Part 3 of 6
“There,” said the Professor of Transcendental Magic, after having traced two words in the Hebrew language in the beginning and at the end of the book. “Here are two words which the spirits of darkness will never counterfeit. Go in peace, sleep well, and no longer evoke spirits.”
The workman withdrew.
A week later, he returned to seek the Man of Science.
“You have restored to me hope and life,” said he; “my strength is partially returned, I am able with the signatures that you gave me to relieve sufferers, and cast out devils, but him, I cannot see him again, and, until I have seen him, I shall be sad to the day of my death. Formerly, he was always near me, he sometimes touched me, and he used to wake me up in the night to tell me all that I needed to know. Master, I beg of you, let me see him again!”
“See whom?”
“Adonai,”
“Do you know who Adonai is?”
“No, but I want to see him again.”
“Adonai is invisible.”
“I have seen him.”
“He has no form.”
“I have touched him.”
“He is infinite.”
“He is very nearly of my own height.”
“The prophets say of him that the hem of his vestment, from the East to the West, sweeps the stars of the morning.”
“He had a very clean surcoat, and very white linen.”
“The Holy Scripture says that one cannot see him and live.”
“He had a kind and jovial face.”
“But how did you proceed in order to obtain these apparitions?”
“Why, I did everything that it tells you to do in the grimoire. ”
“What! Even the bloody sacrifice?”
“Doubtless.”
“Unhappy man! But who, then, was the victim?”
At this question, the workman had a slight trembling; he paled, and his glance became troubled.
“Master, you know better than I what it is,” said he humbly in a low voice. “Oh, it cost me a great deal to do it; above all, the first time, with a single blow of the magic knife to cut the throat of that innocent creature! One night I had just accomplished the funereal rites, I was seated in the circle on the interior threshold of my door, and the victim had just been consumed in a great fire of alder and cypress wood. ... All of a sudden, quite close to me .... I dreamt or rather I felt it pass ... I heard in my ear a heartrending wail ... one would have said that it wept; and since that moment, I think that I am hearing it always.”
Eliphas had risen; he looked fixedly upon his interlocutor. Had he before him a dangerous madman, capable of renewing the atrocities of the seigneur of Retz? And yet the face of the man was gentle and honest. No, it was not possible.
“But then this victim. .. tell me clearly what it was. You suppose that I know already. Perhaps I do know, but I have reasons for wishing you to tell me.”
“It was, according to the magic ritual, a young goat of a year old, virgin, and without defect.”
“A real young he-goat?”
“Doubtless. Understand that it was neither a child’s toy, nor a stuffed animal.”
Eliphas breathed again.
“Good,” thought he; “this man is not a sorcerer worthy of the stake. He does not know that the abominable authors of the grimoire, when they spoke of the ‘virgin he-goat,’ meant a little child.”
“Well,” said he to his consultant; “give me some details about your visions. What you tell me interests me in the highest○.”
The sorcerer—for one must call him so—the sorcerer then told him of a series of strange facts, of which two families had been witness, and these facts were precisely identical with the phenomena of Mr.Home: hands coming out of walls, movements of furniture, phosphorescent apparitions. One day, the rash apprentice-magician had dared to call up Astaroth, and had seen the apparition of a gigantic monster having the body of a hog, and the head borrowed from the skeleton of a colossal ox. But he told all that with an accent of truth, a certainty of having seen, which excluded every kind of doubt as to the good faith and the entire conviction of the narrator. Eliphas, who is an epicure in magic, was delighted with this find. In the nineteenth century, a real sorcerer of the middle ages, a remarkably innocent and convinced sorcerer, a sorcerer who had seen Satan under the name of Adonai, Satan dressed like a respectable citizen, and Astaroth in his true diabolical form! What a supreme find for a museum! What a treasure for an archaeologist!
“My friend,” said he to his new disciple, “I am going to help you to find what you say you have lost. Take my book, observe the prescriptions of the ritual, and come again to see me in a week.”
A week later he returned, but this time the workman declared that he had invented a life-saving machine of the greatest importance for the navy. The machine is perfectly put together; it only lacks one thing—it will not work: there is a hidden defect in the machinery. What was that defect? The evil spirit alone could tell him. It is then absolutely necessary to evoke him! ...
“Take care you do not!” said Eliphas. “You had much better say for nine days this qabalistic evocation.” He gave him a leaf covered with manuscript. “Begin this evening, and return to-morrow to tell me what you have seen, for to night you will have a manifestation.”
