"An Incomprehensible Adventure, Attested to by an Entire Province"

It is hard to believe that it was less than a century ago that, in many parts of France, we poor, weak fools still held fast to the superstitious belief that it was only a matter of giving our souls over to the devil, enacted in rituals both cruel and fanatic, for us to get everything we wanted from this diabolical personage; and it is not more than a century ago that the adventure that we are going to tell about occured in one of our southern provinces, where it is still attested to today on the official histories of two cities and furthermore, covered with the most heartfelt personal testimonies to convince the skeptical. The reader may believe it, or may not; we speak only after having verified it; certainly we cannot guarantee it as fact, but we certify to him that more than one hundred thousand souls did believe it, and that more than fifty thousand can still attest today the authenticity with which it is recorded.

If you will so allow, we will disguise the province and the names.

Baron de Vaujour combined from his earliest youth the most unbridled libertinism as well as a taste for all sciences, and especially those occult sciences that mislead man, making him lose in dreams and chimeras precious time and attention that could be utilized in a vastly superior fashion; he was an alchemist, astrologer, sorcerer, necromancer, a quite good astronomer, and however, a mediocre physicist; at the age of twenty-five, the baron, having attained charge of himself and his estate, had, he claimed, found in his ancient books that by immolating a child to the devil, and using certain words, certain contortions during that execrable ceremony, one could make the devil appear, and obtain from the Prince of Darkness all that one wanted; provided that is, that his soul was promised to him. The baron committed himself to perpetrating this horror, commanding the the devil provide him with long life, happiness, no lack of wealth, and prodigious mental and physical strength.

The baron committed the infamous act, and then, this is what unfolded.

He had, as it were, an annuity only amounting to fifteen thousand pounds. He, however, was constantly spending hundreds, and fell quite into debt. At the age of sixty, his sexual prowess was yet at its peak, and there was no end to the succession of comely wenches he could service, one after the other, in a single evening. The orgies he indulged in were legendary; his friends bet he could not service twenty-five women in a single evening, one after another--for a hundred louis. He did so easily (he was then forty-five), and left the hundred louis to the women he had bumstuffed. Another time, approaching fifty. he got together a card game in which he lamented that, regrettably, "I cannot join. Just don't have the money!"

The other players egged him on until. aroused by their enticements, he made a number of strange, contorted passes in the dark, and, returning to the table, put ten thousand louis on a card. Still, the other players jokingly refused to allow him entrance.

"Why?" he asked. They laughingly, to a man replied, "Why, because it is still scarcely enough!"

There must have been much back-slapping in the room.

He want back into the shadow. Returning to the faro table yet again, he began to unroll even more wads of money form his pocket, ten or twenty times over. Astounded were the other card players, and this feat was later attested to by all.

At the age of fifty, the baron married a charming girl with whom he lived very happily, having seven children. Of course, the debauched old rake hell was still unfaithful, still committing infidelities that his jealous wife often suspected; but, she must have known it was simply in his nature to do so, for she never quarelled with him over it. "It is simply his temperament," she reminded herself, and closed her eyes to his many affairs.

Together they lived at his chateau, where he accepted men of learning and distinction, for these were whom he loved to maintain companionship with. Unfortunately, as he approached the age of sixty, a dark pall began ot fall across the face of his life.

He remembered his infernal pact, the human sacrifice (which he had commenced right in this very mansion), and wondered that the Devil might reappear soon, demanding his wealth, his health, or his very soul. The baron thus began to grow melancholy and distant, until his precious wife began to wonder what was the matter. He began to become withdrawn, as more and more time passed.

***

The appointed day, when the pact with the devil was at last to be fulfilled, finally arrived. The baron, now a man of sixty, was summoned from a deep, trance-like, melancholy reverie by his valet. The baron's servant announced that there was a man there to see him, a man that had heard of his unique intellectual gifts, and was eager to converse with him.

