The Horla Read online

  “LETTER FROM A MADMAN” WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1885.

  THE FIRST VERSION OF “THE HORLA” WAS PUBLISHED IN 1886;

  THE FINAL VERSION WAS PUBLISHED IN 1887.

  TRANSLATION ©2005 CHARLOTTE MANDELL

  MELVILLE HOUSE PUBLISHING

  145 PLYMOUTH STREET

  BROOKLYN, NY 11201

  WWW.MHPBOOKS.COM

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PAPERBACK EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Maupassant, Guy de, 1850-1893.

  [Horla. English]

  The horla / Guy de Maupassant; translated by Charlotte Mandell.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-61219-246-8

  I. Mandell, Charlotte. II. Title.

  PQ2349.H713 2005

  843′.8—dc22

  2005010708

  v3.1

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  THE HORLA

  LETTER FROM A MADMAN

  THE HORLA (1886)

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  Other Books in the Series

  THE HORLA

  May 8. What a wonderful day! I spent all morning stretched out on the grass in front of my house, beneath the huge plane tree that completely covers, shelters, and shades the lawn. I love the country here, and I love living here because this is where I have my roots, those profound and delicate roots that attach a man to the land where his ancestors were born and died, and that attach him to what one should think and what one should eat; to customs as well as to foods; to local idioms and peasant intonations; to the smells of the earth, of the villages, of the air itself.

  I love my house, I grew up in it. From my windows, I can see the Seine flowing along the whole length of my garden, behind the road, almost in my back yard, the great, wide Seine, which goes from Rouen to Le Havre, covered with boats passing by.

  To the left, over there, Rouen, the vast blue-roofed city, beneath the peaked crowd of Gothic bell towers. They are countless, slender or broad, dominated by the iron spire of the cathedral, and full of bells that ring in the blue air on fine mornings, carrying towards me their gentle, distant metal drone, their bronze song the breeze carries to me, now stronger, now weaker, depending on whether the wind is awakening or growing drowsy.

  How fine it was this morning!

  Around eleven o’clock, a long procession of ships, pulled by a tugboat fat as a fly, groaning from the effort and vomiting a thick plume of smoke, filed past my gate.

  After two English schooners, whose red flags rippled on the sky, came a superb Brazilian three-master, all white, admirably clean and gleaming. I saluted it, I don’t know why, it made me so happy to see this ship.

  May 11. I’ve been a little feverish for a few days now. I feel unwell, or rather I feel sad.

  Where do these mysterious influences come from that change our happiness into despondency and our confidence into distress? You might say that the air, the invisible air, is full of unknowable Powers, from whose mysterious closeness we suffer. I wake up full of joy, with songs welling up in my throat. Why? I go down to the water; and suddenly, after a short walk, I come back disheartened, as if some misfortune were awaiting me at home. Why? Is it a shiver of cold that, brushing against my skin, has affected my nerves and darkened my soul? Is it the shape of the clouds, or the color of the daylight, the color of things, so changeable, that, passing in front of my eyes, has disturbed my thoughts? How can we know? Everything that surrounds us, everything we see without looking at it, everything we brush against without recognizing it, everything we touch without feeling it, everything we encounter without discerning it, everything has on us, on our organs, and, through them, on our ideas, on our heart itself, swift, surprising, and inexplicable effects.

  How profound this mystery of the Invisible is! We cannot fathom it with our wretched senses, with our eyes that don’t know how to perceive either the too-small or the too-big, the too-close or the too-far, the inhabitants of a star or the inhabitants of a drop of water … with our ears that deceive us, for they transmit to us the vibrations of the air as ringing tones. They are fairies that perform the miracle of changing this movement into a sound, and by this metamorphosis, give birth to music, which makes the mute agitation of nature into a song … with our sense of smell, weaker than a dog’s … with our sense of taste, which can scarcely tell the age of a wine.

