Locus Solus Page 2

  Thwarted by the failure of all their investigations, the King con­sidered the possibility of a buried opening and ordered the base of the mountain, which was covered by fine gravel, to be cleared beneath the spot where the echo was.

  Several makeshift workmen, equipped with whatever tools came to hand, almost at once laid bare the top of an arch which they cleared so that a man might just pass through.

  Jouël entered the narrow corridor torch, in hand and soon discovered a magnificent cavern all of green marble, studded, through some curious geological phenomenon, with huge nuggets of gold. These alone were worth an incalculable fortune, which might well be increased tenfold by those undoubtedly concealed in the mass of the mountain.

  Amazed, Jouël decided to set this fabulous wealth aside, out of reach of the greedy, for the eventuality of a period of ruin and misfortune, since at that time it was not needed by a happy realm enjoying the peace and prosperity due to its founder’s genius. Keeping his thoughts to himself, the King summoned his retinue and the night was spent peacefully in the hospitable cavern.

  Next day, under Jouël’s direction, laborers set to work and men plied to and fro to the nearest village. When the original narrow passage had been completely rescued from the sand by their efforts, it became a spacious tunnel, in the middle of which, after cleaning the cave, a great two-leaved gate was set, left, at the King’s express command, without a lock. Then, in front of everyone, Jouël, who was skilled in magic, uttered two solemn spells. By the first he made the outside of the mountain for ever invulnerable to the hardest tools — and by the second he bound shut the tall, stout gate, at the same time securing it against being breeched or forced open.

  The monarch then made an important declaration to those present. A certain magical sentence describing a superhuman event connected with himself and destined to illustrate his death would have the power of momentarily opening the gate each time it was faultlessly pronounced; but not even he knew yet what it would be, and even had he wished to do so, would have been unable to recover the forbidden riches. Only once in the course of future centuries, at a time of great public disaster, actual or impending eruption of which might call for the contribution of these treasures, would Jouël have the power to reveal the kabbalistic utterance to one of his successors in a dream. He was announcing the content of the open sesame beforehand so the many foolhardy ones, by their periodic attempts, might save the great lode from the oblivion to which an absolute confinement would necessarily have condemned it.

  A month later, when he had returned to Gloannic after completing his tour, Jouël died on a clear night, full of years and glory — and suddenly a new star shone in the firmament.

  The people were quick to recognize this as the supernatural event predicted by Jouël for the hour of his death and confidently hailed the unforeseen star as the very soul of the deceased, ready to keep eternal watch over the kingdom’s destiny. Knowing thereafter what fact had to be expressed in the formula that would release Morne-Vert’s enormous wealth, the new sovereign, Jouël’s ambitious son, pronounced many a pithy text before the bewitched gate, describing in a thousand different ways the late King’s transformation into a star in the heavens. But he did not manage to utter it correctly, for the leaves remained shut. And afterward, when similar attempts were made, they always proved vain.

  Now Kourmelen had in his dream received this stubborn phrase from the lips of Jouël, empowered to reveal it by the political tempest threatening the kingdom. At the threshold of Morne-Vert he uttered the following words, which seekers down centuries had only come close to:

  “Jouël burns, heavenly star.”

  The gate opened wide — then closed when the visitor had passed through to enter the green cave.

  Following Jouël’s command, the reason for which he understood, Kourmelen had come there to hide all the gold of his crown. What place could be found safer than this cave, so long inviolate despite a thousand attempts? And even if, by sheer persistence, a conspirator were to discover the exact open sesame, a guarantee against the dreaded usurpation was provided by the presence in the cave of innumerable ingots from which the recast and transformed Load was quite indistinguishable. Indeed, because of the popular fetishism, only a head encircled by the ancestral crown, indisputably restored from its original gold, could rule. Yet how was the revered ingot to be identified among so many others like it?

