What Pierre did with his soul

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Doctor Davidoff turned his harsh and weatherbeaten features toward Prince Patrizzi’s guests with an air of inspiration, and contributed these surprising words to the discussion :

And do you people believe that a suggestion many times repeated has power to implant in your brain an idea that will pierce it with the penetrativeness and persistency of a gimlet ? Do you believe that this idea can so influence your spiritual being as to modify your physical condition ? — for I suppose that you will admit that mind rules matter absolutely and positively?”

“ Yes, we admit it,” the Neapolitan calmly answered. “ Now, and this is the very point that I want you to an swer, the conclusion must be. . .

To this reply, which gave promise of an exhaustive argument upon the proposition laid down by the Russian doctor, there succeeded an instant of stupefied silence among the gay spendthrifts and complaisant women who had been dining in the parlor of the Hotel de Paris, on the terrace of Monte Carlo. Looks of astonishment and disgust were exchanged about the luxuriously spread

WHAT PIERRE DID WITH HIS SOUL.

table, upon which the flowers were dying of suffocation amid the heat of the lamps and the smoke of cigarettes : then suddenly a storm of exclamations and invective arose from these devotees of fashion, in indignant protest at being torn from the customary inanity of their conversation and set down in the midst of a dry desert of scientific discussion.

“ We’ve had enough physiology !”

“ We’re here to drink, smoke, and laugh !”

“ This isn’t a dissecting-room, it’s a private dining-room !”

“ The doctor be hanged ! He’s paf T

‘‘Please listen, gentlemen ; it is very interesting.”

“You are boring these ladies to death !”

“ Open the window; it stinks of science in here!”

“ Oh dear! I wish I was at the Casino ! . . . I dreamed the red came out thirteen times.”

“That’s an idea that the croupier palmed off on you.”

“ Will you have a dance ?”

“Oh, oh ! Laura, sit down on the piano!”

“ Well, well, children, go wherever you choose, only let us have peace.”

“ Don’t ask us to stay! No! There would be no use in trying to keep us!”

. “ You are a polite .set !”

Three or four women and five or six young men arose tumultuously, and called upon the head-waiter to bring their wraps, which that functionary did with much bustle. Patrizzi kept his seat, smiling on the pretty women, who shook out their skirts and smoothed down their waists with coquettish airs. He shook hands carelessly with his guests, and said :

WHAT PIERRE DID WITH HIS SOUL.

“ Let every one do as he pleases. Go along ; we will be with you in an hour.” Then turning to Pierre Laurier the artist, his friend Jacques de Vignes, and Doctor Davidoff, who had kept their places : “ Go on, my dear fellow,” he said to the physician ; “ you interest me immensely.”

The Russian threw away his cigarette, lighted another one, and looking upon his three listeners with an air of authority, went on with the tale that had been cut short by the interruptions of the guests who had now departed.

WHAT PIERRE DID WITH HIS SOUL.

“ I confess that the story which I was beginning to tell our friends is quite a strange one, and that it is a little wanting in probability to those who are of a sceptical turn ; but in our dark and foggy Slavonian land, which seems to be really the proper abode of ghosts and phantoms, it would not have elicited the first word of incredulity. Half of our compatriots are Swedenborgians without being aware of it, who admit the phenomena of the invisible world in company with the great philosopher, but without reasoning upon them ; and you might affirm in their presence, as I now do before you, the astounding fact of the transmission of a soul into a living body merely by an exertion of the will on the part of a person v/ho has made up his mind to die, and you would see them tremble and grow pale, but not utter a word of protest. In our country people believe that there are vampires who come forth from their grave when a ray of moonlight falls upon the stone ; they believe in apparitions that reveal to one his approaching end. And so, just by the very fact that credence is given to these miracles, they are rendered possible of accomplishment. A powerful conviction is the most penetrating of fluids, and absolute confidence is the first condition demanded by spiritualism. If you doubt, its adepts will say to you, do not attempt to fathom our mysteries ; they will remain absolutely sealed to you. The world of the invisible is revealed only to those who have an ardent longing for knowledge of it; to the mocker and the incredulous it will remain forever a closed book.”

Jacques de Vignes was here attacked by a painful fit of coughing, which turned his fine features quite pale ; he regained his breath with difficulty, and turning toward the doctor, as if animated by sorhe secret hope :

“ And you say that you witnessed the occurrence,” said he in a choking voice; “you saw the young girl come back to life, regain health and strength, as if all her fiance’s vitality had passed into her being ?”