The next day, our good man did not miss the appointment.
“I woke up suddenly,” said he, “upon one o’clock in the morning. In front of my bed I saw a bright light, and in this light a shadowy arm which passed and repassed before me, as if to magnetize me. Then I went to sleep again, and some instants afterwards, waking anew, I saw again the same light, but it had changed its place. It had passed from left to right, and upon a luminous background I distinguished the silhouette of a man who was looking at me with arms crossed.”
“What was this man like?”
“Just about your height and breadth.”
“It is well. Go, and continue to do what I told you.”
The nine days rolled by; at the end of that time, a new visit; but this time he was absolutely radiant and excited. As soon as he caught sight of Eliphas:
“Thanks, Master!” he cried. “The machine works! People whom I did not know have come to place at my disposal the funds which were necessary to carry out my enterprise; I have found again peace in sleep; and all that thanks to your power!”
“Say, rather, thanks to your faith and your docility. And now, farewell: I must work. .. Well, why do you assume this suppliant air, and what more do you want of me?”
“Oh, if you only would ”
“Well, what now? Have you not obtained all that you asked for, and even more than you asked for, for you did not mention money to me?”
“Yes, doubtless,” said the other sighing; “but I do want to see him again!”
“Incorrigible!” said Eliphas.
Some days afterwards, the Professor of Transcendental Magic was awakened, about two o’clock in the morning, by an acute pain in the head. For some moments he feared a cerebral congestion. He therefore rose, relit his lamp, opened his window, walked to and fro in his study, and then, calmed by the fresh air of the morning, he lay down again, and slept deeply. He had a nightmare: he saw, terribly real, the giant with the fleshless ox’s head of which the workman had spoken to him. The monster pursued him, and struggled with him. When he woke up, it was already day, and somebody was knocking at his door. Eliphas rose, threw on a dressing- gown, and opened; it was the workman.
“Master,” said he, entering hastily, and with an alarmed air; “how are you?”
“Very well,” replied Eliphas.
“But last night, at two o’clock in the morning, did you not run a great danger?”
Eliphas did not grasp the allusion; he already no longer remembered the indisposition of the night.
“A danger?” said he. “No; none that I know of.”
“Have you not been assaulted by a monster phantom, who sought to strangle you? Did it not hurt you?”
Eliphas remembered.
“Yes,” said he, “certainly, I had the beginning of a sort of apoplectic attack, and a horrible dream. But how do you know that?”
“At the same time, an invisible hand struck me roughly on the shoulder, and awoke me suddenly. I dreamt then that I saw you fighting with Astaroth. I jumped up, and a voice said in my ear: ‘Arise and go to the help of thy Master; he is in danger.’ I got up in a great hurry. But where must I run? What danger threatened you? Was it at your own house, or elsewhere? The voice said nothing about that. I decided to wait for sunrise; and immediately day dawned, I ran, and here I am.”
“Thanks, friend,” said the magus, holding out his hand; “Astaroth is a stupid joker; all that happened last night was a little blood to the head. Now, I am perfectly well. Be assured, then, and return to your work.”
Strange as may be the facts which we have just related, there remains for us to unveil a tragic drama much more extraordinary still.
It refers to the deed of blood which at the beginning of this year plunged Paris and all Christendom into mourning and stupefaction; a deed in which no one suspected that Black Magic had any part.
Here is what happened:
During the winter, at the beginning of last year, a bookseller informed the author of the Dogme et rituel de la haute magie that an ecclesiastic was looking for his address, testifying the greatest desire to see him. Eliphas Levi did not feel himself immediately prepossessed with confidence towards the stranger, to the point of exposing himself without precaution to his visits; he indicated the house of a friend, where he was to be in the company of his faithful disciple, Desbarrolles. At the hour and date appointed they went, in fact, to the house of Mme. A , and found that the ecclesiastic had been waiting for them for some moments.
He was a young and slim man; he had an arched and pointed nose, with dull blue eyes. His bony and projecting forehead was rather broad than high, his head was dolichocephalic, his hair flat and short, parted on one side, of a greyish blond with just a tinge of chestnut of a rather curious and disagreeable shade. His mouth was sensual and quarrelsome; his manners were affable, his voice soft, and his speech sometimes a little embarrassed. Questioned by Eliphas Levi concerning the object of his visit, he replied that he was on the look-out for the grimoire of Honorius, and that he had come to learn from the Professor of Occult Science how to obtain that little black book, now-a-days almost impossible to find.
