 The Diary of Mr. Pointer by M.R. James This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Read by Stephen Ball The Diary of Mr. Pointer by M.R. James The sale room of an old and famous firm of book auctioneers in London is, of course, a great meeting place for collectors, librarians and dealers. Not only when an auction is in progress, but perhaps even more notably, when books that are coming on for sale are upon view. It was in such a sale room that the remarkable series of events began, which were detailed to me not many months ago by the person whom they principally affected, namely Mr. James Denton, M.A., F.S.A., etc., etc., sometime of Trinity Hall, now or lately, of Rencombe Manor in the County of Warwick. He, on a certain spring day in a recent year, was in London for a few days upon business connected principally with the furnishing of the house which he had just finished building at Rencombe. It may be a disappointment to you to learn that Rencombe Manor was new, that I cannot help. There had, no doubt, been an old house, but it was not remarkable for beauty or interest. Even if it had been, neither beauty nor interest would have enabled it to resist the disastrous fire which about a couple of years before that date of my story had raised it to the ground. I am glad to say that all that was most valuable in it had been saved, and that it was fully insured, so that it was, with a comparatively light heart, that Mr. Denton was able to face the task of building a new and considerably more convenient dwelling for himself and his aunt, who consisted his whole menagerie. Being in London, with time on his hands, and not far from the sail room at which I have obscurely hinted, Mr. Denton thought that he would spend an hour there upon the chance of finding among that portion of the famous Thomas Collection of MSS, which he knew to be then on view, something bearing upon the history or topography of his part of Warwickshire. He turned in accordingly, purchased a catalogue, and ascended to the sail room, where, as usual, the books were disposed in cases, and some laid out upon the long tables. At the shelves, or sitting about the tables, were figures many of whom were familiar to him. He exchanged nods and greetings with several, and then settled down to examine his catalogue and note the likely items. He had made good progress through about two hundred of the five hundred lots, every now and then rising to take a volume from the shelf and give it a cursory glance, when a hand was laid on his shoulder, and he looked up. His interrupter was one of those intelligent men, with a pointed beard and flannel shirt, of whom the last quarter of the nineteenth century was, it seems to me, very prolific. It is no part of my plan to repeat the whole conversation which ensued between the two. I must content myself with stating that it largely conferred to common acquaintances, e.g. to the nephew of Mr Denton's friend, who had recently married and settled in Chelsea, to the sister-in-law of Mr Denton's friend, who had been seriously indisposed, but was now better, and to a piece of china which Mr Denton's friend had purchased some months before, at a price much below its true value. From which he will rightly infer that the conversation was rather in the nature of a monologue. In due time, however, the friend bethought himself that Mr Denton was there for a purpose, and said he, What are you looking out for, in particular? I don't think there's much in this lot. Why, I thought there might be some Warwickshire collections, but I don't see anything under Warwick in the catalogue. No, apparently not, said the friend. All the same, I believe I noticed something like a Warwickshire diary. What was the name again? Drayton? Potter? Painter? Either a P or a D, I feel sure. He turned over the leaves quickly. Yes, here it is. Pointer. Lot 486. That might interest you. There are the books, I think, out on the table. Someone has been looking at them. Well, I must be getting on. Goodbye. You look us up, won't you? Couldn't you come this afternoon? We've got a little music, about four. Well then, when you're next in town? He went off. Mr Denton looked at his watch, and found to his confusion that he could spare no more than a moment before retrieving his luggage and going for the train. The moment was just enough to show him that there were four large-ish volumes of the diary, that it concerned the years about 1710, and that there seemed to be a good many insertions in it of various kinds. It seemed quite worthwhile to leave a commission of five and twenty pounds for it, and this he was able to do for his usual agent entered the room as he was on the point of leaving it. That evening he rejoined his aunt at the temporary abode, which was a small dower-house not many hundred yards from the manor. On the following morning the two resumed a discussion that had now lasted for some weeks as to the equipment of the new house. Mr Denton laid before his relative a statement of the results of his visit to town, particulars of carpets, of chairs, of wardrobes, and of bedroom china. Yes, dear, said his aunt, but I don't see any chinsers here. Did you go to Mr Denton stamped on the floor? Where else indeed could he have stamped? Oh dear, oh dear, he said. The one thing I missed. I am sorry. The fact is I was on my way there, and I happened to be passing Robinsers. His aunt threw up her hands. Robinsers! Then the next thing will be another parcel of horrible old books at some outrageous price. I do think, James, when I am taking all this trouble for you, you might contry to remember the one or two things which I specially begged you to see after. It's not as if I was asking it for myself. I don't know whether you think I get pleasure out of it, but if so, I can assure you it's very much the reverse. The thought and worry and trouble I have over it you have no idea of, and you have simply to go to the shops and order the things. Mr Denton interposed a moan of penitence. Oh, aunt! Yes, it's all very well, dear, and I don't want to speak sharply, but you must know how very annoying it is, particularly as it delays the whole of our business, for I can't tell how long. Here is Wednesday. The Simpsons come tomorrow, and you can't leave them. Then on Saturday we have friends, as you know, coming for tennis. Yes, indeed, you spoke of asking them yourself, but of course I had to write the notes, and it is ridiculous, James, to look like that. We must occasionally be civil to our neighbours. You wouldn't like to have it said that we were perfect bears. What was I saying? Well, anyhow, it comes to this, that it must be Thursday in next week at least, before you can go into town again, and until we have decided upon the Simpsons, it is impossible to settle upon one single other thing. Mr Denton ventured to suggest that as the paint and wallpapers had been dealt with, this was too severe of you, but his aunt was not prepared to admit at the moment, nor indeed was there any proposition he could have advanced, which he would have found herself able to accept. However, as the day went on, she receded a little from this position, examined with lessening disfavour the samples and price lists submitted by her nephew, and even in some cases gave a qualified approval of his choice. As for him, he was naturally somewhat dashed by the consciousness of duty unfulfilled, but more so by the prospect of the Lawn Tennis Party, which, though an inevitable evil in August, he had thought there was no occasion to fear in May. But he was to some extent cheered by the arrival on Friday morning of an intimation that he had secured at a price of twelve pounds ten shillings, the four volumes of Pointer's manuscript diary, and still more by the arrival on the next morning of the diary itself. The necessity of taking Mr. and Mrs. Simpson for a drive in the car on Saturday morning, and of attending to his neighbours and guests that afternoon, prevented him from doing more than open the parcel until the party had retired to bed on the Saturday night. It was then that he made certain of the fact, which he had before only suspected, that he had indeed acquired the diary of Mr. William Pointer, Squire of Akrington, about four miles from his own parish, that same Pointer, who was for a time a member of the circle of Oxford antiquaries, the centre of which was Thomas Hearn, and with whom Hearn seems ultimately to have quarrelled, a not uncommon episode in the career of that excellent man. As is the case with Hearn's own collections, the diary of Pointer contained a good many notes from printed books, descriptions of coins and other antiquities that had been brought to his notice, and drafts of letters on these subjects besides the chronicle of everyday events. The description in the sale catalogue had given Mr. Denton no idea of the amount of interest, which seemed to lie in the book, and he sat up reading in the first of the four volumes until a reprehensibly late hour. On the Sunday morning, after church, his aunt came into the study, and was diverted from what she had been going to say to him, in the sight of the four brown leather quarters on the table. What are these? she said suspiciously. New, aren't they? Oh, are these the things that made you forget about my chintzers? I thought so. Disgusting! What did you give for them? I should like to know. Over ten pounds. James, it is really sinful. Well, if you have money to throw away on this kind of thing, there can be no reason why you should not subscribe, and subscribe handsomely, to my anti-vivisection league. There is not, indeed, James, and I shall be very seriously annoyed if— Who did you say wrote them? Oh, Mr. Pointer of Ackrington. Well, of course there is some interest in getting together old papers about this neighbourhood, but ten pounds! She picked up one of the volumes, not that which her nephew had been reading, and opened it at random, dashing it to the floor the next instant with a cry of disgust as an earwig fell from between the pages. Mr. Denton picked it up with a smothered expletive, and said, Poor Book, I think you're rather hard on Mr. Pointer. What's I dear? I beg his pardon, but you know I cannot abide those horrid creatures. Let me see if I've done any mischief. No, I think all's well, but look here what you've opened him on. Dear me, yes, to be sure. How very interesting. Do unpin it, James, and let me look at it. It was a piece of patterned stuff about the size of a quarto page to which it was fastened by an old-fashioned pin. James detached it and handed it to his aunt, carefully replacing the pin in the paper. Now, I do not know exactly what the fabric was, but it had a design printed upon it, which completely fascinated Miss Denton. She went into raptures over it, held it against the wall, made James do the same that she might retire to contemplate it from a distance, then poured over it at close quarters, and ended her examination by expressing in the warmest terms her appreciation of the taste of the ancient Mr. Pointer, who had had the happy idea of preserving the sample in his diary. It is the most charming pattern, she said, and remarkable too. Look, James, how delightfully the lines ripple. It reminds one of hair very much, doesn't it? And then these lots of ribbonate intervals they give just the relief of colour that is wanted. I wonder— I was going to say, said James, with deference, I wonder if it would cost much to have it copied for our curtains. Copied? How could you have it copied, James? Well, I don't know the details, but I suppose that is a printed pattern, and that you could have a block cut from it in wood or metal. Now, really, that is a capital idea, James. I am almost inclined to be glad that you were so— that you forgot the chinsers on Wednesday. At any rate, I'll promise to forgive and forget if you get this lovely old thing copied. No one will have anything in the least like it, and, mind, James, we won't allow it to be sold. Now, I must go, and I've totally forgotten what it was I came in to say, never mind, it'll keep. After his aunt had gone, James Stenton devoted a few minutes to examining the pattern more closely than he had yet had the chance of doing. He was puzzled to think why it should have struck Miss Stenton so forcibly. It seemed to him not specially remarkable or pretty. No doubt it was suitable enough for a curtain pattern. It ran in vertical bands, and there was some indication that these were intended to converge at the top. She was right, too, in thinking that these main bands resembled rippling, almost curling, tresses of hair. Well, the main thing was to find out by means of trade directories, or otherwise, what firm would undertake the reproduction of an old pattern of this kind. Not to delay the reader over this portion of the story, a list of likely names was made out, and Miss Stenton fixed a day for calling on them, or some of them, with his sample. The first two visits which he paid were unsuccessful, but there is luck in odd numbers. The firm in Bermondsey, which was the third on his list, was accustomed to handling this line. The evidence that they were able to produce justified their being entrusted with the job. Our Mr. Cattle took a feverent personal interest in it. It's art-rending, isn't it, sir? He said, To picture the quantity of really lovely medieval stuff of this kind that lies well nigh unnoticed in many of our residential country houses, much of it in peril, I take it, of being cast aside as so much rubbish. What is it Shakespeare says? Unconsidered trifles. Ah, I often say he has a word for his all, sir. I say Shakespeare, but I'm well aware all don't old with me there. I had something of an upset the other day when