The Chateau d'Argol (7 page)

THE CHAPEL OF THE ABYSS

A
FEW
DAYS
AFTER
these signal events, Albert strolled idly along the banks of the river of Argol. These perilous gorges, these precipitous crags, veiled in the thick curtain of the woods, attracted his tormented soul. Here the river rolled its waters along the bottom of a natural chasm with towering sides, to which clung all the rich verdure of a glorious forest. The continual windings of the river's course gave an aspect of singular isolation to these retreats. Around Albert the high walls of frowning forest seemed to consume a considerable portion of the sky, and even to touch the edge of the sun's ardent disc although it had already risen high over the horizon. These branches, majestically and rhythmically swaying, were stirred by the wind from the nearby sea which brought with it the roar of the waves and the aerial tumult of boundless space. But below this grandiose symphony, on a level with the stream, all was stillness and untroubled calm in the shelter of the impenetrable rampart of trees through which transparent and motionless columns of coolness rose from the water.

Sometimes, struck by the slanting rays of the sun, the river in one of its broad sweeps burst on the eye with its wide beaches sparkling in the dazzling light, sometimes it contracted into a deep and narrow channel between high verdant walls, where it seemed to be escaping with the thick fluidity of oil, green and black, seemed to be
adapting itself
to the darkling hue of the high walls, with the guile of a natural snare that struck the senses with a silent horror, like a serpent gliding through the grass.

This natural ambush—with no possible escape for the soul goaded by mystery and curiosity and by the encompassing silence where no bird sang, and where the too apparent symptoms of the habitual lethargy of
night
were contradicted only by the altogether singular gaze of the white, vacant and blinding disc of the sun darting Albert's eye into the cool entrails of the earth—seemed the scene of an unfathomable crime where the utterly indisputable absence of any
piece of evidence
must finally attract the eye to the now altogether significant depths of those dark, transparent waters where, haunted by a sinister foreboding, his eye now sought a golden ring set with fabulous gems, or a dagger still smeared with a network of those red and indelible filaments that make the complete dilution of human blood in water forever so improbable.

The curious presence of the sun over that lofty horizon at a late hour of the afternoon (looking more like the moon in the middle of the night brushing the highest branches of the trees), the dark transparence of the water, the limpidity of the sun that a million leaves divided and vaporized into a floating mist like a sulphurous cloud, captured and glaucous—everything conspired in that abysmal aquarium of the air to fill Albert's soul with an eerie feeling that these were not the ordinary effects of light traversing our atmosphere but—and the thought made him shudder—that he was looking at an impossible
negative of the night
, and, as he lay at full length on the grassy bank, he leaned his face down close to the swift and vibratile surface of the water to touch its incalculable coolness with his cheeks. Great fishes were swimming in the transparent water, embellishing the depths with their lashing movements. A lurking life animated those depths above which all the terrestrial voices seemed to fall uniformly silent, instantly smothered by the rush of those violent cold waters pressing with an unendurable force against his eardrum, and sounding an inexorable alarm.

Once more his eye swept their calm surface and at once his brain recovered its lucidity. He had discovered the real
meaning
of this inconceivable landscape which he had until now only considered
upside-down.

Out of the depth of that chasm, which stung his skin with its mortal chill, rose the trembling, watery visage of the sun, and the reflected colonnades of trees were ranged like heavy towers, lustrous and as smooth as copper, while under his eyes and lips, in the centre of this inverted peristyle of a solemn regularity, appeared the face of the sky like a merciful abyss, henceforth instantly opened, into which man might at last irrevocably plunge and satisfy without restraint what now to Albert was revealed as his most natural
inclination.

For a second he closed his eyes under the charm and the terror and the intense pleasure of the temptation, and when he opened them again the curtain of trees was suddenly torn asunder beneath the water, and the reflected image of Herminien, walking without effort
under
the surface, came toward him through that forever forbidden world—and in the midst of the tumult of his terror and his ecstasy, which sent all the blood surging to his heart, could be heard distinctly the
ten strokes of a clock.

