I walked round the old town walls and reached the gate of the Paris road. After eleven in the evening, this was the only gate in Étampes which stayed open.

  The destination of my excursion was an esplanade which, now as then, overlooks the whole town. But these days there is no trace of the gibbet that used to rise over this esplanade, apart from three fragments of the masonry which kept in place the three stakes bound together by two beams of wood, all of which formed the gallows.

  To reach this esplanade, situated on the left of the road as you go from Étampes to Paris and on the right when you come from Paris to Étampes, you had to pass the foot of the Guinette Tower, an outwork that resembles a sentinel placed alone in the plain to guard the town.*

  This tower, which you must know, Chevalier Lenoir, and which Louis XI once tried unsuccessfully to blow up, was gutted by the explosion and looks as if it is gazing at the gibbet, of which it can see only the extremity, with the black socket of a great empty eye.

  In daytime it is the haunt of crows; at night-time it is the palace of screech owls and tawny owls.

  Amid their cries and hoots, I made my way to the esplanade – a narrow path, difficult and uneven, hollowed out of the rock and ploughing right through the undergrowth.

  I cannot say that I was afraid. The man who believes in God and places his trust in him should not be afraid of anything. But I was… susceptible to the atmosphere.

  The only thing you could hear in the whole world was the monotonous click-clack of the mill in the lower town, the cry of the owls and the wind whistling through the undergrowth.

  The moon went in behind a black cloud, whose edges it embroidered with a whitish fringe. Then it disappeared.

  My heart was beating. It seemed to me that I was going to see not what I had come to see, but something unexpected. I carried on walking uphill.

  Once I’d reached a certain point in my ascent, I started to be able to make out the upper extremity of the gibbet, composed of those three pillars and those two crosspieces of oak I mentioned just now.

  It is from these crosspieces of oak that hang the iron crosses to which the men being executed are tied.

  I could see, like a shifting shadow, the body of L’Artifaille, that wretched man, swinging to and fro in the wind.

  Suddenly I came to a halt; I could now see all of the gibbet from its top to its base. I could also make out a shapeless mass that looked like a four-legged animal, prowling around.

  I stayed where I was and crouched behind a rock. The animal was bigger than a dog and more massive than a wolf.

  Suddenly it rose on its hind feet, and I realized that this animal was none other than the one Plato calls a featherless biped – in other words, a man.

  What could a man have come here for, at this time, under a gibbet, unless he had come with a pious heart to pray – or an impious heart to perpetrate some sacrilege?

  In any event, I resolved to lie low and wait.

  Just then, the moon emerged from the cloud that had hidden it for a moment, and shone brightly down on the gibbet. I looked up.

  I could distinctly see the man, and even make out all his movements.

  This man picked up a ladder lying on the ground, then raised it against one of the stakes, the one closest to the body of the hanged man.

  Then he climbed up the ladder.

  Then he formed with the hanged man a strange group, in which the living man and the dead seemed to mingle in an embrace.

  Suddenly a terrible cry resounded. I saw the two bodies flailing about; I heard a strangulated cry for help, soon muffled; then one of the two bodies fell back from the gibbet, while the other remained hanging on its rope, waving its arms and legs.

  It was impossible for me to guess at what was happening beneath that vile mechanism, but one way or another, whether it was the work of man or of the Devil, something extraordinary had just occurred, something which cried out for help, something which required assistance.

  I rushed forward.

  On seeing me, the hanging man seemed to become twice as frenzied, while beneath him the body that had fallen back from the gibbet lay motionless.

  I first ran up to the living man. I quickly climbed up the few steps of the ladder and cut the rope with my knife; the hanged man fell to the ground, and I jumped down off the ladder.

  The hanged man was writhing in terrible convulsions, while the other corpse continued to lie motionless.

  I realized that the slip knot was still tightly gripping the poor devil’s throat. I lay over him to undo it, and with the greatest difficulty I managed to untie the slip knot that had been strangling him.

  During this operation, I was forced to look into the man’s face, and recognized, to my astonishment, the hangman.

  His eyes were popping out of their sockets, his face had turned a shade of blue, his jawbone was almost out of its joint and a panting that more closely resembled a death rattle than a breath emerged from his chest.

  Meanwhile the air entered his lungs little by little and, with the air, life returned to him.

  I had propped him up against a boulder; after a while he appeared to be coming round; he coughed, and as he coughed he turned his neck round and at last looked me in the eye.

  His astonishment was no less great than mine had been.

  “Oh! Father! Is it you?”

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “And what are you doing here?” he asked me.

  “I might ask you the same thing.”

  He seemed to gather his wits. He again stared round him, but this time his eyes came to rest on the corpse.

  “Ah,” he said, trying to struggle to his feet, “let’s go, Father! In Heaven’s name, let’s go!”

  “You go if you want, my friend; as for me, I have a duty to fulfil.”

  “Here?”

  “Here.”

  “What duty?”

  “This wretched man, who was hanged by you today, wished that I should come and say five Paters and five Aves at the foot of the gibbet for the salvation of his soul.”

  “For the salvation of his soul? Oh, Father! You’ll have a hard job saving that one – he’s the Devil incarnate.”

