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Canon Alberic's Scrap-book

Scary Books: The Best Ghost Stories
: MONTAGUE RHODES JAMES

St. Bertrand de Comminges is a decayed town on the spurs of the

Pyrenees, not very far from Toulouse, and still nearer to

Bagneres-de-Luchon. It was the site of a bishopric until the Revolution,

and has a cathedral which is visited by a certain number of tourists. In

the spring of 1883 an Englishman arrived at this old-world place--I can

hardly dignify it with the name of city, for there are not a thousand

inhabitants.
He was a Cambridge man, who had come specially from

Toulouse to see St. Bertrand's Church, and had left two friends, who

were less keen archaeologists than himself, in their hotel at Toulouse,

under promise to join him on the following morning. Half an hour at the

church would satisfy _them_, and all three could then pursue their

journey in the direction of Auch. But our Englishman had come early on

the day in question, and proposed to himself to fill a note-book and to

use several dozens of plates in the process of describing and

photographing every corner of the wonderful church that dominates the

little hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this design

satisfactorily, it was necessary to monopolize the verger of the church

for the day. The verger or sacristan (I prefer the latter appellation,

inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly sent for by the somewhat

brusque lady who keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge; and when he came,

the Englishman found him an unexpectedly interesting object of study. It

was not in the personal appearance of the little, dry, wizened old man

that the interest lay, for he was precisely like dozens of other

church-guardians in France, but in a curious furtive, or rather hunted

and oppressed, air which he had. He was perpetually half glancing behind

him; the muscles of his back and shoulders seemed to be hunched in a

continual nervous contraction, as if he were expecting every moment to

find himself in the clutch of an enemy. The Englishman hardly knew

whether to put him down as a man haunted by a fixed delusion, or as one

oppressed by a guilty conscience, or as an unbearably henpecked husband.

The probabilities, when reckoned up, certainly pointed to the last idea;

but, still, the impression conveyed was that of a more formidable

persecutor even than a termagant wife.



However, the Englishman (let us call him Dennistoun) was soon too deep

in his note-book and too busy with his camera to give more than an

occasional glance to the sacristan. Whenever he did look at him, he

found him at no great distance, either huddling himself back against the

wall or crouching in one of the gorgeous stalls. Dennistoun became

rather fidgety after a time. Mingled suspicions that he was keeping the

old man from his _dejeuner_, that he was regarded as likely to make away

with St. Bertrand's ivory crozier, or with the dusty stuffed crocodile

that hangs over the font, began to torment him.



"Won't you go home?" he said at last; "I'm quite well able to finish my

notes alone; you can lock me in if you like. I shall want at least two

hours more here, and it must be cold for you, isn't it?"



"Good heavens!" said the little man, whom the suggestion seemed to throw

into a state of unaccountable terror, "such a thing cannot be thought of

for a moment. Leave monsieur alone in the church? No, no; two hours,

three hours, all will be the same to me. I have breakfasted, I am not at

all cold, with many thanks to monsieur."



"Very well, my little man," quoth Dennistoun to himself: "you have been

warned, and you must take the consequences."



Before the expiration of the two hours, the stalls, the enormous

dilapidated organ, the choir-screen of Bishop John de Mauleon, the

remnants of glass and tapestry, and the objects in the treasure-chamber,

had been well and truly examined; the sacristan still keeping at

Dennistoun's heels, and every now and then whipping round as if he had

been stung, when one or other of the strange noises that trouble a

large empty building fell on his ear. Curious noises they were

sometimes.



"Once," Dennistoun said to me, "I could have sworn I heard a thin

metallic voice laughing high up in the tower. I darted an inquiring

glance at my sacristan. He was white to the lips. 'It is he--that is--it

is no one; the door is locked,' was all he said, and we looked at each

other for a full minute."



Another little incident puzzled Dennistoun a good deal. He was examining

a large dark picture that hangs behind the altar, one of a series

illustrating the miracles of St. Bertrand. The composition of the

picture is well-nigh indecipherable, but there is a Latin legend below,

which runs thus:



"Qualiter S. Bertrandus liberavit hominem quem

diabolus diu volebat strangulare." (How St.

Bertrand delivered a man whom the Devil long

sought to strangle.)



Dennistoun was turning to the sacristan with a smile and a jocular

remark of some sort on his lips, but he was confounded to see the old

man on his knees, gazing at the picture with the eye of a suppliant in

agony, his hands tightly clasped, and a rain of tears on his cheeks.