a gentleman came in. A titled man, too, he was, and I think he told me he'd wrote on the topic, and I happened to cite out something about Hercules and the painted cloth. Dear me, you never seen such a bother. But as to this, what you've kindly confided to us, it's a piece of work we should take real enthusiasm in achieving it out to the very best of our ability. What man has done, as I was observing only a few weeks back to another esteemed client, man can do, and in three to four weeks' time, all being well, we should hope to lay before you evidence to that effect, sir. Take the address, Mr. Higgins, if you please. Such was the general drift of Mr. Cattle's observations on the occasion of his first interview with Mr. Denton. About a month later, being advised that some samples were ready for his inspection, Mr. Denton met him again, and had, it seems, reason to be satisfied with the faithfulness of the reproduction of the design. It had been finished off at the top in accordance with the indication I mentioned, so that the vertical bands joined. But something still needed to be done in the way of matching the colour of the original. Mr. Cattle had suggestions of a technical kind to offer, with which I need not trouble you. He had also views as to the general desirability of the pattern, which were vaguely adverse. You say you don't wish this to be supplied, accepting to personal friends equipped with authorisation from yourself, sir. It shall be done. I quite understand your wish to keep it exclusive. Lends a ketchup, does it not, to the sweet. What's every man's, it's been said, is no man's. Do you think it would be popular if it were generally obtainable? Asked Mr. Denton. I hardly think it, sir, said Cattle, pensively clasping his beard. I hardly think it, not popular. It wasn't popular with a man that cut the block, was it, Mr. Iggins? Did he find it a difficult job? He'd no call to do so, sir, but the fact is that the artistic temperament, and our men are artists, sir, every single one of them, true artists, as much as many that the world styles by the term. It's apt to take some strange, oddly accountable likes or dislikes, and here was an example. The twice or three that I went to inspect the progress, language I could understand, for that's habitual to him. But real distaste for what I shall call a dainty enough thing, I did not, nor am I able to fathom. It seemed, said Mr. Cattle, looking narrowly upon Mr. Denton, as if the man centred something almost heevil in the design. Indeed, did he tell you so? I can't say I see anything sinister in it myself. Neither can I, sir. In fact, I said as much. Come, Gatwick, I said. What's to do here? What's the reason for your prejudice? For I call it no more than that. But no, no explanation was forthcoming, and always merely reduced, as I am now, to the shrug of the shoulders and a quibono. However, here it is. And with that, the technical side of the question came to the front again. The matching of the colours for the background, the hem, and the knots of ribbon was by far the longest part of the business, and necessitated many sendings to and fro of the original pattern and of new samples. During part of August and September too, the Dentons were far away from the manor, so that it was not until October was well in that a sufficient quantity of the stuff had been manufactured to furnish curtains for the three or four bedrooms which were to be fitted up with it. On the feast of Simon and Jude, the aunt and nephew returned from a short visit to find all completed, and their satisfaction at the general effect was great. The new curtains, in particular, agreed to admiration with their surroundings. When Mr Denton was dressing for dinner and took stock of his room, in which there was a large amount of the shins displayed, he congratulated himself over and over again on the look which had first made him forget his aunt's commission, and had then put into his hands this extremely effective means of remedying his mistake. The pattern was, as he said at dinner, so restful, and yet so far from being dull. And Miss Denton, who, by the way, had none of the stuff in her own room, was much disposed to agree with him. At breakfast next morning he was induced to qualify his satisfaction to some extent, but very slightly. There is one thing I rather regret, he said, that we allowed them to join up the vertical bands of the pattern at the top. I think it would have been better to leave that alone. Oh, said his aunt, interrogatively. Yes, as I was reading in bed last night, they kept catching my eye, rather. That is, I found myself looking across them every now and then. There was an effect as if someone kept peeping out between the curtains in one place or another, where there was no edge. I think this was due to the joining up of the bands at the top. The only other thing that troubled me was the wind. Why, I thought it was a perfectly still night. Perhaps it was only on my side of the house, but there was enough to sway my curtains and rustle them more than I wanted. That night a bachelor friend of James Denton came to stay, and was lodged in a room on the same floor as his host, but at the end of a long passage, halfway down which was a red bay's door, put there to cut off the draught and intercept noise. The party of three had separated. Miss Denton a good first. The two men at about eleven. James Denton, not yet inclined for bed, sat himself down in an armchair, and read for a time. Then he dozed, then he woke, and bethought himself that his brown spaniel, which ordinarily slept in his room, had not come upstairs with him. Then he thought he was mistaken. For happening to move his hand, which hung down over the arm of the chair within a few inches of the floor, he felt on the back of it just the slightest touch of a surface of hair, and stretching it out in that direction he stroked and pattered around something. But the feel of it, and still more, the fact that instead of a responsive movement, absolute stillness greeted his touch, made him look over the arm. What he had been touching rose to meet him. It was in the attitude of one that had crept along the floor on its belly, and it was, so far as could be recollected, a human figure. But of the face which was now rising to within a few inches of his own, no feature was discernable, only hair. Shapeless as it was, there was about it so horrible an air of menace that he bounded from his chair and rushed from the room he heard himself moaning with fear, and doubtless he did right to fly. As he dashed into the bay's door that cut the passage in two, and forgetting that it opened towards him, beat against it with all the force in him, he felt a soft, ineffectual tearing at his back, which all the same seemed to be growing in power as if the hand, or whatever worse than the hand was there, were becoming more material as the pursuer's rage was more concentrated. Then he remembered the trick of the door, he got it open, he shut it behind him, he gained his friend's room, and that is all we need to know. It seems curious that during all the time that had elapsed since the purchase of Pointer's Diary, James Denton should not have sought an explanation of the presence of the pattern that had been pinned into it. Well, he read the diary through without finding it mentioned, and had concluded that there was nothing to be said. But on leaving Rencombe Manor, he did not know whether for good, as he naturally insisted upon doing, on the day after experiencing the horror I have tried to put into words, he took the diary with him, and at his seaside lodgings, he examined more narrowly the portion whence the pattern had been taken. What he remembered having suspected about it turned out to be correct. Two or three leaves were pasted together, but written upon, as was patent when they were held up to the light. They yielded easily to steaming, for the pasted lots much of its strength, and they contained something relevant to the pattern. The entry was made in 1707. Old Mr. Casbury of Atkrington told me this day much of young Sir Everard Charlotte, whom he remembered, commoner of University College, and thought was of the same family as Dr. Arthur Charlotte, now master of Yee-Kol. This Charlotte was a personable young gent, but a loose, atheistical companion, and a great lifter, as they then called the hard drinkers, and for what I know, do so now. He was noted and subject to several censures at different times for his extravagancies, and if the full history of his debaucheries had been known, no doubt would have been expelled, Yee-Kol, supposing no interest had been employed on his behalf, of which Mr. Casbury had some suspicion. He was a very beautiful person, and constantly wore his own hair, which was very abundant, from which, and his loose way of living, the Kant's name for him was Absalom, and he was accustomed to say that indeed he believed he had shortened old David's days, meaning his father Sir Job Charlotte, an old worthy cavalier. Note that Mr. Casbury said that he remembers not the year of Sir Everard Charlotte's death, but it was 1692 or three. He died suddenly in October. Several lines describing his unpleasant habits and reputed delinquencies are omitted. Having seen him in such topping spirits the night before, Mr. Casbury was amazed when he learned the death. He was found in the town ditch. The hair, as was said, plucked clean off his head. Most bells in Oxford rung out for him, being a nobleman, and he was buried next night in St Peter's in the East. But two years after, being to be moved to his country estate by his successor, it was said the coffin, breaking by mischants, proved quite full of hair, which sounds fabulous, but yet I believe precedents are upon record, as in Dr. Pyatt's History of Staffordshire. His chambers afterwards stripped. Mr. Casbury came by part of the hangings of it, which to a said, this charlat had designed expressly for a memorial of his hair, giving the fellow that drew it a lot to work by, and the piece which I have fastened in here was parcel of the same which Mr. Casbury gave to me. He said he believed there was a subtlety in the drawing, but had never discovered it himself, nor much like to pour upon it. The money spent upon the curtains might as well have been thrown into the fire, as they were. Mr. Cattle's comment upon what he heard of the story took the form of a quotation from Shakespeare. You may guess it without difficulty. It began with the words, there are more things. End of The Diary of Mr. Pointer by M. R. James. The Enchanted Woman by Anna Kingsford The first consciousness which broke my sleep last night was one of floating, of being carried swiftly by some invisible force through a vast space, then of being gently lowered, then of light. Under gradually I found myself on my feet in a broad noon day brightness, and before me an open country. Heels Heels as whereas the eye could reach. Heels with snow on the tops and mists around their gorges. This was the first thing I saw distinctly. Then casting my eyes towards the ground, I perceived that all about me lay huge masses of grey material which at first I took for blocks of stone, having to form appliance, but as I looked at them more intently, my sight grew clearer, and I saw to my horror that they were really alive. A panic seized me, and I tried to run away, but on turning I became suddenly aware that the whole country was filled with these awful shapes, and the faces of those nearest to me were most dreadful for their eyes, and something in their expression, though not in the form of their faces, were human. I was absolutely alone in a terrible world peopled with lions, two of a monstrous kind. Recovering myself within a fort I resumed my flight, but as I passed through the midst of this concourse of monsters, it suddenly struck me that they were perfectly unconscious of my presence. I even laid my hands in passing on the heads and mains of several, but they gave no sign of seeing me or of knowing that I touched them. At last I gained a trace hold of a great pavilion, not apparently built by hands, but formed by nature. The walls were solid, yet they were composed of huge trees standing close together like columns, and the roof of the pavilion was formed by their massive foliage, through which not a ray of outer light penetrated. Such light as there was seemed naveless, and appeared to rise out of the ground. In the centre of this pavilion I stood alone, happy to have got clear away from those dreadful beasts and the gaze of their steadfast eyes. As I stood there, I became conscious of the fact that the naveless light of the place was concentrating itself into a focus on the column dwell opposite to me. It grew there, becoming denser, and then spread, revealing as it spread a series of moving pictures that appeared to be seen sexually enacted before me. For the figures in the pictures were leaving, and they moved before my eyes. Though I heard neither word nor sound, and this is what I saw. First they came in writing on the wall of the pavilion. This is the history of our world. These walls, as I looked at them, appeared to sink into the wall as they had risen out of it, and to ill place to the pictures which then began to come out in succession deemly at first and strong and clear as actual scenes. First I beheld the beautiful woman with the sweetest face and most perfect form conceivable. She was dwelling in a cave among the hills with her husband and he too was beautiful, more like an angel than a man. They seemed perfectly happy together and the dwelling was like paradise. Every side was beauty, sunlight and repose. This picture sank into the wall as the writing had done. And then came out