the midst of my abject misery, my privations, and often my despair, I have only a few lucid moments left to gather together geological observations, all that I can assert for you is that the bubbling incandescent lava, the glow of boiling substances is something terrifying and sublime, and which can only be compared to the impression of the astronomer sounding the endless depths of the universe with his telescope.

      However, I must admit that these impressions need to be studied further and classified methodically, so as to draw from them fixed conclusions. Consequently as soon as you condescend, my dear and worthy master, to send to me at Neustadt the small sum that I ask to provide for my basic needs, we shall see that we agree with a view to establishing three subterranean observatories, one in the valley of Catania, the other in Iceland, and the third in one of the valleys of Capac-Uren, Songay, or Cayembé-Uren, the deepest of the Cordilleras, and as a consequence …

      Here the letter stopped.

      I was dumbfounded. Had I read the ideas of a madman, or rather the fulfilled inspirations of a genius? What was I to say? or think? Thus this man, this wretch, living at the bottom of a den like a fox, dying of hunger, had perhaps been one of those chosen people, whom the Supreme Being sends to earth, to enlighten future generations.

      And this man had hanged himself out of disgust and despair! His request had not been answered when he only asked for a piece of bread in exchange for his discovery. It was horrible.

      A long time, a very long time, I stayed there, dreaming, thanking heaven for having limited my intelligence to the everyday needs for life, for not having wanted to make myself superior to the common crowd. Finally the constable seeing me staring, my mouth wide open, ventured to touch my shoulder: ‘M. Christian,’ he said to me, ‘look it is getting late. The burgomaster must have returned from the meeting.’

      ‘Ah! That’s right!’ I exclaimed, crumpling up the paper. ‘On our way.’

      We climbed down the hill again.

      My worthy cousin received me, his face beaming, on the threshold of his house: ‘Well, well! Christian! Have you found anything of this idiot who hanged himself?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘As I suspected. He was some madman who escaped from Stefansfeld or elsewhere. Indeed he did well to hang himself. When one is good for nothing, it’s the simplest thing.’

      The following day I left Hirchwiller. I shall never go back.

       THE WHITE AND THE BLACK

      I

      At that time we passed our evenings at Brauer’s alehouse, which opens upon the square of Vieux-Brisach. After eight o’clock there used to drop in, one by one, Frederick Schultz the notary; Frantz Martin the burgomaster, Christopher Ulmett the magistrate; the counsellor Klers; the engineer Rothan; the young organist Theodore Blitz; and some others of the chief townsfolk, who all sat around the same table and drank their foaming bok-bier like brothers.

      The apparition of Theodore Blitz, who came to us from Jena with a letter of recommendation from Harmosius – his dark eyes, his brown dishevelled hair, his thin white nose, his metallic voice, and his mystic ideas – occasioned us some little disquiet. It used to trouble us to see him rise abruptly and pace two or three times up and down the room, gesticulating the while, mocking with a strange air the Swiss landscapes with which the walls were adorned – lakes of indigo-blue, mountains of an apple-green, paths of brilliant red. Then he would seat himself down again, empty his glass at a gulp, and commence a discussion about the music of Palestrina, about the lute of the Hebrews, about the introduction of the organ into our churches, about the shophar, the sabbatic epochs, etc. He would knit his brows, plant his sharp elbows on the edge of the table, and lose himself in deep thought. Yes, he perplexed us not a little – we others who were grave and accustomed to methodical ideas. However, it was necessary to put up with it; and the engineer Rothan himself, in spite of his bantering spirit, in the end grew calm and no longer continued to contradict the young organist when he was right.

      Theodore Blitz was plainly one of those nervously organised beings who are affected by every change of temperature. The year of which I speak was extremely warm; we had several heavy storms towards the autumn, and folk began to fear for the wine harvest.

      One evening all our little world was gathered, according to custom, around the table, with the exception of the magistrate Ulmett and the organist. The burgomaster talked about the weather and great hydraulic works. As for me I listened to the wind gamboling without amongst the plane-trees of the Schlossgarten, to the drip of the water from the spouts, and to its dashing against the windows. From time to time one could hear a tile blown off a roof, a door shut to with a bang, a shutter beat against a wall. Then would arise the great clamour of the storm, sweeping, sighing, and groaning in the distance, as if all the invisible powers were seeking and calling on one another in the darkness, while living things hid themselves, sitting in corners, in order to escape a fearful meeting with them.

      From the church of Saint-Landolphe nine o’clock sounded, when Blitz hurriedly entered, shaking his hat like one possessed, and saying in his husky voice: ‘Surely the Evil One is about his work! The white and the black are having a tussle. The nine times nine thousand nine hundred and ninety thousand spirits of Envy battle and tear themselves. Go, Ahriman! Walk! Ravage! Lay waste! The Amschaspands are in flight! Oromage veils her face! What a time, what a time!’

      And so saying he walked round the room, stretching his long skinny limbs, and laughing by jerks.

      We were all astounded at such an entry, and for some seconds no one spoke a word. Then, however, the engineer Rothan, led on by his caustic humour, said: ‘What nonsense is that you are singing there, M. Organist? What do Amschaspands signify to us? or the nine times nine thousand nine hundred and ninety thousand spirits of Envy? Ha! ha! ha! It is really comic. Where on earth did you pick up such strange language?’

      Theodore Blitz stopped suddenly short in his walk and shut one eye, while the other, wide open, shone with a diabolic irony.

      When Rothan had finished: ‘Oh, engineer,’ said he; ‘oh! sublime spirit, master of the trowel, and mortar, director of stones, he who orders right angles, angles acute, angles obtuse, you are right – a hundred times right.’

      He bent himself with a mocking air, and went on: ‘Nothing exists but matter – the level, the rule, and the compass. The revelations of Zoroaster, of Moses,

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