“As we neared the Place we saw on the
opposite side of the street two flickering iron lanterns that threw a ghastly
green light down upon the barred dead-black shutters of the building, and
caught the faces of the passers-by with sickly rays that took out all the life
and transformed them into the semblance of corpses. Across the top of the
closed black entrance were large white letters, reading simply:
CAFE DU NEANT
The entrance was
heavily draped with black cerements, having white trimmings, such as hang
before the houses of the dead in Paris.
Here patrolled a solitary croque-mort, or hired pall-bearer, his black cape
drawn closely about him, the green light reflected by his glazed top-hat. A
more dismal and forbidding place it would be difficult to imagine. Mr. Thompkins
paled a little when he discovered that this was our destination, this grisly
caricature of eternal nothingness, and hesitated at the threshold. Without a
word Bishop firmly took his arm and entered. The lonely croque-mort drew apart
the heavy curtain and admitted us into a black hole that proved later to be a
room. The chamber was dimly lighted with wax tapers, and a large chandelier
intricately devised of human skulls and arms, with funeral candles held in
their fleshless fingers, gave its small quota of light.
Large, heavy,
wooden coffins, resting on biers, were ranged about the room in an order
suggesting the recent happening of a frightful catastrophe. The walls were
decorated with skulls and bones, skeletons in grotesque attitudes, battle-pictures,
and guillotines in action. Death, carnage, assassination were the dominant
note, set in black hangings and illuminated with mottoes on death. A half-dozen
voices droned this in a low monotone: "Enter, mortals of this sinful
world, enter into the mists and shadows of eternity. Select your biers, to the
right, to the left; fit yourselves comfortably to them, and repose in the
solemnity and tranquillity of death; and may God have mercy on your souls!"
A number of
persons who had preceded us had already pre-empted their coffins, and were
sitting beside them awaiting developments and enjoying their consommations,
using the coffins for their real purpose, tables for holding drinking-glasses. Alongside
the glasses were slender tapers by which the visitors might see one another.
There seemed to be
no mechanical imperfection in the illusion of a charnel-house; we imagined that
even chemistry had contributed its resources, for there seemed distinctly to be
the odor appropriate to such a place. We found a vacant coffin in the vault,
seated ourselves at it on rush-bottomed stools, and awaited further
developments.
Another croque-mort
a garcon he was came up through the gloom to take our orders. He was dressed
completely in the professional garb of a hearse-follower, including claw-hammer
coat, full-dress front, glazed tile, and oval silver badge. He droned, "Bon
soir, Macchabees! [This word (also Maccabe, argot Macabit) is given in Paris
by sailors to cadavers found floating in the river] Buvez les crachats
d'asthmatiques, voila des sueurs froides d'agonisants. Prenez done des certificats de deces, seulement
vingt sous. C'est pas cher et c'est artistique !"
Bishop said that he would be pleased
with a lowly bock. Mr. Thompkins
chose cherries a l'eau-de-vie, and I, une menthe.
"One microbe of Asiatic cholera
from the last corpse, one leg of a lively cancer, and one sample of our
consumption germ!" moaned the creature toward a black hole at the farther
end of the room. Some women among the visitors tittered, others shuddered, and
Mr. Thompkins broke out in a cold sweat on his brow, while a curious
accompaniment of anger shone in his eyes. Our sleepy pallbearer soon loomed
through the darkness with our deadly microbes, and waked the echoes in the
hollow casket upon which he set the glasses with a thump.
"Drink,
Macchabees!" he wailed: "drink these noxious potions, which contain
thvilest and deadliest poisons!"
"The villain!"
gasped Mr. Thompkins; "it is horrible, disgusting, filthy!"
The tapers
flickered feebly on the coffins, and the white skulls grinned at him mockingly
from their sable background. Bishop exhausted all his tactics in trying to
induce Mr. Thompkins to taste his brandied cherries, but that gentleman
positively refused, he seemed unable to banish the idea that they were laden
with disease germs.
After we had been
seated here for some time, getting no consolation from the utter absence of
spirit and levity among the other guests, and enjoying only the dismay and
trepidation of new and strange arrivals, a rather good-looking young fellow,
dressed in a black clerical coat, came through a dark door and began to address
the assembled patrons. His voice was smooth, his manner solemn and impressive,
as he delivered a well-worded discourse on death. He spoke of it as the gate
through which we must all make our exit from this world, of the gloom, the
loneliness, the utter sense of helplessness and desolation. As he warmed to his
subject he enlarged upon the follies that hasten the advent of death, and spoke
of the relentless certainty and the incredible variety of ways in which the
reaper claims his victims. Then he passed on to the terrors of actual
dissolution, the tortures of the body, the rending of the soul, the
unimaginable agonies that sensibilities rendered acutely susceptible at this
extremity are called upon to endure. It required good nerves to listen to that,
for the man was perfect in his role. From matters of individual interest in
death he passed to death in its larger aspects. He pointed to a large and
striking battle scene, in which the combatants had come to hand-to-hand
fighting, and were butchering one another in a mad lust for blood. Suddenly the
picture began to glow, the light bringing out its ghastly details with hideous
distinctness. Then as suddenly it faded away, and where fighting men had been
there were skeletons writhing and struggling in a deadly embrace. A similar
effect was produced with a painting giving a wonderfully realistic
representation of an execution by the guillotine. The bleeding trunk of the
victim lying upon the flap-board dissolved, the flesh slowly disappearing,
leaving only the white bones. Another picture, representing a brilliant dance-hall
filled with happy revellers, slowly merged into a grotesque dance of skeletons;
and thus it was with the other pictures about the room.