“ I am not discussing the materiality of the fact,” Davidoff replied, “ I am simply giving you its psychological consequence. Vladimir Alexievitch, seeing Maria Fedorowna, whom he loved devotedly, dying by inches before his eyes, like a lamp of which the oil is burned out, having vainly applied to all the physicians of Moscow and having summoned me, me who am telling you this story, from St. Petersburg, only to hear from my lips the poor girl’s deathwarrant, — had the idea of calling in an old Tungoose sorceress who had brought with her from Nijni-Novgorod the reputation of doing marvels. He went one night to consult her ; it was Christmas Eve. The old hag received him in a hovel in the outskirts of the city, and when she had gone through her terrible incantations for his benefit, she handed him a wooden cup containing a liquid of a peculiar odor. As ht was hesitating about drinking, she looked at him with a menacing countenance and said : ‘ You say that you love a woman, and want to save her life, even at the cost of your own, and yet you do not dare drink this unknown liquid, fearing that it may

poison you O man, son of man, poor in spirit like all

mankind. . . . Weep, then, and suffer like your brother men, since you cannot rise above humanity * ’

“ Then Vladimir Alexievitch was seized with shame ; he emptied at a single draught the repulsive cup, and seemed to succumb to a sudden intoxication. A delicious warmth lO

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ran through his body, and he became so light that it seemed as if he was about to rise from the earth and take wing. A luminous mist veiled his eyes, as if vivid rays were piercing the clouds and falling upon his vision. His blood ran bubbling through his veins, and his ears were greeted by celestial music. He had the sensation of being borne away into the immensity of space, and breezes of exquisite coolness came and kissed his brow. Little by little the knowledge of things earthly left him, and in the midst of a divine transport, a beatific ecstasy, he beheld advancing toward him, heavenly vision, a white, sublime form which, in a voice sweet and tender as an angel’s song, thus addressed him :

“ ‘ Thou wishest to redeem the life of her whom thou lovest ? Then give thine own in change ; thy soul to her form, and thine own body to the cold grave. Thou shalt have nothing to regret, since thou wilt exist in her, and her happiness will be the source of thy joy.’

“ The heavenly apparition was lost in the luminous mist, and Vladimir Alexievitch was restored to consciousness. He found himself sitting in the hovel of the old Tungoose witch, beside a smoking fire of pitch-pine. The old woman was muttering unintelligible words, and seemed to pay no heed to her guest. Terrified by what he had witnessed, the young man endeavored to collect his thoughts and reason with himself upon his strange adventure. He saw before him only an ordinary old filthy hag, who had been the means of bringing him into communication with the spirits, as the guardian of a temple opens the door of the sanctuary and admits one to the dazzling presence of the gods. He laid his hand upon the old

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^ I woman’s shoulder ; she turned her dull eyes upon him and said in her sardonic voice :

“ ‘ Well, have you learned what you wished to know ? ’

“ ‘ What were the means that you employed to take from me my consciousness of the things of the outer world ? What was it that you made me drink ? ’

“ ‘ What matters it ? Did you behold the invisible ones ? ’

“ ‘ What was the sorcery that you used to show them to me ? ’ ,

‘ Ask it of themselves They are there, everywhere,

around you ! Would you doubt ? Remain, then, hopeless. Put your trust in them, and supreme delights await you.’

“ The witch’s form dilated, her face was irradiated with a wild, scornful beauty, and pointing to the door, she said to Vladimir Alexievitch :

“ ‘ Tempt not Heaven ! . . . Go ! and have faith . . . have faith ! ’

“ He threw his purse upon the ground, but the old woman spurned it from her with her foot. She raised her arms, as in a parting invocation, and with the bright flame of inspiration flashing from her face, she repeated, in tones that thrilled the heart of the young man :

“ ‘ Have faith, poor child ! There lies the road of salvation. Have faith ! ’

“ He left her and went home. That night he spent in writing, and next morning, when they entered his apartment, he was dead.”

“ And his fiancee, did she recover?” Pierre Laurier inquired.

“ She recovered,” replied Davidoff, “ but although she

WHAT PIERRE DID WITH HIS SOUL.

was a charming girl, and greatly beloved, she would marry none of her suitors, and remained a maid, as if faithful to some dear, mysterious love.”

“ And 6.0 you believe this miracle, doctor?” Jacques de Vignes asked with an effort.

Davidoff shook his head and answered lightly :

“ There is not a great deal that doctors believe nowadays. Materialism has many believers among my colleagues ; still magnetism has of late assumed such strange aspects that fresh horizons have opened up before us, and we are largely attracted toward that spiritualism that maintains the existence of the soul ; and if we admit the influence of mental suggestion on those who are subjected to the hypnotic sleep, is not that a near approach to belief in a higher principle which directs, and consequently controls, matter ?”

