The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories (43 page)

It was a good quarter of an hour that we waited, and Dr. Weber was beginning to grow impatient, when a black object, with long hooked claws, appeared suddenly in the shadow and precipitated itself toward the opening.

A cry resounded about the pyre.

The spider, driven back by the live coals, reëntered its cave. Then, smothered doubtless by the smoke, it returned to the charge and leaped out into the midst of the flames. Its long legs curled up. It was as large as my head, and of a violet red.

One of the woodcutters, fearing lest it leap clear of the fire, threw his hatchet at it, and with such good aim that on the instant the fire around it was covered with blood. But soon the flames burst out more vigorously over it and consumed the horrible destroyer.

* * * *

Such, Master Frantz, was the strange event which destroyed the fine reputation which the waters of Spinbronn formerly enjoyed. I can certify the scrupulous precision of my account. But as for giving you an explanation, that would be impossible for me to do. At the same time, allow me to tell you that it does not seem to me absurd to admit that a spider, under the influence of a temperature raised by thermal waters, which affords the same conditions of life and development as the scorching climates of Africa and South America, should attain a fabulous size. It was this same extreme heat which explains the prodigious exuberance of the antediluvian creation!

However that may be, my tutor, judging that it would be impossible after this event to reestablish the waters of Spinbronn, sold the house back to Hâselnoss, in order to return to America with his negress and collections. I was sent to board in Strasbourg, where I remained until 1809.

The great political events of the epoch then absorbing the attention of Germany and France explain why the affair I have just told you about passed completely unobserved.

4
A collection of prescriptions indorsed by the Faculty of Paris.—
Trans
.

THE THREE SOULS

In the year 1805 I was engaged in my sixth year of transcendental philosophy at Heidelberg. You understand the life of a university student; it is a grand life—the life of a great lord. He rises at noon, smokes his pipe, drinks two or three glasses of schnaps, and then, unbuttoning his coat to his chin, he places his little flat Prussian cap jauntily on his head, and quietly goes to listen for half an hour to the illustrious Professor Hasenkopf discuss on ideas
a priori a posteriori
. While listening to him he may yawn as much as he pleases, or even go to sleep if he likes.

The lecture over, he goes to a tavern; he stretches his legs under a table, and pretty waitresses run about with plates of sausages, slices of ham and large jugs of strong beer. he sings the air of the “Brigands” of Schiller, he drinks, he eats. He whistles to his dog Hector, and takes a walk, or perhaps some difficulty arises in the tavern, blows are exchanged, glasses are knocked over, and jugs fall to the ground. The watchman arrives, he seizes the students, and they pass a night in the station-house.

Thus pass away days, months, years.

In Heidelberg are to be seen princes, dukes and barons in embryo; there are also the sons of shoemakers, schoolmasters and honorable traders. The young noblemen form a band to themselves, but the rest mingle fraternally together.

I was then thirty-two years of age; my beard had commenced to turn gray; beer, pipes and sauerkraut began to decline in my esteem. I felt the necessity of change. With respect to Hasenkopf, the listening to so many lectures on discursive ideas and intuitive ideas, on apodietical truths and predicted truths, turned by head into a veritable
pot-pouri
. It seemed to me that the foundation of science was
ex nihilo nihili
. Often I exclaimed to myself, stretching out my arms,

“Kasper Zann, Kasper Zann! it is not wise to know too much; nature has no more illusions for you. You can say, in a voice of lamentation, with the prophet Jeremiah,
Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas
!”

Such were my melancholy thoughts when, towards the end of the spring of the year 1805, a terrible event caused me to realize the fact that I did not know everything, and that a philosophical career is not always strewn with roses.

Amongst my old comrades there was a certain Wolfgang Scharf, the most inflexible logician that I had ever met. Picture to yourself a little, dried-up man, with sunken eyes, white eyebrows, bushy red hair, hollow cheeks, ornamented with straggling whiskers, large shoulders and exceeding dilapidated clothes. To see him glide along the walls, with a loaf of bread under his arm, with his sparkling eyes and stooping shoulders, you would have said he resembled an old cat searching for his sweetheart. But Wolfgang thought of nothing but metaphysics. For five or six years he had lived on bread and water in a garret belonging to a disused butcher’s establishment. No bottle of sparkling ale nor Rhine wine had ever calmed his ardor for science, no slice of ham had ever impaired the course of his sublime meditations. The poor wretch was, therefore, frightful to see. I say frightful, for in spite of his apparent marasmus, there was a force of cohesion in his bony structure terrible to contemplate. The muscles of his jaws and hands protruded, like clusters of iron; in addition to which he was cross-eyed.

This strange being, in the midst of his voluntary isolation, appeared to have preserved for me alone a portion of his sympathy. He came to see me from time to time, and gravely seated in my armchair, with his fingers moving convulsively, he would entertain me with his metaphysical lucubrations.

“Kaspar,” said he to me one day, proceeding in the Socratic manner of argument, “Kaspar, what is the soul?”

Proud to display my erudition, I replied with dictatorial air:

“According to Thales, it is a kind of lodestone; according to Plato, a substance which moves of itself; according to Asclepiades, an excitation of the senses. Anaximander says that it is composed of earth and water; Empedocles, of blood; Hippocrates, a spirit diffused through the body; Zeno, the quintessence of the four elements; Xenocrates—”

“Yes, yes; but what do you believe the substance of the soul to be?”

“I, Wolfgang? I say, with Lactantius, that I know nothing. I am an Epicurian from nature. For, according to the Epicurians, all judgement comes from the senses, and as the soul does not come under my senses, I cannot judge of it.”

“And yet, Kaspar, there a number of animals, such as insects, fishes, that live deprived of several senses. Who knows if we possess all? If there does not exist some of which we have no idea?”