Dennistoun naturally pretended to have noticed nothing, but the question

would not away from him, "Why should a daub of this kind affect any one

so strongly?" He seemed to himself to be getting some sort of clue to

the reason of the strange look that had been puzzling him all the day:

the man must be monomaniac; but what was his monomania?



It was nearly five o'clock; the short day was drawing in, and the church

began to fill with shadows, while the curious noises--the muffled

footfalls and distant talking voices that had been perceptible all

day--seemed, no doubt because of the fading light and the consequently

quickened sense of hearing, to become more frequent and insistent.



The sacristan began for the first time to show signs of hurry and

impatience. He heaved a sigh of relief when camera and note-book were

finally packed up and stowed away, and hurriedly beckoned Dennistoun to

the western door of the church, under the tower. It was time to ring the

Angelus. A few pulls at the reluctant rope, and the great bell

Bertrande, high in the tower, began to speak, and swung her voice up

among the pines and down to the valleys, loud with mountain-streams,

calling the dwellers on those lonely hills to remember and repeat the

salutation of the angel to her whom he called Blessed among women. With

that a profound quiet seemed to fall for the first time that day upon

the little town, and Dennistoun and the sacristan went out of the

church.



On the doorstep they fell into conversation.



"Monsieur seemed to interest himself in the old choir-books in the

sacristy."



"Undoubtedly. I was going to ask you if there were a library in the

town."



"No, monsieur; perhaps there used to be one belonging to the Chapter,

but it is now such a small place----" Here came a strange pause of

irresolution, as it seemed; then, with a sort of plunge, he went on:

"But if monsieur is _amateur des vieux livres_, I have at home something

that might interest him. It is not a hundred yards."



At once all Dennistoun's cherished dreams of finding priceless

manuscripts in untrodden corners of France flashed up, to die down again

the next moment. It was probably a stupid missal of Plantin's printing,

about 1580. Where was the likelihood that a place so near Toulouse would

not have been ransacked long ago by collectors? However, it would be

foolish not to go; he would reproach himself for ever after if he

refused. So they set off. On the way the curious irresolution and sudden

determination of the sacristan recurred to Dennistoun, and he wondered

in a shamefaced way whether he was being decoyed into some purlieu to be

made away with as a supposed rich Englishman. He contrived, therefore,

to begin talking with his guide, and to drag in, in a rather clumsy

fashion, the fact that he expected two friends to join him early the

next morning. To his surprise, the announcement seemed to relieve the

sacristan at once of some of the anxiety that oppressed him.



"That is well," he said quite brightly--"that is very well. Monsieur

will travel in company with his friends; they will be always near him.

It is a good thing to travel thus in company--sometimes."



The last word appeared to be added as an afterthought, and to bring with

it a relapse into gloom for the poor little man.



They were soon at the house, which was one rather larger than its

neighbors, stone-built, with a shield carved over the door, the shield

of Alberic de Mauleon, a collateral descendant, Dennistoun tells me, of

Bishop John de Mauleon. This Alberic was a Canon of Comminges from 1680

to 1701. The upper windows of the mansion were boarded up, and the whole

place bore, as does the rest of Comminges, the aspect of decaying age.



Arrived on his doorstep, the sacristan paused a moment.



"Perhaps," he said, "perhaps, after all, monsieur has not the time?"



"Not at all--lots of time--nothing to do till to-morrow. Let us see what

it is you have got."



The door was opened at this point, and a face looked out, a face far

younger than the sacristan's, but bearing something of the same

distressing look: only here it seemed to be the mark, not so much of

fear for personal safety as of acute anxiety on behalf of another.

Plainly, the owner of the face was the sacristan's daughter; and, but

for the expression I have described, she was a handsome girl enough. She

brightened up considerably on seeing her father accompanied by an

able-bodied stranger. A few remarks passed between father and daughter,

of which Dennistoun only caught these words, said by the sacristan, "He

was laughing in the church," words which were answered only by a look of

terror from the girl.