“You are philosophizing, dear sir,” the Prince interrupted ; “ you do not answer the question.”

“ Oh! you^ Patrizzi,” said Pierre Laurier, with a laugh ; “ you believe in Saint January, and when the case becomes serious you invoke the Madonna ; you wear little horns of coral to protect you against the jettatura, and you grow pale when you see a knife and fork crossed on the tablecloth. It follows, therefore, that you are a fit subject for Davidoff ’s devilments ; but Jacques and I have a thicker epidermis, and it would require proof to convince us.”

“ Still, it would be a comfortable thing to believe in, some mysterious influence that could restore us to life,” the sick man murmured. “ Oh, to have some supreme hope to anchor to ! It would be health and safety. Does not half the cure consist in confidence ?”

“ I believe you !” exclaimed Pierre Laurier. “ Those f

WHAT PIERRE DID WITH HIS SOUL.

are the most sensible words that have been spoken in two hours. To the devil with your witches, your Swedenborgians, your moonlight visions and your souls passing from body to body like a ferret in a rat-hole ! Give a sick man certain assurance that he will get well and you accomplish his cure at once . . . that is all there is about it ! Take my friend Jacques de Vignes here, for example, who made the doctor pack him off to the south because he caught cold ; make him understand that his illness is only imaginary, that there is nothing the matter with his lungs, that he has no reason in the world to be alarmed ; in a word, let him know that all that ails him is a trifling cough, and by removing the cause you remove the effect : Jacques de Vignes is at once forced to abandon his whispered tones, his languishing eyes, his Wertherian looks. He returns to life and pretty women ; to his beef-steak and his cigar.”

“Alas!” murmured Jacques, who was just then convulsed by a severe attack of coughing, “ how I wish that there was room for hope ! I am attached to life, and every day I feel that it is slipping away from me little by little.”

The painter laid his hand upon the sick man’s shoulder and said to him in a cheerful tone :

“You won’t believe me when I tell you that you are not seriously ill; you won’t believe Davidoff, who has made a thorough examination of you. You insist on retaining this brooding care and scourging yourself with it, as if it were a pleasure to you. You are grieving your mother, and you bring tears to your sister’s eyes. . . . Will nothing convince you, then? Must I do for you what Vladimir Alexievitch did and hand you over a soul in exchange for yours? I have only my own to dispose of, you know, and it does not amount to much ; even if I should give it to you some night in a fit of spleen, I don’t know that I should be making a very desirable gift. They say, however, that we must not look a gift-horse in the mouth, and the main thing is that you should live, you who have everything to make you happy, who are loved, who would be wept ; while as for me, I might as well go out now and jump from the terrace of the Casino into the sea. . . . Who would ever miss that madcap called Pierre Laurier, that painter who is impotent to grasp his ideal, that gamester for whom the cards no longer produce an emotion, that lover spurned by his mistress, that highliver to whom life is a burthen !” He brought down his fist with a violence that shook the table and continued, his features working with bitter emotion, his lips writhing with a cruel smile : “ I am an ass to start in afresh every

morning on a life that I curse every night ... to the devil with it ! . . . Jacques, will you have rny soul ?”

“ Come, come,” gently said Jacques, ‘'you have been having another quarrel with Cl^mence Villa to-day. Leave her, my poor friend, if she causes you such suffering.”

“ How can I ?” said Pierre, who had turned very pale, resting his heavy head upon his hand.

“ Give her a good beating, then,” calmly observed Patrizzi.

“ If I only dared !” said the young man, with flashing eyes. “ But that girl makes me a slave ; everything that she wants she makes me do. I bear everything from her, whims, vices, deceit. At times I feel like murdering her. . . and it is upon myself that the blow would fall . . . to relieve myself of her tyranny. Oh, I am a poor-spirited

WHAT PIERRE DID WITH HIS SOUL.

coward ! I know that she is false to me with every one in the Hotel des Etrangers. . . Only the other day I caught her with a ridiculous Italian baritone. She is ruining me ; she is bringing me down into the dust ; she is making me something lower than she is herself. . .And I have not strength to break my chains ! Truly I am a wretched man !”

“ No, you are not wretched,” said the doctor, “ you are ill. Let us go out ; it is stifling here.”

“ It is ten o’clock,” remarked Jacques de Vignes. “ My carriage must be waiting. I will return to Villefranche.”

“Wrap yourself up well,” said the Prince, “for the night is cool.”

