CHAPTER XVI
THE HALL OF THE KINGS OF BOHEMIA
Don Luis interrupted himself after delivering his opening sentence andstood enjoying the effect produced. Captain Belval, who knew his friend,was laughing heartily. Stephane continued to look anxious. All's Wellhad not budged.
Don Luis continued:
"Let me begin by confessing, ladies and gentlemen, that my object infixing my date so precisely was to some extent to stagger you. Inreality I could not tell you within a few centuries the exact date ofthe scene which I shall have the honour of describing to you. But what Ican guarantee is that it is laid in that country of Europe which to-daywe call Bohemia and at the spot where the little industrial town ofJoachimsthal now stands. That, I hope, is fairly circumstantial. Well,on the morning of the day when my story begins, there was greatexcitement among one of those Celtic tribes which had settled a centuryor two earlier between the banks of the Danube and the sources of theElbe, amidst the Hyrcanian forests. The warriors, assisted by theirwives, were striking their tents, collecting the sacred axes, the bowsand arrows, gathering up the pottery, the bronze and tin implements,loading the horses and the oxen.
"The chiefs were here, there and everywhere, attending to the smallestdetails. There was neither tumult nor disorder. They started early inthe direction of a tributary of the Elbe, the Eger, which they reachedtowards the end of the day. Here boats were waiting, guarded by ahundred of the picked warriors who had been sent ahead. One of theseboats was conspicuous for its size and the richness of its decoration. Along yellow cloth was stretched from side to side. The chief of chiefs,the King, if you prefer, climbed on the stern thwart and made a speechwhich I will spare you, because I do not wish to shorten my own, butwhich may be summed up as follows: the tribe was emigrating to escapethe cupidity of the neighbouring populations. It is always sad to leavethe places where one has dwelt. But it made no difference to the men ofthe tribe, because they were carrying with them their most valuablepossession, the sacred inheritance of their ancestors, the divinity thatprotected them and made them formidable and great among the greatest, inshort, the stone that covered the tomb of their kings.
"And the chief of chiefs, with a solemn gesture, drew the yellow clothand revealed a block of granite in the shape of a slab about two yardsby one, granular in appearance and dark in colour, with a few glitteringscales gleaming in its substance.
"There was a single shout raised by the crowd of men and women; and all,with outstretched arms, fell flat on their faces in the dust.
"Then the chief of chiefs took up a metal sceptre with a jewelledhandle, which lay on the block of granite, brandished it on high andspoke:
"'The all-powerful staff shall not leave my hand until the miraculousstone is in a place of safety. The all-powerful staff is born of themiraculous stone. It also contains the fire of heaven, which gives lifeor death. While the miraculous stone was the tomb of my forefathers, theall-powerful staff never left their hands on days of disaster or ofvictory. May the fire of heaven lead us! May the Sun-god light our way!'
"He spoke: and the whole tribe set out upon its journey."
Don Luis struck an attitude and repeated, in a self-satisfied tone:
"He spoke: and the whole tribe set out upon its journey."
Patrice Belval was greatly amused; and Stephane, infected by hishilarity, began to feel more cheerful. But Don Luis now addressed hisremarks to them:
"There's nothing to laugh at! All this is very serious. It's not a storyfor children who believe in conjuring tricks and sleight of hand, but areal history, all the details of which will, as you shall see, give riseto precise, natural and, in a sense, scientific explanations. Yes,ladies and gentlemen, scientific: I am not afraid of the word. We arehere on scientific ground; and Vorski himself will regret his cynicalmerriment."
Don Luis took a second sip of water and continued:
"For weeks and months the tribe followed the course of the Elbe; and oneevening, on the stroke of half-past nine, reached the sea-board, in thecountry which afterwards became the country of the Frisians. Itremained there for weeks and months, without finding the requisitesecurity. It therefore determined upon a fresh exodus.
"This time it was a naval exodus. Thirty boats put out to sea--observethis number thirty, which was that of the families composing thetribe--and for weeks and months they wandered from shore to shore,settling first in Scandinavia, next among the Saxons, driven off,putting to sea again and continuing their voyage. And I assure you itwas really a strange, moving, impressive sight to see this vagrant tribedragging in its wake the tombstone of its kings and seeking a safe,inaccessible and final refuge in which to conceal its idol, protect itfrom the attack of its enemies, celebrate its worship and employ it toconsolidate the tribal power.
