The Spasm

by Guy de Maupassant

　　

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The hotel guests slowly entered the dining-room and took their places.The waiters did not hurry themselves, in order to give the late comers achance and thus avoid the trouble of bringing in the dishes a secondtime. The old bathers, the habitues, whose season was almost over,glanced, gazed toward the door whenever it opened, to see what new facesmight appear.This is the principal distraction of watering places. People lookforward to the dinner hour in order to inspect each day's new arrivals,to find out who they are, what they do, and what they think. We alwayshave a vague desire to meet pleasant people, to make agreeableacquaintances, perhaps to meet with a love adventure. In this life ofelbowings, unknown strangers assume an extreme importance. Curiosity isaroused, sympathy is ready to exhibit itself, and sociability is theorder of the day.We cherish antipathies for a week and friendships for a month; we seepeople with different eyes, when we view them through the medium ofacquaintanceship at watering places. We discover in men suddenly, afteran hour's chat, in the evening after dinner, under the trees in the parkwhere the healing spring bubbles up, a high intelligence and astonishingmerits, and a month afterward we have completely forgotten these newfriends, who were so fascinating when we first met them.Permanent and serious ties are also formed here sooner than anywhereelse. People see each other every day; they become acquainted veryquickly, and their affection is tinged with the sweetness and unrestraintof long-standing intimacies. We cherish in after years the dear andtender memories of those first hours of friendship, the memory of thosefirst conversations in which a soul was unveiled, of those first glanceswhich interrogate and respond to questions and secret thoughts which themouth has not as yet uttered, the memory of that first cordialconfidence, the memory of that delightful sensation of opening our heartsto those who seem to open theirs to us in return.And the melancholy of watering places, the monotony of days that are allalike, proves hourly an incentive to this heart expansion.Well, this evening, as on every other evening, we awaited the appearanceof strange faces.Only two appeared, but they were very remarkable, a man and a woman--father and daughter. They immediately reminded me of some of Edgar Poe'scharacters; and yet there was about them a charm, the charm associatedwith misfortune. I looked upon them as the victims of fate. The man wasvery tall and thin, rather stooped, with perfectly white hair, too whitefor his comparatively youthful physiognomy; and there was in his bearingand in his person that austerity peculiar to Protestants. The daughter,who was probably twenty-four or twenty-five, was small in stature, andwas also very thin, very pale, and she had the air of one who was wornout with utter lassitude. We meet people like this from time to time,who seem too weak for the tasks and the needs of daily life, too weak tomove about, to walk, to do all that we do every day. She was ratherpretty; with a transparent, spiritual beauty. And she ate with extremeslowness, as if she were almost incapable of moving her arms.It must have been she, assuredly, who had come to take the waters.They sat facing me, on the opposite side of the table; and I at oncenoticed that the father had a very singular, nervous twitching.Every time he wanted to reach an object, his hand described a sort ofzigzag before it succeeded in reaching what it was in search of, andafter a little while this movement annoyed me so that I turned aside myhead in order not to see it.I noticed, too, that the young girl, during meals, wore a glove on herleft hand.After dinner I went for a stroll in the park of the bathingestablishment. This led toward the little Auvergnese station of Chatel-Guyon, hidden in a gorge at the foot of the high mountain, from whichflowed so many boiling springs, arising from the deep bed of extinctvolcanoes. Over yonder, above our heads, the domes of extinct craterslifted their ragged peaks above the rest in the long mountain chain. ForChatel-Guyon is situated at the entrance to the land of mountain domes.Beyond it stretches out the region of peaks, and, farther on again theregion of precipitous summits.The "Puy de Dome" is the highest of the domes, the Peak of Sancy is theloftiest of the peaks, and Cantal is the most precipitous of thesemountain heights.It was a very warm evening, and I was walking up and down a shady path,listening to the opening, strains of the Casino band, which was playingon an elevation overlooking the park.And I saw the father and the daughter advancing slowly in my direction.I bowed as one bows to one's hotel companions at a watering place; andthe man, coming to a sudden halt, said to me:"Could you not, monsieur, tell us of a nice walk to take, short, pretty,and not steep; and pardon my troubling you?"I offered to show them the way toward the valley through which the littleriver flowed, a deep valley forming a gorge between two tall, craggy,wooded slopes.They gladly accepted my offer.And we talked, naturally, about the virtue of the waters."Oh," he said, "my daughter has a strange malady, the seat of which isunknown. She suffers from incomprehensible nervous attacks. At one timethe doctors think she has an attack of heart disease, at another timethey imagine it is some affection of the liver, and at another theydeclare it to be a disease of the spine. To-day this protean malady,that assumes a