“I need only look at people to send them to sleep as though I had given them a draught of opium. I need only stretch out my hands to produce … terrible … terrible things. If you knew? Yes. If you knew? And my power extends not merely over men, but over animals and even over … over objects. …
“It tortures me and terrifies me. Often I have longed to tear out my eyes and cut off my hands.
“But I will … I want you to know everything. Look, I’ll show it you … not on human beings, that is done everywhere, but on … on … animals. Call Mirza.”
He was walking in long strides, with the air of a man suffering from hallucinations, and he exposed his hands hidden in his breast. They seemed to me terrifying, as though he had bared two swords.
And I obeyed him mechanically, subjugated, quivering with terror and consumed by a kind of impetuous desire to see. I opened the door and whistled to my dog, who was lying in the hall. At once I heard the hurried sound of her claws on the stairs, and she appeared, wagging her tail with pleasure.
Then I signed to her to lie down in a chair; she jumped on it, and Jacques began to caress her, gazing at her.
At first she seemed restless; she shivered, turning her head to avoid the man’s fixed stare, and seemed agitated by a growing fear. Suddenly she began to tremble, as dogs tremble. Her whole body palpitated, shaken by long-drawn shudders, and she tried to escape. But he laid his hand on the animal’s head, and, at his touch, she uttered a long howl such as is heard at night in the country.
I myself felt drowsy, giddy, as one is on board ship. I saw the furniture sway, and the walls move. “Enough, Jacques, enough,” I stammered. But he was no longer listening to me, and stared at Mirza in a steady, frightening way. She closed her eyes now and let her head fall as though going to sleep. He turned to me.
“It is done,” he said; “now look.”
And, throwing his handkerchief to the other side of the room, he cried: “Fetch it!”
At that the animal rose and, tottering along as though blind, moving her legs like a cripple, she went towards the piece of linen that was a white blotch by the wall. Several times she tried to take it in her mouth, but her jaws closed on one side of it, as though she had not seen it. At last she seized it, and returned with the same swaying somnambulistic gait.
It was a terrifying sight. “Lie down,” he ordered. She lay down. Then, touching her forehead, he said: “A hare: seize him, seize him!” And the beast, still lying on her side, tried to run, stirring like a dog in the middle of a dream, and uttering strange little ventriloquial barks, without opening her mouth.
Jacques seemed to have gone mad. The sweat poured from his brow. “Bite him, bite your master,” he cried. She gave two or three frightened twitches. One would have sworn she was resisting, struggling. “Bite him,” he repeated. Then, rising, my dog came towards me, and I retreated towards the wall, shaking with terror, with my foot raised to kick her, to keep her off.
But Jacques commanded: “To me, at once.” She turned back towards him. Then, with his two great hands, he began to rub her head, as though he were freeing her from invisible bonds.
Mirza opened her eyes again. “It is finished,” he said.
I dared not touch her, and pushed the door for her to go out. She went out slowly, trembling, exhausted, and again I heard her claws on the stairs.
But Jacques returned to me: “That is not all. It is this which frightens me most; look. Things obey me.”
On my table was a sort of dagger that I used as a paper-cutter. He stretched out his hand towards it, and the hand seemed to crawl slowly towards it; and suddenly I saw, yes, I saw the knife itself quiver, then move, then slide gently, of itself, over the wood towards the hand, that lay still, waiting for it; it placed itself between his fingers.
I screamed with terror. I thought I was going mad myself, but the shrill sound of my own voice calmed me at once.
“All things come to me like that,” continued Jacques. “That is why I hide my hands. What is it? Magnetism, electricity, the loadstone principle? I do not know, but it is horrible.
“And do you realise why it is horrible? When I am alone, as soon as I am alone, I cannot restrain myself from attracting everything that surrounds me.
“And I spend whole days changing the positions of things, never wearying of testing my abominable power, as if to see whether it has not left me.”
He had buried his great hands in his pockets, and stared into the night. A slight sound, a faint quivering, seemed to pass through the trees.
It was the rain beginning to fall.
“It is frightening,” I murmured.
“It is horrible,” he repeated.
A murmur ran through the leaves, like a gust of wind. It was the storm, a heavy, torrential downpour.
Jacques began to breathe in great gasps that made his breast heave.
“Leave me,” he said; “the rain will calm me. I want to be alone now.”
The boat was crowded with people. The crossing promised to be calm, and the Havre people were going to make an excursion to Trouville.
The ropes were cast off; a final shriek from the whistle announced our departure, and at the same moment the ship shuddered through her whole body, and along her flanks rose the sound of water rushing.
The paddles revolved for some seconds, stopped, and started again slowly:
