II
I began by travelling in Italy. The sun did me good. For six months, I wandered from Genoa to Venice, Venice to Florence, Florence to Rome, Rome to Naples. Then I went over Sicily, a country alike notable for its climate and its monuments, relics of the Greek and Norman occupation. I turned to Africa, I peacefully crossed the huge calm yellow desert over which camels, gazelles and vagabond Arabs wander, and almost nothing haunts the light, crystalline air, neither by night nor day.
I returned to France by Marseilles, and despite the gaiety of the province, the dimmer light of the sky saddened me. Once more I felt, on returning to the Continent, the curious fancy of a sick man who believed himself cured and whom a dull pain warns that the flame of his malady is not quite extinguished.
Then I came back to Paris. A month later, I was bored with it. It was autumn, and before winter came on, I wanted to make an expedition across Normandy, with which I had no acquaintance.
I began at Rouen, of course, and for eight days I wandered ecstatically, enthusiastically, through this medieval city, in this amazing mirror of extraordinary Gothic monuments.
Then about four o’clock one afternoon, as I was tempting some unreal street, in which a stream, black as the ink they call “Robec Water,” flows, my attention, wholly fixed on the bizarre and antiquated character of the houses, was suddenly distracted by a glimpse of a line of secondhand dealers’ shops which succeeded each other from door to door.
How well they had chosen, these obscene traffickers in rubbish, their pitch in this fantastic alley, perched above the evil watercourse, beneath the roofs bristling with tiles and slates on which still creaked the weathercocks of bygone days!
In the depths of those dark stairs, all higgledy-piggledy could be seen carved presses, Rouen, Neders, Moustiers pottery, painted statues, or some in oak, Christs, Virgins, saints, church ornaments, chasubles, copes, even chalices, and even painted shrines from which the Almighty has been dismantled. Curious, are they not? these caverns in these tall houses, in these huge towns, filled from cellar to attic with every kind of article whose existence seemed ended, but which outlived their natural owners, their century, their period, their fashion, to be bought by new generations as curiosities.
My weakness for trinkets reawakened in this city of antiquaries. I went from stall to stall, crossing in two strides the bridges made of four rotten planks thrown across the nauseous Robec Water.
Heavens! What a shock! One of my most handsome wardrobes met my eyes at the end of a vault crowded with articles, looking like the entrance to the catacombs of a cemetery for old furniture. I drew nearer, trembling in every limb, trembling so much that I dared not touch it. I put out my hand, I hesitated. It was really it, after all: a unique Louis XIII wardrobe, easily recognisable by anyone who had ever seen it. Suddenly casting my eyes a little further, into the deeper shadows of the shop, I caught sight of three of my armchairs, covered with petit point tapestry; then, still further back, my two Henri II tables, so rare that people came to Paris to look at them.
Think! Think of my state of mind!
But I went on, incapable, tortured with emotion. But I went forward, for I am a brave man, as a knight of the Dark Ages thrust his way into a nest of sorcery. Step by step, I found everything which had belonged to me, my chandeliers, my books, my pictures, my hangings, my armours, everything except the desk full of my letters, which I could see nowhere.
I went on, climbing down dim galleries, climbing up to higher floors, I was alone. I shouted; no one answered. I was alone; there was no one in this vast house, tortuous as a maze.
Night fell, and I had to sit down in the shadows of my own chairs, for I would not go away. From time to time I called: “Hallo! Hallo! Is anyone there?”
I must have been there for certainly more than an hour when I heard steps, light footsteps, and slow, I don’t know where. I was on the point of fleeing, but taking heart, I called once more and saw a light in an adjoining room.
“Who is there?” said a voice.
I replied: “A customer.”
The answer came:
“It is very late to come into shops like this.”
“I have been waiting for more than an hour,” I returned.
“You could come back tomorrow!”
“Tomorrow, I shall have left Rouen.”
I did not dare go forward, and he did not come. All the time, I was watching the reflection of his light illuminating a tapestry on which two angels hovered above the bodies on a battlefield. It, too, belonged to me. I said:
“Well! Are you coming?”
He answered:
“I am waiting for you.”
I rose and went towards him.
In the middle of a large room stood a tiny man, tiny and very fat, the fatness of a freak, a hideous freak.
He had an extraordinary beard of straggling hair, thin-grown and yellowish, and not a hair on his head. Not a hair! As he held his candle at arm’s length to see me the better, his skull looked to me like a little moon in this vast room cluttered with old furniture. His face was wrinkled and swollen, his eyes scarcely visible.
I bargained for three chairs, which were mine, and paid for them on the spot an enormous sum, giving only the number of my room at the hotel. They were to be delivered before nine o’clock on the following morning.