thousand forms and a thousand modes of attack, isattributed to the stomach, which is the great caldron and regulator ofthe body. This is why we have come here. For my part, I am ratherinclined to think it is the nerves. In any case it is very sad."Immediately the remembrance of the violent spasmodic movement of his handcame back to my mind, and I asked him:"But is this not the result of heredity? Are not your own nervessomewhat affected?"He replied calmly:"Mine? Oh, no-my nerves have always been very steady."Then, suddenly, after a pause, he went on:"Ah! You were alluding to the jerking movement of my hand every time Itry to reach for anything? This arises from a terrible experience whichI had. Just imagine, this daughter of mine was actually buried alive!"I could only utter, "Ah!" so great were my astonishment and emotion.He continued:"Here is the story. It is simple. Juliette had been subject for sometime to serious attacks of the heart. We believed that she had diseaseof that organ, and were prepared for the worst."One day she was carried into the house cold, lifeless, dead. She hadfallen down unconscious in the garden. The doctor certified that lifewas extinct. I watched by her side for a day and two nights. I laid herwith my own hands in the coffin, which I accompanied to the cemetery,where she was deposited in the family vault. It is situated in the veryheart of Lorraine."I wished to have her interred with her jewels, bracelets, necklaces,rings, all presents which she had received from me, and wearing her firstball dress."You may easily imagine my state of mind when I re-entered our home.She was the only one I had, for my wife had been dead for many years.I found my way to my own apartment in a half-distracted condition,utterly exhausted, and sank into my easy-chair, without the capacity tothink or the strength to move. I was nothing better now than asuffering, vibrating machine, a human being who had, as it were, beenflayed alive; my soul was like an open wound."My old valet, Prosper, who had assisted me in placing Juliette in hercoffin, and aided me in preparing her for her last sleep, entered theroom noiselessly, and asked:"'Does monsieur want anything?'"I merely shook my head in reply."'Monsieur is wrong,' he urged. 'He will injure his health. Wouldmonsieur like me to put him to bed?'"I answered: 'No, let me alone!'"And he left the room."I know not how many hours slipped away. Oh, what a night, what a night!It was cold. My fire had died out in the huge grate; and the wind, thewinter wind, an icy wind, a winter hurricane, blew with a regular,sinister noise against the windows."How many hours slipped away? There I was without sleeping, powerless,crushed, my eyes wide open, my legs stretched out, my body limp,inanimate, and my mind torpid with despair. Suddenly the great doorbell,the great bell of the vestibule, rang out."I started so that my chair cracked under me. The solemn, ponderoussound vibrated through the empty country house as through a vault.I turned round to see what the hour was by the clock. It was just two inthe morning. Who could be coming at such an hour?"And, abruptly, the bell again rang twice. The servants, without doubt,were afraid to get up. I took a wax candle and descended the stairs.I was on the point of asking: 'Who is there?'"Then I felt ashamed of my weakness, and I slowly drew back the heavybolts. My heart was throbbing wildly. I was frightened. I opened thedoor brusquely, and in the darkness I distinguished a white figure,standing erect, something that resembled an apparition."I recoiled petrified with horror, faltering:"'Who-who-who are you?'"A voice replied:"'It is I, father.'"It was my daughter."I really thought I must be mad, and I retreated backward before thisadvancing spectre. I kept moving away, making a sign with my hand,' asif to drive the phantom away, that gesture which you have noticed--thatgesture which has remained with me ever since."'Do not be afraid, papa,' said the apparition. 'I was not dead.Somebody tried to steal my rings and cut one of my fingers; the bloodbegan to flow, and that restored me to life.'"And, in fact, I could see that her hand was covered with blood."I fell on my knees, choking with sobs and with a rattling in my throat."Then, when I had somewhat collected my thoughts, though I was still sobewildered that I scarcely realized the awesome happiness that hadbefallen me, I made her go up to my room and sit dawn in my easy-chair;then I rang excitedly for Prosper to get him to rekindle the fire and tobring some wine, and to summon assistance."The man entered, stared at my daughter, opened his mouth with a gasp ofalarm and stupefaction, and then fell back dead."It was he who had opened the vault, who had mutilated and then abandonedmy daughter; for he could not efface the traces of the theft. He had noteven taken the trouble to put back the coffin into its place, feelingsure, besides, that he would not be suspected by me, as I trusted himabsolutely."You see, monsieur, that we are very unfortunate people."He was silent.The night had fallen, casting its shadows over the desolate, mournfulvale, and a sort of mysterious fear possessed me at finding myself by theside of those strange beings, of this young girl who had come back fromthe tomb, and this father with his uncanny spasm.I found it impossible to make any comment on this dreadful story. I onlymurmured:"What a horrible thing!"Then, after a minute's silence, I added:"Let us go indoors. I think it is growing cool."And we made our way back to the hotel.

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