The Double Life

It is necessary to enumerate all the accomplishments of M. Eliphaste, for it gives Adolphe a chance of refuting in advance the reproach put upon him for letting him treat his best friend with the utmost severity. The criminal eccentricities of M. Longuet, of which Signor Petito was the first victim, made him dread the most irremediable catastrophes, and it was for this reason that he was led to consider the operation of Cartouche as a benefit, not only possible, but probable, without too great a risk to Théophraste. As to Mme. Longuet, her faith in M. Eliphaste was so great that at first she only made a few remarks, so as to relieve her of any responsibility, and then the terror that she had of sleeping with Cartouche made her, over and above everything, desire his death.

M. Eliphaste told Adolphe to take Théophraste’s heels, and he took and held him under the armpits, and they carried him into the sub-cellar, where a laboratory had been fitted up, which was lighted in the day by gas, with large, red, hissing flames.

Mme. Longuet followed. They placed Théophraste on a bed, and bound him down with straps. He was still under the mesmeric influence. M. Eliphaste stood over him, watching him closely, for a quarter of an hour, during which time there was a deep silence in the room. At length a voice was heard. It was M. Eliphaste praying. The prayer began in this way:

“In the beginning there was silence. Oh, age Eternal, source of all ages–”

When the prayer was ended, M. Eliphaste took Théophraste by the hand and seemed to command him without speaking. He questioned Théophraste by the strength of his domineering spirit -only by the answers Théophraste made could they understand what he had been commanded to tell. Théophraste said, without effort, “Yes, I see. Yes, I am. I am M. Théophraste Longuet; in an apartment of the Rue Gerondeau.” M. Eliphaste turned toward Adolphe and Marceline. “The operation is a bad one,” he said in a deep voice. “I have put Cartouche to sleep, and Théophraste answers me. He is sleeping in the present. We must not precipitate matters. It will be dangerous.”

“I am in the Rue Gerondeau-in the apartment under mine-and I see stretched on the bed a man without ears. In front of him a woman; a dark woman-she is pretty-she is young-her name is Regina-the woman is saying to the man, ‘Signor Petito, as true as I am called Regina, and that you have lost your ears, you will cease to see me in forty-eight hours if you have not found the means to give me a little comfort, to which I have a right. When I married you, you basely deceived me, both as to your fortune and as to your intelligence. Your fortune rested only in hopes which have not been realized. What are you going to do?’

“Signor Petito replies, ‘My dear Regina, you puzzle me. Leave me in peace to find a trace of the treasures that the imbecile above is incapable of snatching from the profound depths of the earth.’”

Théophraste made them understand, in his sleep, that the imbecile referred to was Cartouche. M. Eliphaste turned toward them, saying, “I expect that word to make him quit the present. Now, madam, the time has come. I am going to tempt God.” And then he spoke in a commanding voice, in a voice that it seemed impossible not to obey. “Cartouche,” said he, extending his hand above the strapped bed with a commanding majesty, “Cartouche, where wast thou on the night of the first of April, 1721, at ten o’clock?”

“On the night of April first, 1721, at ten o’clock, I struck two light blows on the door, with the intention of making them open the door of the Tavern Reine Margot. I never should have believed that I could have reached the ironmonger’s shop so easily. But I had killed the horse of the French guardsman, and I had thrown those who had followed him into the Seine. At the Reine Margot I found Paleton, Gatelard, and Guenal Noire. La Belle Laittiere was with them. I related the story to them while emptying a bottle of wine. I had confidence in them, and I told them that I suspected Va de Bon Cour-and perhaps Marie Antoinette-of having whispered something to the spies. They cried out, but I cried out louder than they. I announced to them that I had decided to deal summarily with all who gave me cause to suspect them. I became very angry, and La Belle Laittiere told me that I was no longer bearable. Was it my fault? Every one had betrayed me. I could not sleep two nights consecutively in one place. Where, then, were the days when all Paris was with me? Where, then, was the day of my wedding to Marie Antoinette, when we sang the air of ‘Tout joli belle menniere, Tout joli moulin’? Where was now my uncle Taton? Shut up in a castle. And his son? Killed by me because he was going to denounce me. I had done it quickly. A pistol shot, and his corpse was under a pile of rubbish. Then I was sure of his silence. I killed the robber Pepin, and the police officer Huron. I did not ask anything, only that they leave me alone to police Paris for the security of everybody. My great council,” this he murmured to himself, “did not pardon me for having Jacques le Febrere executed. I am no longer bearable, and that is because I wish to live. After that which had come to pass,” continued Théophraste in his hypnotic sleep, “and the miraculous way in which I escaped in spite of treachery and the precautions taken by the spies, I did not conceal from Gate-lard or from Guenal Noire that I had decided to leave them.

