Short Fiction

mad. For the second time he passed through the town between two policemen, and saw the heavy door of the building on which was written: “Home for the Mentally Deficient,” close behind him.

XXX

How the Proverb⁠—“The Madder One Is, the More One Laughs”⁠—Is Not Always Quite True

The next he went into the courtyard of the establishment and the first person he set eyes on was the author of the manuscript on metempsychosis. The two enemies looked each other up and down and then drew close. A circle was formed round them and Dagobert cried:

“Here’s the man who wanted to steal my life’s work, who wanted to filch from me the glory of my discovery.”

A murmur passed through the crowd, and Heraclius answered:

“Here’s the man who pretends that animals are men and men animals.”

Then they both began to talk at once and became more and more excited. As on the first occasion, they soon came to blows, but the onlookers separated them.

From that day onwards each of them tried with amazing perseverance and tenacity to recruit followers and soon the whole community was divided into two rival parties. These parties were so enthusiastic, so violent and so irreconcilable that if a metempsychosist happened to run across an adversary a terrible battle ensued. To avoid these sanguinary encounters the Governor was obliged to arrange separate hours of exercise for each faction: for there had never been such relentless hatred between two rival sects since the quarrel between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Thanks to this prudent arrangement, however, the chiefs of the hostile clans lived happily⁠—beloved and listened to by their disciples, obeyed and venerated.

Sometimes during the night the sound of a dog howling and barking outside the walls would make Heraclius and Dagobert tremble in their beds. It was the faithful Pythagoras who, having escaped his master’s vengeance by a miracle, had tracked him to the threshold of his new home and was trying to gain an entrance to the house into which only men had the right to pass.

On the River

Last summer I rented a country cottage on the banks of the Seine, several miles from Paris, and I used to go out to sleep there every night. After a while, I formed the acquaintance of one of my neighbours, a man between thirty and forty years of age, who really was one of the queerest characters I have ever met. He was an old boating-man, crazy on the subject of boats, and was always either in, or on, or by the water. He must have been born in a boat, and probably he will die in one, some day, while taking a last outing.

One evening, as we were walking along the banks of the Seine, I asked him to tell me about some of his nautical experiences. Immediately his face lighted up, and he became eloquent, almost poetical, for his heart was full of an all-absorbing, irresistible, devouring passion⁠—a love for the river.

“Ah!” said he, “how many recollections I have of the river that flows at our feet! You street-dwellers have no idea what the river really is. But let a fisherman pronounce the word. To him it means mystery, the unknown, a land of mirage and phantasmagoria, where odd things that have no real existence are seen at night and strange noises are heard; where one trembles without knowing the reason why, as when passing through a cemetery⁠—and indeed the river is a sinister cemetery without graves.

“Land, for a fisherman, has boundaries, but the river, on moonless nights, appears to him unlimited. A sailor doesn’t feel the same way about the sea. The sea is often cruel, but it roars and foams, it gives us fair warning; the river is silent and treacherous. It flows stealthily, without a murmur, and the eternal gentle motion of the water is more awful to me than the big ocean waves.

“Dreamers believe that the deep hides immense lands of blue, where the drowned roll around among the big fish, in strange forests or in crystal caves. The river has only black depths, where the dead decay in the slime. But it’s beautiful when the sun shines on it, and the waters splash softly on the banks covered with whispering reeds.

“In speaking of the ocean the poet says:

“ ‘O flots, que vous savez de lugubres histoires!
Flots profonds, redoutés des mères à genoux,
Vous vous les racontez en montant les marées,
Et c’est ce qui vous fait ces voix désespérées
Que vous avez, le soir, quand vous venez vers nous.’3

Well, I believe that the stories the slender reeds tell one another in their wee, silvery voices are even more appalling than the ghastly tragedies related by the roaring waves.

“But as you have asked me to relate some of my recollections, I will tell you a strange adventure that happened to me here, about ten years ago.

“Then, as now, I lived in old mother Lafon’s house and one of my best friends, Louis Bernet, who since has given up boating, as well as his happy-go-lucky ways, to become a State Councillor, was camping out in the village of C⁠⸺, two miles away. We used to take dinner together every day, either at his place or at mine.

“One evening, as I was returning home alone, feeling rather tired, and with difficulty rowing the twelve-foot boat that I always took out at night, I stopped to rest a little while near that point over there, formed by reeds, about two hundred yards in front of the railway bridge. The weather was magnificent; the moon was shining very brightly, and the air was soft and still. The calmness of the surroundings tempted me, and I thought how pleasant it would be to fill my pipe here and smoke. No sooner said than done, and, laying hold of the anchor, I dropped it overboard. The boat, which was following the stream, slid to the end of the