another, the same man and woman driving together in a slage drawn by reander over fields of ice. With all about them glaciers and snow and great mountains veiled in reds of slowly moving mist. The slage went at a rapid pace and its occupants talked gaily to each other, so far as I could judge by their smiles and the movement of their lips. But what caused me much surprise was that they carried between them and actually in your hands a glowing flame. The fervour of which I felt reflected from the picture upon my own cheeks. The ice around shone with its brightness. The mist upon the snow mountains caught its gleam. Yet strong as were its light and heat neither the man nor the woman seemed to be bound or dazzled by it. This picture too, the beauty and brilliance of which greatly impressed me sank and disappeared as the former. Next I saw a terrible looking man clad in an enchantress robe standing alone upon an ice-creak. In the air above him, posh like a dragonfly, was an evil spirit having a head and face like that of a human being. The rest of it resembled the tale of a comet and seemed made of a green fire which flickered in and out as doswait by a wind. And as I looked, suddenly through an opening among the hills, I saw the slayage pass, carrying the beautiful woman and her husband and in the same instant the enchanter also saw it and his face contracted and the evil spirit lowered itself and came between me and him. Then this picture sank and vanished. I next beheld the same cave in the mountains which I had before seen and the beautiful couple together in it. Then a shadow dug under the door of the cave and the enchanter was there asking admittance. Cheerfully they bade him enter and as he came forward with his snake-like eyes fixed on the fair woman, I understood that he wished to have her for his own and was even then devising how to bear her away. And the spirit in the air beside him seemed busy suggesting schemes to this end. Then this picture melted and became confused even placed for but a brief moment to another in which I saw the enchanter carrying the woman away in his arms. She struggling and lamenting her long bright hair streaming behind her. This scene passed from the world as though a wind had swept away and they rose up in its place a picture which impressed me with a more vivid sense of reality than all the rest. It represented a marketplace in the midst of which was a pile of faggots and a steak such as were used formally for the burning of heretics and witches. The marketplace around which were rows of seeds as though for a concourse of spectators yet appeared quite deserted. I saw only three living beings present the beautiful woman, the enchanter and the evil spirit. Nevertheless, I thought that the seeds were really occupied by invisible tenants for every now and then there seemed to be a steer in the atmosphere as of a great multitude and I had moreover a strange sense of facing many weaknesses. The enchanter laid the woman to the steak fastened her chair with iron chains lit the faggots about her feet and drew to a short distance where he stood with his arms folded looking on as the flames rose about her. I understood that she had refused his love and that in his fury he had denounced her as a sorceress. Then in the fire above the pile I saw the evil spirit posing itself like a fly and rising and sinking and fluttering in the thick smoke. While I wondered what this meant the flames which had consented the beautiful woman parted in their midst and disclosed the sight so horrible and unexpected as to thrill me from head to foot and curdle my blood. The chain to the steak there stood not a fair woman I had seen there a moment before but a hideous monster a woman steel but a woman with three heads and three bodies linked in one each of her long arms ended not in a hand but in a claw like that of a bar to propine. Her hair resembled the locks of the classic medusa and her faces were inexpressibly lonesome she seemed with all her dreadful heads and limbs to read in the flames and yet not to be consumed by them. She gathered them into herself her claws caught them and chewed them down her triple body appeared to suck the fire into itself as their blast drove it. The sight upheld me I covered my face and they had looked no more. When at length I again turned my eyes upon the wall the picture that had so terrified me was gone and instead of it I saw the enchanter flying through the world pursued by the evil spirit and that dreadful omen. Through all the world they seemed to go the scenes changed with marvellous rapidity not a picture glowed with the wealth and gorgeousness of the Tory Joan now the ice fields of the north rose into view and on a pine forest then a wildest she sure but always the same tree flying figures always the horrible tree formed a hobby pursuing the enchanter and besides that the evil spirit with the dragonfly wings at last this succession image is seized and I beheld the desolate region in the midst of which said the omen to the enchanter beside her. He said reposing in her lap either the sight of her must have become familiar to him and so less horrible or she had subjugated him by some spell at all events they were met at last and their offspring lay around them on the stony ground or moved to two and row these were lions monsters with human faces such as I had seen in the beginning of my dream their jaws dripped blood they paced backwards and forwards lashing their tails then too this picture faded and sank into the wall as the others had done and through its melting outlines came out again the walls I had first seen this is the history of our world only they seem to mean some a change but how I cannot tell the horror of the whole thing was too strong upon me to let me dare look larger at the wall and I awake repeating to myself the question how could one omen become tree and of the enchanter omen when you make that much talk to visit to New Orleans by all means see early whatever evidence of progress and a grandisement her hospitable citizens wish to show you New Orleans belongs to the living present and has serious practical relations with these united states in this great living world and age and yet I want the first morning walk that you two take together and alone to be in the old french quarter go down royal street you shall not have taken many steps in it when far down on the right hand side narrow street almost shuts its converging lines together in the distance there will begin to rise above the extravagant confusion of intervening roofs and to stand out against the dazzling sky a square lattice remnant of a belvedere you can see that the house it surmounts is a large solid rectangular pile and that it stands directly on the street at what residents call the upper river corner though the river is several squares away on the right there are fifty people in this rural who can tell you their wild versions and this house is strange true story against anyone who can do this present writer the honor to point out the former residents of sewer george madame did accuse or dr. mossy or the unrecognizably restored dwelling of madame delphine I fancy you already there the neighborhood is very still the streets are almost empty of life and the cleanness of their stone pavements is largely the cleanness of disuse the house you are looking at is a brick covered with stucco which somebody may be line washing white or painting yellow or brown while I am saying it is gray an uncovered balcony as wide as the sidewalk makes a deep arcade around its two street sides the last time I saw it it was for rent and looked as if it had been so for a long time but that proves nothing every one of its big window shutters was closed and by the very intensity of their rusty silence spoke a hostile impenetrability just now it is occupied they say that louis philippe afterwards king of the french was left in one of its chambers that would have been in 1798 but in 1798 they were not building such tall buildings as this in new orleans did not believe the soil would uphold them as late as 1806 when sewer george's house upon the st. peter street corner was begun people shook their heads and this house is taller than sewer george's I should like to know if the rumor is true lafayette too they say occupied the same room maybe so but we know he had elegant apartments fitted up for him at the city's charge in the old cabildo still it was they say in those it's bright early days the property of the pantelos a noble france spanish family and I have mentioned these points which have no close bearing upon our present story mainly to clear the field of all mere they say's and leave the ground for what we know to be authenticated fact however strange the entrance under the balconies in royal street within a deep white portal the walls and ceiling of which are covered with ornamentations two or three steps shut off from the sidewalk by a pair of great gates of open ornamental ironwork with gilded tops rise to the white door this also is loaded with a raised work of urns and flowers birds and fonts and febuses in its chariot inside from a marble floor an iron railed winding stair said the spider to the fly leads to the drawing rooms on the floor even with the balcony these are very large the various stores that let into them and the folding door between them have carved panels a deep freeze covered with raised work white angels with palm branches and folded wings stars and wreaths runs all around interrupted only by high wide windows let out between fluted Corinthian pilasters upon the broad open balcony the lofty ceilings too are beautiful with raised garlandry measure one of the windows eight feet across each of its shutters is four feet wide look at those old crystal chandeliers and already here is something uncanny at the bottom of one of these rooms a little door in the wall it is barely a woman's height yet big hinges jut out from the jam and when you open it and look in you see only a small dark place without steps or anything to let you down to its floor below a leap of several feet it is hardly noteworthy only neither you nor I can make out what it ever was for the house is very still as you stand a moment in the middle of the drawing room looking at each other you hear the walls and floors saying those soft nothings to one another that they so often say when left to themselves while you are looking straight at one of the large doors that lead into the hail its lock gives us a whispered click and the door slowly swings open no cat no draft you and I exchange a silent smile and rather like the mystery but do you know that is an old trick of those doors and has made many an emotional girl smile less instead of more although I doubt you nor any carpenter could explain it I assume you see that you visit the house when it is vacant it is only at such times that you were likely to get in a friend wrote me lately Miss Blank and I tried to get permission to see the interior Madame said the landlord had requested her not to allow visitors that over 300 had called last winter and had been refused for that reason I thought of the person who would call if they knew its story another writes the landlord's orders are positive that no photographer of any kind shall come into his house the house has three stories and an attic the windows farthest from the street are masked by long green lattice balconies or galleries one to each story which communicate with one another by staircases behind lattices and partly overhang a small damp paved court which is quite hidden from out of use say from one or two neighboring windows on your right as you hook down into this court a long narrow wing stands out at right angles from the main house four stories high with the lattice galleries continuing along the entire length of each floor it bounds this court on the southern side each story is a row of small square rooms and each room has a single high window in the southern wall and a single door on the hither side opening upon the lattice gallery of that floor wings of that sort were once very common in New Orleans in the rich they were the houses slaves quarters but certainly some of the features you see here never were common lock seven inclines across several windows without sashes but with sturdy iron gratings and solid iron shutters on the fourth floor the doorway communicating with the main house is entirely closed twice over by two pairs of full length batten shutters held in on the side of the main house by iron hooks 18 inches long two to each shutter and yet it was through this doorway that the ghost figuratively speaking of course we are dealing with plain fact in history got into this house will you go to the Belvedere? I went there once unless the cramped stair that reaches it has been repaired you will find it something rickety the newspapers writing 55 years ago in the heat and haste of the moment must have aired as the heavy pieces of furniture being carried up this last cramped flight of stairs to be cast out of the windows into the street far below besides the third story windows are high enough for the most thorough smashing of anything dropped from them for that purpose the attic is cut up into little closets lying in one of them close up under the roof maybe you will still find as I did all the big iron keys of those big iron locks downstairs the day I stepped up into this Belvedere it was shaking visibly in a squall of wind an electric storm was coming out of the north and west yet overhead the sun still shown vehemently through the rolling white clouds it was grand to watch these they were sailing majestically hither and thither southward across the blue leaning now this way and