  “What? The Devil incarnate?”

  “Of course – didn’t you see what he just did to me?”

  “What he did to you?… So what did he do to you?”

  “He hanged me, damn it!”

  “He hanged you? But I was under the impression that it was the other way around, and that it was you who had done him that dismal favour!”

  “You’re dead right! And I thought I’d hanged him good and proper. It seems I was wrong! But in that case, why didn’t he take advantage of the moment when I was swinging in my turn to run away?”

  I went over to the corpse and lifted it; it was stiff and cold.

  “Because,” I said, “he’s dead.”

  “Dead!” repeated the hangman. “Dead! Devil take it – that’s even worse. Come on, Father, let’s get out of here this minute!”

  And he rose to his feet.

  “No, by Heaven,” he said then, “actually, I’d rather stay put! He’d only have to get up and come running after me. At least you’re a holy man and you’ll defend me.”

  “My friend,” I said to the hangman, gazing at him fixedly, “there’s something behind all this. You were asking me just now what I’d come here to do at such an hour. Now it’s my turn to ask you: what had you come here to do?”

  “Ah well, good Lord, Father, I’ll have to tell you one way or another, in the confessional or outside it! Well, I’ll tell you outside it… But wait a minute…”

  He took a step backwards.

  “What?”

  “He didn’t move over there?”

  “No, rest assured, the wretched man is quite dead.”

  “Oh, quite dead… quite dead… never mind! I’m still going to tell you why I came, and if I die, he’ll just say the opposite, that’s all.”

  “Go on.”

  “I have to tell you that this miscreant didn’t want to hear any mention of confession. He just kept saying every so often, ‘Has Father Moulle come yet?’ He was told, ‘No, not yet.’ He’d heave a sigh; they offered him a priest, and he replied, ‘No! Father Moulle… no one else.’”

  “Yes, that I know.”

  “At the foot of the Guinette Tower he stopped. ‘Please go and see if Father Moulle hasn’t come yet.’ ‘No,’ I told him. And we set off again.

  “At the foot of the ladder, he stopped again. ‘Isn’t Father Moulle here?’ he asked. ‘No, I keep telling you!’ There’s nothing more irritating than a man who keeps asking you the same question. ‘Let’s get on with it!’ he said.

  “I passed the rope round his neck. I placed his feet against the ladder and said, ‘Up you go.’ He went up without needing to be asked twice; but when he had gone two thirds of the way up the ladder, he said:

  “‘Wait a minute while I make sure Father Moulle hasn’t arrived.’

  “‘Go ahead and look,’ said I. ‘There’s no law against it.’

  “Then he looked one last time into the crowd, but when he didn’t see you, he sighed. I thought he was ready and waiting and that I just needed to give him the shove, but he saw my movement.

  “‘Wait,’ he said.

  “‘Now what?’

  “‘I’d like to kiss a medal of Our Lady on my neck.’

  “‘Good idea! You’ve just got time,’ I said. ‘Kiss away!’

  “And I placed the medal against his lips.

  “‘And what else?’ I asked.

  “‘I want to be buried with this medal.’

  “‘Hmmm…’ said I. ‘I was under the impression that all the hanged man’s effects belonged to the hangman.’

  “‘That’s not my problem. I want to be buried with my medal.’

  “‘I want! I want! You’re a bold one!’

  “‘Well, I do want it!’

  “I’d run out of patience; he was all ready – he had the rope round his neck and the other end of the rope was already hooked up.

  “‘Go to the Devil!’ I said to him. And I launched him into space.

  “‘Our Lady, have pi—’

  “Well, that was all he managed to say: the rope strangled both the man and his sentence. At the same time, you know how it’s done – I grasped the rope, leapt onto his shoulders and, with a hi and a ho, that was the end of that. He had no cause for complaint, and I can assure you he didn’t suffer.”

  “But none of this explains why you came here tonight.”

  “Ah, well, that’s just the thing that’s the most difficult to explain.”

  “Well, let me tell you, then: you came to take his medal off him.”

  “Oh, all right then. The Devil tempted me. I said to myself, I said, ‘You want this and you want that – it’s all very well for you to say so, but when night comes, we’ll see.’ I’d left my ladder nearby; I knew where to find it. I’d been for a walk; I came back by the longest route and then, when I couldn’t hear anything, I went up to the gibbet, I set my ladder up, I climbed up it, I pulled the hanged man towards me, I unhooked the chain round his neck and—”

  “And what?”

  “Good Lord, believe me if you want to: just as the medal left his neck, the hanged man seized me, took his own head out of the slip knot, placed my head where his had been and, for God’s sake, gave me the shove, just as I’d given it to him. There you have it.”

  “Impossible! You must be mistaken.”

  “Did you find me hanged, yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I can promise you I didn’t hang myself. That’s all I can tell you.”

  I thought it over for a moment.

  “And what about the medal?” I asked “Where is it?”

  “I don’t know! Look around on the ground – it can’t be far away. When I felt myself being hanged, I let go of it.”

  I got up and looked round at my feet. A ray of moonlight shone on the earth as if to guide my quest.

  I picked it up. I went over to the body of poor L’Artifaille and tied the medal back round his neck.

  Just as the medal touched his chest, something like a shudder passed through his entire body, and a shrill, almost painful cry emerged from his chest.

  The hangman leapt backwards.

  My spirit had just been illuminated by that cry. I remembered what the Scriptures say about exorcisms, and the cry that demons utter on leaving the body of those they have possessed.

  The hangman was trembling like a leaf.

  “Come over here, my friend,” I told him, “and don’t be afraid.”

  He approached hesitantly.

  “What do you want from me?” he said.

  “There’s a corpse here that needs to be put back in its place.”

  “Never! Do you want him to go and hang me again?”

  “There’s no danger, my friend – I’ll answer for everything.”

  “But Father, leave off – please!”

  “Come on,” I said to him.

  He took another step.

  “Hmmm,” he said. “I don’t trust him.”

  “And you’re wrong, my friend. So long as the body has its medal, you have nothing to fear.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the demon will have no power over him. This medal was protecting him, and you took it off him; at that very same moment the evil genius which had inclined him to wickedness, and had been kept at bay by his good angel, came back into the corpse – and you yourself saw what this evil genius got up to.”

  “And the cry we just heard?”

  “That was the cry he uttered when he sensed that his prey was escaping him.”

  “Well,” said the hangman, “that might well be true.”

  “It is.”

  “So I’ll go and put him back on his hook.”

  “Yes, put him back: justice must pursue its course; the sentence must be carried out.”

  The poor devil was still hesitating.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said. “I will answer for everything.”

  “Never mind that,” said the hangman. “Just don’t let me out of your sight, and if I utter the slightest cry, come to my help.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  He went up to the corpse, lifted it gently by its shoulders and pulled it towards the ladder, talking to it the whole time.

  “Don’t be frightened, L’Artifaille,” he told him. “I haven’t come to take your medal away. You can still see us, can’t you, Father?”

  “I can, my friend, don’t worry.”

  “I haven’t come to take your medal off you,” continued the hangman in his most conciliatory tone. “No, don’t worry: since that’s what you wanted, you’ll be buried with it. It’s true, Father – he isn’t moving.”

  “You see!”

  “You’ll be buried with it; meanwhile I’m just putting you back in your place, at the wish of the priest, since, as far as I’m concerned, you know!…”

  “Yes, yes.” I said, unable to repress a smile. “But hurry up!”

  “There, it’s done,” he said, letting go of the body that he had just reattached to the hook, and jumping down straight away.

  And the body swayed in the air, motionless and inanimate.

  I knelt down and I began to recite the prayers that L’Artifaille had asked me to say.

  “Father,” said the hangman, kneeling down next to me, “would you mind saying the prayers loud enough and slowly enough for me to repeat them?”

  “What, you poor soul – you mean you’ve forgotten them?”

  “I don’t think I ever knew them.”

  I said the five Paters and the five Aves, which the hangman conscientiously repeated after me.

  When the prayer was finished, I got up.

  “L’Artifaille,” I said quietly to the dead man, “I have done what I could for the salvation of your soul – it is up to Our Blessed Lady to do the rest.”

  “Amen!” said my companion.

  At that moment a ray of moonlight illuminated the corpse like a cascade of silver. Midnight chimed from Notre-Dame.

  “Come on,” I said to the hangman, “there’s nothing more for us to do here.”

  “Father,” said the poor devil, “would you be kind enough to grant me one last favour?”

  “What’s that?”

  “See me home. I won’t have any rest until I feel my door is shut and bolted between me and matey over there.”

  “Come on, my friend.”

  We left the esplanade, though my companion, every ten paces, turned round to see if the hanged man was still in his place.

  Nothing stirred.

  We went back into town. I saw my man home. I waited until he had lit the lamps in his house, then he closed the door on me, bade me farewell and thanked me through the door. I returned home, perfectly calm in mind and body.

  The next day, on awakening, I was told that the thief’s wife was waiting for me in my dining room.

  Her face was calm and almost joyful.

  “Father,” she said, “I’ve come to thank you: my husband appeared to me yesterday just as midnight was chiming from Notre-Dame, and he told me, ‘Tomorrow morning, you will go and see Father Moulle, and you will tell him that, thanks to him and Our Lady, I am saved.’”

  11

  The Bracelet of Hair

  “My dear Abbé,” said Alliette, “I have the greatest esteem for you and the greatest veneration for Cazotte; I admit to the fullest the influence of your evil genius; but there is one thing you’re forgetting, of which I, for instance, am an example: death does not kill life; death is merely a mode of transformation of the human body; death kills memory, that is all. If memory did not die, each person would remember all the peregrinations of his soul, from the beginning of the world up until now. The philosophers’ stone is nothing other than this secret; it was this secret that Pythagoras discovered, and that was rediscovered by the Count of Saint-Germain and by Cagliostro; it is this secret that I possess in my turn, and which means that my body will die – as I can definitely recall has already happened to it four of five times… and then again, when I say that my body will die, I am wrong: there are certain bodies that do not die, and mine is one of them.”