object:1f.lovecraft - The Alchemist
author class:H P Lovecraft
subject class:Fiction
genre class:Horror
class:chapter
High up, crowning the grassy summit of a swelling mound whose sides are
wooded near the base with the gnarled trees of the primeval forest,
stands the old chateau of my ancestors. For centuries its lofty
battlements have frowned down upon the wild and rugged countryside
about, serving as a home and stronghold for the proud house whose
honoured line is older even than the moss-grown castle walls. These
ancient turrets, stained by the storms of generations and crumbling
under the slow yet mighty pressure of time, formed in the ages of
feudalism one of the most dreaded and formidable fortresses in all
France. From its machicolated parapets and mounted battlements Barons,
Counts, and even Kings had been defied, yet never had its spacious
halls resounded to the footsteps of the invader.
But since those glorious years all is changed. A poverty but little
above the level of dire want, together with a pride of name that
forbids its alleviation by the pursuits of commercial life, have
prevented the scions of our line from maintaining their estates in
pristine splendour; and the falling stones of the walls, the overgrown
vegetation in the parks, the dry and dusty moat, the ill-paved
courtyards, and toppling towers without, as well as the sagging floors,
the worm-eaten wainscots, and the faded tapestries within, all tell a
gloomy tale of fallen grandeur. As the ages passed, first one, then
another of the four great turrets were left to ruin, until at last but
a single tower housed the sadly reduced descendants of the once mighty
lords of the estate.
It was in one of the vast and gloomy chambers of this remaining tower
that I, Antoine, last of the unhappy and accursed Comtes de C——, first
saw the light of day, ninety long years ago. Within these walls, and
amongst the dark and shadowy forests, the wild ravines and grottoes of
the hillside below, were spent the first years of my troubled life. My
parents I never knew. My father had been killed at the age of
thirty-two, a month before I was born, by the fall of a stone somehow
dislodged from one of the deserted parapets of the castle; and my
mother having died at my birth, my care and education devolved solely
upon one remaining servitor, an old and trusted man of considerable
intelligence, whose name I remember as Pierre. I was an only child, and
the lack of companionship which this fact entailed upon me was
augmented by the strange care exercised by my aged guardian in
excluding me from the society of the peasant children whose abodes were
scattered here and there upon the plains that surround the base of the
hill. At the time, Pierre said that this restriction was imposed upon
me because my noble birth placed me above association with such
plebeian company. Now I know that its real object was to keep from my
ears the idle tales of the dread curse upon our line, that were nightly
told and magnified by the simple tenantry as they conversed in hushed
accents in the glow of their cottage hearths.
Thus isolated, and thrown upon my own resources, I spent the hours of
my childhood in poring over the ancient tomes that filled the
shadow-haunted library of the chateau, and in roaming without aim or
purpose through the perpetual dusk of the spectral wood that clothes
the side of the hill near its foot. It was perhaps an effect of such
surroundings that my mind early acquired a shade of melancholy. Those
studies and pursuits which partake of the dark and occult in Nature
most strongly claimed my attention.
Of my own race I was permitted to learn singularly little, yet what
small knowledge of it I was able to gain, seemed to depress me much.
Perhaps it was at first only the manifest reluctance of my old
preceptor to discuss with me my paternal ancestry that gave rise to the
terror which I ever felt at the mention of my great house; yet as I
grew out of childhood, I was able to piece together disconnected
fragments of discourse, let slip from the unwilling tongue which had
begun to falter in approaching senility, that had a sort of relation to
a certain circumstance which I had always deemed strange, but which now
became dimly terrible. The circumstance to which I allude is the early
age at which all the Comtes of my line had met their end. Whilst I had
hitherto considered this but a natural attribute of a family of
short-lived men, I afterward pondered long upon these premature deaths,
and began to connect them with the wanderings of the old man, who often
spoke of a curse which for centuries had prevented the lives of the
holders of my title from much exceeding the span of thirty-two years.
Upon my twenty-first birthday, the aged Pierre gave to me a family
document which he said had for many generations been handed down from
father to son, and continued by each possessor. Its contents were of
the most startling nature, and its perusal confirmed the gravest of my
apprehensions. At this time, my belief in the supernatural was firm and
deep-seated, else I should have dismissed with scorn the incredible
narrative unfolded before my eyes.