Then I departed. He accompanied me to the door with many polite expressions.
I at once betook me to the head police station, where I related the story of the theft of my furniture and of the discovery I had just made.
They immediately asked for information by telegram from the Department which had had charge of the burglary, asking me to wait for the reply. An hour later a quite satisfactory answer arrived.
“I shall have this man arrested and questioned at once,” the chief told me, “for he may possibly have been suspicious and made away with your belongings. If you dine and come back in a couple of hours, I will have him here and make him undergo a fresh examination in your presence.”
“Most certainly, sir. My warmest thanks. …”
I went to my hotel and dined with a better appetite than I could have believed possible. Still I was contented enough. They had him. Two hours later I went back to the chief inspector, who was waiting for me.
“Well, sir,” he said, as soon as he saw me, “they haven’t found your man. My fellows haven’t been able to put their hands on him!”
“Ah!” I felt that I should faint. “But … you have found his house all right?” I asked.
“Quite. It will be watched and held until he comes back. But as for himself, vanished!”
“Vanished?”
“Vanished. Usually he spends the evenings with his neighbour, herself a dealer, a queer old witch, Widow Bidoin. She has not seen him this evening and can give no information about him. We must wait till tomorrow.”
I departed. How sinister, how disturbing, how haunted the streets of Rouen seemed to me.
I slept badly enough, with nightmares to drag me out of each bout of sleep. As I did not want to appear either too worried or in too much haste, I waited on the following day until ten o’clock before going to the police station.
The dealer had not appeared. His shop remained closed.
The inspector said to me:
“I have taken all the necessary steps. The Department has charge of the affair; we will go off together to this shop and have it opened, and you shall point out your belongings to me.”
We were driven there in a carriage. Some policemen with a locksmith were posted in front of the shop door, which stood open.
When I entered, I found neither my wardrobe, my armchairs, nor my tables, nor anything—nothing of what had furnished my house—absolutely nothing, even though on the previous evening I could not move a step without meeting one of my pieces.
The inspector, surprised, at first looked at me with distrust.
“Good God, sir!” I said, “the disappearance of this furniture coincides amazingly with the disappearance of the dealer.”
He smiled:
“True enough. You were wrong to buy and pay for those things of yours yesterday. It put him on his guard!”
I replied:
“What seems incomprehensible to me is that all the places where my furniture stood are now occupied by other pieces!”
“Oh,” answered the inspector, “he had the whole night, and accomplices too, no doubt. This house probably communicates with its neighbours. Never mind, sir, I am going to move very quickly in this matter. This rogue won’t keep out of our hands very long, now we hold his retreat!”
Ah, my heart, my poor heart, how it was beating.
I stayed in Rouen for a fortnight. The man did not return. My God! My God! Is there any man alive who could confound, could overreach him? Then on the morning of the sixteenth day, I received from my gardener, the caretaker of my pillaged and still empty house, the following strange letter:
Sir:
I beg to inform you that last night there occurred something which no one can fathom, the police no more than ourselves. All the furniture has come back, everything without exception, down to the very smallest objects. The house is now exactly the same as it was on the night of the burglary. It is enough to drive one off one’s head. It happened during the night of Friday-Saturday. The drive is cut up as if they had dragged everything from the gate to the door exactly as it was on the day of the disappearance.
We await you, sir, while remaining,
Ah, no, no, no, no! I will never go back there!
I took the letter to the police inspector.
“This restitution has been made very skilfully,” he said. “Let’s pretend to do nothing now. We’ll catch our man one of these days.”
But he is not caught. No. They haven’t got him, and I am as afraid of him now as if he was a wild beast lurking behind me.
Not to be found! He is not to be found, this moon-headed monster. Never will he be caught. He will never again come back to his house. What does that matter to him! I am the only person who could confront him, and I will not.
I will not! I will not! I will not!
And if he returns, if he comes back to his shop, who could prove that my furniture was in his place? Mine is the only evidence against him; and I am well aware that it is regarded with suspicion.
Oh, no, such a life was no longer bearable. And I could not keep the secret of what I had seen. I could not go on living like anyone else with the dread that such happenings would begin again.
I went to see the doctor in charge of this private asylum, and told him the whole story.
After questioning me for a long time, he said:
“Would you be willing to remain here for some time?”
“Very willing.”
“You have means?”
“Yes.”
“You would like separate quarters?”
“Yes.”
“Would you care to see friends?”
“No, not a soul. The man from Rouen might dare, for vengeance’ sake, to follow me here.”
And I have been alone, alone, quite alone, for three months. I am almost at peace. I have only one fear. … Suppose the antique-dealer went mad … and suppose they brought him to this retreat. … The prisoners themselves are not safe. …