  If only we had other organs that could work other miracles for us, how many things we could then discover around us!

  May 16. I am sick, no doubt about it—and I was feeling so healthy last month! I have a fever, a terrible fever, or rather a feverish nervous exhaustion, which makes my soul as sick as my body. I keep having this terrifying feeling of some danger threatening, this apprehension of a misfortune on the way, or of death approaching, this premonition that must be the onset of a sickness still unknown, germinating in the blood and the flesh.

  May 18. I’ve just gone to consult my doctor, since I could no longer sleep. He found my pulse was rapid, my eyes dilated, my nerves vibrating, but without any alarming symptom. I must submit to taking showers and drinking potassium bromide.

  May 25. No change. Really, I am in a strange condition. As evening approaches, an incomprehensible anxiety invades me, as if night hid a terrible threat for me. I dine quickly, then I try to read; but I do not understand the words. I can scarcely make out the letters. Then I walk back and forth in my living room, under the oppression of a confused and irresistible fear, the fear of sleep and fear of my bed.

  Around ten o’clock, I climb up to my bedroom. As soon as I’m inside, I turn the key twice and bolt the locks; I am afraid … of what?… I never feared anything till now.… I open my wardrobes, look under my bed, listen … listen … for what? Is it strange that a simple illness, a circulatory disorder perhaps, an irritated nerve ending, a little congestion, a tiny perturbation in the all too imperfect and delicate functioning of our living mechanism, can turn the happiest of men into a melancholic, and the bravest into a coward? Then I go to bed, and I wait for sleep like someone waiting for the executioner. I wait for it, with terror at its arrival; and my heart beats, my legs tremble; and my whole body trembles in the warmth of the bedclothes, till the moment I suddenly fall into repose, the way one drowns oneself, dropping into an abyss of stagnant water. I don’t feel it coming, as I used to, this treacherous sleep, hidden beside me, that lies in wait for me, that is about to seize me by the head, close my eyes, annihilate me.

  I sleep—for a long time—two or three hours—then a dream—no—a nightmare grips me. I am fully aware that I am lying down and sleeping.… I feel it and I know it … and I also feel that someone is approaching me, looking at me, feeling me, is climbing into my bed, kneeling on my chest, taking my neck in his hands and squeezing … squeezing … with all his strength, to strangle me.

  And I struggle with myself, bound by the atrocious powerlessness that paralyzes us in dreams. I want to cry out—I cannot. I want to move—I cannot. I try, with terrible efforts, gasping for breath, to turn over, to throw off this being that is crushing me and suffocating me—I can’t!

  And all of a sudden, I wake up, panic-stricken, covered with sweat. I light a candle. I am alone.

  After this crisis, which is renewed every night, I finally sleep, calmly, until dawn.

  June 2. My condition has become even worse. What do I have? The bromide does nothing for it; the showers do nothing. This afternoon, in order to tire out my body (which was weary to begin with), I went to the forest of Roumare for a walk. First I thought that the fresh air, gentle and sweet, full of the fragrance of grass and leaves, would imbue my veins with a new blood, my heart with a new energy. I took a broad avenue we use for hunting, then turned tow
ards La Bouille by a narrow path between two armies of unusually tall trees that set a thick, green, almost black roof between the sky and me.

  Suddenly I was seized by a shiver, but not of cold—a strange shiver of anxiety.

  I quickened my step, uneasy at being alone in this wood, frightened for no reason, stupidly, because of the profound solitude. All of a sudden, it seemed to me I was being followed, that someone was walking just behind me, very close, very close, close enough to touch me.

  I turned around suddenly. I was alone. Behind me I saw only the straight, wide lane, empty, high, terribly empty; and in the other direction it also stretched away out of sight, exactly the same, terrifying.