'Yes, yes," said the baron. "Have him brought into my chambers at once!"

And so the valet escorted the strange man inside. He saw that the man is quite handsome, had an accent that marked him out as being from Paris, perhaps; the man began to speak, almost immediately, of all the high sciences. The baron thought him somewhat familiar. Where had he seen this man before?

Answering all his inquiries thusly, M. de Vaujour suddenly felt rather too warm. He asked his guest if he would like to accompany him for a walk through his estates. The strange man readily assents, and, arm-in-arm, off they go.

This is the season of harvest, so the peasants are all about the fields and orchards. When they see M. de Vaujour, his arm extended as if over the shoulder of an invisble man, speaking to someone they cannot see, they say to themselves, "Blimey! His Lordship has gone soft in the head! Quick, someone warn the madame!"

And off they go to do just that.

Unfortunately, Madame de Vaujour could not be roused, and so the thirty peasants returned. Later, all thirty were questioned, and all thirty swore as they saw His Lordship enter into a cul-de-sac, a sort of dead end down a wooded path, his arm still slung over an invisible ...nothing. They noted that, as he observed them, he thought that they might be concerned, for some reason, to come to his aid. To that end, he waved them off, and he and his phantom companion went down the little wooded path wherein, like a cradle, it would be necessary for a man to retrace his steps just to get back out.

After an hour, the person he thought he was with said to him:

"Baron, you don't recognize me. Have you forgotten the vow of your youth? Have you forgotten how I fulfilled it?"

The baron began to shake.

"Fear not," said the spirit with which he spoke, "I am not here to master you, but I could, if I wished, take you away, and reclaim all of my gifts, and all that is dear to you; go back to your house, you will see what sorry state it is in, you will see there the just punishment for your vast crimes. I love crimes, Baron; I lust for them, and my peculiar duty compels me to punish them. Go back to your house, I say, and convert! You still have awhile to live; you will die in five years. However, the hope of one day being with God will not be taken away from you, granted you change your ways. Farewell!"

The baron, suddenly finding himself alone, begged the assembled peasants to tell him if they had seen such-and-such a man enter the wooded lane with him. Each peasant, to a single man, replied that"Beggin' your pardon, mi'Lord, but there weren't no one went in there but you!" They further informed him that they had gone to warn his wife of his unusual behavior, but had received no reply.

"Beggin' your pardon, mi'Lord, but there weren't no one home!"

"No one?" cried the baron, very moved. "But, I have left six servants, seven children and my wife there!"

"There's no one, sir," they answered him.

The baron began to really, truly be frightened. And so, racing home, and finding the door bolted, he assembled his peasants to help break it down. They did so, and he rushed inside.

Already, in the gloom, he could make out the deep pools of red flowing down the stairs. He made his way up, trembling. He followed the winding trail of blood to the Master Bedchamber.

He opened the door on a scene of horror.

It is butchery the likes of which few men could conceive.

The bodies of his wife and children, even his servants, dismembered, mutilated beyond recognition, their severed heads left atop the mantle, and their piteous fingers grasping the wall in crimson streaks of pain. His poor, benumbed mind finally cracking, he cried out.

Falling to his knees in a dead swoon, he was eventually roused by his servants, of whom he begged them to see to their final duties, and bury the remains of his poor family "in consecrated ground."

Then he, betook himself to the Monastery of the Grand Chartreuse. There he remained, in the utmost piety, until his death--five years later.

We must absolutely forbid ourselves any reflection on this incomprehensible occurrence. It happened; nothing can change that. It, likewise, cannot be explained.

A rational man must avoid believing in fantastic wonders and chimerical events. But, when something is so universally attested to by eyewitnesses of a stolid and dependable, unimaginative type, well, even an occurence as singular as this must cause us to bow our heads , close our eyes, and say, "I don't understand how worlds float in space. Therefore, it follows there are things upon earth that, likewise, should defy my mind's ability to comprehend."