The paper carried me back to the days of the thirteenth century, when
the old castle in which I sat had been a feared and impregnable
fortress. It told of a certain ancient man who had once dwelt on our
estates, a person of no small accomplishments, though little above the
rank of peasant; by name, Michel, usually designated by the surname of
Mauvais, the Evil, on account of his sinister reputation. He had
studied beyond the custom of his kind, seeking such things as the
Philosopher’s Stone, or the Elixir of Eternal Life, and was reputed
wise in the terrible secrets of Black Magic and Alchemy. Michel Mauvais
had one son, named Charles, a youth as proficient as himself in the
hidden arts, and who had therefore been called Le Sorcier, or the
Wizard. This pair, shunned by all honest folk, were suspected of the
most hideous practices. Old Michel was said to have burnt his wife
alive as a sacrifice to the Devil, and the unaccountable disappearances
of many small peasant children were laid at the dreaded door of these
two. Yet through the dark natures of the father and the son ran one
redeeming ray of humanity; the evil old man loved his offspring with
fierce intensity, whilst the youth had for his parent a more than
filial affection.
One night the castle on the hill was thrown into the wildest confusion
by the vanishment of young Godfrey, son to Henri the Comte. A searching
party, headed by the frantic father, invaded the cottage of the
sorcerers and there came upon old Michel Mauvais, busy over a huge and
violently boiling cauldron. Without certain cause, in the ungoverned
madness of fury and despair, the Comte laid hands on the aged wizard,
and ere he released his murderous hold his victim was no more.
Meanwhile joyful servants were proclaiming the finding of young Godfrey
in a distant and unused chamber of the great edifice, telling too late
that poor Michel had been killed in vain. As the Comte and his
associates turned away from the lowly abode of the alchemists, the form
of Charles Le Sorcier appeared through the trees. The excited chatter
of the menials standing about told him what had occurred, yet he seemed
at first unmoved at his father’s fate. Then, slowly advancing to meet
the Comte, he pronounced in dull yet terrible accents the curse that
ever afterward haunted the house of C——.
“May ne’er a noble of thy murd’rous line
Survive to reach a greater age than thine!”
spake he, when, suddenly leaping backwards into the black wood, he drew
from his tunic a phial of colourless liquid which he threw into the
face of his father’s slayer as he disappeared behind the inky curtain
of the night. The Comte died without utterance, and was buried the next
day, but little more than two and thirty years from the hour of his
birth. No trace of the assassin could be found, though relentless bands
of peasants scoured the neighbouring woods and the meadow-land around
the hill.
Thus time and the want of a reminder dulled the memory of the curse in
the minds of the late Comte’s family, so that when Godfrey, innocent
cause of the whole tragedy and now bearing the title, was killed by an
arrow whilst hunting, at the age of thirty-two, there were no thoughts
save those of grief at his demise. But when, years afterward, the next
young Comte, Robert by name, was found dead in a nearby field from no
apparent cause, the peasants told in whispers that their seigneur had
but lately passed his thirty-second birthday when surprised by early
death. Louis, son to Robert, was found drowned in the moat at the same
fateful age, and thus down through the centuries ran the ominous
chronicle; Henris, Roberts, Antoines, and Armands snatched from happy
and virtuous lives when little below the age of their unfortunate
ancestor at his murder.
That I had left at most but eleven years of further existence was made
certain to me by the words which I read. My life, previously held at
small value, now became dearer to me each day, as I delved deeper and
deeper into the mysteries of the hidden world of black magic. Isolated
as I was, modern science had produced no impression upon me, and I
laboured as in the Middle Ages, as wrapt as had been old Michel and
young Charles themselves in the acquisition of daemonological and
alchemical learning. Yet read as I might, in no manner could I account
for the strange curse upon my line. In unusually rational moments, I
would even go so far as to seek a natural explanation, attributing the
early deaths of my ancestors to the sinister Charles Le Sorcier and his
heirs; yet having found upon careful inquiry that there were no known
descendants of the alchemist, I would fall back to occult studies, and
once more endeavour to find a spell that would release my house from
its terrible burden. Upon one thing I was absolutely resolved. I should
never wed, for since no other branches of my family were in existence,
I might thus end the curse with myself.