"The last stage was Ireland; and it was here that, one day, after theyhad dwelt in the green isle for half a century or perhaps a century,after their manners had acquired a certain softening by contact withnations which were already less barbarous, the grandson orgreat-grandson of the great chief, himself a great chief, received oneof the emissaries whom he maintained in the neighbouring countries. Thisone came from the continent. He had discovered the miraculous refuge. Itwas an almost unapproachable island, protected by thirty rocks andhaving thirty granite monuments to guard it.
"Thirty! The fateful number! It was an obvious summons and command fromthe mysterious deities. The thirty galleys were launched once more andthe expedition set forth.
"It succeeded. They took the island by assault. The natives they simplyexterminated. The tribe settled down; and the tombstone of the Kings ofBohemia was installed . . . in the very place which it occupies to-dayand which I showed to our friend Vorski. Here I must interpolate a fewhistorical data of the greatest significance. I will be brief."
Adopting a professorial tone, Don Luis explained:
"The island of Sarek, like all France and all the western part ofEurope, had been inhabited for thousands of years by a race known as theLiguri, the direct descendants of the cave-dwellers part of whosemanners and customs they had retained. They were mighty builders, thoseLiguri, who, in the neolithic period, perhaps under the influence of thegreat civilizations of the east, had erected their huge blocks ofgranite and built their colossal funeral chambers.
"It was here that our tribe found and made great use of a system ofcaves and natural crypts adapted by the patient hand of man and of acluster of enormous monuments which struck the mystic and superstitiousimagination of the Celts.
"We find therefore that, after the first or wandering phase, therebegins for the God-Stone a period of rest and worship which we will callthe Druidical period. It lasted for a thousand or fifteen hundred years.The tribe became mingled with the neighbouring tribes and probably livedunder the protection of some Breton king. But, little by little, theascendancy had passed from the chiefs to the priests; and these priests,that is to say, the Druids, assumed an authority which increased in thecourse of the generations that followed.
"They owed this authority, beyond all doubt, to the miraculous stone.True, they were the priests of a religion accepted by all and also theinstructors of Gallic childhood (it seems certain, incidentally, thatthe cells under the Black Heath were those of a Druid convent, or rathera sort of university); true, in obedience to the practices of the time,they presided over human sacrifices and ordained the gathering of themistletoe, the vervain and all the magic herbs; but, before all, in theisland of Sarek, they were the guardians and the possessors of the stonewhich gave life or death. Placed above the hall of the undergroundsacrifices, it was at that time undoubtedly visible in the open air; andI have every reason to believe that the Fairies' Dolmen, which we nowsee here, then stood in the place known as the Calvary of the Flowersand sheltered the God-Stone. It was there that ailing and crippledpersons and sickly children were laid to recover their health andstrength. It was on the sacred slab that barren women became fruitful,on the sacred slab that old men felt their en
ergies revive.
"In my eyes it dominates the whole of the legendary and fabled past ofBrittany. It is the radiating centre of all the superstitions, all thebeliefs, all the fears and hopes of the country. By virtue of the stoneor of the magic sceptre which the archdruid wielded and with which heburnt men's flesh or healed their sores at will, we see the beautifultales of romance springing spontaneously into being, tales of theknights of the Round Table, tales of Merlin the wizard. The stone is atthe bottom of every mystery, at the heart of every symbol. It isdarkness and light in one, the great riddle and the great explanation."
Don Luis uttered these last words with a certain exaltation. He smiled:
"Don't let yourself be carried away, Vorski. We'll keep our enthusiasmfor the narrative of your crimes. For the moment, we are at the climaxof the Druidical period, a period which lasted far beyond the Druidsthrough long centuries during which, after the Druids had gone, themiraculous stone was exploited by the sorcerers and soothsayers. Andthus we come gradually to the third period, the religious period, thatis to say, actually to the progressive decline of all that constitutedthe glory of Sarek: pilgrimages, commemorative festivals and so forth.
