LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 116, 14 October 1874, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE INVISIBLE EYE. Continued. This way of treating the matter was far from satisfying my mind, however. The old woman’s horrible glance pursued me everywhere; and more than once, while scaling the perpendicular ladder of my lodging-hole, feeling my clothes caught in a nail, I trembled from head to foot, believing that the old woman had seized me by the tails of my coat for the purpose of pulling me down backwards.

Toubac, to whom I related the story, far from laughing at it, received it with a serious air.

‘Master Christian,’ he said, “if the old woman means you arm, take care; her teeth are small, sharp-pointed, and wonderfully white, which is not natural at her age. She has the Evil Eye ! Children run away at her approach, and the people of Nuremberg call her Fledermausse!’ I admired, generally, the Jew’s clearsightedness, and what he had told me made me reflect a good deal; but at the end of a few weeks, having often met Fledermausse without harmful consequences, my fears died away and I thought no more of her. Now, it happened one night, when I was lying sound asleep, I was awakened by a strange harmony. It was a kind of vibration, so soft, so melodious, that the murmur of a light breeze through foilage can convey but a feeble idea of its gentle nature. For a long time I listened to it, my eyes wide open, and holding my breath the better to hear it.

At length, looking towards the window, I saw two wings beating against the glass. I thought, at first, that it was a bat imprisoned in my chamber; but the moon was shining clearly, and the wings of a magnificent night-moth, transparent as lace, were designed upon its radiant disc. At times their vibrations were so rapid as to hide them from my view; then, for awhile they would lie in repose, extended on the glass pane, their delicate articulations made visible anew.

This vaporous apparition in the midst of the universal silence, opened my heart to the tenderest emotions; it seemed to me that a sylphid, pitying my solitude, had come to see me; and this idea brought the tears into my eyes. * Have no fear, gentle captive,—have no fear! ’ I said to it; ‘ your confidence shall not be betrayed. I will not retain you against your wishes; return to heaven —to liberty! ’ And I opened the window. The night was calm. Thousands of stars glittered in space. For a moment I contemplated this sublime spectacle, and the words of prayer rose naturally to my lips. But judge of my amazement when, lowering my eyes, I saw a man hanging from the iron stanchion supporting the signboard of the Becuf-gras; the hair in disorder, the arms stiff, the legs straightened to a point, and throwing their gigantic shadow the whole length of the street ! The immobility of this figure, in the moonlight, had something frightful in it. I felt my tongue grow icy cold, and my teeth chattered. I was about to utter a cry; but, by what mysterious attraction I know not, my eyes were drawn towards the opposite house, and there 1 dimly distinguished the old woman, in the midst of the heavy shadow, squatting at her window and contemplating the hanging body with diabolical satisfaction.

I became giddy with terror ; my whole strength deserted me, and I fell down in a heap insensible. I do not know how long I lay unconscious. On coming to myself I found that it was broad day. The mists of night, entering my garret, had dropped their fresh moisture on my hair. Mingled and confused noises rose from the street below. I looked out from my window. The burgomaster and his secretary were standing at the door of the Baivf-gras; they remained there a long time. People came and went, stopped to look, then passed on their way. Women of the neighbourhood, sweeping in front of their houses, looked from a distance towards the public house and chatted with each other. At length a stretcher, on which lay a body covered with a woollen cloth, was brought out of the auberge and carried away by two men, who passed down the street, children, on their way to school, following them as they went. Everybody else retired. The window in front of the house remained open still; a fragment of rope dangled from the iron support of the signboard. I had not dreamed—l had really seen the night-moth on my window-pane—then the suspended body—then the old woman! In the course of that day Toubec paid me his weekly visit. ‘ Anything to sell, Master Christian? ’ he cried, as his big nose became visible above the edge of the floor, which it seemed to shave.

I did not hear him. I was seated on my only chair, my hands upon my knees, my eyes fixed on vacancy before me. Toubec, surprised at my immobility, repeated in a louder tone, * Master Christian!—Master Christian! ’ then, stepping up to me, tapped me smartly on the shoulder. ‘ What’t the matter?—what’s the matter? ’ he asked.

* Ah! is that you, Toubec? ’ ‘Well, it’s pleasant for me to think so! Are you ill? ’ ‘ No, —I was thinking. ’ ‘ What the deuce about? ’

‘ The man who was hung ’ ‘ Aha? ’ cried the old broker; ‘ you saw the poor felloAV, then? What a strange affair! The third in the same place! ’ ‘ The third ?’