The painter assisted his friend to put on his overcoat and wrapped a plaid about him ; then at the foot of the staircase, in a voice that still quivered with pain, he said to him :

“ Good-night, and remember — you may count upon my soul.”

Doctor Davidoff saw Jacques de Vignes to his carriage, closed the door, and told the driver to go ahead ; then having listened for a moment to the noise of the wheels as they rolled away over the creaking sand of the drive, he came slowly toward the painter, who stood watching the stars and waiting for him.

“ Shall we go to the Casino?” asked Patrizzi.

“ What is the use ? It is such a fine evening, suppose we walk a bit.”

“ In which direction are you going?”

“Toward Mentone.”

“ And you will stop about half a mile from here, at a villa where the gate is overhung with roses in bloom ?”

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“ Yes.”

“ And you will come out directly afterward in a rage with yourself and every one else. . . Take my advice : don’t go to that girl’s.”

“ Where should I go, then ? If I follow your advice and return to my hotel, up there in the solitude of my room my thoughts will turn exclusively upon her whom you 'tell me to avoid. She has me in her clutches, don’t you see ? and the ties which bind me to her are strong, since for all my desperate struggles they still remain unbroken. After every effort I fall back, weaker, more badly hurt, more hopelessly a captive. And I despise myself and I hate her !”

“And yet it is easy enough to leave a woman !” said the Neapolitan with a smile. “ Unfortunately we don’t know it until afterward. There has to be a beginning, in the first place. . . . But it is an easy matter to philosophize to those who are in trouble. Good-night, gentlemen ; I am going in to break the bank.”

He lighted a cigarette and strolled away. Davidoff and Pierre Laurier continued their walk among the gardens that lay bathed in moonlight. The perfumed stillness of the night surrounded them. They left the streets of the city behind them, and to their right, at the base of the cliffs that indent the coast, they saw the sea, bright as a sheet of silver. The night was so clear that they could see the red lights of the vessels as they lay at anchor in the distant roadstead. Silently they walked along their elevated path. When they came to a little thicket of cactus and lentiscus they paused for a moment to let their eyes wander over the scene, oppressed, as it were, by its immensity. A sudden noise, like that of an' animal stirring in the underbrush, attracted their attention, and presently they saw, coming up the steep path that ran along the hillside, a man whose musket glittered in the moonlight.

“ What is that ?” Davidoff asked in surprise.

Pierre Laurier looked attentively and replied :

“ It is a coast-guardsman.’’

They stood still. The man continued to ascend. When he reached the level ground he looked distrustfully at the two pedestrians. Although it was barely a mile and a quarter from the last houses of the city, the spot was a lonely one ; but all that coast is wild and well adapted to the smuggler’s trade.

“ Do you take us for dealers in contraband ?” the painter demanded.

“ No, monsieur,” replied the soldier, “not now that 1 see you close at hand ; but as I looked up from below, seeing you standing there motionless, I thought that you might have come to give some signal.”

“ Are the rascals at work again ?”

“ Oh, always ! There is more smuggling done between Monaco and Vintimille than anywhere else ; there is not a \veek passes without their making a descent somewhere. . . . We have been watching a vessel that has been lying off and on for the last four days, waiting for a chance to slip in, . . . but the rascals will have to pay for the nights that they have kept us out of our beds, and if they persist in landing, they will be welcomed with musket-shots. Good-evening, messieurs ; . . . don’t remain there . . . the place is dangerous.”

He carried his hand to his kepi in military style and disappeared among the undergrowth that served to cover his place of observation. Pierre Laurier and Davidoff resumed their walk, turning back in the direction of the city.

“ I envy the stirring life of the men who are the objects of the threats of that good exciseman,” said Pierre. “ They are now roaming over the sea, watchful and circumspect, ready either for a trade or a fight. Their goods once landed, off they will go again on another expedition with its unknown perils. All that they think of is their

toilsome and uncertain occupation I wish that I was

among them.”

“ Go away, if you wish to. Count Woreseff, on whose yacht I am a guest, leaves Villefranche day after to-morrow. He is going to Egypt ; we shall touch at Alexandria and then go up the Nile as far as the second cataract ; we shall see Thebes, the desert, the pyramids. It is a two months’ trip, with the timbers of a fine boat under your feet and the splendor of an Eastern sky over your head. You know how glad the Count will be to have you with him .... You can paint, you can shoot, and, above all, you can forget !”

“No, life would be made too easy; I should be too pampered, too happy with you. There would be no dangers to distract my mind, no hard work to tire my body ; all my surroundings would be too civilized. What I need is a wild life ; if you would only promise to have me taken prisoner by the Tovariks and led away captive to Timbuctoo, I might go with you. Something like that would be my salvation.”