"The Church in fact was unable to put up with that crude fetish-worship.As soon as she was strong enough, she was bound to fight against theblock of granite which attracted so many believers and perpetuated sohateful a religion. The fight was an unequal one; and the pastsuccumbed. The dolmen was moved to where we stand, the slab of the kingsof Bohemia was buried under a layer of earth and a Calvary rose at thevery spot where the sacrilegious miracles were once wrought.
"And, over and above that, there was the great oblivion!
"Let me explain. The practices were forgotten. The rites were forgottenand all that constituted the history of a vanished cult. But theGod-Stone was not forgotten. Men no longer knew where it was. In timethey even no longer knew what it was. But they never ceased to speak ofand believe in the existence of something which they called theGod-Stone. From mouth to mouth, from generation to generation, theyhanded down on to one another fabulous and terrible stories, whichbecame farther and farther removed from reality, which formed a more andmore vague and, for that matter, a more and more frightful legend, butwhich kept alive in their imaginations the recollection of the God-Stoneand, above all, its name.
"This persistence of an idea in men's memories, this survival of a factin the annals of a country had the logical result that, from time totime, some enquiring person would try to reconstruct the prodigioustruth. Two of these enquiring persons, Brother Thomas, a member of theBenedictine Order, who lived in the middle of the fifteenth century, andthe man Maguennoc, in our own time, played an important part. BrotherThomas was a poet and an illuminator about whom we possess not manydetails, a very bad poet, to judge by his verses, but as an illuminatoringenuous and not devoid of talent. He left a sort of missal in which herelated his life at Sarek Abbey and drew the thirty dolmens of theisland, the whole accompanied by instances, religious quotations andpredictions after the manner of Nostradamus. It was this missal,discovered by Maguennoc aforesaid, that contained the famous page withthe crucified women and the prophecy relating to Sarek; it was thismissal that I myself found and consulted last night in Maguennoc'sbedroom.
"He was an odd person, this Maguennoc, a belated descendant of thesorcerers of old; and I strongly suspect him of playing the ghost onmore than one occasion. You may be sure that the white-robed,white-bearded Druid whom people declared that they had seen on the sixthday of the moon, gathering the mistletoe, was none other than Maguennoc.He too knew all about the good old recipes, the healing herbs, the wayto work up the soil so as to make it yield enormous flowers. One thingis certain, that he explored the mortuary crypts and the hall of thesacrifices, that it was he who purloined the magic stone contained inthe knob of the sceptre and that he used to enter these crypts by theopening through which we have just come, in the middle of the Posternpath, of which he was obliged each time to replace the screen of stonesand pebbles. It was he also who gave M. d'Hergemont the page from themissal. Whether he confided the result of his last explorations to himand how much exactly M. d'Hergemont knew does not matter now. Anotherfigure looms into sight, one who is henceforth the embodiment of thewhole affair and claims all our attention, an emissary dispatched byfate to solve the riddle of the centuries, to carry out the orders ofthe mysterious powers and to pocket the God-Stone. I am speaking ofVorski."
Don Luis swallowed his third glass of water and, beckoning to theaccomplice, said:
"Otto, you had better give him a drink, if he's thirsty. Are youthirsty, Vorski?"
Vorski on his tree seemed exhausted, incapable of further effort orresistance. Stephane and Patrice once more intervened on his behalf,fearing an immediate consummation.
"Not at all, not at all!" cried Don Luis. "He's all right and he'll holdout until I've finished my speech, if it were only because he wants toknow. You're tremendously interested, aren't you, Vorski?"
"Robber! Murderer!" spluttered the wretched man.
"Splendid! So you still refuse to tell us where Francois is hidden?"
"Murderer! Highwayman!"
"Then stay where you are, old chap. As you please. There's nothingbetter for the health than a little suffering. Besides, you have causedso much suffering to others, you dirty scum!"
Don Luis uttered these words harshly and in accents of anger which onewould hardly have expected from a man who had already beheld so manycrimes and battled with so many criminals. But then this last one wasout of all proportion.