“It is possible, but as it is a doubtful question, I refrain from giving an opinion.”

“Do you believe, Kasper, that it is possible to know anything without having learned it?”

“No; all science proceeds from experience or study.”

“But how is it, comrade, that little chickens, the moment they issue from the egg, begin to run and pick up their nourishment? How is it that they perceive the hawk in the midst of the clouds, and hide themselves under their mother’s wing? Did they learn to recognize their enemy in the egg?”

“That is the effect of instinct, Wolfgang; all animals obey instinct.”

“Then it appears that instinct consists in knowing what has never been learned?”

“Now you are asking too much,” I cried. “How can I answer you?”

He smiled in a disdainful manner, and, throwing his worn-out cloak over his shoulders, left me without adding another word.

I looked upon him as a madman, but a madman of the most innocent kind; for who could imagine that a passion for metaphysics could be dangerous?

Such was the condition of affairs when the old cake-dealer, Catherine Wogel, suddenly disappeared. This good woman, with her tray suspended from her stork-like neck, would present herself at the taverns frequented by the students. She was a great favorite with the young men, and they would jest with her and she with them.

Her disappearance was remarked on the third day.

“What the deuce has become of Catherine?” said one of the students. “Can she be sick? It is very strange; she appeared so merry the last time she was here.”

We learned that the police were in search of her. My own opinion was, that the poor old woman, overcome by
kirsch-wasser
, had fallen into the river.

But the next morning, as I was leaving the lecture-room of Hasenkopf, I met Wolfgang. The moment he saw me his eyes sparkled, and he said:

“I have been looking for you, Kaspar. I have been looking for you; the hour of triumph has come. You must follow me.”

His appearance, his gestures, his pallor betrayed extreme agitation, and when he seized me by the arm, dragging me towards the Tanner’s quarter, I could not help experiencing a feeling of undefinable fear, without having courage to resist.

The little street down which we proceeded was situated in the rear of the Munster, and was the very oldest part of Heidelberg. The square roofs, the wooden galleries, in which hung the clothes of the poor people who resided in the houses, the external staircases with worm-eaten steps, the thousand wan and curious faces, which, with half-open mouths, projected from the little windows and regarded with eager glances the strangers who were passing through their filthy quarter; the long poles reaching from one roof to the other, and loaded with bleeding skins, and the thick smoke which issued from the chimneys of every roof—all these things combined was like a resurrection of the middle ages to me, and, although the sky was clear, the long shadows cast by the sun on the decrepit walls added to my emotion by the strangeness of contrast.

There are moments when a man loses all presence of mind. I had not even the idea to ask Wolfgang where we were going.

After we had passed through this populous quarter, where misery reigned triumphant, we reached the, comparatively speaking, deserted Butcher’s Quarter. Suddenly Wolfgang, whose cold and dry hand seemed riveted to my wrist, dragged me into a building which was destitute of windows.

“Go forward!” said he.

I followed a wall, at the end of which I found a staircase, so much dilapidated that it was with the greatest difficulty I could ascend. My comrade kept repeating to me, in an impatient voice:

“Higher! Higher!”

I stopped sometimes, almost frozen with fear, under the pretext of taking breath, and for the purpose of examining the nooks of this sombre dwelling, but in fact to deliberate if it were not time to escape.

At last we reached the foot of a ladder, the upper steps of which were lost in the darkness. I have often asked myself since, how I could be so imprudent as to ascend this ladder, without exacting the slightest explanation from my friend Wolfgang. It seems that madness is contagious.

I ascended then, he behind me. I reached the top, and my feet came in contact with a dusty floor. I looked around me, and found that I was in an immense garret, the roof of which contained three windows; on the left the gray wall of the gable reached the top of the roof. A small table, loaded with books and papers, stood in the middle of the loft. Above it was so dark that the beams supporting the roof could scarcely be distinguished. It was impossible to look out into the street, for the windows were ten or twelve feet from the floor.

At the first moment I did not notice a low door with a large vent-hole contrived in the gable-wall, breast high.

Wolfgang, without saying a word, pushed towards me a trunk, which served him for a chair, and then taking in both his hands a large pitcher of water he took a long drink, whilst I gazed on him as if I were in a dream.

“We are in the false roof of an old slaughter-house,” said he, with a strange smile. “The council has voted funds to build another outside the city. I have been here five years without paying any rent. Not a soul has come to trouble my studies.”

He sat down on a heap of firewood in a corner.

“Well,” he continued, “let us proceed to business. Are you sure, Kaspar, that we have a soul?”

“Listen, Wolfgang,” said I in a bad humor, “if you have led me here to talk metaphysics, you have done wrong. I had just left Hasenkopf’s lecture, and was going to breakfast, when you intercepted me. I take my dose of abstract ideas every day—that is sufficient for me. Explain yourself clearly, then, or let me go to breakfast.”

“You only like to eat, then?” said he in a hoarse voice. “Do you know that I have passed whole days without putting a bit into my mouth? And I have done this from love of science.”

“Everyone to his taste; you live on syllogisms and preposterous theories. I love sausages and beer. I can’t help it—my appetite is stronger than my love of science.”

He became quite pale, his lips trembled, but conquering his anger, he said:

“Kaspar, since you will not answer my question, listen at least to my explanations. Man has need of admirers, and I wish you to admire me. I wish to confound you by the sublime discovery that I have made; I think it not too much to ask an hour’s attention for ten years of conscientious study.”

“Very well, go on, I will listen—but hurry.”

His face twitched again and made me reflect. I repented having accompanied him, and I assumed a grave demeanor for the purpose of not irritating the maniac. My meditative face appeared to calm him a little, for after a few moments’ silence he resumed: