The Tales of Hoffmann, page 2
Die Brautwahl, written in 1819, appeared in November that year in the Berlinische Taschen-Kalender; it was revised in mid-1820 and the revised version included in the third volume of the Serapions-Brüder published in the same year.
The English version of these eight tales of Hoffmann is a work of collaboration. Stella and Vernon Humphries translated Doge and Dogaressa. Sally Hayward translated Mademoiselle de Scudery, The Entail and The Mines at Falun, and I revised her translations. I translated The Sandman, The Artushof, Councillor Krespel and The Choosing of the Bride.
In helping to produce these new English versions of some of Hoffmann’s best stories, I have sometimes felt the need to ‘editorialize’. Hoffmann well knew how to evoke and maintain tension, but he did so, of course, in the idiom, and above all at the tempo, of his own age; this tempo was somewhat slower than ours, and it seemed to me that, for a story to produce, in modern English, the effect intended by the author, some speeding up and tightening up was sometimes called for. How far one should go in this interference can, I think, be only a matter of subjective judgement and ‘feel’ as one proceeds through the story; and its justification can lie only in whether or not it succeeds in its objective – whether, that is, the story affects the reader of today in the way in which, so far as one can tell, it affected Hoffmann’s many thousands of readers in his own day. His aim, as a writer of fiction, was to give pleasure; and ours is nothing else.
June 1980
R.J.H.
MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDERY
A tale from the age of Louis XIV
It was in the Rue St Honoré that the little house was situated which Madeleine de Scudery, famous for her charming poems, occupied by the grace and favour of Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon.
Towards midnight – it would have been in the autumn of the year 1680 – there was a sudden violent hammering on the door, which echoed through the whole hall. Baptiste, who acted as cook, footman and doorman in Madeleine’s small household, had gone to the country for his sister’s wedding, and so it happened that only Madeleine’s maid, Martinière, was in the house and still awake.
She listened to the persistent knocking… she remembered that Baptiste was away and that she and Mademoiselle were alone and unprotected; all the crimes ever committed in Paris – burglary, theft, murder – rushed through her mind. She was certain that a mob of cutthroats, having heard the house was unguarded, was rampaging outside, and so she remained in her room, quailing and quaking – and cursing Baptiste and his sister’s wedding.
Down below, the knocking still thundered on and it seemed to her as if a voice were calling at intervals: ‘For Christ’s sake, open the door! Open up!’
Finally, with growing anxiety, Martinière seized the candlestick with its lighted candle and ran out into the hall; there she could make out quite clearly the voice of whoever was knocking: ‘For Christ’s sake, open up!’
‘Indeed,’ thought Martinière, ‘no robber would talk like that. Who knows, it may be someone being pursued who is seeking refuge with my mistress: she is known for her good deeds. But one can’t be too careful!’
She opened a window and called down, asking who was banging on the door at that hour of the night and waking everybody up… and trying as hard as possible to make her deep voice sound as masculine as it could. In the glimmer of moonlight which had just broken through the dark clouds she became aware of a tall figure enveloped in a light grey cloak and a broad-brimmed hat pulled well down over his eyes. She now called out more loudly, so that the figure down below could hear: ‘Baptiste, Claude, Pierre! Get up and go and see immediately what ne’er-do-well is trying to knock the house down!’
Then the voice came up from below with a softer, almost pleading tone: ‘Ah! Martinière, now I know it’s you, dear lady, hard as you have tried to disguise your voice. I also know that Baptiste has gone into the country and you are alone with your mistress in the house. Just open the door for me without delay, don’t be afraid! I absolutely must have a talk with your mistress, right this minute.’
‘What are you thinking of?’ replied Martinière. ‘Do you think my mistress would want to talk to you in the middle of the night? Don’t you realize she has been asleep for ages and I wouldn’t wake her up at any price!’
‘I know,’ said the figure below, ‘that your mistress has just this minute laid aside the manuscript of her novel Clelia, which she is working on so tirelessly, and is just now writing some verses which she is thinking of reading to the Marquise de Maintenon in the morning. I beseech you, Madame Martinière, have compassion and open the door for me. An unfortunate fellow’s salvation from ruin depends upon it; the honour, freedom, indeed the life of someone depends on this moment; I must speak to your mistress. Just think how your mistress’s wrath would fall on you for ever if she were to learn that it was you who stony-heartedly turned away from her door an unfortunate fellow who came to beg for her help.’
‘But why do you want to beg my mistress’s sympathy at this unearthly hour? Come back in the morning at a more suitable time!’ rejoined Martinière. From below there came: ‘Does fate come back at a certain time on a certain day when it strikes like the fatal flash of lightning? Is help to be delayed when rescue depends on a moment? Open the door for me! You have nothing to fear from a poor unprotected wretch, abandoned by the world, pursued and harassed by a terrible destiny, who wants only to implore your mistress to save him from his impending doom!’
Martinière heard the figure below sob and groan with pain at these words; the tone of his voice was, moreover, that of a young man, and it reached her very heart. Moved to her soul, she went and fetched the key.
Hardly had she opened the door when the figure pushed his way violently in, strode past Martinière into the hall, and cried wildly: ‘Take me to your mistress!’
Martinière lifted the candlestick on high and the flickering light fell on a deathly pale, fearfully distorted youthful countenance; and she would have liked to sink to the ground in terror when, as the man now threw back his cloak, the shining handle of a stiletto glinted at his belt. The man looked at her with angrily flashing eyes and cried, more fiercely than ever: ‘Take me to your mistress, I tell you!’
Now Martinière believed Mademoiselle to be in the most dire peril; all the affection she felt for her dear mistress welled up passionately within her and engendered a courage of which she would not have thought herself capable. Quickly she slammed the door of her chamber, which she had left open, stood before it, and said firmly: ‘In faith, your wild conduct here inside the house does not suit with the plaintive words you used outside. I was wrong to feel sorry for you. My mistress should not and shall not speak to you now. If you had no wickedness in mind you would not shun the daylight. Come back in the morning.’
The man breathed a deep sigh, fixed Martinière with a terrible look, and reached for his stiletto. Martinière silently committed her soul to the Lord; yet she stood unflinching and looked the man bravely in the eye, pressing herself more firmly against the door through which the man would have to go to gain access to her mistress.
‘Let me see your mistress, I say!’ cried the man again.
‘Do what you will,’ replied Martinière, ‘I am not moving from here – just finish the evil deed you have begun. You will meet a degrading death in the Place de Grève – you and your wicked friends!’
‘Ha!’ cried the man. ‘You are right, Martinière! I do look like a murderer!’ And with that he drew the stiletto.
‘Jesus!’ cried the poor woman, expecting the death blow; but at that moment she heard the clink of weapons and the tread of horses’ hooves out in the street. ‘Constables! Constables! Help! Help!’ shrieked Martinière.
‘You dreadful woman, do you want to ruin me? Now all is up with me! Here, take this! Take it! Give it to Mademoiselle now, today… in the morning – whenever you like!’ So saying, the man snatched the candlestick from Martinière, extinguished the candle, and pressed a small box into her hands. ‘For your salvation’s sake, give the box to Mademoiselle!’ he cried, and rushed from the house.
Martinière had slipped to the floor; now she stood up again and felt her way in the darkness back to her room, where, quite exhausted and incapable of another sound, she sank into the armchair. Then she heard the rattle of a key: she must have left it in the house door. Soft, uncertain footsteps approached the apartment… Spellbound, without strength to move, she waited for the worst… As the door opened, she recognized in the light of the lantern the face of honest Baptiste. He looked bewildered and deathly pale.
‘For heaven’s sake!’ he began. ‘For heaven’s sake, Madame Martinière, tell me what has happened! – I don’t know what it was, but something dragged me away from the wedding yesterday evening! I was back on the road when I met a patrol, horsemen and infantry, armed to the teeth. They stopped me and didn’t intend to let me go; but as luck would have it, Desgrais was with them, the Lieutenant Constable – he knows me well enough. “Eh! Baptiste, what are you doing out here at night?” he says. “You must stay at home and keep guard. It’s dangerous out here. We think we may still make a good catch tonight!”… You will hardly believe, Madame Martinière, how those words terrified me. Then, when I reached our doorstep, a cloaked figure darted out of the house with a drawn stiletto and sent me flying! The house was open, the key was in the lock. Tell me, what does all this mean?’