Even the way Herminien was dressed, as he thus appeared to Albert in such an alarming fashion among the trees of the opposite bank, differed considerably from his usual attire. His head bare and his brown curls flying in the wind, he wore a long grey cloak that hung in austere folds from his shoulders and enveloped him completely. His face shone with a fraternal exaltation, and it seemed to Albert that this image out of the bottom of the river smiled at him with a smile whose calm and meditative fixity belonged to some region inaccessible to all human relationships. As though borne along by the web of an exalting music, his limbs seemed the prisoners of the fatal laws of a
number
—although a primary one in every respect—and his step majestic beyond all measure and at every moment plainly
oriented
, seemed to Albert the materialization, shorn for the first time of all kinds of grotesquely aesthetic veils, of what Kant has called, mysteriously enough,
purposiveness without purpose.
Whereas still governed by a quantity of the known laws of our planet, it seemed clear that his ways, perhaps for the first time, did not
exactly
coincide with the paths already traced, and that one could, without too great surprise, expect of this ambiguous apparition miracles, comparatively minor no doubt and not yet formally violating the physical laws already verified, but whose very ambiguity and air of derisive mystification could not fail to engender a feeling of uneasiness.

The curve of his two arms, raised in a gesture of ecstasy, suggested that of a lute, of which, it seemed strangely to Albert, Herminien was, at the same time, both the sound and the strings, and the landscape appeared to concentrate in him all its secret energy, to fire him with a supernatural and tremulous flame, and when he should open his
mouth
, one had every reason to expect to hear the powerful cry of the forest itself and of the mighty waters, for in a flash the bewitched mind accepted the idea that he occupied the very focal point, the precious and uniquely efficacious centre of this enormous and sonorous pavilion, and that he would shake the entire forest with the least breath of his voice. At that instant the curve of his arms was broken, he placed a finger on his lips, and with a gesture whose gentle seriousness seemed to caress the wall of the heart itself, he beckoned Albert to follow him.

Walking on opposite and parallel banks of the river with the rapid current between them, their reflections met in the very middle of the stream, smooth as a mirror. The shimmering freshness of the grass, the coolness of the air, the corollas of the big red flowers that bowed gracefully as they passed and seemed to distil a subtle and grave incense like the confident and devout soul of morning itself, gave to their silent peregrination the characters of a pilgrimage without a goal, and was for that very reason all the more perturbing. An extraordinary suspense filled Albert's soul, and his forehead, bent toward the ground, seemed to be bowed over his own plenitude. Around them the black depths of the forest seemed to grow denser with every step, the water, confined between its high banks, took on the flowing transparency of night. A rustic wooden bridge made of logs crudely put together, joined the two banks, and one behind the other they penetrated into the heart of the forest, and pressed forward among its precipitous gorges.

Soon, through the trunks of the trees covered with brilliant and elastic moss, through the branches twisted into fantastic arabesques, appeared the grey walls of a chapel overhanging the abyss. It presented the image of marvellous antiquity and in more than one place fragments of the delicate arches had fallen onto the black grass, where they shone like the white and scattered limbs of a hero treacherously felled, to whom the mysterious oratory would consecrate to the end of time the tears of an insatiable sorrow. Crazy vines with curiously lacy leaves, roots with vigorous thorns, and tufts of grey oats clung to the stones. On all sides the forest encircled it like a stifling cloak, and under the thick branches there floated a vague green twilight that had all the immobility of stagnant water: the place seemed so perfectly enclosed that the confined air could no more circulate there than in a long-closed room, and drifting around the walls in an opaque cloud, imbued for centuries with the persistent perfumes of moss and dried stones, it seemed like an odorant balm into which the precious relics had fallen. And yet, in the midst of this atmosphere of dream where time seemed miraculously suspended, an iron clock bristled with ominous arms, and the creaking, regular sound of its mechanism which it was impossible for the soul in the midst of these solitudes to connect in any way with the measurement of a time empty of all substance in these regions, and which seemed only the starting of some infernal machine, was immediately adopted by Albert as the explanation of the eerie sounds that had so terrified him on the banks of the river at the moment of Herminien's sudden apparition.

They entered the sanctuary through a low door. A heavy, dense air, a fragrant and almost total obscurity filled this refuge of prayer, in the middle of which, hanging from the vaulted ceiling, shone a lamp in a red globe whose marvellously fragile flame was constantly flaring up, bent over and lifted as by the beating of invisible wings. There were large breaches in the roof through which glided pell-mell, as into a deep abyss (and without the soul that was pierced to its very depths like the sharp point of a spear, being able to distinguish the sound of the light—the yellow and vibrant cry of the sun) the dazzling darts of the flaming breast of a bird. And the whole chapel, submerged in the green dusk diffused by its stained glass windows against which the leaves, indistinct through the dirt and thickness of the panes, floated with a movement more indolent and softer than seaweed, seemed to have
descended
into the gulfs of the forest as into some submarine grotto that pressed with all the force of its cool palms against these walls of glass and of stone, and to be held over these vertiginous depths only by the marvellous cable of the sun.

Their eyes, finally accustomed to the sudden obscurity, distinguished in one of the corners of the confined space, a large stone which was apparently the slab—as heavy as sleep—of an ancient tomb, and lingered for a few moments on the
ex voto
inscriptions in an ancient and almost indecipherable tongue, accompanying, it appeared, the offerings of a helmet and an iron lance which could be seen hanging on the darkest side of the deserted altar, and whose polished surfaces and sharp point, in spite of the persistent humidity of the walls, still preserved an astonishing brilliance. And a growing disquietude took hold of Albert's mind, deeply disturbed for many minutes now by these objects, whose character appeared so exclusively
emblematic.
It seemed to him that between the iron clock, the lamp, the tomb, the helmet and the lance there must be woven, perhaps through the effect of some ancient spell, but more likely because of their intimate and dangerous conjunction of an appalling antiquity, as the glistening saltpetre of the vault bore witness, a bond difficult in the circumstances to discover, but whose unquestionable existence imprisoned the imagination as in a perfect circle, and designated in an intentionally closed space the very geometric locus of the Enigma, whose inextricable knots had been stifling him since morning with an embrace at every instant more convincing—so that in the middle of his journey toward the altar he stopped abruptly, a prey to a sudden terror lest his enchanted footsteps, if they continued, should bring him face to face with its disconcerting and incontestable countenance.

Strange parallels, and not so much those of resemblance as those, in every respect more curious, of Analogy, all tending to imply that this visit, so altogether baffling, had not indeed been directed toward a chapel lost in the forest, but really toward some castle enchanted by the menace of the equivocal arms of the Fisher King, made a sudden ineffaceable inroad on his brain. The sun's rays shining down onto the middle of the empty and desolate altar, the sound of the heavy drops of water on the flagstones, the damp obscurity of the place, the song of the bird through the breach in the vault shriller than if it had burst inside the ear itself and as though fraught with an inexplicable and delirious hope, the regular ticking of the iron clock—all filled his soul with glorious and melancholy visions, exhausted it with an imperious and devastating suspense that rising, little by little, with the trills of the bird to a supreme point where it attained the consuming ardour of fire, in its vigorous plenitude wrung tears from the eyes no less than might the sound of the most sumptuous brass instruments. And perhaps it was not perceptible to him in the midst of his tumultuous agitation, how much higher than all the voices of nature resounded here with a dissonant clamour the glaring
disappropriation
of all things—of the altar all the more majestic for being abandoned, of the useless lance, of the tomb as perturbing as a cenotaph, of the clock
ticking for nothing
outside of time, on which its gears had no more grip than a mill-wheel in a dried-up stream, of the lamp burning in full daylight, of the windows palpably made to be looked
into
from
outside
, and against which were glued all the green tentacles of the forest.