“I would gladly give a hundred francs for a copy of that grimoire,” said he.
“The work in itself is valueless,” said Eliphas. &lrdquo;It is a pretended constitution of Honorius II, which you will find perhaps quoted by some erudite collector of apocryphal constitutions; you can find it in the library.”
“I will do so, for I pass almost all my time in Paris in the public libraries.”
“You are not occupied in the ministry in Paris?”
“No, not now; I was for some little while employed in the parish of St. Germain-Auxerrois.”
“And you now spend your time, I understand, in curious researches in occult science.”
“Not precisely, but I am seeking the realization of a thought. ... I have something to do.”
“I do not suppose that this something can be an operation of Black Magic. You know as well as I do, reverend sir, that the Church has always condemned, and still condemns, severely, everything which relates to these forbidden practices.”
A pale smile, imprinted with a sort of sarcastic irony, was all the answer that the Abbe gave, and the conversation fell to the ground.
However, the cheiromancer Desbarrolles was attentively looking at the hand of the priest; he perceived it, a quite natural explanation followed, the Abbe offered graciously and of his own accord his hand to the experimenter. Desbarrolles knit his brows, and appeared embarrassed. The hand was damp and cold, the fingers smooth and spatulated; the mount of Venus, or the part of the palm of the hand which corresponds to the thumb, was of a noteworthy development, the line of life was short and broken, there were crosses in the centre of the hand, and stars upon the mount of the moon.
“Reverend sir,” said Desbarrolles, “if you had not a very solid religious education you would easily become a dangerous sectary, for you are led on the one hand toward the most exalted mysticism, and on the other to the most concentrated obstinacy combined with the greatest secretiveness that can possibly be. You want much, but you imagine more, and as you confide your imaginations to nobody, they might attain proportions which would make them veritable enemies for yourself. Your habits are contemplative an rather easygoing, but it is a somnolence whose awakenings are perhaps to be dreaded. You are carried away by a passion which your state of life ------ But pardon, reverend sir, I fear that I am over-stepping the boundaries of discretion.”
“Say everything, sir; I am willing to hear all, I wish to now everything.”
“Oh, well! If, as I do not doubt to be the case, you turn to the profit of charity all the restless activities with which the passions of your heart furnish you, you must often be blessed for your good works.”
The Abbe once more smiled that dubious and fatal smile which gave so singular an expression to his pallid countenance. He rose and took his leave without having given his name, and without any one having thought to ask him for it.
Eliphas and Desbarrolles reconducted him as far as the staircase, in token of respect for his dignity as a priest.
Near the staircase he turned and said slowly:
“Before long, you will hear something. ... You will hear me spoken of,” he added, emphasizing each word. Then he saluted with head and hand, turned without adding a single word, and descended the staircase.
The two friends returned to Mme. A ’s room.
“There is a singular personage,” said Eliphas; “I think I have seen Pierrot of the Funambules playing the part of a traitor. What he said to us on his departure seemed to me very much like a threat.”
“You frightened him,” said Mme. A . “Before your arrival, he was beginning to open his whole mind, but you spoke to him of conscience and of the laws of the Church, and he no longer dared to tell you what he wished.”
“Bah! What did he wish then?”
“To see the devil.”
“Perhaps he thought I had him in my pocket?”
“No, but he knows that you give lessons in the Qabalah, and in magic, and so he hoped that you would help him in his enterprise. He told my daughter and myself that in his vicarage in the country, he had already made one night an evocation of the devil by the help of a popular grimoire. ‘Then’ said he, ‘a whirlwind seemed to shake the vicarage; the rafts groaned, the wainscoting cracked, the doors shook, the windows opened with a crash, and whistlings were heard in every corner of the house.’ He then expected that formidable vision to follow, but he saw nothing; no monster presented itself; in a word, the devil would not appear. That is why he is looking for the grimoire of Honorius, for he hopes to find in it stronger conjurations, and more efficacious rites.”
“Really! But the man is then a monster, or a madman!”
“I think he is just simply in love,” said Desbarrolles. “He is gnawed by some absurd passion, and hopes for absolutely nothing unless he can get the devil to interfere.”
“But how then—what does he mean when he says that we shall hear him spoken of?”