now that like a fleet of great ships of the line maneuvering for position against the dark northern enemies already flashing and thundering on set I was much above any neighboring roof far to the south and southwest the newer New Orleans spread away over the flat land northeastward but near at hand a mass of ships and steamers with glimpses here and there of the water and farther away the open breadth of the great yellow river sweeping around Slaughterhouse Point under an air heavy with the falling black smoke and white steam of hurrying tugs closer by there was a strange confusion of roofs, trees, walls, vines, tiled roofs, brown and pink and stuccoed walls, pink, white, yellow, red and every sort of gray the old convent of the Ursulines stood in the admits against the old ferry with a great sycamore on one side and a willow on the other almost under me I noticed some of the semicircular arches of rotten red brick that were once a part of the Spanish barracks in the north the old third third city district lie as though I looked down upon it from a cliff a tempestuous gray sea of slate roofs dotted with tossing green tree tops beyond it not far away the deep green ragged line of cypress swamp half encircled it leaned weirdly under a sky packed with dark clouds that flashed and growled and boomed and growled again you could see rain falling from one cloud over like poncher train the strong gale brought the sweet smell of it westward yonder you may still describe the old Calibus just peeping over the tops of some lofty trees and that bunch a little at the left is Congo square but the old old Calibus the one to which this house was once strangely related is hiding behind the cathedral here on the south the street that crosses royal here and makes the corner on which this house stands is hospital street and yonder westward where it bends a little to the right and runs away so bright clean and empty between two long lines of groves and flower gardens it is the old Bayou road to the lake it was down that road that the mistress of this house fled in her carriage from its door with the howling mob at her heels before you descend from the Belvedere turn to see how the roof drops away in eight different slopes and think from whichever one of these slopes it was of the little fluttering, defrocked lump of terrified childhood that leaped from there and fell clean to the paved yard below a last word while we are still here there are other reasons one at least besides tragedy and crime that make people believe this place is haunted this particular spot is hardly one where a person would prefer to see a ghost even if one knew it was not an optical illusion but one evening some years ago when a bright moon was mounting high and swinging well around to the south a young girl who lived nearby and who had proper skepticism for the marvels of the gossip past this house she was approaching it from an opposite sidewalk when glancing up at this Belvedere outlined so loftily on the night sky she saw with startling clearness all the pale and misting in the deep shadow of the cupola it made me shudder she says until I reasoned the matter out a single silent motionless object the figure of a woman leaning against its lattice by careful scrutiny she made it out to be only a sorcery of moonbeams that fell as slant from the farther side through the skylight of the Belvedere's roof and sifted through the lattice would that there were no more reality to the story before us part 2 Madame Lalouri on the 30th of August 1831 before Octave de Armas notary 1e Soniat de Faucet sold this property to a Madame Lalouri she may have dwelt in the house earlier than this but here is where its tragic history begins Madame Lalouri was still a beautiful and most attractive lady though bearing the name of a third husband her surname had been first McCarty a genuine Spanish Creole name although of Irish origin of course then Lopez or maybe first Lopez and then McCarty and then Blanc she had two daughters the elder at least the issue of her first marriage the house is known to this day as Madame Blanc's house which you notice it never was so distinctly was she the notable figure in the household her husband was younger than she there is strong sign of his lesser importance in the fact that he was sometimes and only sometimes called doctor Dr. Louis Lalouri the graces and graciousness of their accomplished and entertaining mother quite outshone his step-daughters as well as him to the frequent and numerous guests at her sumptuous bore these young girls seemed comparatively unanimated if not actually unhappy not so with their mother to do her full share in the upper circles of good society to dispense the pleasures of drawing room and dining room with generous frequency and captivating amiability was the eager pursuit of a lady who nevertheless kept the management of her money affairs real state and slaves mainly in her own hands of slaves she had ten and housed most of them in the tall narrow wing that we have already noticed we need not recount again the state of society about her at that time the description of it given by the young German Duke whom we quoted without date in the story of Salome Muller belongs exactly to this period Grimes stood at the top in front of things John Slidel was already shining beside him they were co-members of the Elkin Club then in its glory it was trying energetically to see what incredible quantities a madera it could drink Judge Mazaro was of a congenital and was being lampooned by the imbecile wit of the singers and dancers of the Kalinda in Congo Square the tree-planted levy was still populist on summer evenings with promenaders and loungers the quadrune cased was in its dying splendor still threatening the moral destruction of private society and hated as only woman can hate enemies of the hearthstone by the proud fair ladies of the Creole Pureblood among whom Madame LaLaurie shone brilliantly her elegant house filled with furniture of the most costly description says the New Orleans B of a date which we shall come to stood central in the swirl of downtown Gady public and private from royal into hospital street across circuit street rue de la Cirque that was a good way to get into Bayou Road white almost as snow with its smooth silent pavement of powdered shells this road followed the slow clear meanderings of Bayou Saint-Jean from red-roofed and embowered suburb of Saint-Jean to the lake a swamp of giant grizzly bearded cypresses hanging it all the way and the whole five miles teeming with gay swift carriages some filled with smokers others with ladies and children the finest equipage of all being as you may recollect that of John Fitzmiller he was at that very time master of Salamé Mueller several others fairer than Salamé he belongs in the present story only here in this landscape and here not as a typical but only as an easily possible slave-holder for that matter Madame LaLaurie let it be plainly understood was only another possibility not a type the two stories teach the same truth that a public practice is answerable for whatever can happen easier with it than without it no matter whether it must or only may happen however let the moral wait or skip it entirely if you choose a regular feature of that bright afternoon throng was Madame LaLaurie's coach with the ever so pleasant Madame LaLaurie inside and her sleek black coachmen on the box think some friend would say as he returned her courteous bow think of casting upon that woman the suspicion of starving and maltreating her own house servants look at that driver his skin shines with good keeping the truth is those jealous Americans there was intense jealousy between the Americans and the Creoles the Americans were just beginning in public manners to hold the odds in private society the Creoles still had power but it was slipping from them even there Madame LaLaurie was a Creole whether Louisiana or San Domingo born was no matter she could not be criticized by American envy nor were the Creoles themselves go nosing into the secretest privacy of her house why look you it is her common practice before her guests to leave a little wine in her glass and hand it with some word of kindness to the slave waiting in her back thin and hollow chested the slaves yes to be sure but how about your rich uncle or my dear old mother or they not hollow chested well but this kind of logic did not satisfy everybody not even every Creole and particularly not all her neighbors the common populace too had unflattering beliefs do you see this splendid house do you see those attic windows there are slaves of their confined in chains and darkness and kept at the point of starvation a Creole gentleman who seems to have been a neighbor made several attempts to bring the matter to light but in vain yet rumors and suspicious indications grew so ranked that at length another prominent citizen an American lawyer who had a young Creole studying law in his office ventured to send him to the house to point out to Madame LaLaurie certain laws of the state of the old black code slaves who shall not be properly fed clad and provided for by their masters may give information thereup to the attorney general or the superior council or to all the other officers of justice of an inferior jurisdiction and may put the written exposition of their wrongs into their hands upon which information and even ex officio should the information come from another quarter the attorney general shall prosecute said masters etc but the young law student on making his visit was captivated by the sweetness of the lady whom he had been sent to warn against committing unlawful misdemeanors and withdrew filled with indignation against anyone who could suspect her of the slightest unkindness to the humblest living thing Part 3 A terrible revelation the house that joined Madame LaLaurie's premises on the eastern side had a staircase window that looked down into her little courtyard one day all by chance the lady of that adjoining house was going up those stairs just when the keen scream of a terrified child resounded from the next yard she sprung to the window and looking down saw a little negro girl about eight years old run wildly across the yard and into the house with Madame LaLaurie a cow hide whip in her hand following swiftly and close upon her they disappeared but by glimpses through the dark lattices and by the sound of the tumult the lady knew that the child was flying up stairway after stairway from gallery to gallery hard pressed by her furious mistress soon she heard them rise into the Belvedere and the next instant they darted out upon the roof down into its valleys and up over its ridges the little fugitive slid and scrambled she reached the sheer edge the lady at the window hit her face in her hands there came a dull jarring thud in the paved court beneath and the lady looking down saw the child lifted from the ground and born out of sight limp silent dead she kept her place at the window hours passed the day waned darkness settled down then she saw a torch brought a shallow hole was dug as it seemed to her but in fact a condemned well of slight depth a mere pit was uncovered and the little broken form was buried she informed the officers of justice from what came to light at a later season it is hard to think that in this earlier case the investigation was more than superficial yet an investigation was made and some legal action was taken against Madame Ellurie for cruelty to her slaves they were taken from her and liberated uh no they were sold by the sheriff bid in her by her relatives and by them sold back to her let us believe that this is what occurred or at least was shammed for unless we do we must accept the implication of a newspaper statement of two or three years afterwards and the confidant impression of an aged creel gentleman in notary still living who was not a witness to much of the story but all Madame Ellurie ever suffered for this part her hideous misdeeds was a fine lawyers will doubt this remind us that Madame Ellurie was not legally chargeable with the child's death the lady at the window was not the only witness who might have been brought a woman still living who after the civil war was four years of domestic in this haunted house says her husband now long dead then a lad was passing the place when the child ran out on the roof and he saw her scrambling about on it seeking to escape but he did not see the catastrophe that followed no one saw more than what the law knows as assault and the child was a slave Miss Martin knew in her short account of the matter what she heard in New Orleans and from eyewitnesses only a few years after it had occurred conjectures that Madame Ellurie's object in buying back these slaves was simply to renew her cruelties upon them but a much easier and even kinder guess would be that they knew things about her that had not been and must not be told if she could possibly prevent it a high temper let us say had led her into a slough of misdoing to a depth beyond all her expectation and the only way out was on the farther side yet bring to bear all the generous conjecture one can and still the fact stands that she did starve whip and otherwise torture those poor victims she even mistreated her daughters for conveying them food which she had withheld was she not insane one would hope so but we cannot hurry to believe just what is most comfortable or kindest that would be itself a kind of emotional insanity if she was insane how about her husband for Miss Martin who was told that he was no party to her crimes was misinformed he was as deep in the same mire as passive complicity could carry him if she was insane her insanity stopped and she