All this being
done, the master of ceremonies, in lugubrious tones, invited us to enter the
chambre de la mort. All the visitors rose, and, bearing each a taper, passed in
single file into a narrow, dark passage faintly illuminated with sickly green
lights, the young man in clerical garb acting as pilot. The cross effects of
green and yellow lights on the faces of the groping procession were more
startling than picturesque. The way was lined with bones, skulls, and fragments
of human bodies.
"O
Macchabees, nous sommes devant la porte
de la chambre de la mort!" wailed an unearthly voice from the farther end
of the passage as we advanced. Then before us appeared a solitary figure standing
beneath a green lamp. The figure was completely shrouded in black, only the
eyes being visible, and they shone through holes in the pointed cowl. From the
folds of the gown it brought forth a massive iron key attached to a chain, and,
approaching a door seemingly made of iron and heavily studded with spikes and
crossed with bars, inserted and turned the key; the bolts moved with a harsh,
grating noise, and the door of the chamber of death swung slowly open.
"O
Macchabees, enter into eternity, whence none ever return!" cried the new,
strange voice.
The walls of the
room were a dead and unrelieved black. At one side two tall candles were
burning, but their feeble light was insufficient even to disclose the presence
of the black walls of the chamber or indicate that anything but unending
blackness extended heavenward. There was not a thing to catch and reflect a
single ray of the light and thus become visible in the blackness.
Between the two
candles was an upright opening in the wall; it was of the shape of a coffin. We
were seated upon rows of small black caskets resting on the floor in front of
the candles. There was hardly a whisper among the visitors. The black-hooded
figure passed silently out of view and vanished in the darkness.
Presently a pale, greenish-white illumination
began to light up the coffin-shaped hole in the wall, clearly marking its
outline against the black. Within this space there stood a coffin upright, in
which a pretty young woman, robed in a white shroud, fitted snugly. Soon it was
evident that she was very much alive, for she smiled and looked at us saucily. But
that was not for long. From the depths came a dismal wail: "O Macchabee,
beautiful, breathing mortal, pulsating with the warmth and richness of life, thou
art now in the grasp of death! Compose thy soul for the end!"
Her face slowly
became white and rigid; her eyes sank; her lips tightened across her teeth; her
cheeks took on the hollowness of death, she was dead. But it did not end with
that. From white the face slowly grew livid... then purplish black... The eyes
visibly shrank into their greenish-yellow sockets... Slowly the hair fell away...
The nose melted away into a purple putrid spot. The whole face became a semi-liquid
mass of corruption. Presently all this had disappeared, and a gleaming skull
shone where so recently had been the handsome face of a woman; naked teeth
grinned inanely and savagely where rosy lips had so recently smiled. Even the
shroud had gradually disappeared, and an entire skeleton stood revealed in the
coffin. The wail again rang through the silent vault: "Ah, ah, Macchabee! Thou
hast reached the last stage of dissolution, so dreadful to mortals. The work
that follows death is complete. But despair not, for death is not the end of
all. The power is given to those who merit it, not only to return to life, but
to return in any form and station preferred to the old. So return if thou
deservedst and desirest."
With a slowness
equal to that of the dissolution, the bones became covered with flesh and
cerements, and all the ghastly steps were reproduced reversed. Gradually the
sparkle of the eyes began to shine through the gloom; but when the reformation
was completed, behold! there was no longer the handsome and smiling young
woman, but the sleek, rotund body, ruddy cheeks, and self-conscious look of a
banker. It was not until this touch of comedy relieved the strain that the
rigidity with which Mr. Thompkins had sat between us began to relax, and a
smile played over his face, a bewildered, but none the less a pleasant, smile. The
prosperous banker stepped forth, sleek and tangible, and haughtily strode away
before our eyes, passing through the audience into the darkness. Again was the
coffin-shaped hole in the wall dark and empty.
He of the black
gown and pointed hood now emerged through an invisible door, and asked if there
was any one in the audience who desired to pass through the experience that
they had just witnessed. This created a suppressed commotion; each peered into
the face of his neighbor to find one with courage sufficient for the ordeal. Bishop
suggested to Mr. Thompkins in a whisper that he submit himself, but that
gentleman very peremptorily declined. Then, after a pause, Bishop stepped forth
and announced that he was prepared to die. He was asked solemnly by the doleful
person if he was ready to accept all the consequences of his decision. He
replied that he was. Then he disappeared through the black wall, and presently
appeared in the greenish-white light of the open coffin. There he composed
himself as he imagined a corpse ought, crossed his hands upon his breast,
suffered the white shroud to be drawn about him, and awaited results, after he
had made a rueful grimace that threw the first gleam of suppressed merriment
through the oppressed audience. He passed through all the ghastly stages that
the former occupant of the coffin had experienced, and returned in proper
person to life and to his seat beside Mr. Thompkins, the audience applauding
softly.
A mysterious figure in black
waylaid the crowd as it filed out. He held an inverted skull, into which we
were expected to drop sous through the natural opening there, and it was with
the feeling of relief from a heavy weight that we departed and turned our backs
on the green lights at the entrance”.
What a wonderful contrast ! Here
we were in the free, wide, noisy, brilliant world again. Here again were the
crowds, the venders, saucy grisettes with their bright smiles, shining teeth,
and alluring glances. Here again were the bustling cafes, the music, the lights,
the life, and above all the giant arms of the Moulin Rouge sweeping the sky.
"Now," quietly remarked
Bishop, ••having passed through death, we will explore hell”…
William Chambers Morrow,
Bohemian Paris of To-day (1899)