“I soon left them and opened the door of the Reine Margot. Not a soul in the ironmonger’s shop. I was saved. I did not even stop Magdelen, whom I passed while walking along the walls of the cemetery, where I was going to sleep that night. Truth was, I was going to pass the night like a robber in my hole in the Rue Amelot. It was pouring with rain.”

It would be difficult to describe the strange tone in which this narrative was related. The undulation of the phrases, their stops and their stations, then the peculiar monotone in which the words fell from Théophraste’s lips while he was in the hypnotic sleep. His face sometimes expressed anger, sometimes contempt, and sometimes terror.

M. Lecamus, who had seen Cartouche’s portrait, recalled that at certain times there was a striking resemblance to that of Théophraste. Just as he was relating the incident of passing Magdelen, and the downpour of rain, Théophraste’s face showed a most peculiar expression, changing from joy to most overwhelming despair.

M. Eliphaste, leaning over the bed, asked him: “What then, Cartouche?”

Théophraste replied in a rattling voice: “I killed a passerby.”

The operation continued, but it was only by degrees that M. Eliphaste wished to bring Cartouche to the hour of his death. Before making him live his death, it was necessary to make him live a little of his life. That was the reason that M. Eliphaste had thrown the spirit of Cartouche back to the month of April, 1721.

Though the minutes following were terrible for the onlookers, they were worse for Cartouche, who was passing through the end of his career the second time.

It was not until October 11, 1721, that the treason bore fruit.

Coustard, sergeant in the company of Cha-bannes, took forty men and four sergeants with him, all of whom were designated by Duchatelle, Cartouche’s lieutenant, who had betrayed him. This little army, in citizen clothes, concealing its arms very mysteriously, surrounded the house pointed out by Duchatelle.

It could not have been more than nine o’clock in the evening when they arrived in sight of the tavern, Au Pictolet, kept by Germain Tassard and his wife, near the Rue des Trois Bornes. Tassard was smoking his pipe on the doorstep, when Duchatelle came up and demanded, “Is there nobody upstairs? No? Where are the four ladies?”

Tassard, who expected this question, said, “Go up.”

The little troop rushed in, and when they came to the room above, they found Boloquy and Cartouche drinking wine before the fireplace. Gaillard was in bed, and Cartouche was seated on the bed, mending his breeches.

They rushed upon him. The attack was so sudden that he had no time to make any resistance. They tied him with strong ropes, and, placing him in the coach, took him prisoner to Monsieur the Secretary of State. Then he was taken to the Grande Châtelet.

He was in his shirt, having had no time to put on his breeches. He kept cool, congratulating the lieutenant who had betrayed him on the fine livery he wore.

As the coach passed down the road, it nearly crushed some poor wretch who was in the way, and Cartouche, seeing his plight, shouted to him that phrase which he seemed to have affected, “It is necessary to look out for the wheel.”

All the people ran out to see him on his way to the house of M. the Secretary of State. They cried out, “It is Cartouche! It is Cartouche!” only half believing it, as they had so often been deceived.

While in the prison awaiting trial, Cartouche received many illustrious visitors. The Regent came; the courtesan Emilie and the Mme. le Maréchale de Boufflers followed one after the other to pay the prisoner small attentions. Some one had composed a play, and Quinnato, the famous actor of the time, who filled the principal rôle in it, came to ask him for suggestions about the chief scene.

When Cartouche had been sufficiently amused, he began to think of making his escape. He intended doing this in spite of the very close watch that was being kept over him.

After getting out of his dungeon, and just as he was pushing the last bar which separated him from the street and liberty, he was discovered and caught.

Thinking that the Grande Châtelet was not strong enough for so ingenious a man, he was bound securely in chains and taken to the Conciergerie, in the most formidable corner of the tower of Montgomery.

CHAPTER XIX

The Torture Chamber

IT is only the basest of literature that describes without adequate reason the weird, the horrible. However, many authors find it necessary to dilate upon the most satanic personalities of men, and the worst cruelties imaginable.