As I drew near the age of thirty, old Pierre was called to the land
beyond. Alone I buried him beneath the stones of the courtyard about
which he had loved to wander in life. Thus was I left to ponder on
myself as the only human creature within the great fortress, and in my
utter solitude my mind began to cease its vain protest against the
impending doom, to become almost reconciled to the fate which so many
of my ancestors had met. Much of my time was now occupied in the
exploration of the ruined and abandoned halls and towers of the old
chateau, which in youth fear had caused me to shun, and some of which,
old Pierre had once told me, had not been trodden by human foot for
over four centuries. Strange and awesome were many of the objects I
encountered. Furniture, covered by the dust of ages and crumbling with
the rot of long dampness, met my eyes. Cobwebs in a profusion never
before seen by me were spun everywhere, and huge bats flapped their
bony and uncanny wings on all sides of the otherwise untenanted gloom.
Of my exact age, even down to days and hours, I kept a most careful
record, for each movement of the pendulum of the massive clock in the
library told off so much more of my doomed existence. At length I
approached that time which I had so long viewed with apprehension.
Since most of my ancestors had been seized some little while before
they reached the exact age of Comte Henri at his end, I was every
moment on the watch for the coming of the unknown death. In what
strange form the curse should overtake me, I knew not; but I was
resolved, at least, that it should not find me a cowardly or a passive
victim. With new vigour I applied myself to my examination of the old
chateau and its contents.
It was upon one of the longest of all my excursions of discovery in the
deserted portion of the castle, less than a week before that fatal hour
which I felt must mark the utmost limit of my stay on earth, beyond
which I could have not even the slightest hope of continuing to draw
breath, that I came upon the culminating event of my whole life. I had
spent the better part of the morning in climbing up and down
half-ruined staircases in one of the most dilapidated of the ancient
turrets. As the afternoon progressed, I sought the lower levels,
descending into what appeared to be either a mediaeval place of
confinement, or a more recently excavated storehouse for gunpowder. As
I slowly traversed the nitre-encrusted passageway at the foot of the
last staircase, the paving became very damp, and soon I saw by the
light of my flickering torch that a blank, water-stained wall impeded
my journey. Turning to retrace my steps, my eye fell upon a small
trap-door with a ring, which lay directly beneath my feet. Pausing, I
succeeded with difficulty in raising it, whereupon there was revealed a
black aperture, exhaling noxious fumes which caused my torch to
sputter, and disclosing in the unsteady glare the top of a flight of
stone steps. As soon as the torch, which I lowered into the repellent
depths, burned freely and steadily, I commenced my descent. The steps
were many, and led to a narrow stone-flagged passage which I knew must
be far underground. The passage proved of great length, and terminated
in a massive oaken door, dripping with the moisture of the place, and
stoutly resisting all my attempts to open it. Ceasing after a time my
efforts in this direction, I had proceeded back some distance toward
the steps, when there suddenly fell to my experience one of the most
profound and maddening shocks capable of reception by the human mind.
Without warning, I heard the heavy door behind me creak slowly open
upon its rusted hinges. My immediate sensations are incapable of
analysis. To be confronted in a place as thoroughly deserted as I had
deemed the old castle with evidence of the presence of man or spirit,
produced in my brain a horror of the most acute description. When at
last I turned and faced the seat of the sound, my eyes must have
started from their orbits at the sight that they beheld. There in the
ancient Gothic doorway stood a human figure. It was that of a man clad
in a skull-cap and long mediaeval tunic of dark colour. His long hair
and flowing beard were of a terrible and intense black hue, and of
incredible profusion. His forehead, high beyond the usual dimensions;
his cheeks, deep-sunken and heavily lined with wrinkles; and his hands,
long, claw-like, and gnarled, were of such a deathly, marble-like
whiteness as I have never elsewhere seen in man. His figure, lean to
the proportions of a skeleton, was strangely bent and almost lost
within the voluminous folds of his peculiar garment. But strangest of
all were his eyes; twin caves of abysmal blackness, profound in
expression of understanding, yet inhuman in degree of wickedness. These
were now fixed upon me, piercing my soul with their hatred, and rooting
me to the spot whereon I stood. At last the figure spoke in a rumbling
voice that chilled me through with its dull hollowness and latent
malevolence. The language in which the discourse was clothed was that
debased form of Latin in use amongst the more learned men of the Middle
Ages, and made familiar to me by my prolonged researches into the works
of the old alchemists and daemonologists. The apparition spoke of the
curse which had hovered over my house, told me of my coming end, dwelt
on the wrong perpetrated by my ancestor against old Michel Mauvais, and
gloated over the revenge of Charles Le Sorcier. He told how the young
Charles had escaped into the night, returning in after years to kill
Godfrey the heir with an arrow just as he approached the age which had
been his father’s at his assassination; how he had secretly returned to
the estate and established himself, unknown, in the even then deserted
subterranean chamber whose doorway now framed the hideous narrator; how
he had seized Robert, son of Godfrey, in a field, forced poison down
his throat, and left him to die at the age of thirty-two, thus
maintaining the foul provisions of his vengeful curse. At this point I
was left to imagine the solution of the greatest mystery of all, how
the curse had been fulfilled since that time when Charles Le Sorcier
must in the course of Nature have died, for the man digressed into an
account of the deep alchemical studies of the two wizards, father and
son, speaking most particularly of the researches of Charles Le Sorcier
concerning the elixir which should grant to him who partook of it
eternal life and youth.