would probably at her plump well fed coachman he was her spy against all others and if she was insane then why did not her frequent gas at tables suspected all that society knew was that she had carried her domestic discipline to excess had paid dearly for it and no doubt was dissisting and would henceforth dissist from that kind of thing enough allowance can hardly be made in our day for the delicacy a society felt about prying into one of its own gentlemen or lady members treatment of his or her own servants who was going to begin such an inquiry John Fitz Miller and so time passed and the beautiful and ever sweet and charming Madame LaLaurie whether sane or insane we leave to the doctors except Dr. LaLaurie continued to drive daily, yearly on the gay bayou route to manage her business affairs and to gather bright groups around her tempting board without their suspicion that she kept her cook in the kitchen by means of a 24 foot chain fastened to her person by the wall or floor and yet let this be said to the people's credit that public suspicion and indignation steadily grew but they were still only growing when one day the 10th of April 1834 the aged cook she was 70 chained as she was purposely set the house on fire it is only tradition that having in a dream the night before seeing the drawing room window curtains on fire she seized the happy thought and made the dream a reality but it is in the printed record of the day that she confessed the deed to the mayor of the city the desperate strategy succeeds the alarm of fire spreads to the street and a hundred men rush in while a crowd throngs the streets some are neighbors, some friends, some strangers one is Monsieur Machoul the gentleman who has so long been watching his chance to bring the law upon the house in its mistress young D a notary's clerk is another and another is Judge Connage and there are others of good and well-known name the fire has got a good start the kitchen is in flames the upper stories are filling with smoke strangers run to the place whence it all comes and falls fighting the fire friends rally to the aid of Monsieur Madame Mallory the pretty lady has not lost one wit is at her very best her husband is as passive as ever this way she cries, this way take this, go now and hurry back if you please this way we are carrying out into places of safety plates, jewels, robes and the lighter and costlier pieces of furniture this way please gentlemen that is only the servants quarters the servants quarters but where are the servants Madame's answers are witty but evasive never mind them now, save the valuables somebody touches Judge Connage those servants are chained and locked up and liable to perish where? in the garret rooms he hurries towards them he turns driven back and nearly suffocated by the smoke he looks around him this is no sketch of the fancy, we have his deposition sworn before magistrate next day and sees some friends of the family he speaks to them I am told, so and so can it be will you speak to Monsieur Madame but the friends repulse him coldly he turns and makes fresh inquiries of others he notices two gentlemen near him whom he knows one is Montreal Fernandez, will you go to the garret and search I am blind and half smothered another, he thinks it was Felix Lefebvre goes in another direction most likely towards the double door between the attics of the house and wing Montrula and Fernandez come back saying they have searched thoroughly and found nothing Madame LaLaurie begs them with all her sweetness to come other ways and consider other things but here is Lefebvre he cries, I have found some of them I have broken some bars but the doors are locked and they run through the smoke they reach the spot break the doors down down comes the doors the room they push into is a den they bring out two negresses one has a large heavy iron collar at the neck and heavy irons on her feet the fire is subdued now, they say but the search goes on here is Monsieur Gillott he has found another victim in another room they push aside a mosquito net and see a negro woman aged, helpless and carry her out Judge Canange confronts Dr. LaLaurie again are there slaves still in your garret, Monsieur? and the doctor replies with insulting tone that there are persons who would do much better by remaining at home than visiting others to dictate to them the laws and the quality of a fish's friends the search went on the victims were led or carried out the sight that met the public eye made the crowd literally grown with horror and shout with indignation we saw wrote the editor of the advertiser one of these miserable beings the sight was so horrible that we could scarce look upon it the most savage heart could not have witnessed the spectacle and moved he had a large hole in his head his body from head to foot was covered with scars and filled with worms the sight inspired us with so much horror that even at the moment of writing this article we shutter from its effects those who have seen the others represent them to be in a similar condition one after another it must have been in the first rush of the inside throng to follow these sufferers into the open air and sunlight that the quick-witted Madame Elloree clapped to the doors of her house with only herself and her daughters possibly the coachman also inside, in nothing but locks and bars to defend her from the rage of the populace the streets under her windows the streets under her windows the streets under her windows the streets under her windows the streets under her windows the streets under her windows royal street here hospital yonder and the yard were thronged something by and by put someone in mind to look for buried bodies there had been nine slaves besides the coachman where were the other two a little digging brought their skeletons to light an adult out of the soil and the little childs out of the condemned well there they lay but the living seven the indiscreet crowd brought them food and drink and before the day was done two more were dead the others were tenderly carried shall we say it to prison to the calaboose thither at least two thousand people flocked that day to see if they might these wretched sufferers the quiet fell upon the scene of the morning's fire the household and its near friends busied themselves in getting back to the jewelry, plate, furniture, and the like the idle crowd looking on in apathy and trusting it may be to see a rest made but the restoration was finished and the house remained closed-sparred no arrest was made as for Dr. Lalouri he does not appear in the scene then the crowd along in the afternoon began to grow again then to show anger and by and by to hoot and groan and cry for satisfaction part four the ladies flight the old bayou road saw a strange sight that afternoon down in its farther end lay a little settlement of Spanish moss-gatherers pot-hunters and shrimpers around a custom house station a lighthouse and a little faint there the people who drove out in carriages were in the habit of alighting and taking the cool air of the lake and sipping lemonade, wines, and ices before they turned homeward again along the crowded way that they had come and after years the place fell into utter neglect the customs station was removed the fort dismantled the gate carriage people drove on the new shell road in carleton avenues and sips and smoked in the twilights and starlights of carleton gardens and the new lake end the older haunt once so bright with fashionable pleasure-making was left to the soul and illumination of st. John light and the mongrel life of a bunch of cabins branded Crab Town and became in popular superstition at least the yearly rendezvous of the voodoo then all at once in latter days it bloomed out in electrical, horticultural, festival, pyrotechnical, splendor as Spanish fort and the carriages all came rolling back so whenever you and your friend visit Spanish fort and stroll along the bayous edge on the fort side and watch the broad schooners glide out along the bayous mouth and into the open water you may say somewhere just along this bank within the few paces between here and yonder must be where that schooner lay bored and ready to sell for Mandeville the afternoon that Madame LaLaurie fleeing from the mob etc. for on that afternoon when the people surrounded the house crying for vengeance she never lost it seems her cunning she and her sleek black coachman took counsel together and his plan of escape was adopted the early afternoon dinner hour of those times came and passed and the crowd still filled the street but as yet had done nothing presently right in the midst of the throng her carriage came to the door according to its well-known daily habit at that hour and at the same moment the charming Madame LaLaurie in all her pretty manners and sweetness of mine stepped quickly across the sidewalk and entered the vehicle the crowd was taken all back when it gathered its wits the coach door had shut and the horses were starting then her audacity was understood she's getting away was the cry and the multitude rushed upon her sees the horses they shouted and dashed at the bits and reins the black driver gave the word to his beast and with his coach whip lashed the faces of those who sprung forward the horses reared and plunged the harness held and the equipages off the crowd went with it turn the coach over they cry and attempted but fail drag her out they tried to do it again and again but in vain away it rattles away it flashes down the hospital street past bourbon Dauphine Burgundy in the rampart with the crowd following yelling but fast growing thin and thinner stop her stop her stop that carriage stop that carriage in vain on it spins out upon the bayou road came the pattering hoofs and humming wheels not wildly driven but just at their most speed into the whole whirling retinue of fashionable New Orleans out for afternoon airing past this equipage past that one past half a dozen a dozen a score their inmate sit chatting in every sort of mood over the day's sensation when what is this a rush from behind a world of white dust and as I live there she goes now on her regular drive what a scandalous speed and see here there after her past 50 gigs and coaches past a hundred around this long bend on the road around that one goodbye pursuers never a chance to cut her off the swamp forever on the right the bayou on the left she is getting away getting away the crowd is miles behind the lake is reached the road ends what next the coach dashes up to the bayou's edge and stops why just here ah because just here so near the bayou's mouth a schooner lies against the bank is Dr. Lowry's hand in this the coachman parlays a moment with the schooner master and hands him down a purse of gold the coach doors opened the lady a light and is presently on the vessel's deck the lines are cast off the great sales go up the few lookers on are there without reference to her and offer no interruption a little pushing with poles lets the wind fill the canvas and first slowly and silently and then swiftly and with the grateful creaking of cordage and spars the vessel glides out past the lighthouse through the narrow opening stands away towards the northern horizon below which signed 30 miles away lies the little watering place of mandeville with roads leading as far away northward as one may choose to fly madame the lorry is gone the brave coachman one cannot help admiring the villains intrepid turned and drove back towards the city what his plan was it is not further known no wonder if he thought he could lash and dash through the same mob again but he mistook he had not reached town again when the crowd met him this time they were more successful they stopped the horses killed them what they did with the drivers not told but one can guess they broke the carriage in a bits then they returned to the house they reached at about 8 o'clock in the evening the two daughters had just escaped by a window the whole house was locked and barred hermetically sealed says la vielle of the next morning the human tempest fell upon it and in a few minutes says the courier the doors and windows were broken open the crowd rushed in and the works of destruction began those who rushed in are of all classes and colors continues the courier of next day but no no says a survivor of today who was there and took part we wouldn't have allowed it in a single hour everything movable disappeared or perished the place was rifle of jewelry and plate china was smashed the very stair balusters were pulled piece from piece hangings beddings and table linen were tossed into the streets and the elegant furniture bedsteads wardrobes buffets tables chairs pictures pianos says the newspaper were taken with pains to the third story windows burled out and broken smashed into a thousand pieces upon the ground below the very basements were emptied and the floors wainscotts and iron balconies damaged as far as at the moment they could be the southern southern nightfall descended and torches danced in the streets and through the ruined house the debris was gathered into hot bonfires feather beds were cut open and the pavements covered with the thick snow of feathers the night wore on but the mom persisted they mounted and battered the roof they defaced the inner walls morning found them still at their senseless mischief and they were in the act of pulling down the walls when the sheriff and several citizens interfered and put an end to their work it was proposed to go at once to the houses of others long suspected of light cruelty to their slaves but against this the highest gentility of the city alertly and diligently opposed themselves not at all because of sympathy with such