“Who knows? Perhaps he thinks to carry off the Queen of England, or the Sultana Valide.”
The conversation dropped, and a whole year passed without Mme. A . or Desbarrolles, or Eliphas hearing the unknown young priest spoken of.
In the course of the night between the 1st and 2nd of January, 1857, Eliphas Levi was awakened suddenly by the emotions of a bizarre and dismal dream. It seemed to him that he was in a dilapidated room of gothic architecture, rather like the abandoned chapel of an old castle. A door hidden by a black drapery opened on to this room; behind the drapery one guessed the hidden light of tapers, and it seemed to Eliphas that, driven by a curiosity full of terror, he was approaching the black drapery. ... Then the drapery was parted, and a hand was stretched forth and seized the arm of Eliphas. He saw no one, but he heard a low voice which said in his ear:
“Come and see your father, who is about to die.”
The magus awoke, his heart palpitating, and his forehead bathed in sweat.
“What can this dream mean?” thought he. “It is long since my father died; why am I told that he is going to die, and why has this warning upset me?”
The following night, the same dream recurred with the same circumstances; once more Eliphas awoke, hearing a voice in his ear repeat:
“Come and see your father, who is about to die.”
This repeated nightmare made a painful impression upon Eliphas: he had accepted, for the 3rd January, an invitation to dinner in pleasant company, but he wrote and excused himself, feeling himself little inclined for the gaiety of a banquet of artists. He remained, then, in his study; the weather was cloudy; at midday he received a visit from one of his magical pupils, Viscount M . When he left, the rain was falling in such abundance that Eliphas offered his umbrella to the Viscount, who refused it. There followed a contest of politeness, of which the result was that Eliphas went out to see the Viscount home. While they were in the street, the rain stopped, the Viscount found a carriage, and Eliphas, instead of returning to his house, mechanically crossed the Luxembourg, went out by the gate which opens on the Rue d’Enfer, and found himself opposite the Pantheon.
A double row of booths, improvised for the Festival of St. Geneviève, indicated to pilgrims the road to St. Etienne-du-Mont. Eliphas, whose heart was sad, and consequently disposed to prayer, followed that way and entered the church. It might have been at that time about four o’clock in the afternoon.
The church was full of the faithful, and the office was performed with great concentration, and extraordinary solemnity. The banners of the parishes of the city, and of the suburbs, bore witness to the public veneration for the virgin who saved Paris from famine and invasion. At the bottom of the church, the tomb of St. Geneviève shone gloriously with light. They were chanting the litanies, and the procession was coming out of the choir.
After the cross, accompanied by its acolytes, and followed by the choirboys, came the banner of St. Geneviève; then, walking in double file, came the lady devotees of St. Geneviève, clothed in black, with a white veil on the head, a blue ribbon around the neck, with the medal of the legend, a taper in the hand, surmounted by the little gothic lantern that tradition gives to the images of the saint. For, in the old books, St Genevieve is always represented with a medal on her neck, that which St. Germain d’Auxerre gave her, and holding a taper, which the devil tries to extinguish, but which is protected from the breath of the unclean spirit by a miraculous little tabernacle.
After the lady devotees came the clergy; then finally appeared the venerable Archbishop of Paris, mitred with a white mitre, wearing a cope which was supported on each side by his two vicars; the prelate, leaning on his cross, walked slowly, and blessed to right and left the crowd which knelt about his path. Eliphas saw the Archbishop for the first time, and noticed the features of his countenance. They expressed kindliness and gentleness; but one might observe the expression of a great fatigue, and even of a nervous suffering painfully dissimulated.
The procession descended to the foot of the church, traversing the nave, went up again by the aisle at the left of the door, and came to the station of the tomb of St. Geneviève; then it returned by the right-hand aisle, chanting the litanies as it went. A group of the faithful followed the procession, and walked immediately behind the Archbishop.
Eliphas mingled in this group, in order more easily to get through the crowd which was about to reform, so that he might regain the door of the church. He was lost in reverie, softened by this pious solemnity.
The head of the procession had already returned to the choir, the Archbishop was arriving at the railing of the nave: there the passage was too narrow for three people to walk in file; the Archbishop was in front, and the two grand-vicars behind him, always holding the edges of his cope, which was thus thrown off, and drawn backwards, in such a manner that the prelate presented his breast uncovered, and protected only the by crossed embroideries of his stole.