Therefore, it is only with the knowledge that the recital of the misfortunes of Théophraste is destined to throw a light on the most obscure problems of psychic surgery that the author of these lines proceeds with this description of the most frightful tortures, moral and physical, that have ever been endured by man.

The operation to be performed was a singular one, and full of the gravest of dangers. However, M. Eliphaste was in the habit of performing the most complicated of psychic operations, and the delicacy of his astral scalpel was universally acknowledged. But the difficulty was the delay.

Had M. Lecamus brought Théophraste earlier, the danger would have been less, but now M. Eliphaste recognized the gravity of the case, and he said that to kill Cartouche without killing Longuet was to tempt God. It was the gravest responsibility.

However, he knew how to lead M. Longuet’s mind quietly and without haste to the subject of his death, and thus he prepared him for death.

He made him live his death the moment that he made him die his death. Then, at the psychological moment, he made a certain gesture, the double sign which precipitated in death the spirit of the dead, and brought back to life the living mind.

These were the details of the operation to be performed, and the preliminaries, which consisted in making Théophraste live through the last months of Cartouche’s life, having been started, M. Eliphaste began asking Théophraste a series of questions. The latter was lying, groaning, on the bed in the laboratory, which was lighted by the hissing scarlet flames.

M. Lecamus and Mme. Longuet sat on a low bench at one side of the room. M. Eliphaste stood beside the bed.

“Where did they take you, Cartouche?”

“In the torture room. My trial is ended. I am condemned to die on the wheel. Before the torture they wish me to confess the names of my accomplices, my friends, my mistresses. I should rather die on the wheel twice! They shall know nothing!”

“And now, where are you, Cartouche?”

“I am going down a small stairway, at the end of the ‘Walk of the Pillory.’ I open a grating. I am in the dark cellars. These dungeons do not frighten me. I know them well! Ah! Ah! I was shut up in that dungeon under Phillippe le Bel!”

Then with a terrible power M. Eliphaste cried out, “Cartouche! Thou art Cartouche! Thou art in the dungeons by order of the Regent.” Then he repeated to himself, “Phillippe le Bel?” and then to Théophraste again, “Where are we going? Where are we? My God! We must not lose our way! And now where are you, Cartouche?”

“I advance in the darkness of the cellars. There are about me, walking in the dark, so many guardsmen that I cannot tell the number. I see below, far, far below, a ray of light that I know well. It is a square ray of light that the sun has forgotten since the beginning of the history of France. My guards are not French guardsmen. They mistrust all French guardsmen. My guards are commanded by the Lieutenant of the Short Robe of the Châtelet.”

“Where art thou now, Cartouche?”

“I am in the torture chamber. There are before me men clothed in long robes, but I cannot distinguish their faces. They are my commissioners, who have been entrusted with the verifications, as appeared to be the custom. But why do they call it verifications? The thought makes me smile.” (Théophraste really smiled as he said this.) “Where are you now, Cartouche?”

“They put me on the criminal stool. They have put my legs in backings. With incredibly strong cords, they have bound small planks about my legs. I believe truly that the rascals wish to make me suffer to the limit, and the whole day’s work will be rough. But I have a heart hardened by courage. They shall not break it!” At this point M. Longuet, on his strapped bed, uttered a fearful cry. His mouth was wide open, and he groaned incessantly. Adolphe and Marceline leaned over him and asked with horror when that howling would cease, and when that mouth would close. But M. Eliphaste only said, “The torture has begun. But if he howls like that at the first blow of the mallet, there is going to be trouble.” M. Eliphaste was not expecting those groans. He paid no attention to the howling. He calmed M. Lecamus and Mme. Longuet with a supreme gesture. He spoke to Théophraste, something they never knew, for the howling prevented them from hearing anything.

At last the howling became groaning, and eventually the groaning itself stopped. Théophraste’s face had become comparatively placid.

“Why do you cry out in that way, Cartouche?” “I scream because it is a punishment that I cannot denounce my accomplices. I have their names on the end of my tongue! They do not see that if I do not denounce them it is because I cannot move the end of my tongue! I cannot! I cannot! I cannot! And they struck with their mallet again! And they sunk the pieces of wood into my legs again! It is unjust! I cannot move the end of my tongue!”

“What are they doing to you now, Cartouche?” “The doctor and the surgeon are leaning over me and feeling my pulse. They are congratulating themselves on having chosen that kind of torture, which is, they are saying to the commissioners, the least dangerous to life and the least susceptible to accidents.”