cruelties the single reason has its parallel in our own day it was the fear that the Negroes would be thereby encouraged to seek by violence those rights which their masters thought it not expedient to give them the movement was suppressed and the odious parties were merely warned that they were watched Madame Lalourie we know by notorial records was in Mandeville ten days after when she executed the power of attorney in favor of her New Orleans business agent in which act she was authorized and assisted by her husband Louis Lalourie so he disappears his wife made her way to mobile some say to the north and then to Paris being recognized and confronted there she again fled the rest of her story is tradition that comes very directly a domestic and a creole family that knew Madame Lalourie and slave women used to enjoy great confidence and familiarity in the creole households at times tells that one day a letter from France to one of the family informed them that Madame Lalourie, while spending a season at Pau had engaged with the party of fashionable people in a boar hunt and somehow meeting the boar while apart from her companions had been set upon by the infuriated beast and too quickly for anyone to come to her rescue had been torn and killed if this occurred after 1836 or 1837 it has no disagreement with Harriet Martin's account that at the latter date Madame Lalourie was supposed to still be skulking about some French province under a false name the house remained untouched for at least three years ornamented with various writings expressive of indignation and just punishment the volume of Lebel containing this account seems to have been abstracted from the city archives it was in the last week of April of May 1836 that Miss Martinou saw the house it stands she wrote about a year later and is meant to stand in its ruined state it was the strange sight of its gaping windows and empty walls in the midst of a busy street which excited my wonder and was the cause of my being told the story the first time I gathered other particulars afterwards from eyewitnesses so the place came to be looked upon as haunted in March 1837 Madame Lalourie's agent sold the house to a man who held it but a little over three months and then sold it at the same price that he had paid only fourteen thousand dollars the notary who made the earlier act of sale must have found it interesting he was one of those who had helped find and carry out Madame Lalourie's victims it did not change hands again for twenty five years and then in what state of repair I know not it was sold at an advance equal to a yearly increase of but six sevenths of one percent of the gaping ruins sold in 1837 there is a certain poetry indentorial records but we will not delve for it now idle talk of strange sights and sounds crowded out of notice any true history the house may have had in those twenty five years or until war had destroyed that slavery to whose horridest possibilities the gloomy pile even when restored and renovated stood a ghost-ridden monument yet its days of dark romance were by no means ended five a new use the era of political reconstruction came the victorious national power decreed that they who had once been master and slave should enter into political partnership on terms of civil equality the slaves grasped the boon but the masters trained for generations in the conviction that public safety and private purity were possible only by the subjection of the black race under the white clothed civil equality as but another name for private companionship and spurned as dishonor and destruction in one the restoration of their sovereignty at the price of political co-partnership with the groveling race they had bought and sold and subjected easily to the leash and lash what followed took everyone by surprise the negro came at once into a larger share of power than it was ever intended he should or expected he would attain his master related to him long and only under the imagined necessities of plantation government vowed the issue must and should be not how shall the two races share public self-government in prosperous emity but which race shall exclusively rule the other race by race the necessities of national authority tipped the scale and the powers of legislation and government and the spoils of office tumbled all together into the freedman's ragged lap thereupon fell upon New Orleans never well governed at the best a volcanic shower of corruption and misrule and yet when histories calm summing up and final judgment comes there must this be pointed out which was very hard to see through the dust and smoke of those days that while plunder and fraud ran riot yet no serious attempt was ever made by the freedman or his allies to establish any un-American principle of government and for nothing else was he more fiercely, bloodily opposed than for measures approved by the world's best thought and in full harmony with the national scheme of order. We shall see now what these things have to do with our strange true story. In New Orleans the American public school system which recognizes free public instruction as a profitable investment of the public funds for the common public safety had already long been established the Negro adopted and enlarged it he recognized the fact that the relation of pupils in the public schools is as distinctly a public and not a private relation as that of the sidewalk, the market, the public park, or the streetcar but recognizing also the impractic capabilities of place and time he established separate schools for whites and blacks in one instance however owing mainly to the smallness of numbers it seemed more feasible to allow a common enjoyment of the civil right of public instruction without separation by race than to main two separate schools one at least of which would be very feeble for lack of numbers now it being so decided of all the buildings in New Orleans which one was chosen for this experiment but the haunted house in Royal Street I shall never forget the day although marked by no startling incident when I sat in this lofty drawing rooms and heard its classes in their annual examination it was June and the teachers and pupils were clad in recognition of the special occasion and in the light fabrics fitted to the season the rooms were adorned with wreaths garlands and bouquets among the scholars many faces were beautiful and all were fresh and young much Gallic blood asserted itself in complexion and feature generally of undoubted, unadulterated Caucasian purity but sometimes a visible and now and then reponderating African tincture only two or three unless I have forgotten were of pure Negro blood there in the rooms that had once resounded with screams of Madame Lory's little slave fleeing to her death and with the hootings and maledictions of the enraged mob was being tried the experiment of a common enjoyment of public benefits by the daughters of two wildly divergent races without the enforcement of private social companionship from such enforcement school was as free as any school is or ought to be the daily discipline did not require any two pupils to be social but only everyone to be civil and civil to all these pages are written however to tell a strange true story and not to plead one cause or another whatever the story itself pleads let it plead outside the haunted house far and near the whole community was divided into two fiercely hostile parties that actual war with each other the one striving to maintain government upon a co-citizenship regardless of race in all public relations the other sworn to make race the supreme sufficient inexorable condition of supremacy on the one part and subjection on the other it for all this the school prospered nevertheless it suffered much internal unrest many a word was spoken that struck like a club many a smile stung like a whip lash many a glance stab like a knife even in the midst of a recitation a wounded one would sometimes break into sobs or silent tears while the aggressor crimsoned and palpitated with the proud indignation of the master cased the teachers met all such by play with prompt impartial repression and concentration upon the appointed duties of the hour sometimes another thing restored order few indeed of the pupils of whatever racial purity or preponderance but held more or less at all the ghostly traditions of the house and at times it chanced to be just in the midst of one of these ebullitions of scorn, grief and resentful tears that noiselessly and majestically the great doors of the reception rooms untouched by visible hands would slowly swing open and the hushed girls would call to mind madame la Lurie not all who bore the tincture of the despised race suffered alike some were fierce and sturdy and played a savage tit for tat sensible a few bore themselves inflexibly by dint of sheer nerve while many generally more white than black quivered and winced continually under the contulie that fell they felt with peculiar injustice and cruelty upon them odd things happen from time to time to remind one of the houses early history one day a deep hidden well that no one had suspected the existence of was found in the basement of the main house another time but we must be brief matters and thus for years but at length there was a sudden and violent change part 6 evictions the radical party in Louisiana gorged with private spoils and loathed and hated by all but unbroken ranks and well-to-do society that would held a creed as righteous and reasonable as any political party ever held was going to pieces by the sheer weakness of its own political corruption it was made mainly of the poor and weak elements of the people had it been ever so pure it could not have made headway against the strongest ranks of society concentrating against it with revolutionary intent when deserted by the power which had called it to responsibility and come this history of a house must not run into the history of a government it is a fact in our story however that in the conservative party there spring up the white league purposing to rest the state government from the radicals by force of arms on the 14th of September 1874 the white league met and defeated the metropolitan police in a hot and bloody engagement of infantry and artillery on the broad steamboat landing in the very middle of New Orleans but the federal authority interfered the radical government resumed control but the white league survived and grew in power in November elections were held and the state legislator was found to be republican by majority of only two one bright spring like day in December such as a northern march might give in its best mood the school had gathered in the haunted house as usual but the hour of duty had not yet struck two teachers sat in an upper classroom talking of the history of the house the older of the two had lately heard of an odd new incident connected with it and was telling of it a distinguished foreign visitor she said guest at a dinner party in the city of the previous season turned unexpectedly to his hostess the talk being of quaint old New Orleans houses and asked how to find the house where that celebrated tyrant had lived who was driven from the city by a mob for maltreating her slaves the rest of the company sat aghast while the hostess silenced him by the severe coldness with which she replied that she knew nothing of it one of madam lullery's daughters was sitting there, guest at the table when the teacher's story was told her companion made no comment she had noticed a singular sound that was increasing in volume out of doors, seemed far away but it was drawing nearer she started up for she recognize it now as a clamor of human voices and remembered that the iron gates had not yet been locked for the day they hurried to the window, looked down and saw the narrow street full from wall to wall for a hundred yards with men coming towards them the front of the crowd had already reached the place and was turning towards the iron gates the two women went quickly to the hall and looking down the spiral staircase to the marble pavement of the entrance three stories below saw the men swarming in through the wide gateway and doorway by dozens while they still leaned over the balustrade Marguerite, one of their pupils a blue eyed blonde girl of lovely complexion with red voluptuous lips and beautiful hair held by a carven shell comb came and bent over the balustrade with them suddenly her comb slipped from its hold flashed downward as striking the marble pavement flew into pieces at the feet of the men who were about to ascend several of them looked quickly up Marguerite turned ashy pale and sunk down in hysterics the two teachers carried her to a remote room the bed chamber of the janetress and then obeyed in order of the principal calling her associates to the second floor a band of men were coming up the winding stair with measured military tread towards the landing for the principal with her assistants gathered around her stood to confront them she was young, beautiful and of calm temper her skin says one who was present was one of dazzling clearness her abundant hair was golden auburn and in happy hours her eyes were as soft as velvet but when the leader of the band of men reached the stair landing threw his coat open and showed the badge of the white league her face had blanched and hardened to marble and her eyes darkened to black as they glowed with indignation we have come, said the white leaker to remove the colored pupils you will call your school to order to which the principal replied you will permit me first to confer with my corpse of associates he was a trifle disconcerted oh, certainly the teachers gathered in the principal's