  I closed my eyes. Why? And I began to spin on one heel, very quickly, like a top. I almost fell; I opened my eyes again; the trees were dancing; the earth was floating; I had to sit down. And then, I no longer knew how I had gotten there! Strange idea! Strange! Strange idea! I didn’t know anymore. I left by the path that was at my right, and I returned to the avenue that had brought me to the middle of the forest.

  June 3. The night was horrible. I am going to go away for a few weeks. A little journey will surely set me to rights.

  July 2. I have returned. I am cured. And I’ve had a delightful excursion, too. I visited Mont Saint-Michel, which I’d never seen before.

  What a vision, when you arrive, as I did, in Avranches, towards the end of day! The city is on a hill; and I was led into the public garden, on the edge of the city. I let out a cry of astonishment. A vast bay stretched out in front of me, as far as the eye could see, between two coasts far apart from each other, disappearing in the distance into the mist; and in the middle of this immense yellow bay, beneath a luminous golden sky, there rose up, dark and sharp-pointed, a strange mountain, in the middle of the sands. The sun had just disappeared, and on the still blazing horizon the outline of this fantastic rock stood out, bearing on its summit a fantastic monument.

  At dawn, I went towards it. The sea was low, as it had been the night before, and I watched the surprising abbey rise before me as I approached it. After several hours of walking, I reached the massive hill of stones that supports the little city dominated by the great church. After climbing the narrow, steep street, I entered the most wonderful Gothic dwelling built for God on Earth, vast as a city, full of low chambers crushed beneath vaults, and high galleries supported by frail columns. I entered this giant granite jewel, light as lace, covered with towers and slim pinnacles, in which winding staircases rise up, and which hurl into the blue sky of day, and the dark sky of night, their strange heads bristling with chimeras, devils, fantastic animals, monstrous flowers, and which are linked to each other by slender, finely carved arches.

  When I was at the summit, I said to the monk who was with me, “Father, how happy you must be here!”

  He answered, “It is very windy, Monsieur”; and we set to talking as we watched the sea rise, as it came running onto the sand and covering it with a breastplate of steel.

  And the monk told me stories, all the old stories of this place, legends, always more legends.

  One of them particularly struck me. The local people, the ones who live on the hill, claim they hear voices at night in the sands. They say they hear two goats bleating, one with a strong voice, the other with a feeble voice. Scoffers assert they’re the cries of seabirds, which sometimes resemble bleating, and sometimes human moans; but late-night fishermen swear they have seen, roaming about on the dunes, between the two tides, around the little town cast so far from the world, an old shepherd, whose head, covered with his cloak, could never be seen; and who led, walking in front of them, a billygoat with a man’s face, and a nanny-goat with a woman’s face, both with long white hair, talking ceaselessly, arguing with each other in an unknown language, then suddenly stopping to bleat with all their might.

  I said to the monk, “Do you believe this?”

  He murmured, “I don’t know!”

  I said, “If other beings besides us exist on Earth, why didn’t we meet them a long time ago? Why haven’t you yourself seen them? Why haven’t I seen them, myself?”

  He replied, “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.”

  I fell silent before this simple reasoning. This man was a wise man, or perhaps an idiot. I wasn’t able rightly to tell; but I fell silent. What he said then, I had often thought.

  July 3. I slept badly; there must indeed be a feverish influence here, for my coachman suffers from the same illness as I do. When I returned yesterday, I noticed his unusual pallor. I asked him:

  “What is wrong with you, Jean?”

  “I can no longer rest, Monsieur; my nights are eating up my days. Since Monsieur left, that’s what’s been sticking to me like a curse.”

  The other servants are doing well, though, but I am very afraid of a relapse.

  July 4. Without a doubt, I have caught it again. My old nightmares are coming back. Last night, I felt someone squatting over me, who, with his mouth over mine, was drinking in my life through my lips. Yes, he was sucking it in from my throat, just like a leech. Then he rose, sated, and I woke up, so wounded, broken, and annihilated, that I could no longer move. If that goes on for a few more days, I will definitely go away again.