But in another minute they were in the sitting-room of the house, a

small, high chamber with a stone floor, full of moving shadows cast by a

wood-fire that flickered on a great hearth. Something of the character

of an oratory was imparted to it by a tall crucifix, which reached

almost to the ceiling on one side; the figure was painted of the natural

colors, the cross was black. Under this stood a chest of some age and

solidity, and when a lamp had been brought, and chairs set, the

sacristan went to this chest, and produced therefrom, with growing

excitement and nervousness, as Dennistoun thought, a large book wrapped

in a white cloth, on which cloth a cross was rudely embroidered in red

thread. Even before the wrapping had been removed, Dennistoun began to

be interested by the size and shape of the volume. "Too large for a

missal," he thought, "and not the shape of an antiphoner; perhaps it may

be something good, after all." The next moment the book was open, and

Dennistoun felt that he had at last lit upon something better than good.

Before him lay a large folio, bound, perhaps, late in the seventeenth

century, with the arms of Canon Alberic de Mauleon stamped in gold on

the sides. There may have been a hundred and fifty leaves of paper in

the book, and on almost every one of them was fastened a leaf from an

illuminated manuscript. Such a collection Dennistoun had hardly dreamed

of in his wildest moments. Here were ten leaves from a copy of Genesis,

illustrated with pictures, which could not be later than 700 A.D.

Further on was a complete set of pictures from a psalter, of English

execution, of the very finest kind that the thirteenth century could

produce; and, perhaps best of all, there were twenty leaves of uncial

writing in Latin, which, as a few words seen here and there told him at

once, must belong to some very early unknown patristic treatise. Could

it possibly be a fragment of the copy of Papias "On the Words of Our

Lord," which was known to have existed as late as the twelfth century at

Nimes?[A] In any case, his mind was made up; that book must return to

Cambridge with him, even if he had to draw the whole of his balance from

the bank and stay at St. Bertrand till the money came. He glanced up at

the sacristan to see if his face yielded any hint that the book was for

sale. The sacristan was pale, and his lips were working.



"If monsieur will turn on to the end," he said.



So monsieur turned on, meeting new treasures at every rise of a leaf;

and at the end of the book he came upon two sheets of paper, of much

more recent date than anything he had yet seen, which puzzled him

considerably. They must be contemporary, he decided, with the

unprincipled Canon Alberic, who had doubtless plundered the Chapter

library of St. Bertrand to form this priceless scrapbook. On the first

of the paper sheets was a plan, carefully drawn and instantly

recognizable by a person who knew the ground, of the south aisle and

cloisters of St. Bertrand's. There were curious signs looking like

planetary symbols, and a few Hebrew words in the corners; and in the

northwest angle of the cloister was a cross drawn in gold paint. Below

the plan were some lines of writing in Latin, which ran thus:



"Responsa 12^{mi} Dec. 1694. Interrogatum est:

Inveniamne? Responsum est: Invenies. Fiamne dives?

Fies. Vivamne invidendus? Vives. Moriarne in lecto

meo? Ita." (Answers of the 12th of December, 1694.

It was asked: Shall I find it? Answer: Thou shalt.

Shall I become rich? Thou wilt. Shall I live an

object of envy? Thou wilt. Shall I die in my bed?

Thou wilt.)



"A good specimen of the treasure-hunter's record--quite reminds one of

Mr. Minor-Canon Quatremain in 'Old St. Paul's,'" was Dennistoun's

comment, and he turned the leaf.



What he then saw impressed him, as he has often told me, more than he

could have conceived any drawing or picture capable of impressing him.

And, though the drawing he saw is no longer in existence, there is a

photograph of it (which I possess) which fully bears out that statement.

The picture in question was a sepia drawing at the end of the

seventeenth century, representing, one would say at first sight, a

Biblical scene; for the architecture (the picture represented an

interior) and the figures had that semi-classical flavor about them

which the artists of two hundred years ago thought appropriate to

illustrations of the Bible. On the right was a king on his throne, the

throne elevated on twelve steps, a canopy overhead, soldiers on either

side--evidently King Solomon. He was bending forward with outstretched

scepter, in attitude of command; his face expressed horror and disgust,

yet there was in it also the mark of imperious command and confident

power. The left half of the picture was the strangest, however. The

interest plainly centered there. On the pavement before the throne were

grouped four soldiers, surrounding a crouching figure which must be

described in a moment. A fifth soldier lay dead on the pavement, his

neck distorted, and his eyeballs starting from his head. The four

surrounding guards were looking at the King. In their faces the

sentiment of horror was intensified; they seemed, in fact, only

restrained from flight by their implicit trust in their master. All this

terror was plainly excited by the being that crouched in their midst.