private rooms some were dumb one broke into tears another pleaded devotion to the principal and one was just advising that the onus of all action be thrown upon the intruders when the door was pushed open and the white leaker said ladies, we are waiting assemble the school, we are going to clean it out the pupils, many of them trembling weeping and terrified but with difficulty brought to order in the assembly room this place had once been Madame Maluri's dining hall a freeze of angels ran around its four walls and oddly for some special past occasion a legend in crimson and gold on the western side bore the words the eye of God is on us gentlemen, the school is assembled said the principal call the roll was the reply and we will challenge each name it was done as each name was called its young bear rose and confronted her inquisitors and the inquisitors began to blunder accusations of the fatal taint work met with denials and withdrawn with apologies sometimes it was truth and sometimes pure arrogance and falsehood that triumphed over these champions of instinctive racial antagonism one dark girl shot up hotly at the call of her name I have Indian blood and can prove it you will not be disturbed poorly the principal next called a thin girl of mixed blood and freckled face rose and said my mother is white step aside commanded the white leaguer but by the law the color follows the mother and so I am white step aside cried the man in a fury in truth there was no such long Octavia a pretty oriental girl rises silent pale but self controlled are you colored yes I am colored she moves aside a girl very fair but with crinkling hair and other signs of negro extraction stands up and says I am the sister of the aunt naming a high democratic official and I shall not leave this school you may remain your case will be investigated Eugenie a modest girl visibly of mixed race rises weeping silently step aside Marceline V a bold eyed girl of much African blood stands up and answers I am not colored we are Spanish and my brother will call on you and prove it he is allowed to stay at length the roll call is done now madam you will dismiss these peoples that we have set aside at once we will go down and wait to see that they come out the men trapped out of the room went downstairs rejoining the impatient crowd that was clamoring in the street then followed a wild scene within the old house restraint was lost terror ruled the girls who had been ordered into the street sobbed and shrieked and begged oh save us we cannot go out there the mob will kill us what shall we do one girl of grand and noble air as dark and handsome as an East Indian princess and standing first in her class for scholarship threw herself at her teacher's feet crying have pity on me miss my poor Lientine replied the teacher what can I do there are good colored schools in the city would it not have been wise for your father to send you to one of them but the girl rose up and answered must I go to school with my own servants to escape and unmerited disdain and the teacher was silent while the confusion increased the shame of it will kill me cried gentle Eugenie and there upon at last a teacher commonly one of the sternest in discipline explained Eugenie goes Marceline shall go if I have to put her out myself Spanish indeed and Eugenie a pearl by the side of her just then Eugenie's father came he had forced his way through the press in the street and now stood bidding his child have courage and return with him the way he had come tie your veil close Eugenie said the teacher and they will not know you and so they went the father and the daughter but they went alone none followed this roused the crowd to no easy anger why don't the rest come it howled but the teachers tried in vain to inspire the panic-stricken girls with courage to face the mob and were in despair when a school official arrived and with calm and confident authority bade the expelled girls gather in ranks and follow him through the crowd so they went out through the iron gates the great leaves of which closed after them were the rasping of their key and shooting of their bolts while the teacher said come the reporters will soon be here let us go and see after Marguerite they found her in the room of the janitress shut in and fast asleep do you think one asked of the janitress that mere fright and the loss of that comb made this strong girl ill no I think she must have guessed those men's airing in her eye at the eye of someone who knew her but what of that she is colored she is visible I tell you yes why I thought her as pure German as her name no the mixture is there though the only trace of it is on her lips her mother she is dead now was a beautiful quadrum a German sea captain loved her the law stood between them he opened a vein in his arm forced in some of her blood went to court swore he had African blood got a license and married her Marguerite is engaged to be married to a white man it was like life and death so to speak for her not to let those men turn her out of here the teacher turned away pondering the eviction did not at that time hold good the political struggle went on fierce and bitter the radical government was doomed but not dead a few weeks after the scene just described the evicting girls were reinstated a long term of suspense followed the new year became the old and went out twice this happened in 1877 there were two governors and two governments in Louisiana in sight from the Belvedere of the Haunted House eight squares away up royal street in the state house the de facto government was shut up under close military siege by the Dajar's government at the girls high school in Madame LaLaurie's old house continuing faithfully their daily lessons knew within as little certainty to which of the two they belonged as though New Orleans had been some Italian city of the 15th century but to guess the white league was not far from right and in April the radical government expired a democratic school board came in June brought commencement day and some of the same girls who had been evicted in 1874 were graduated by the new board in 1877 during the summer the schools and school laws were overhauled and in September or October the high school was removed to another place where each pupil suspected of mixed blood was examined officially behind closed doors and only those who could prove white or Indian ancestry were allowed to stay a colored high school was open in Madame LaLaurie's house with a few pupils it lasted one session maybe two and then perished in 1882 the haunted house had become a conservatory of music chamber concerts were frequent in Madame LaLaurie's old dining hall on a certain sweet evening in the spring of that year there sat among those who had gathered to hear the haunted place filled with the deluge of sweet sounds one who had been a teacher there when the house had been as someone who could tell which said on the spot for the second time purged of its iniquities the scene was much changed says the auditor but the ghosts were all there walking on the waves of harmony and thickest and fastest they trooped in and out when a passionate song thrilled the air with the promise that someday, someday eyes clearer grown the truth may see End of The Haunted House in Royal Street by George Washington Cable Recording by Aaron Lilis www.cheerydreary.com A Madman by Maurice LaVelle This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recorded by Steven Ball A Madman by Maurice LaVelle He was neither wicked nor cruel, but he hungered for the unexpected the theatre did not interest him yet he attended often, hoping for the outbreak of a fire he went to the fair at Neurie to see if perhaps one of the menagerie animals might go wild and mangle its trainer once he even visited the bullring but its calculated bloodshed was mundane, too controlled meaningless suffering revolted him he craved the thrill of sudden catastrophe then, after ten years of waiting, fire indeed ravaged the opera-comique one night when he was there he escaped uninjured, but soon afterwards he saw the celebrated lion tamer Frederick torn to pieces by his cats the madman was only a few feet away from the cage when it happened he lost interest in wild beast shows and the theatre and fell into a deep depression but then one morning he saw a garish poster one of many that covered the walls of Paris against a blue background a peculiar slanted track descended curled itself into a circular loop and then plummeted straight down the top of the billboard depicted a tiny cyclist about to dare the dangerous route the newspapers ran a story explaining that the cyclist intended to ride down just such a track when I reached the loop he told reporters you will actually see me round it upside down the press was invited to inspect the track and the bicycle I used no mechanical trickery the daredevil bragged nothing but precise scientific calculation that and my ability to keep up my nerve when the madman read the article his good spirit returned he immediately went to buy a ticket he did not want his attention distracted when the rider looped the loop so he purchased an entire box of seats opposite the track and sat alone on opening night after a suspenseful wait the cyclist appeared high above the audience at the top of the ribbon of road a moment of tense anticipation then down he sped as promised he circled the loop with head underneath and feet in the air and then it was all over the performance certainly thrilled the madman but as he exited with the crowd he knew he might experience the same intense sensation once or twice more and then, as always the novelty would die still bicycles break road surfaces wear out and no man's nerve holds out forever sooner or later there must be an accident the cyclist was scheduled to perform for three months in Paris and then tour the provinces the madman decided to go to every single performance even if he had to follow the show on its travels he bought the same box for the entire Parisian run and sat in the same seat night after night one evening two months later the performance had just ended and the madman was on his way out when he noticed the performer standing in one of the corridors of the auditorium he walked up to him but before he could utter a word the cyclist greeted him affably I know you you come to my show every night that's true your remarkable feat fascinates me but who told you I'm always here no one, the rider smiled I see you myself but how can you so high up at such a moment you are actually able to study the audience the cyclist laughed hardly it'd be dangerous for me to look at a crowd shifting around and prattling but confidentially there's a little trick involved in what I do a trick? the madman was surprised and dismayed no no, I don't mean a hoax but there's something I do which the public is unaware of the cyclist winked this would be our little secret yes when I mount my bicycle and grasp the handlebars I never worry about my own strength and coordination but the total concentration the ride demands concerns me it's almost impossible for me to empty my mind of all but one idea my greatest danger is that my eyes will stray but here's my trick I find one spot in the auditorium and focus all my attention on it the first time I rode in this hall I spied you in your box and chose you as my spot the next evening there you were again the madman sat in his customary seat a sighted buzz filled the hall a hush fell when the rider made his entrance a black speck far overhead two men held his bicycle the cyclist gripped the handlebars stared out over the heads of the crowd and shouted the signal the men gave the machine a shove at that instant the madman rose and walked to the opposite side of this box the audience screamed a cycle and rider shot off the track and plunged into the midst of the crowd the madman donned his coat smoothed his hat against one sleeve and departed End of A Madman by Maurice Lavel The Man of Science by Jerome K. Jerome I met a man in the strand one day that I knew very well as I thought though I had not seen him for years we walked together to Charing Cross and there we shook hands and parted next morning I spoke of this meeting to a mutual friend and then I learned for the first time that the man had died six months before the natural inference was that I had mistaken one man for another an error that not having a good memory for faces I frequently fall into what was remarkable about the matter however was that throughout our walk I had conversed with the man under the impression that he was that other dead man and whether by coincidence or not his replies had never once suggested to me my mistake as soon as I finished Jefferson who had been listening very thoroughly asked me if I believed in spiritualism to its fullest extent that is rather a large question I answered what you mean by spiritualism to its fullest extent well do you believe that the spirits of the dead have not only the power of revisiting this earth at their will but that when here they have the power of action or rather of exciting to action let me put a definite case a spiritualist friend of mine a sensible and by no means imaginative man once told me that a table through the medium of which the spirit of a friend Ben in the habit of communicating with him came slowly across the room towards him of its own accord one night as he sat alone and pinioned him against the wall now can any of you believe that or can't you? I could Brown took it upon himself to reply but before doing so I should wish for an introduction to the friend who told you the story speaking generally he continued it seems to me that the difference between what we call the