  July 5. Have I lost my reason? What I saw last night is so strange that my head spins when I think of it!

  As I do now each evening, I had locked my door; then, since I was thirsty, I drank half a glass of water, and I noted by chance that my carafe was full to its crystal stopper.

  Then I went to bed, and fell into one of my dreadful sleeps, from which I was snatched after about two hours by an even more frightful shock.

  Imagine a man asleep, who is being killed, and who wakes up with a knife in his lung, with a death rattle, covered in blood, who can no longer breathe, who will die, and doesn’t understand why—that’s what it’s like.

  Having finally come to my senses, I was thirsty again; I lit a candle and went towards the table where my carafe was. I raised it and tipped it over my glass; nothing poured out.—It was empty! It was completely empty! First, I was at a complete loss; then, all of a sudden, I experienced such a terrible emotion that I had to sit down, or rather, fall into a chair. Then I bounded up again to look around me. Then I sat down again, overcome with astonishment and fear, before the transparent crystal! I contemplated it fixedly, trying to comprehend. My hands were trembling! Someone must have drunk this water. Who? Me? It must be me; it could only be me. So I was a sleepwalker, then, and was living, without knowing it, this double mysterious life, which makes us suspect that there are two beings inside us, or that a foreign being, unknowable and invisible, animates our captive body when our soul is dulled; and our body obeys this other being as it does ourselves, or obeys it more than ourselves.

  Who can understand my abominable anguish? Who can understand the emotion of a man, of a healthy mind, wide awake, full of reason, who looks through the glass of a carafe, terrified that a little water has disappeared while he slept. And I stayed there till daylight, without daring to return to my bed.

  July 6. I am going mad. Again someone drank the entire contents of my carafe last night—or rather, I drank it.

  But is it me? Is it me? Who could it be? Who? Oh my God! am I going mad? Who can save me?

  July 10. I have just carried out some surprising experiments.

  Without a doubt, I am mad! And yet …

  On July 6, before I went to bed, I placed on my table some wine, some milk, some water, some bread, and some strawberries.

  Someone drank—I drank—all the water, and a little milk. They didn’t touch the wine, or the bread, or the strawberries.
>
  On July 7, I repeated the same test, which gave the same result.

  On July 8, I didn’t include the water and the milk. They touched nothing.

  Finally, on July 9, I put on my table just the water and the milk, taking care to wrap the carafes in pieces of white muslin, and to tie down the stoppers. Then I rubbed my lips, beard, and hands with graphite, and I went to bed.

  The invincible sleep seized me, followed soon after by the atrocious awakening. I had not moved at all; my covers themselves did not have any stains. I rushed over to my table. The pieces of cloth enclosing the bottles had remained spotless. I undid the strings, quivering with fear. Someone had drunk all the water! And all the milk! Oh my God …

  I am going to leave soon for Paris.

  July 12. Paris. I must have lost my head, those last few days. I must have been the plaything of my exhausted imagination, unless I am actually a sleepwalker, or have undergone one of those influences, which have been observed but are yet to be explained, that are called ‘suggestive.’ In any case, my panic was bordering on madness, but twenty-four hours in Paris have sufficed to restore my composure.

  Yesterday, after I did some shopping and paid some visits, which made me enter into the mood of the fresh, invigorating air, I ended my evening at the Théatre-Français. They were performing a play by Alexandre Dumas the younger, and that alert, powerful wit completed my cure. Solitude is indeed dangerous for a working intelligence. We need to have around us people who think and speak. When we are alone for a long time, we people the void with phantoms.

  I came back to the hotel very happy, by way of the boulevards. Rubbing shoulders with the crowd, I thought, not without irony, of my recent terrors and surmises, when I believed, yes, I believed an invisible being was living beneath my roof. How weak our head is, how easily alarmed it is, how quickly it wanders, as soon as a little incomprehensible fact strikes us!