The Horla Read Online Free PDF Page A

Emperor the measures he thinks best suited to restore these delirious populations to reason
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    And now I remember it, I remember the fine Brazilian three-master that passed by my windows asit went up the Seine, last May 8th. And I thought it was so pretty, so white, so cheerful! The Being was on it, coming from down there, where his race was born. And he saw me! He saw my white house too; and he jumped from the ship onto the shore. Oh my God!
    Now I know, I have guessed. The reign of mankind is over.
    He has come, the One the primal terrors of primitive tribes dreaded, the One anxious priests exorcised, the One magicians summoned on dark nights, without ever seeing him appear, the One to whom the premonitions of adepts wandering through the world attributed all the monstrous or gracious forms of gnomes, spirits, genies, fairies, elves. After the coarse imaginings of primitive horror, more perspicacious men had a clearer presentiment of him. Mesmer guessed his existence, and for ten years now doctors have discovered, in an accurate way, the nature of his power before he himself even exercised it. They have played with this weapon of the new Lord, the domination of a mysterious will over a human soul, which turns into a slave. They called it ‘magnetism,’ ‘hypnotism,’ ‘suggestion’.… What do I know? I have seen them amuse themselves like foolish children with this terrible power. We are cursed. Mankind is cursed. He has come, the … the … what is his name … the … he seems to be shouting out his name to me, and I cannot hear it … the … yes … heis shouting it … I am trying to hear … I can’t … again … the … Horla … I heard … the Horla … it is he … the Horla … he has come!
    Now the vulture has eaten the dove, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the lion has devoured the sharp-horned buffalo; man has killed the lion with the arrow, with the sword, with powder; but the Horla will make man into what we made the horse and the steer: his thing, his servant and his food, by the simple power of his will. Our woe is upon us.
    But the animal sometimes rebels and kills the one who tamed him.… I too want to do this.… I could … but I must recognize him, touch him, see him! Scholars say that the eyes of an animal, different from our own, cannot distinguish objects as our eyes do.… And my eyes cannot distinguish this newcomer who oppresses me.
    Why? Now I remember the words of the monk at Mont Saint-Michel: “Do we see the hundred-thousandth part of what exists? Look, here is the wind, which is the strongest force in nature, which knocks men down, destroys buildings, uproots trees, whips the sea up into mountains of water, destroys cliffs, and throws great ships onto the shoals; here is the wind that kills, whistles, groans, howls—have you ever seen it, and can you see it? Yet it exists.”
    And I thought further: My eye is so weak, so imperfect, that I cannot even make out solid objects,if they are transparent as glass!… If a two-way mirror bars my way, it knocks me down, just as a bird who has flown into a room breaks his neck on the windowpanes. A thousand other things deceive our sight and lead it astray. What is so surprising about our not knowing how to perceive a new body, one that light can pass through?
    A new being! Why not? Surely it had to come. Why should we be the last people? If we can’t distinguish him, as we can all the other creatures before us, it’s because his nature is more perfect, his body finer and more absolute than ours, which is so weak, so clumsily conceived, encumbered with organs that are always weary, always strained, like machinery that is too complex—our body, which lives like a plant, like an animal, feeding with difficulty on air, grass, and meat, an animal machine prey to sicknesses, deformations, putrefactions, short-winded, unstable, simple and strange, naively, poorly made, a coarse and delicate work, a rough