His enthusiasm had seemed for the moment to remove from his terrible
eyes the hatred that had at first so haunted them, but suddenly the
fiendish glare returned, and with a shocking sound like the hissing of
a serpent, the stranger raised a glass phial with the evident intent of
ending my life as had Charles Le Sorcier, six hundred years before,
ended that of my ancestor. Prompted by some preserving instinct of
self-defence, I broke through the spell that had hitherto held me
immovable, and flung my now dying torch at the creature who menaced my
existence. I heard the phial break harmlessly against the stones of the
passage as the tunic of the strange man caught fire and lit the horrid
scene with a ghastly radiance. The shriek of fright and impotent malice
emitted by the would-be assassin proved too much for my already shaken
nerves, and I fell prone upon the slimy floor in a total faint.
When at last my senses returned, all was frightfully dark, and my mind
remembering what had occurred, shrank from the idea of beholding more;
yet curiosity overmastered all. Who, I asked myself, was this man of
evil, and how came he within the castle walls? Why should he seek to
avenge the death of poor Michel Mauvais, and how had the curse been
carried on through all the long centuries since the time of Charles Le
Sorcier? The dread of years was lifted from my shoulders, for I knew
that he whom I had felled was the source of all my danger from the
curse; and now that I was free, I burned with the desire to learn more
of the sinister thing which had haunted my line for centuries, and made
of my own youth one long-continued nightmare. Determined upon further
exploration, I felt in my pockets for flint and steel, and lit the
unused torch which I had with me. First of all, the new light revealed
the distorted and blackened form of the mysterious stranger. The
hideous eyes were now closed. Disliking the sight, I turned away and
entered the chamber beyond the Gothic door. Here I found what seemed
much like an alchemist’s laboratory. In one corner was an immense pile
of a shining yellow metal that sparkled gorgeously in the light of the
torch. It may have been gold, but I did not pause to examine it, for I
was strangely affected by that which I had undergone. At the farther
end of the apartment was an opening leading out into one of the many
wild ravines of the dark hillside forest. Filled with wonder, yet now
realising how the man had obtained access to the chateau, I proceeded
to return. I had intended to pass by the remains of the stranger with
averted face, but as I approached the body, I seemed to hear emanating
from it a faint sound, as though life were not yet wholly extinct.
Aghast, I turned to examine the charred and shrivelled figure on the
floor. Then all at once the horrible eyes, blacker even than the seared
face in which they were set, opened wide with an expression which I was
unable to interpret. The cracked lips tried to frame words which I
could not well understand. Once I caught the name of Charles Le
Sorcier, and again I fancied that the words “years” and “curse” issued
from the twisted mouth. Still I was at a loss to gather the purport of
his disconnected speech. At my evident ignorance of his meaning, the
pitchy eyes once more flashed malevolently at me, until, helpless as I
saw my opponent to be, I trembled as I watched him.
Suddenly the wretch, animated with his last burst of strength, raised
his hideous head from the damp and sunken pavement. Then, as I
remained, paralysed with fear, he found his voice and in his dying
breath screamed forth those words which have ever afterward haunted my
days and my nights. “Fool,” he shrieked, “can you not guess my secret?
Have you no brain whereby you may recognise the will which has through
six long centuries fulfilled the dreadful curse upon your house? Have I
not told you of the great elixir of eternal life? Know you not how the
secret of Alchemy was solved? I tell you, it is I! I! I! that have
lived for six hundred years to maintain my revenge, FOR I AM CHARLES LE
SORCIER!”
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