“ I cannot promise you any such adventures as those,” said Davidoff with a smile, “so I suppose I shall have to leave you to your devices.”

They had reached a very handsome villa, painted pink, the brilliantly lighted windows of which shone out through dense masses of verdure.

“ Your mind is made up, then ; you are bound to go in ?” the doctor asked. “ I may not see you to-morrow, so adieu, and good luck to you.”

They shook hands, and as the Russian started to return to the city, the painter passed through the garden. He rang the bell ; a footman opened the door and showed him into a vestibule fashioned after an Arab patio, the centre of w.hich was' adorned with a basin in which gold-

WHAT PIERRE DID WITH HIS SOUL.

fish were swimming about, the metallic lustre of their scales contrasting with the dark blue walls of their prison. Climbing roses twined about the columns that supported and beautified the hall, and at the farther end a staircase of white marble conducted to the first story.

“ Madame is within?” Pierre Laurier inquired.

“ In the small drawing-room,” the servant replied.

The young man opened the door noiselessly and advanced into the room. Cl^mence Villa was lying on a great sofa in a nest of silken cushions, turning the leaves of a book. She raised her head, wearily stretched her arms, and retained her position. Pierre drew near, and bending over the delicate face of the pretty girl, gave her a kiss between the eyes.

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“ How late you are!” said the actress, with a calm indifference that contrasted with the implied reproach of her speech.

“ Prince Patrizzi’s dinner lasted longer than I thought it would. ...”

“Was it a pleasant party?”

“ Not so much so as if you had been there.”

“ I can’t endure that Patrizzi.”

“Why?”

“ I know that he dislikes me.”

“ No, he does not dislike you ; but he is very fond of me.”

“Well? Can’t he like you without hating me?”

“ He would like you if you did not make me so unhappy.”

“Ah, the everlasting song!” The young woman snapped her fingers^ sent her book flying to the other end of the room and flung herself over on the sofa with a peevish movement, turning her face to the wall.

“ Come, Cl^mence, don’t let’s quarrel,” said the painter ; “ we will talk of something else.”

But the actress, without stirring or lifting her face from her cushions, acrimoniously replied : “ That Patrizzi of yours, you must know, has been pestering me with his attentions just like the rest of them, and it is because I would have nothing to do with him that he has taken a spite against me.”

Laurier’s face grew dark, and he said with irony : “ Why did you make such an invidious exception in his case ?”

At a single bound Cl^mence Villa was on her feet, and, blazing with anger, her eyes flashing beneath their frown-

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ing brows, pointing to the door with her shaking hand, she screamed : “ My little man, if you think you can come here with your insolence, you may make yourself scarce !”

“ I know that you do not care for me any longer ; you do not take any pains to conceal it from me,” said the painter, with an air of despondency.

“ What do you stay here for, then ? If you only exerted yourself a little to make yourself agreeable, I could understand your obstinacy; but you spend your time in vilifying me to your friends or in insulting me to my face in my own house, . . . and all because I will not submit to your whims, and make myself a prisoner and never see

any one but you What a delightful prospect !. .. In a

single word, you are an ingrate. To please you I left Selim Nuflo, who was as good to me as could be and put up with all my caprices. I was very fond of you, . . . oh ! you know it well enough ! . . . for before this crazy fit came on you, you were an agreeable, nice fellow, ... but here for the last three months you have been losing your head altogether, . . . and so, good-day ! It is hot in my line to care for lunatics ; go to an asylum.”

She had posted herself with her back to the fire-place as she spoke, and the amber-like brilliancy of her flesh stood out against the red of her plush dressing-gown like ivory. Her small, curly head, upborne by a neck that was rather long, was exquisitely formed, and her bust, emerging from the opening of her dress in a setting of costly old lace, had the proud firmness of youth.

Pierre approached with hesitating steps, and seating himself upon a stool almost at the young woman’s feet, said :

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“ Forgive me; I am in torture, for I love you, and I am jealous.”

She gave him an ugly look, and replied in freezing tones:

“ So much the worse ! for I have made up my mind that I will endure your brutality and distrust no longer. I have had all that I could do for weeks and weeks to keep myself from telling you so, and now this settles it. It is done, done, done! You need not trouble yourself to come here any more.”

The painter’s face paled slightly. “You mean that for a dismissal ?”

“ Yes, I mean it for a dismissal.”

He was silent for a moment, as if hesitating to give expression to all his thought; then, almost in a whisper, fearing and foreboding the cruel answer that was awaiting him, he asked :