natural and the supernatural is merely the difference between frequency and rarity of occurrence having regard to the phenomena we are compelled to admit I think it illogical to disbelieve anything we are unable to disprove for my part remarked mexianosy I can believe in the ability of our friends to give the quaint entertainments credited to them much easier than I can do their desire to do so you mean added Jeffson you cannot understand why a spirit not compelled as we are by the exigencies of society had cared to spend this evening carrying on a labored and childish conversation with a room full of abnormally uninteresting people that is precisely what I cannot understand mexianosy agreed nor I either said Jeffson but I was thinking of something very different altogether suppose a man died with the dearest wish of his heart unfulfilled do you believe that his spirit might have power to return to earth and complete the interrupted work well answered mexianosy if one admits the possibility of spirits retaining any interest in the affairs of this world at all it is certainly more reasonable to imagine them engaged upon a task such as you suggest than to believe that they occupy themselves with the performance of mere drawing room tricks what are you leading up to why to this replied Jeffson seating himself straddled across his chair and leaning his arms upon the back I was told a story this morning at the hospital by an old French doctor the actual facts are few and simple all that is known can be read in the Paris police records of 62 years ago the most important part of this case however is the part that is not known and that never will be known the story begins with a great wrong done by one man to another man what the wrong was I do not know I am inclined to think however it was connected with a woman I think that because he who had been wronged hated him who had wronged him with a hate such as does not often burn in a man's brain unless it be fanned by the memory of a woman's breath still that is only conjecture and the point is immaterial the man who had done the wrong fled and the other man followed him it became a point-to-point race the first man having the advantage of a day's start the course was the whole world and the stakes were the first man's life travelers were few and far between in those days and this made the trail easy to follow the first man never knowing how far or how near the other was behind him and hoping now and again that he might have baffled him would rest for a while the second man always knowing just how far the first one was before him never paused and thus each day the man who was spurred by hate drew nearer to the man who was spurred by fear at this town the answer to the never varied question would be at seven o'clock last evening monsieur ah 18 hours give me something to eat quick while the horses are being put to at the next the calculation would be 16 hours passing a lonely chalet monsieur puts his head out of the window how long such a carriage passed this way with a tall fair man inside such a one passed early this morning monsieur thanks drive on a hundred banks a piece if you are through the past before daybreak and what for dead horses monsieur twice the value when living one day the man who was ridden by fear looked up and saw before him an open door of a cathedral and passing in knelt down and prayed he prayed long and fervently for men when they are in sore straits clutch eagerly at the straws of faith he prayed that he might be forgiven his sin and more importantly still that he might be pardoned the consequences of his sin and be delivered from his adversary and a few chairs from him facing him knelt his enemy praying also but the second man's prayer being a thanksgiving merely was short so that when the first man raised his eyes he saw the face of his enemy gazing at him across the chair tops with a mocking smile upon it he made no attempt to rise but remaining kneeling fascinated by the look of joy that shown out of the other man's eyes and the other man moved the high back chairs one by one and came towards him softly then just as the man who had been wronged stood beside the man who had wronged him full of gladness his opportunity had come there burst from the cathedral tower a sudden clash of bells and the man whose opportunity had come broke his heart and fell back dead with that mocking smile still playing round his mouth and so he lay there then the man who had done the wrong rose up and passed out praising God what became of the body of the other man is not known it was the body of a stranger who had died suddenly in the cathedral the stairs passed away and the survivor of the tragedy became a worthy and useful citizen and a noted man of science in his laboratory were many objects necessary to him and his researchers and prominent amongst them stood in a certain corner a human skeleton it was a very old and much mended skeleton and one day the long expected end arrived and it tumbled to pieces thus it became necessary to purchase another the man of science visited a dealer he well knew the little parchment faced old man who kept a dingy shop where nothing was ever sold within the shadow of the towers of Notre Dame the little parchment faced old man had just the very thing that monsieur wanted a singularly fine and well proportioned study it should be sent round and set up in monsieur's laboratory that very evening the dealer was as good as his word when monsieur entered his laboratory that evening the thing was in its place monsieur seated himself in his high back chair and tried to collect his thoughts but monsieur's thoughts were unruly and inclined to wander and to wander always in one direction monsieur opened a large volume and commenced to read he read of a man who had wronged another and fled from him the other man following finding himself reading this he closed the book angrily and went and stood by the window and looked out he saw before him the sun pierced nape of a great cathedral with a mocking smile upon his face cursing himself for a fool he turned away with a laugh but his laugh was short-lived for it seemed to him that something else in the room was laughing also struck suddenly still with his feet glued to the ground he stood listening for a while then sought with staring eyes the corner from which the sound had seemed to come but the white thing standing there was only grinning monsieur wiped the damp sweat from his head and hands and stole out for a couple of days he did not enter the room again on the third telling himself that his fears were those of a hysterical girl he opened the door and went in to shame himself he took his lamp in his hand and crossing over to the far corner where the skeleton stood examined it a set of bones bought for three hundred francs was he a child to be scared by such a bogey he held his lamp up in front of the things grinning head the flame flickered as though a faint breath had passed over it the man explained this to himself by saying that the walls of the house were old and cracked and that the wind might creep in anywhere he repeated this explanation to himself as he recrossed the room walking backwards with his eyes fixed on the thing when he reached his desk he sat down and gripped the arms of his chair till his fingers turned white he tried to work the empty eye sockets of that grinning head seemed to be drawing him towards them he rose and battled with his inclination to fly screaming from the room glancing fearfully about him his eye fell upon a high screen standing before the door he dragged it forward and placed it between himself and the thing so that he could not see it nor it see him then he sat down again to his work for a while he forced himself to look at the book in front of him unable to control himself any longer he suffered his eyes to follow their own bent it may have been a hallucination he may have accidentally placed the screen so as to favor such illusion but what he saw was a bony hand coming round the corner of the screen and with a cry he fell to the floor in a swoon the people of the house came running in and lifting him up carried him out and laid him upon his bed as soon as he recovered his first question was where they had found the thing where was it when they entered the room and when they told him that they had seen it standing where it always stood and had gone down into the room to look again because of his frenzied entreaties and returned trying to hide their smiles he listened to their talk about overwork and the necessity for change and rest and said they might do with him as they would so for months the laboratory door remained locked then there came a chill autumn evening when the man of science opened it again and closed it behind him he lighted his lamp and gathered his instruments and books around him and sat down before them in his high back chair and the old terror returned to him but this time he meant to conquer himself his nerves were stronger now and his brain clearer he would fight this unreasoning fear he crossed to the room and locked himself in and flung the key to the other end of the room all amongst jars and bottles with an echoing clatter later on his old housekeeper going her final round tapped at the door and wished him good night as was her custom she received no response at first and growing nervous tapped louder and called again and at length and answering good night came back to her she thought little about it at the time but afterwards she remembered that the voice that had replied to her had been strangely grating and mechanical trying to describe it she likened it to such a voice as she would imagine coming from a statue next morning his door remained still locked it was no unusual thing for him to work all night and far into the next day so no one thought to be surprised when however evening came and yet he did not appear his servants gathered outside the room remembering what had happened once before they listened but could hear no sound they shook the door and called to him then beat with their fists upon the wooden panels but still no sound came from the room becoming alarmed they decided to burst open the door and after many blows it gave way and they crowded in he sat bolt upright in his high-backed chair they thought at first he had died in his sleep but when they drew nearer and the light fell upon him they saw the livid marks of bony fingers round his throat and in his eyes there was a terror such as is not often seen in human eyes Brown was the first to break the silence that followed he asked me if I had any brandy on board he said he felt he should like just a nip of brandy before going to bed that is one of the chief charms of Jeffson's stories they always make you feel you want a little brandy this is the end of The Man of Science by Jerome K. Jerome The Murderer by Richard Middleton this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recorded by Steven Ball The Murderer by Richard Middleton he walked down to the embankment with the paving stones like velvet under his feet and he swerved like one running yet still though he meant to end his life in a few minutes he avoided the traffic with great care so that paternal policemen judged him newly from the country the august sun seemed pitiless in its strength and in his fear and wretchedness he cursed it better rain, mist, fog anything but the reproachful blue of the sky and the dancing glitter of the dust he wanted sympathy and instead nature triumphed over him and emphasised his failure the river was a sparkling tumult of gems where he had pictured a secret immutable surface which had flowed darkly over him and his wrongs in place of a great unspeaking god he found a crowd of dancing laughing children where should he seek peace and forgetfulness he leaned on the parapet and groaned a train thundered by over hungerford bridge as if in answer of course, that was the way safer, quicker he took a ticket at chairing cross station and passed to the end of the platform with a strange numbness in his mind and body as if he were already dead yet he walked to the extreme end because there was no one there to interfere presently the train appeared making its way slowly across the bridge and he leapt off the platform and laid his head on the rail it blistered his cheek because the sun had made it so hot then the earth heaved itself up and thrust and tore him between the wheels of the carriages when the train had passed he rose to his feet unsteady and stared stupidly at the mangled body lying at his feet there was a shrill singing in his ears which was shortly interrupted by the sound of human voices and he felt his arms caught roughly and imprisoned soon he made out the word murder, angrily spoken and found that he was held by plate layers who were gesticulating violently and pointing at the body but he would not speak because though the head had become a crushed horror he knew that the body was his dimly he was aware that porters and policemen were crowding from the station and that they were lifting the body tenderly from the rails then he fainted he came too in the police station and found that his face and hair were dabbled with water presently he was formally charged and warned not to say anything incriminating he said only it was me he hated several times he was trying to convince himself then he was removed to the cells and found himself alone he lay down and slept deeply and the sun had set and risen before he woke at his trial and after conviction he did not speak he seemed too dazed but as they led him away he broke his silence can a man die twice he inquired reflectively twice there is no more to chronicle they were his last recorded word