Martinière, no longer in fear for her life, related all that had happened. Then she and Baptiste went together into the hall. They found the candlestick on the floor where the stranger had dropped it as he fled.
‘It is only too obvious,’ said Baptiste, ‘that our Mademoiselle was to have been robbed and probably murdered. You told me the man knew you were alone with Mademoiselle… indeed, that she was still awake and at her writing. For certain he was one of those accursed scoundrels who get into houses and spy out everything that may be useful to them in their devilish designs. And that little box, Madame Martinière – that I think we shall throw into the Seine at its deepest spot – who knows, it may be some mad attempt on our mistress’s life, so that when she opens it she drops dead, like old Marquis de Tournay when he opened that letter he received from someone he didn’t know!’
After a lengthy consultation, the faithful couple finally resolved to tell their mistress everything in the morning and, after due warning, to hand over to her the mysterious box.
Baptiste’s fears were well founded. Paris was at that time the scene of horrific atrocities; the agent of them, one of the most devilish inventions of Hell. Herr Glaser, a German apothecary and the finest chemist of his time, occupied himself – a frequent temptation for people of learning – with alchemical experiments. His aim was to discover the philosopher’s stone. An Italian named Exili had apprenticed himself to him; to learn the art of alchemy, however, was only a pretext; the mixing, boiling and sublimation of poisons was his real objective, and he at last succeeded in preparing a fine potion, odourless and tasteless, quickly fatal or killing slowly, and leaving behind no trace in the human body. Exili went to work very discreetly, yet still he fell under suspicion and was taken to the Bastille, where he was shortly afterwards joined in his cell by Captain Godin de Sainte Croix. Sainte Croix had long been living with the Marquise de Brinvillier in a relationship which had brought shame on her whole family; finally, as the Marquis himself remained indifferent to his wife’s crimes, her father, Dreux d’Aubray, a Civil Lieutenant of Paris, had compelled the miscreants to separate by means of a warrant of arrest served on the Captain. Characterless, inclined to depravity from his youth up, jealous and revengeful without limit, Sainte Croix could have encountered nothing more to his liking then Exili’s devilish secret: he thought to possess in it the power to exterminate all his enemies. He became Exili’s eager pupil, and he soon equalled his master, so that when he was released from the Bastille he was quite capable of working on his own.
Marquise de Brinvillier was a degenerate; under the influence of Sainte Croix she became a monster. With his aid she poisoned her own father, then her two brothers, and finally her sister; her father she killed for reasons of revenge, the others so as to obtain their inheritance. As the histories of other poisoners show, this kind of crime can become an irresistible passion: such poisoners have then killed people whose life or death must have been a matter of perfect indifference to them. So it was that the sudden death of several paupers in the Hôtel Dieu subsequently gave rise to the suspicion that the bread which the Marquise distributed there weekly as evidence of her piety had been poisoned. It is certain, however, that she poisoned the pigeon pies which she set before her guests on one occasion: the Chevalier de Guet and several others fell victim to that hellish repast.
Sainte Croix, his assistant La Chaussée, and the Marquise for a long time concealed their gruesome crimes behind an impenetrable veil: yet, fiendish though their craftiness was, the eternal power of Heaven had resolved to punish these evildoers while they were still on earth!
The poisons Sainte Croix prepared were so fine that if the powder – poudre de succession the Parisians called it – lay open while being prepared, a single breath sufficed for instant death; for this reason Sainte Croix always wore a mask of fine glass when carrying out this operation, and when one day it fell off as he was about to pour a prepared powder into a phial and he breathed in the poisonous dust, he fell dead on the instant. As he had died without heirs, the court hastened to take charge of his estate; there, locked in a case, they found his whole fiendish arsenal of poisons; and they also discovered letters from the Marquise which left no doubt as to her complicity in his crimes. She fled to a convent in Liège. A law officer, Desgrais, was sent after her: disguised as a priest, he presented himself at the convent where she was in hiding and soon succeeded in entering into an amorous intrigue with her. Enticed to a secret meeting place in a lonely garden outside the town, she was surrounded by Desgrais’s men-at-arms, her priestly lover was transformed into an officer of the Constabulary, and she was forced to climb into a carriage standing ready outside the garden and straightway driven off to Paris. La Chaussée had already been beheaded, and the Marquise suffered a similar fate; after the execution her body was burnt and the ashes were thrown to the winds.
The Parisians for a time breathed freely again, but it soon became evident that the evil Sainte Croix had passed on his dreadful art. Like a malicious and invisible spectre, death stole into even the closest circles of family, love, friendship, and seized upon its unhappy victims. He who today was in blossoming health on the morrow staggered ill and infirm, and no physician’s skill could save him. Riches, a lucrative office, a beautiful, perhaps too youthful wife: these sufficed for a man to be pursued to his death. Mistrust infected the most sacred relationships: husband feared his wife, father his son, sister her brother; meals remained untouched, wine undrunk; and where pleasure had once ruled, fearful eyes kept watch for a murderer. And still the most careful precaution was often in vain.
In an attempt to control the mounting disorder, the King appointed a tribunal to investigate and punish these crimes – the so-called Chambre ardente, which conducted its hearings not far from the Bastille and was presided over by La Regnie. Zealously though he went to work, La Regnie’s efforts remained fruitless, for a long time, and it fell to the cunning Desgrais to penetrate the source of the outrage. In the district of Saint Germain there lived an old woman named La Voisin, skilled in soothsaying and necromancy; and with the help of her accomplices, Le Sage and Le Vigoureux, she knew how to inspire fear and amazement even in those who thought themselves ungullible. Like Sainte Croix a pupil of Exili’s, she knew how to prepare Exili’s untraceable poison and so help sons to early inheritances and wives to younger husbands. Desgrais unearthed her secret and she confessed all: the Chambre ardente sentenced her to death by burning on the Place de Grève. Among her goods there was found a list of all those who had availed themselves of her assistance, and after that execution followed upon execution. Persons in high places did not elude suspicion: it was believed that Cardinal Bonzy had acquired from La Voisin the means of disposing of all those to whom, as Archbishop of Narbonne, he would have had to pay pensions; the Duchess de Bouillon and the Countess de Soissons, whose names were found on the list, were accused of connections with the diabolical old woman. Even the Duke of Luxembourg, Marshal of the Realm, was not spared; the Chambre ardente prosecuted even him and he surrendered to imprisonment in the Bastille, where La Regnie had him locked in a six-foot cell; months passed before it became clear that the Duke had committed no crime: he had once had his horoscope cast by Le Sage.
The blindness of his enthusiasm led La Regnie into illegalities and brutalities, and his tribunal assumed the character of an Inquisition: the slightest suspicion sufficed for strict incarceration, and often it was left to chance to prove the innocence of the condemned. La Regnie soon inspired the hatred of those whose avenger or protector he was supposed to be: the Duchess de Bouillon, questioned by him as to whether she had seen the devil, replied: ‘I fancy I see him at this moment!’
The blood of the guilty and the innocent flowed at the Place de Grève, and as a result death by poison at length grew more and more rare; but trouble of another sort now appeared, to spread fresh consternation. A gang of thieves appeared to have set themselves the task of acquiring all the jewellery in Paris, and they were not hesitating to commit murder in pursuit of this aim. Those fortunate enough to escape with their life deposed that a blow from a fist had knocked them down and that when they came round they found they had been robbed and were in a place quite different from where they had received the blow. The bodies discovered almost every morning in the streets or within houses all bore the same death wound: a dagger thrust to the heart which, according to the doctors, must have killed so quickly and surely that the victim, incapable of making a sound, must have dropped to the ground at once. In the voluptuous court of Louis XIV there were many who, entangled in some amorous intrigue, crept to their mistress in the night, often bearing a rich gift; but often, too, the lover failed to reach the house where he anticipated enjoyment; sometimes he fell on the threshold, sometimes even before his mistress’s door, who, horror-stricken, found his body in the morning.