‘ Yes, the third. I ought to have told you about it before ; but there’s still time—for there’s sure to be a fourth, following the example of the others, the first step only making the difficulty. ’ This said, Toubec seated himself on a box, struck a light with the flint and steel, let his pipe and sent out a few puffs of tobaccosmoke with a thoughtful air. ‘ Good faith !’ said he, ‘ I’m not timid ; but if anyone were to ask me to sleep in that room, I’d rather go and hang myself somewhere else! Nine or ten mouths back’ he continued, * a wholesale furrier, from Tubingen, put up at the Bceuf-gras. He called for supper; ate well, drank well, and was shown up to bed in the room on the third floor they call the ‘ green chamber ;’ and the next day they found him hanging from the stanchion of the signboard. ’ * So much for number one, about which there was nothing to be said. A proper re-

port of the affair was drawn up, and the body of the stranger was buried at the bottom of the garden. But about six weeks afterwards came a soldier from Neustadt ; he had his discharge, and was congratulating himself on his return to his village. All the evening he did nothing but empty mugs of wine and talk of his cousin, who was waiting his return to marry him. At last they put him to bed in the green chamber, and, the same night, the watchman passing along the rue des Minnesangers noticed something hanging from the signboard-stanchion. He raised his lantern ;it was the soldier, with his dis-charge-papers in a tin box hanging on his left thigh, and his hands planted smoothly on the outer seams of his trowsers, as if he had been on parade ! ‘ It was certainly an extraordinary affair ! The burgomaster declared it was the work of the devil. The chamber was examined; they replastered its walls. A notice of the death was sent to Neustadt, in the margin of which the clerk wrote— ‘ Died suddenly of apoplexy.’ ‘ All Nuremberg was indignant against the landlord of the JJtCiif-gras, and wished to compel him to take down the iron stanchion of his signboard, on the pretext that it put dangerous ideas in peoples’ heads. But you may easily imagine that old Nikel Schmidt didn’t listen with that ear.

‘ ‘ That stanchion was put there by my grandfather,’ he said; ‘the sign of the j ßosuf-gras has hung on it, from father to son, for a hundred and fifty years ; it does nobody any harm, not even the hay-carts that pass under it, because it’s more than thirty feet high up ; those who don’t like it have only to look another way, and then they won’t see it. ’ ‘ People’s excitement gradually cooled down, and for several months nothing new happened. Unfortunately, a student of Heidelberg, on his way to the University, came to the Bocvf-gr&s and asked for a bed. He was the son of a pastor. ‘ Who could suppose that the son of a pastor would take into his head the idea of hanging himself to the stanchion of a publichouse sign, because a furrier and a soldier had hung themselves there before him ? It must be confessed, Master Christian, that the thing was not very probable—it would not have appeared more likely to you than it did to me. Well ’

‘ Enough !■ enough !’ I cried ; ‘it is a horrible affair. I feel sure there is some frightful mystery at the bottom of it. It is neither the stanchion nor the chamber ’

‘You don’t mean that you suspect the landlord ?—as honest a man as there is in the world, and belonging to one of the oldest families in Nuremberg ?’ ‘No, no ! heaven keep me from forming unjust suspicions of any one ; but there are abysses into the depths of which one dares not look.’

‘ You are right,’ saidToubec, astonished at my excited manner; ‘ and we had much better talk of something else. By-the-by, Master Christian, “what about our landscape, the view of the Sainte-Odille ?’ The question brought me back to actualities. I showed the broker the picture I had just finished. The business was soon settled between us, and Toubec, thoroughly satisfied, went down the ladder, advising me to think no more of the student of Heidelberg. I would very willingly have followed the old broker’s advice, but when the devil mixes himself in our affairs he is not easily shaken off. Chapter 11. In the midst of solitude, all these events came back to my mind with frightful distinctness. The old woman, I said to myself, is the cause of all this ; she alone has planned these crimes, she alone has carried them into execution ; but by what means ? Has she had recourse to cunning only, or really to the intervention of the invisible powers ? I paced my garret, a voice within me crying, “It is not without purpose that Heaven has permitted you to see Fledermausse watching the agony of her victim ; it was not without design that the poor young man’s soul came to wake you in the form of a night-moth ! No ! all this has not been without purpose. Christian, Heaven imposes on yon a terrible mission ; if you fail to accomplish it, fear yourself that you may fall into the toils of the old woman ! Perhaps at this moment she is laying her snares for you in the darkness !’ During several days these frightful images pursued me without cessation. I could not sleep; I found it impossible to work; the brush fell from my hand, and, shocking to confess, I detected myself at times complacently contemplating the dreadful stanchion. At last, one evening, unable any longer to bear this state of mind, I flew down the ladder four steps at a time, and went and hid myself beside Fledermausse’s door, for the purpose of discovering her fatal secret.

From that time there was never a day that I was not on the watch, following the old woman like her shadow, never losing sight of her; but she was so cunning, she had so keen a scent, that without even turning her head she discovered that I was behind her, and knew' that I was on her track. But nevertheless, she pretended not to see me—went to the market, to the butcher’s, like a simple housewife; only she quickened her pace and muttered to herself as she went.

At the end of a month I saw that it would be impossible for me to achieve my purpose by these means, and this conviction filled me with an inexpressible sadness. ‘ What can I do? ’ I asked myself. ‘ The old woman has discovered my intentions, and is thoroughly on her guard. lam help less. The old wretch already thinks she sees me at the end of the cord! ’

At length, from repeating to myself again and again the question, ‘ What can I do? a luminous idea presented itself to my mind. My chamber overlooked the house of Fledermausse, but it had no dormer window on that side. I carefully raised one of the slates of my roof, and the delight I felt on discovering that by this means I could command a view of the entire antique building can hardly be imagined. To he continued.