Don Luis continued:
"About thirty-five years ago, a very beautiful woman, who came fromBohemia but who was of Hungarian descent, visited the watering-placesthat swarm around the Bavarian lakes and soon achieved a greatreputation as a fortune-teller palmist, seer and medium. She attractedthe attention of King Louis II, Wagner's friend, the man who builtBayreuth, the crowned mad-man famed for his extravagant fancies. Theintimacy between the king and the clairvoyant lasted for some years. Itwas a violent, restless intimacy, interrupted by the frequent whims ofthe king; and it ended tragically on the mysterious evening when Louisof Bavaria threw himself out of his boat into the Starnbergersee. Was itreally, as the official version stated, suicide following on a fit ofmadness? Or was it a case of murder, as some have held? Why suicide?Why murder? These are questions that have never been answered. But onefact remains: the Bohemian woman was in the boat with Louis II and nextday was escorted to the frontier and expelled from the country after hermoney and jewellery had been taken from her.
"She brought back with her from this adventure a young monster, fouryears old, Alex Vorski by name, which young monster lived with hismother near the village of Joachimsthal in Bohemia. Here, in course oftime, she instructed him in all the practices of hypnotic suggestion,extralucidity and trickery. Endowed with a character of unexampledviolence but a very weak intellect, a prey to hallucinations andnightmares, believing in spells, in predictions, in dreams, in occultpowers, he took legends for history and falsehoods for reality. One ofthe numerous legends of the mountains in particular had impressed hisimagination: it was the one that describes the fabulous power of a stonewhich, in the dim recesses of the past, was carried away by evil geniiand which was one day to be brought back by the son of a king. Thepeasants still show the cavity left by the stone in the side of a hill.
"'The king's son is yourself,' his mother used to say. 'And, if you findthe missing stone, you will escape the dagger that threatens you andwill yourself become a king.'
"This ridiculous prophecy and another, no less fantastic, in which theBohemian woman announced that her son's wife would perish on the crossand that he himself would die by the hand of a friend, were among thosewhich exercised the most direct influence on Vorski when the fatefulhour struck. And I will go straight on to this fateful hour, withoutsaying any more of what our conversations of yesterday and last nightrevealed to the three of us or of what we have been able to
reconstruct.There is no reason to repeat in full the story which you, Stephane, toldVeronique d'Hergemont in your cell. There is no need to inform you,Patrice, you, Vorski, or you, All's Well, of events with which you arefamiliar, such as your marriage, Vorski, or rather your two marriages,first with Elfride and next with Veronique d'Hergemont, the kidnappingof Francois by his grandfather, the disappearance of Veronique, thesearches which you set on foot to find her, your conduct at the outbreakof the war and your life in the internment-camps. These are mere triflesbesides the events which are on the point of taking place. We havecleared up the history of the God-Stone. It is the modern adventure,which you, Vorski, have woven around the God-Stone, that we are nowabout to unravel.
"In the beginning it appears like this: Vorski is imprisoned in aninternment-camp near Pontivy in Brittany. He no longer calls himselfVorski, but Lauterbach. Fifteen months before, after a first escape andat the moment when the court martial was about to sentence him to deathas a spy, he escaped again, spent some time in the Forest ofFontainebleau, there found one of his former servants, a man calledLauterbach, a German like himself and like himself an escaped prisoner,killed him, dressed the body in his clothes and made the face up in sucha way as to give him the appearance of his murderer, Vorski. Themilitary police were taken in and had the sham Vorski buried atFontainebleau. As for the real Vorski, he had the bad luck to bearrested once more, under his new name of Lauterbach, and to be internedin the camp at Pontivy.
"So much for Vorski. On the other hand, Elfride, his first wife, theformidable accomplice in all his crimes and herself a German--I havesome particulars about her and their past life in common which are of noimportance and need not be mentioned here--Elfride, I was saying, hisaccomplice, was hidden with their son Raynold in the cells of Sarek. Hehad left her there to spy on M. d'Hergemont and through him to ascertainVeronique d'Hergemont's whereabouts. The reasons which prompted thewretched woman's actions I do not know. It may have been blind devotion,fear of Vorski, an instinctive love of evil-doing, hatred of the rivalwho supplanted her. It doesn't matter. She has suffered the mostterrible punishment. Let us speak only of the part she played, withoutseeking to understand how she had the courage to live for three yearsunderground, never going out except at night, stealing food for herselfand her son and patiently awaiting the day when she could serve and saveher lord and master.