I entirely despair of conveying by any words the impression which this

figure makes upon any one who looks at it. I recollect once showing the

photograph of the drawing to a lecturer on morphology--a person of, I

was going to say, abnormally sane and unimaginative habits of mind. He

absolutely refused to be alone for the rest of that evening, and he told

me afterwards that for many nights he had not dared to put out his light

before going to sleep. However, the main traits of the figure I can at

least indicate. At first you saw only a mass of coarse, matted black

hair; presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful

thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like

wires. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with

long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a

burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the

throned king with a look of beast-like hate. Imagine one of the awful

bird-catching spiders of South America translated into human form, and

endowed with intelligence just less than human, and you will have some

faint conception of the terror inspired by the appalling effigy. One

remark is universally made by those to whom I have shown the picture:

"It was drawn from the life."



As soon as the first shock of his irresistible fright had subsided,

Dennistoun stole a look at his hosts. The sacristan's hands were pressed

upon his eyes; his daughter, looking up at the cross on the wall, was

telling her beads feverishly.



At last the question was asked, "Is this book for sale?"



There was the same hesitation, the same plunge of determination, that he

had noticed before, and then came the welcome answer, "If monsieur

pleases."



"How much do you ask for it?"



"I will take two hundred and fifty francs."



This was confounding. Even a collector's conscience is sometimes

stirred, and Dennistoun's conscience was tenderer than a collector's.



"My good man!" he said again and again, "your book is worth far more

than two hundred and fifty francs, I assure you--far more."



But the answer did not vary: "I will take two hundred and fifty francs,

not more."



There was really no possibility of refusing such a chance. The money was

paid, the receipt signed, a glass of wine drunk over the transaction,

and then the sacristan seemed to become a new man. He stood upright, he

ceased to throw those suspicious glances behind him, he actually laughed

or tried to laugh. Dennistoun rose to go.



"I shall have the honor of accompanying monsieur to his hotel?" said the

sacristan.



"Oh no, thanks! it isn't a hundred yards. I know the way perfectly, and

there is a moon."



The offer was pressed three or four times, and refused as often.



"Then, monsieur will summon me if--if he finds occasion; he will keep

the middle of the road, the sides are so rough."



"Certainly, certainly," said Dennistoun, who was impatient to examine

his prize by himself; and he stepped out into the passage with his book

under his arm.



Here he was met by the daughter; she, it appeared, was anxious to do a

little business on her own account; perhaps, like Gehazi, to "take

somewhat" from the foreigner whom her father had spared.



"A silver crucifix and chain for the neck; monsieur would perhaps be

good enough to accept it?"



Well, really, Dennistoun hadn't much use for these things. What did

mademoiselle want for it?



"Nothing--nothing in the world. Monsieur is more than welcome to it."



The tone in which this and much more was said was unmistakably genuine,

so that Dennistoun was reduced to profuse thanks, and submitted to have

the chain put round his neck. It really seemed as if he had rendered the

father and daughter some service which they hardly knew how to repay. As

he set off with his book they stood at the door looking after him, and

they were still looking when he waved them a last good-night from the

steps of the Chapeau Rouge.



Dinner was over, and Dennistoun was in his bedroom, shut up alone with

his acquisition. The landlady had manifested a particular interest in

him since he had told her that he had paid a visit to the sacristan and

bought an old book from him. He thought, too, that he had heard a

hurried dialogue between her and the said sacristan in the passage

outside the _salle a manger_; some words to the effect that "Pierre and

Bertrand would be sleeping in the house" had closed the conversation.



At this time a growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over

him--nervous reaction, perhaps, after the delight of his discovery.

Whatever it was, it resulted in a conviction that there was some one

behind him, and that he was far more comfortable with his back to the

wall. All this, of course, weighed light in the balance as against the

obvious value of the collection he had acquired. And now, as I said, he

was alone in his bedroom, taking stock of Canon Alberic's treasures, in

which every moment revealed something more charming.



"Bless Canon Alberic!" said Dennistoun, who had an inveterate habit of

talking to himself. "I wonder where he is now? Dear me! I wish that

landlady would learn to laugh in a more cheering manner; it makes one

feel as if there was some one dead in the house. Half a pipe more, did

you say? I think perhaps you are right. I wonder what that crucifix is

that the young woman insisted on giving me? Last century, I suppose.