Then those who were behind the Archbishop saw him tremble, and we heard an interruption in a loud and clear voice; but without shouting, or clamour. What had been said? It seemed that it was: “Down with the goddesses!” But I thought I had not heard aright, so out of place and void of sense it seemed. However, the exclamation was repeated twice or thrice; then some one cried: “Save the Archbishop!” Other voices replied: “To arms!” The crowd, overturning the chairs and the barriers, scattered, and rushed towards the doors shrieking. Amidst the wails of the children, and the screams of the women, Eliphas, carried away by the crowd, found himself somehow or other out of the church; but the last look that he was able to cast upon it was smitten with a terrible and ineffaceable picture!
In the midst of a circle made large by the affright of all those who surrounded him, the prelate was standing alone, leaning always on his cross, and held up by the stiffness of his cope, which the grand-vicars had let go, and which accordingly hung down to the ground.
The head of the Archbishop was a little thrown back, his eyes and his free hand raised to heaven. His attitude was that which Eugène Delacroix has given to the Bishop of Liège in the picture of his assassination by the bandits of the Wild Boar of the Ardennes; [27] there was in his gesture the whole epic or martyrdom; it was an acceptance and an offering; a prayer for his people, and a pardon for his murderer.
The day was falling, and the church was beginning to grow dark. The Archbishop, his arms raised to heaven, lighted by a last ray which penetrated the casements of the nave, stood out upon a dark background, where one could scarcely distinguish a pedestal without a statue, on which were written these two words of the Passion of Christ: ECCE HOMO! and farther in the background, an apocalyptic painting representing the four plagues ready to let themselves loose upon the world, and the whirlwinds of hell, following the dusty traces of the pale horse of death.
Before the Archbishop, a lifted arm, sketched in shadow like an infernal silhouette, held and brandished a knife. Policemen, sword in hand, were running up.
And while all this tumult was going on at the bottom of the church, the singing of the litanies continued in the choir, as the harmony of the orbs of heaven goes on for ever, careless of our revolutions and of our anguish.
Eliphas Levi had been swept out of the church by the crowd. He had come out by the right-hand door. Almost at the same moment the left-hand door was flung violently open, and a furious group of men rushed out of the church.
This group was whirling around a man whom fifty arms seemed to hold, whom a hundred shaken fists sought to strike.
This man later complained of having been roughly handled by the police, but, as far as one could see in such an uproar, the police were rather protecting him against the exasperation of the mob.
Women were running after him, shrieking: “Kill him!”
“But what has he done?” cried other voices.
“The wretch! He has struck the Archbishop with his fist!” said the women.
Then others came out of the church, and contradictory accounts were flying to and fro.
“The archbishop was frightened, and has fainted,” said some.
“He is dead!” replied others.
“Did you see the knife?” added a third comer. “It is as long as a sabre, and the blood was steaming on the blade.”
“The poor Archbishop has lost one of his slippers,” remarked an old woman, joining her hands.
“It is nothing! It is nothing!” cried a woman who rented chairs. “You can come back to the church: Monseigneur is not hurt; they have just said so from the pulpit.”
The crowd then made a movement to return to the church.
“Go! Go!” said at that very moment the grave and anguished voice of a priest. “The office cannot be continued; we are going to close the church: it is profaned.”
“How is the Archbishop?” said a man.
“Sir,” replied the priest, “the Archbishop is dying; perhaps even at this very moment he is dead!”
The crowd dispersed in consternation to spread the mournful news over Paris.
A bizarre incident happened to Eliphas, and made a kind of diversion for his deep sorrow at what had just passed.
At the moment of the uproar, an aged woman of the most respectable appearance had taken his arm, and claimed his protection.
He made it a duty to reply to this appeal, and when he had got out of the crowd with this lady: “How happy I am,” said she, ”to have met a man who weeps for this great crime, for which, at this moment, so many wretches rejoice!”
“What are you saying, madam? How is it possible that there should exist beings so depraved as to rejoice at so great a misfortune?”
“Silence!” said the old lady; “perhaps we are overheard. ... Yes,” she added, lowering her voice; “there are people who are exceedingly pleased at what has happened. And look there, just now, there was a man of sinister mien, who said to the anxious crowd, when they asked him what had happened, ‘Oh, it is nothing! It is a spider which has fallen.’" [28] “No, madam, you must have misunderstood. The crowd would not have suffered so abominable a remark, and the man would have been immediately arrested." [29]
“Would to God that all the world thought as you do!” said the lady.