"I am also ignorant of the series of events that enabled her to takeaction, nor do I know how Vorski and Elfride managed to communicate. Butwhat I know most positively is that Vorski's escape was long andcarefully prepared by his first wife. Every detail arranged. Everyprecaution was taken. On the fourteenth of September of last year,Vorski escaped, taking with him the two accomplices with whom he hadmade friends during his captivity and whom he had, so to speak,enrolled: the Otto and Conrad whom you know of.
"It was an easy journey. At every cross-roads, an arrow, accompanied bya number, one of a series, and surmounted by the initials 'V. d'H.,'which initials were evidently selected by Vorski, pointed out the roadwhich he was to follow. At intervals, in a deserted cabin, someprovisions were hidden under a stone or in a truss of hay. The way ledthrough Guemene, Le Faouet and Rosporden and ended on the beach atBeg-Meil.
"Here Elfride and Raynold came by night to fetch the three fugitives inHonorine's motor-boat and to land them near the Druid cells under theBlack Heath. They clambered up. Their lodgings were ready for them and,as you have seen, were fairly comfortable. The winter passed; andVorski's plan, which as yet was very vague, became more preciselyoutlined from day to day.
"Strange to say, at the time of his first visit to Sarek, before thewar, he had not heard of the secret of the island. It was Elfride whotold him the legend of the God-Stone in the letters which she wrote tohim at Pontivy. You can imagine the effect produced by this revelationon a man like Vorski. The God-Stone was bound to be the miraculous stonewrested from the soil of his native land, the stone which was to bediscovered by the son of a king and which, from that time onward, wouldgive him power and royalty. Everything that he learnt later confirmedhis conviction. But the great fact that dominates his subterranean lifeat Sarek was the discovery of Brother Thomas' prophecy in the course ofthe last month. Fragments of this prophecy were lingering on every hand,which he was able to pick up by listening to the conversations of thefisherfolk in the evenings, lurking under the windows of the cottages oron the roofs of the barns. Within mortal memory, the people of Sarekhave always feared some terrible events, connected with the discoveryand the disappearance of the invisible stone. There was likewise alwaysa question of wrecks and of women crucified. Besides, Vorski wasacquainted with the inscription on the Fairies' Dolmen, about the thirtyvictims destined for the thirty coffins, the martyrdom of the fourwomen, the God-Stone which gives life or death. What a number ofdisturbing coincidences for a mind as weak as his!
"But the prophecy itself, found by Maguennoc in the illuminated missal,constitutes the essential factor of the whole story. Remember thatMaguennoc had torn out the famous page and that M. d'Hergemont, who wasfond of drawing, had copied it several times and had unconsciously givento the principal woman the features of his daughter Veronique. Vorskibecame aware of the existence of the original and of one of the copieswhen he saw Maguennoc one night looking at them by the light of hislamp. Immediately, in the darkness, he contrived somehow to pencil inhis note-book the fifteen lines of this precious document. He now knewand understood everything. He was dazzled by a blinding light. All thescattered elements were gathered into a whole, forming a compact andsolid truth. There was no doubt possible: the prophecy concerned _him_!And it was _his_ mission to realize it!
"This, I repeat, is the essence of the whole matter. From that moment,Vorski's path was lighted by a beacon. He held in his hand Ariadne'sclue of thread. The prophecy represented to him an unimpeachable text.It was one of the Tables of the Law. It was the Bible. And yet think ofthe stupidity, of the unspeakable silliness of those fifteen linesscribbled at a venture, with no other motive than rhyme! Not a phraseshowing a sign of inspiration! Not a spark, not a gleam! Not a trace ofthe sacred madness that uplifted the Delphian pythoness or provoked thedelirious visions of a Jeremiah or an Ezekiel! Nothing! Syllables,rhymes! Nothing! Less than nothing! But quite enough to enlighten thegentle Vorski and to make him burn with all the enthusiasm of aneophyte!
