The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th Century Read Online Free PDF Page B

thought Belissan, who could no longer see because his eyes were covered with beads, feeling more and more terrified.
    When they arrived there, Claude was made to stand up and he was tied to a post.
    At the base of the post there was a stone trough.
    A multitude of hymns, psalms and prayers were chanted.
    And Toa-ka-Magarow, in whom theocratic as well as temporal power was vested, performed some contortions before stepping up to Claude wielding a long knife with a ribbed blade.
    The clerk’s blood dripped into the trough.
    At this sharp, cold, and painful sensation, Claude, by one of those singular tricks of the memory, thought of his attic room and the summer shower which had alone determined the chain of cause and effect which had led him to the cannibal’s knife; and as a result of a sudden flash of intuition, he understood everything that had happened to him.
    And in the grip of some fantastic delirium, he imagined that the Danish horses, the handsome footman and Catherine were all circling him making whooping sounds.
    He remembered nothing more.
    And this was the fate of Claude Belissan, former clerk to the public prosecutor, man of nature, who served as a feast for the noble savages of Hatouhougou after they had respectfully offered his ears, considered the most delicate part of the human body, to Toa-ka-Magarow.

       1    Louis Antoine de Bougainville (1729–1811). French navigator who explored the South Pacific as leader of a French naval force which sailed around the world (1766–1769).

Solange
Alexandre Dumas
    Night had completely come upon us during M. Ledru’s narrative. The company in the drawing-room appeared like mute and motionless shadows, so much we feared he might break off; for we perfectly understood that the terrible tale he had just related was but the prologue to another still more terrible.
    Not a breath was heard. The doctor alone opened his mouth; I pressed his hand to prevent his speaking; and so, indeed, he kept silent.
    After a few seconds, M. Ledru continued:
    I had just left the abbey, and was crossing the Place Taranne, on my way to the Rue de Tournon, where I lodged, when I heard a woman’s voice calling for help.
    It could not be that she had fallen among thieves or robbers, for it was scarcely ten o’clock at night. I ran to the corner of the square whence the cry had proceeded, and saw, by the light of the moon issuing from behind a cloud, a woman who was struggling to escape from a patrol of sans-culottes.
    The woman, on her side, perceived me; and remarking by my attire that I was not altogether a plebeian, she sprang towards me, exclaiming:
    ‘Stay, here is M. Albert, whom I am acquainted with; he will tell you that I really am the daughter of Mother Ledieu, the laundress.’
    At the same time the poor woman, all pale and trembling, seized me by the arm, and clung to me as the shipwrecked sailor clings to the plank he has laid hold of.
    ‘The daughter of Mother Ledieu! be it so; but you have got no identity card, my fine lady; so you must come along with us to the guard-house.’
    The young woman pressed my arm. I felt the terror and entreaty implied by that pressure; I understood her.
    As she had called me by the first name that had offered itself to her mind, I called her likewise by the first that occurred to me.
    ‘What! is it you, my poor Solange?’ said I to her; ‘what has happened to you?’
    ‘You see, gentlemen,’ she resumed.
    ‘I think you might say citizens.’
    ‘Hear me, Mister Sergeant; it is not my fault if I speak as I do,’ said the young girl. ‘My mother had some customers in high life, and was accustomed to be polite; so that I have acquired a bad habit – I am well aware of it – an aristocratic habit. But what’s to be done? I cannot break myself of it.’
    There was a degree of raillery in this answer, in spite of her trembling voice, which I alone understood. I wondered who the woman could be. There were no means of solving the problem.