Then she added: “I recommend myself to your prayers, for I see clearly that you are a man of God.”
“Perhaps every one does not think so,” replied Eliphas.
“And what does the world matter to us?” replied the lady with vivacity; ”the world lies and calumniates, and is impious! It speaks evil of you, perhaps. I am not surprised at it, and if you knew what it says of me, you would easily understand why I despise its opinion!”
“The world speaks evil of you, madam?”
“Yes, in truth, and the greatest evil that can be said.”
“How so?”
“It accuses me of sacrilege.”
“You frighten me. Of what sacrilege, if you please?”
“Of an unworthy comedy that I am supposed to have played in order to deceive two children, on the mountain of the Salette.”
“What! You must be ”
“I am Mademoiselle de la Merlière.”
“I have heard speak of your trial, mademoiselle, and of the scandal which it caused, but it seems to me that your age and your position ought to have sheltered you from such an accusation.”
“Come and see me, sir, and I will present you to my lawyer, M. Favre, who is a man of talent whom I wish to gain to God.”
Thus talking, the two companions had arrived at the Rue du Vieux Colombier. The Lady thanked her improvised cavalier, and renewed her invitation to come to see her.
“I will try to do so,” said Eliphas; “but if I come shall I ask the porter for Mille. de la Merlière?”
“Do not do so,” said she; “I am not know under that name; ask for Mme. Dutruck.”
“Dutruck, certainly, madam; I present my humble compliments.”
And they separated.
The trial of the assassin began, and Eliphas, reading in the newspapers that the man was a priest, that he had belonged to the clergy of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, that he had been a country vicar, and that he seemed exalted to the point of madness, recalled the pale priest who, a year earlier, had been looking for the grimoire of Honorius. But the description which the public sheets gave of the criminal disagreed with the recollection of the Professor of Magic. In fact, the majority of the papers said that he had black hair. ... ”It is not he, then,” thought Eliphas. “However, I still keep in my ear and in my memory the word which would now be explained for me by this great crime: ‘You will soon learn something. Before a little, you will hear speak of me.’”
The trial took place with all the frightful vicissitudes with which every one is familiar, and the accused was condemned to death.
The next day, Eliphas read in a legal newspaper the account of this unheard-of scene in the annals of justice, but a cloud passed over his eyes when he came to the description of the accused: “He is blond.”
“It must be he,” said the Professor of Magic.
Some days afterwards, a person who had been able to sketch the convict during the trial, showed it to Eliphas.
“Let me copy this drawing,” said he, all trembling with fear.
He made the copy, and took it to his friend Desbarrolles, of whom he asked, without other explanation:
“Do you know this head?”
“Yes,” said Desbarrolles energetically. ”Wait a moment: yes, it is the mysterious priest whom we saw at Mme. A ’s, and who wanted to make magical evocations.”
“Oh, well, my friend, you confirm me in my sad conviction. The man we saw, we shall never see again; the hand which you examined has become a bloody hand. We have heard speak of him, as he told us we should; that pale priest, do you know what was his name?”
“Oh, my God!” said Desbarolles, changing colour, “I am afraid to know it!”
“Well, you know it: it was the wretch Louis Verger!”
Some weeks after what we have just recorded, Eliphas Levi was talking with a bookseller whose specialty was to make a collection of old books concerning the occult sciences. They were talking of the grimoire of Honorius.
“Now-a-days, it is impossible to find it,” said the merchant. “The last that I had in my hands I sold to a priest for a hundred francs.”
“A young priest? And do you remember what he looked like?”
“Oh, perfectly, but you ought to know him well yourself, for he told me he had seen you, and it is I who sent him to you.”
No more doubt, then; the unhappy priest had found the fatal grimoire, he had done the evocation, and prepared himself for the murder by a series of sacrileges. For this is in what the infernal evocations consist, according to the grimoire of Honorius:
“Choose a black cock, and give him the name of the spirit of darkness which one wishes to evoke.
“Kill the cock, and keep its heart, its tongue, and the first feather of its left wing.
“Dry the tongue and the heart, and reduce them to powder.
“Eat no meat and drink no wine, that day.
“On Tuesday, at dawn, say a mass of the angels.
“Trace upon the altar itself, with the feather of the cock dipped in the consecrated wine, certain diabolical signatures (those of Mr. Home’s pencil, and the bloody hosts of Vintras).