"Stephane, Patrice, listen to the prophecy of Brother Thomas. TheSuperhun wrote it down on ten different pages of his note-book, so thathe might wear it ten times next to his skin and engrave it in the verysubstance of his being. Here's one of the pages. Stephane, Patrice,listen! Listen, O faithful Otto! And you yourself, Vorski, for the lasttime listen to the doggerel of Brother Thomas! Listen as I read!
"In Sarek's isle, in year fourteen and three, There will be shipwrecks, terrors, grief and crimes, Death-chambers, arrows, poison there will be And woe, four women crucified on tree! For thirty coffins victims thirty times.
"Before his mother's eyes, Abel kills Cain. The father then, coming forth of Almain, A cruel prince, obeying destiny, By thousand deaths and lingering agony, His wedded wife one night of June hath slain.
"Fire and loud noise will issue from the earth In secrecy where the great treasure lies And man again will on the stone set eyes Once stolen from wild men in byegone days O'er the sea; the God-Stone which gives life or death."
Don Luis Perenna had begun to read in emphatic tones, bringing out theimbecility of the words and the triteness of the rhythm. He ended in ahollow voice, without resonance, which died away in an anguishedsilence. The whole adventure appeared in all its horror.
He continued:
"You understand how the facts are linked together, don't you Stephane,you who were one of the victims and who knew or know the others? So doyou, Patrice, don't you? In the fifteenth century, a poor monk, with adisordered imagination and a brain haunted by infernal visions,expresses his dreams in a prophecy which we will describe as
bogus,which rests on no serious data, which consists of details depending onthe exigencies of the rhyme or rhythm and which certainly, both in thepoet's mind and from the standpoint of originality, possesses no morevalue than if the poet had drawn the words at random out of a bag. Thestory of the God-Stone, the legends and traditions, none of all thisprovides him with the least element of prophecy. The worthy man evolvedthe prophecy from his own consciousness, not intending any harm andsimply to add a text of some sort to the margin of the devilish drawingwhich he had so painstakingly illuminated. And he is so pleased with itthat he takes the trouble to take a pointed implement and engrave a fewlines of it on one of the stones of the Fairies' Dolmen.
"Well, four or five centuries later, the prophetic page falls into thehands of a Superhun, a criminal lunatic, a madman eaten up with vanity.What does the Superhun see in it? A diverting puerile fantasy? Ameaningless caprice? Not a bit of it! He regards it as a document of thehighest interest, one of those documents which the most Superhunnish ofhis fellowcountrymen love to pore over, with this difference, that thedocument to his mind possesses a miraculous origin. He looks upon it asthe Old and New Testament, the Scriptures which explain and expound theSarek law, the very gospel of the God-Stone. And this gospel designateshim, Vorski, him, the Superhun, as the Messiah appointed to execute thedecrees of Providence.
"To Vorski, there is no possibility of mistake. No doubt he enjoys thebusiness, because it is a matter of stealing wealth and power. But thisquestion occupies a secondary position. He is above all obeying themystic impulse of a race which believes itself to be marked out bydestiny and which flatters itself that it is always fulfilling missions,a mission of regeneration as well as a mission of pillage, arson andmurder. And Vorski reads his mission set out in full in Brother Thomas'prophecy. Brother Thomas says explicitly what has to be done and nameshim, Vorski, in the plainest terms, as the man of destiny. Is he not aking's son, in other words a 'prince of Almain?' Does he not come fromthe country where the stone was stolen from the 'wild men o'er the sea?'Has he not also a wife who is doomed, in the seer's prophecies, to thetorture of the cross? Has he not two sons, one gentle and gracious asAbel, and the other wicked and uncontrolled as Cain?
"These proofs are enough for him. He now has his mobilization-papers,his marching-orders in his pocket. The gods have indicated the objectiveupon which he is to march; and he marches. True, there are a few livingpeople in his path. So much the better; it is all part of the programme.For it is after all these living people have been killed and, moreover,killed in the manner announced by Brother Thomas that the task will bedone, the God-Stone released and Vorski, the instrument of destiny,crowned king. Therefore, let's turn up our sleeves, take our trustybutcher's knife in hand, and get to work! Vorski will translate BrotherThomas' nightmare into real life!"