Yes, probably. It is rather a nuisance of a thing to have round one's

neck--just too heavy. Most likely her father had been wearing it for

years. I think I might give it a clean up before I put it away."



He had taken the crucifix off, and laid it on the table, when his

attention was caught by an object lying on the red cloth just by his

left elbow. Two or three ideas of what it might be flitted through his

brain with their own incalculable quickness.



"A penwiper? No, no such thing in the house. A rat? No, too black. A

large spider? I trust to goodness not--no. Good God! a hand like the

hand in that picture!"



In another infinitesimal flash he had taken it in. Pale, dusky skin,

covering nothing but bones and tendons of appalling strength; coarse

black hairs, longer than ever grew on a human hand; nails rising from

the ends of the fingers and curving sharply down and forward, gray,

horny and wrinkled.



He flew out of his chair with deadly, inconceivable terror clutching at

his heart. The shape, whose left hand rested on the table, was rising to

a standing posture behind his seat, its right hand crooked above his

scalp. There was black and tattered drapery about it; the coarse hair

covered it as in the drawing. The lower jaw was thin--what can I call

it?--shallow, like a beast's; teeth showed behind the black lips; there

was no nose; the eyes, of a fiery yellow, against which the pupils

showed black and intense, and the exulting hate and thirst to destroy

life which shone there, were the most horrifying feature in the whole

vision. There was intelligence of a kind in them--intelligence beyond

that of a beast, below that of a man.



The feelings which this horror stirred in Dennistoun were the intensest

physical fear and the most profound mental loathing. What did he do?

What could he do? He has never been quite certain what words he said,

but he knows that he spoke, that he grasped blindly at the silver

crucifix, that he was conscious of a movement towards him on the part of

the demon, and that he screamed with the voice of an animal in hideous

pain.



Pierre and Bertrand, the two sturdy little serving-men, who rushed in,

saw nothing, but felt themselves thrust aside by something that passed

out between them, and found Dennistoun in a swoon. They sat up with him

that night, and his two friends were at St. Bertrand by nine o'clock

next morning. He himself, though still shaken and nervous, was almost

himself by that time, and his story found credence with them, though not

until they had seen the drawing and talked with the sacristan.



Almost at dawn the little man had come to the inn on some pretense, and

had listened with the deepest interest to the story retailed by the

landlady. He showed no surprise.



"It is he--it is he! I have seen him myself," was his only comment; and

to all questionings but one reply was vouchsafed: "Deux fois je l'ai vu;

mille fois je l'ai senti." He would tell them nothing of the provenance

of the book, nor any details of his experiences. "I shall soon sleep,

and my rest will be sweet. Why should you trouble me?" he said.[B]



We shall never know what he or Canon Alberic de Mauleon suffered. At the

back of that fateful drawing were some lines of writing which may be

supposed to throw light on the situation:



"Contradictio Salomonis cum demonio nocturno.

Albericus de Mauleone delineavit.

V. Deus in adiutorium. Ps. Qui habitat.

Sancte Bertrande, demoniorum effugator, intercede pro me miserrimo.

Primum uidi nocte 12^{mi} Dec. 1694: uidebo mox ultimum.

Peccaui et passus sum, plura adhuc passurus. Dec. 29, 1701."[C]



I have never quite understood what was Dennistoun's view of the events

I have narrated. He quoted to me once a test from Ecclesiasticus: "Some

spirits there be that are created for vengeance, and in their fury lay

on sore strokes." On another occasion he said: "Isaiah was a very

sensible man; doesn't he say something about night monsters living in

the ruins of Babylon? These things are rather beyond us at present."



Another confidence of his impressed me rather, and I sympathized with

it. We had been, last year, to Comminges, to see Canon Alberic's tomb.

It is a great marble erection with an effigy of the Canon in a large wig

and soutane, and an elaborate eulogy of his learning below. I saw

Dennistoun talking for some time with the Vicar of St. Bertrand's, and

as we drove away he said to me: "I hope it isn't wrong: you know I am a

Presbyterian--but I--I believe there will be 'saying of Mass and singing

of dirges' for Alberic de Mauleon's rest." Then he added, with a touch

of the Northern British in his tone, "I had no notion they came so

dear."



The book is in the Wentworth Collection at Cambridge. The drawing was

photographed and then burnt by Dennistoun on the day when he left

Comminges on the occasion of his first visit.



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