“And now, Cartouche, what are they doing to you?”

“They are doing nothing to me, and I regret it, for they have decided to bury the second wedge in me only a half hour after the first, and let the pain which it produced pass away, and the sensibility be entirely restored. I am looking at my judges. They have black mouths. I like the face of the executioner better. He is no more amused than I. He wants to be somewhere else. But there he comes with the second judge. They are all around me. They are over me! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!…”

Never had Théophraste looked so terrible. His mouth was wide open, and his tongue seemed paralyzed. Foam was around his lips, and his eyes seemed to start out of his head.

M. Lecamus looked across to M. Eliphaste, who said, when the second howl had died away, “Why do you scream, Cartouche?”

“Because these torturers will not listen to the names that are on the end of my tongue.”

“But you have not told us any names. You have only screamed.”

“It is Cartouche they are torturing and Longuet who screams,” answered Théophraste.

M. Eliphaste was taken aback by this last response. He turned toward the two silent onlookers and said in a low, trembling voice, “Then it is he who is suffering.”

There was no room for doubting this truth. The fearful expressions on Théophraste’s face as he imagined the executioner forcing the wedge in, showed too plainly that though it was Cartouche whom they tortured, it was Théophraste who really suffered.

M. Eliphaste seemed very concerned. Never before had such a case come before his astral scalpel. The identity of the soul had been proven, and suffering Cartouche had cried out in distress after two centuries. This cry had waited to come from the lips of Théophraste.

M. Eliphaste leaned his head on his hands and prayed. After a short silence he turned to M. Lecamus and said, “We are only at the second wedge, and there are seven of them.”

“Do you think my husband will have the strength to bear them?” asked Marceline.

M. Eliphaste leaned over the prostrate form of Théophraste and examined his head, just as the doctor had done to Cartouche in the torture chamber.

“The man is all right,” said he. “I don’t believe there is anything to fear now. We must kill Cartouche.”

“I think so, too,” said Lecamus. “It is necessary for the future security and definite happiness of M. Longuet.”

M. Eliphaste then continued his interrogations:

“And now what are they doing to you, Cartouche?”

“They are questioning me. I cannot reply. Why doesn’t that man in the corner of the dungeon do his duty? I have not yet seen his face. He turned his back to me and made a noise with old irons. The executioner is very quiet. He is leaning against the wall, yawning. There is a lamp on the table which gives light to two men, who write incessantly. Behind the man who is making the noise I see a little red light. The executioner’s assistant has loosened the knots in the cords a little, which gives me a relief for which I am grateful… But… but… but the assistant on the other side pulls and pulls. If he continues to pull the cords so he will cut my legs off. They bring a crucifix for me to kiss. Behind the man who turned his back on me I hear something like crackling embers, and there are small red flames which lick the stone walls. Between the two men who are writing there is a man who makes a sign. The executioner has a kind face. I sign to him for some water. I could bear the pain better if I had not such a thirst. The executioner raises his mallet! I swear I cannot say the names which are at the end of my tongue. They will not leave me. I cannot speak! Oh! why cannot you hear them? Take them from me!”

By this time his mouth had become closed, but the lips were opened in such a way as to make it appear that he had no lips. The teeth were locked and welded together tightly. A muffled cry of suffering came from the throat, but could not escape through the closed teeth. Suddenly there was a sharp grinding, and his teeth began to break under the great pressure of that closed jaw. Pieces of teeth were scattered over the bed, and blood issued from his mouth. His horrible groaning continued, and Théophraste showed signs of weakening under the great strain.

At this horrible spectacle M. Eliphaste declared wearily that he had never assisted or suspected that he could assist at such suffering. He confessed that until to-day he had never operated on a reincarnated soul of less than five hundred years. It was obvious that in spite of all his science and all his experience the illustrious medium was nonplussed.

M. Eliphaste did not try any longer to dissimulate his anxiety. He could have stopped the operation there if he had had time. But they buried the wedges in so rapidly that it did not even permit him to question M. Longuet.

During this last performance M. Longuet’s toothless mouth opened again. Other cries issued from it which were not like human cries at all. They were so curious and so weird that all three onlookers leaned over him, trembling with terror to see how such a cry could be made by a human mouth.

