The Double Star and Other Occult Fantasies by de la Vaudère Jane

Author:de la Vaudère, Jane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Snuggly Books
Published: 2020-12-25T00:00:00+00:00

YVAINE

I. Père Lazare

Every day I saw him go out. He seemed humble and unhappy. His deformed hat fell over his eyes, his trousers and jacket were tattered and sordid rags.

Intrigued, I sought information from the concierge, and I learned that the old man had been living in the house for ten years. Rich at first, he had lost his fortune in insensate alms, given without choice and without discernment, by virtue of caprice, a love of squandering. Originally a tenant of the first floor, he had successively moved through all the stories; now he lived under the eaves, by charity, in a garret deprived of air and light.

Our building was a former town house in the grand style, once built almost outside the city, but which presently found itself in an enclave surrounded by new buildings, regular and banal. The few fine trees in the garden remained there as if in the depths of a well, extending their pale branches like long arms toward the sky. Moss was eating away the stones, a green-tinted damp oozed beneath the ivy that had invaded everything. One might have thought it a corner of a forest put in prison, a corner of nature agonizing in mute despair. And in that obscure peace, which made one shiver, Père Lazare came to sit down, his face hidden in his hands, his long bony carcass shaken by unappeasable sobs.

I observed him for hours with a complex sentiment of mistrust and compassion. I do not know whether the other tenants saw him, as I did, through the small window-panes of their apartments, but no one talked to him, no one seemed to take any interest in his misfortune. Sometimes, he raised his head, and I shuddered before the fixity of his gaze and the dolorous crease of his thin lips.

One rainy morning he slipped on the edge of the sidewalk, after having distributed his alms, as was his custom; he could not get up again, and a passing cart crushed his leg above the knee. He was taken to the hospital, covered in blood, and for several months no further mention was heard of him. Then, suddenly, he reappeared, went up to his attic, and continued his former existence as in the past. With his crutches beside him—for he had been obliged to suffer the amputation of his leg—he still remained for long hours on the mossy bench in the garden.

Several times, I tried to start a conversation, but he did not seem to see me, and for six months I could not get a word out of him.

He lived in the midst of people without even knowing those to whom he gave alms, indifferent to everything and everyone.

Winter came again, the sky’s smiles were effaced; the mildness of golden and topaz sunsets was succeeded by the desolation of ashen firmaments empty of stars and wing-beats.

Père Lazare resumed his taciturn walks; the bench in the little garden no longer offered him sufficient shelter.

However, his resources were diminishing incessantly, and a moment arrived when he no longer had anything left, absolutely nothing.

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