“On Wednesday, prepare a taper of yellow wax; rise at midnight, and alone, in the church, begin the office of the dead.
“Mingle with this office infernal evocations.
“Finish the office by the light of a single taper, extinguish it immediately, and remain without light in the church thus profaned until sunrise.
“On Thursday, mingle with the consecrated water the powder of the tongue and heart of the black cock, and let the whole be swallowed by a male lamb of nine days old. ...”
The hand refuses to write the rest. It is a mixture of brutalizing practices and revolting crimes, so constituted as to kill for evermore judgment and conscience. [30]
But in order to communicate with the phantom of absolute evil, to realize that phantom to the point of seeing and touching it, is it not necessary to be without conscience and without judgment?
There is doubtless the secret of this incredible perversity, of this murderous fury, of this unwholesome hate against all order, all ministry, all hierarchy, of this fury, above all, against the dogma which sanctifies peace, obedience, gentleness, purity, under so touching an emblem as that of a mother.
This wretch thought himself sure not to die. The Emperor, thought he, would be obliged to pardon him; an honourable exile awaited him; his crime would give him an enormous celebrity; his reveries would be bought for their weight in gold by the booksellers. He would become immensely rich, attract the notice of a great lady, and marry beyond the seas. It is by such promises that the phantom of the devil, long ago, lured Gilles de Laval, Seigneur of Retz, and made him wade from crime to crime. A man capable of evoking the devil, according to the rites of the grimoire of Honorius, has gone so far upon the road of evil that he is disposed to all kinds of hallucinations, and all lies. So, Verger slept in blood, to dream of I know not what abominable pantheon; and he awoke upon the scaffold.
But the aberrations of perversity do not constitute an insanity; the execution of this wretch proved it.
One knows what desperate resistance he made to his executioners. “It is treason,” said he; “I cannot die so! Only one hour, an hour to write to the Emperor! The Emperor is bound to save me.”
Who, then, was betraying him?
Who, then, had promised him life?
Who, then, had assured him beforehand of a clemency which was impossible, because it would revolt the conscience of the public?
Ask all that of the grimoire of Honorius!
Two incidents in this tragic story bear upon the phenomena produced by Mr. Home: the noise of the storm heard by the wicked priest in his early evocations, and the difficulty which he found in expressing his real thought in the presence of Eliphas Levi.
One may also comment upon the apparition of the sinister man taking pleasure in the public grief, and uttering an indeed infernal word in the midst of the consternation of the crowd, an apparition only noticed by the ecstatic of La Salette, the too celebrated Mlle. de La Merliere, who has the air after all of a worthy individual, but very excitable, and perhaps capable of acting and speaking without knowing it herself, under the influence of a sort of ascetic sleep-waking.
This word “sleep-waking” brings us back to Mr. Home, and our anecdotes have not made us forget what the title of this work promised to our readers.
We ought, then, to tell them what Mr. Home is.
We keep our promise.
Mr. Home is an invalid suffering from a contagious sleep-waking.
This is an assertion.
It remains to us to give an explanation and a demonstration.
That explanation and demonstration, in order to be complete, demand a work sufficient to fill a book.
That book has been written, and we shall publish it shortly.
Here is the title:
The Reason of Miracles, or the Devil at the Tribunal of Science. [31]
“Why the devil?”
Because we have demonstrated by facts what Mr. de Mirville had, before us, incompletely set forth.
We say “incompletely”; because the devil is, for Mr. de Mirville, a fantastic personage, while for us, it is the misuse of a natural force.
A medium once said: “Hell is not a place, it is a state.”
We shall be able to add: “The devil is not a person or a force; it is a vice, and in consequence, a weakness.”
Let us return for a moment to the study of phenomena!
Mediums are, in general, of poor health and narrow limitations.
They can accomplish nothing extraordinary in the presence of calm and educated persons.
One must be accustomed to them before seeing or feeling anything.
The phenomena are not identical for all present. For example, where one will see a hand, another will perceive nothing but a whitish smoke.
Persons impressed by the magnetism of Mr. Home feel a sort of indisposition; it seems to them that the room turns round, and the temperature seems to them to grow rapidly lower.
The miracles are more successful in the presence of a few people chosen by the medium himself.
In a meeting of several persons, it may be that all will see the miracles — with the exception of one, who will see absolutely nothing.