Mme. Longuet wanted to run away, but in her fright she fell. When she arose the cries had ceased. M. Eliphaste commanded her to be quiet, recalling to her with a severe look her responsibility in the operation.

M. Théophraste now reposed peacefully on his strap-mattress. That peacefulness, following immediately the horrors of such suffering, was extraordinary. He was not in pain. He remembered none of it. After the torturing was over he ceased to think of it, and consequently this was how he could reply to M. Eliphaste in the intervals of torture, in the most natural way, without physical emotion.

M. Eliphaste again began to interrogate him:

“And now where are you, Cartouche?”

“I am still in the torture chamber. Ah! they hold me! They hold me tightly! They hold my arms! What are they going to do? The man in the center says, ‘By order of the Regent we must have the names. So much the worse if he dies for it! Are the tongs ready? Begin with the breasts!.. Oh! Oh! The man kneeling before the burning coals gets up, making a noise with the irons. He hands the red tongs to the executioner. They uncover my right breast! Oh! Oh! It is dreadful! I cannot live through it!”

CHAPTER XX

In the Charnel House

THE recital which follows is the integral reproduction of what came out of the mouth of Théophraste while plunged in hypnotic sleep, from the moment that he submitted to the torture until he died. This part is of the highest importance, not only for the experimental spirit of science, but for history, for it destroys the legend of the wheel and shows to us, in an indisputable fashion, the real death of Cartouche. I have not found this part stored in the oaken chest, but in the papers and statements which have been read in the Spiritual Congress of 1889. It is all from M. Eliphaste’s hand.

Théophraste, or, rather, Cartouche in the power of M. Eliphaste, said, “I do not know exactly what has happened to me. I have died, I have hidden the document, and I have not met a single person. When I re-opened my eyes (I had them closed then, and I was without doubt falling from a feebleness that seemed like death) I did not recognize at first a single one of the objects which surrounded me, and I did not know the place into which they had carried me. Certainly I am no longer in the torture room, nor in my dungeon in the tower of Montgomery. Am I only in the Conciergerie again? I do not know. Where have they imprisoned me after the torture, whilst waiting for my death? Into what new prison have they thrown me? The first thing that I distinguish is a bluish light which flitters across some heavy bars which are covered with a grating. The moon visits me. It descends two or three steps. I try to make a movement, but I cannot. I am an inert thing. My will does not control my legs any longer, nor a single one of my muscles. It is as if they had severed all relations between my will and my flesh. My brain is no longer the master of seeing and comprehending. It is no longer master of my actions. My poor legs! I feel them scattered around me. I ought to have attained a degree of suffering-I kneel on one, as I have explained, so that I shall not suffer more. But where am I?… The moon descended two more steps, and then two more.... Oh! Oh! What is this that the moon lights? It is an eye! A large eye! But the eye is empty; that large eye is empty, and the other eye at its side-which is also lighted now-is covered again with its green eyelid. I see the whole head! It had no skin on the cheeks, but it had a beard on the chin. The moon advances continuously. It halts gently in the holes of the nose. It has two holes in the nose, two on a head.... They threw me, then, into a common ditch! The moon shone on me.... I have two legs of a corpse across my stomach. I recognize those steps now, and this ditch, and this moon.... I am in the charnel house of Montfançon!… I am afraid!… When I went up to the Cleopimetes by the Bue des Morts on junketing days I used to look at that charnel house through the grating. I looked at it with curiosity because I already saw my carrion there, but the idea never occurred to me that when a carrion was there it could look from the other side of the grating. And now my carrion sees! They threw me there because they thought me dead, and I am buried alive, with the corpses of the persons hanged. My fate is entirely miserable and surpasses all that the imagination of men could invent! The saddest reflections assail me, and if I ask myself first of all, by what artifice of fate I am reduced to such an extremity, I am obliged to confess that fate had nothing to do with this affair, but my pride only. I should have continued quietly to be the ‘chief of all the robbers’ if I had remained alive. But La Belle Laittiere was right when she said in the tavern of the Reine Margot that I was no longer fit to live. I was pleased to play the potentate, and I ended by having a mania for cutting up in pieces all those whom I suspected. My lieutenants ran more danger in serving me than in deserting me. They betrayed me, and that was logical. The beginning of my bad luck was the affair of the Luxembourg. It should have opened my eyes, but my pride hindered me from seeing clearly. This is a good time for these reflections, now that I am in the charnel house.