The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th Century by Terry Hale Page A
Authors: Terry Hale
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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
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
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