  Without too much difficulty Kourmelen extracted a long stone half-embedded in the surface of an isolated block of green marble to obtain a perfect cavity into which the precious, heavy object neatly fitted. Once in place it had the same appearance as the numerous specimens of gold embedded all over the cavern’s serpentine.

  But if the ingot’s anonymity were to be too complete, Hello herself would have no chance of reigning, since one day she would be obliged to prove its almost divine origin by some undeniable sign before restoring it to the shape of a royal crown for her brow.

  Still following Jouël’s instructions, Kourmelen began to sign the flat surface of the green block with his dagger’s point, barely scratching the marble.

  The kings of Kerlaguëzo had, from the beginning, affixed the word Ego to important documents, in place of their name: this heightened their prestige by making each of them, during his reign, the supreme I, source and goal of all things. The handwriting and the date redeemed this syllabic uniformity by giving a double indication of the relevant sovereign on each item.

  So on this occasion, adopting his usual mark without hesitation, Kourmelen engraved his customary Ego, with the date — then at once covered the whole inscription with a thin layer of sand. By this latter precaution the King made it almost impossible for an uninformed seeker to discover the indication of the signature, should he, by some unheard-of chance, succeed in pronouncing the correct open sesame; moreover, when the King had entered the cave he had sought out the darkest corner in which to do his business. In leaving, Kourmelen used the four mighty vocables to reopen the gate, which quickly closed again behind him.

  When he returned from this expedition, he declared publicly (while suppressing all the details) that the Load was now recast and by his efforts lay inside Morne-Vert, whose password Jouël had revealed to him in a dream. To maintain the people’s confidence in the future, it was important for them to know that the sacred gold was buried in a safe place, waiting to consecrate future sovereigns, since the idea of its loss would have reduced them to a dangerous condition of despair.

  Kourmelen felt death already upon him and hastened to complete Jouël’s commands. The latter, with much supplementary advice, had bid him have no hesitation in taking the court jester Le Quillec to play the indispensable part of a universal confidant. One-eyed and repulsive, Le Quillec used to exaggerate the grotesqueness of his person, which was the object of general hilarity, by always dressing in pink like the daintiest of coxcombs. Full of spirited repartee, he concealed a good and upright soul beneath his comic mask, and was most sincerely devoted to the King.

  Kourmelen was at first amazed by such a choice, but on reflection admired Jouël’s sagacity. As well as being a most trustworthy agent, Le Quillec would be immune from threats or persuasion designed to make him talk, since, insofar as he was a humble and despised person, no one would consider him worthy of having been chosen as the repository of a great secret.

  The King revealed to the jester, without keeping anything back, the formula for entering the cave, the location of the celebrated ingot and the existence of the conclusive signature. When the right moment came to act, Hello, as the daughter of a sovereign and divine race, would be forewarned by one of those celestial signs denied to ordinary mortals like Le Quillec and would come of her own accord to the one-eyed man to ask him for his secrets. Only on that day, lest some involuntary sign of interest or favor arouse the suspicion of the court, would the strange confidant be designated to the orphan in a manner that had to remain un
known even to Le Quillec, who was doomed for the present to a long period of passive waiting.

  Dismissing the jester, Kourmelen took a puppet clothed in pink from a supply of toys intended for his daughter and removed one of its eyes.

  During her pregnancy, Queen Pleveneuc had with her own hands embroidered a sumptuous blue cushion upon which she had intended her expected child to lie beside her on her couch, until the day of her churching. Kourmelen had always done his best to instil respect for this relic in Hello, whose poor mother, surprised by death, had never been able to use it. He undid a length of the overcasting and slipped the puppet as deep as possible into the feathers; then he instructed the chambermaid to sew up the open part, which he explained was due to an accident.

  With no witnesses present, the King told Hello (directing her to keep their conversation secret) that a present awaited her within the blue cushion, but that she was only to explore its interior at a command from Heaven.

  To the very end Kourmelen had merely followed Jouël’s instructions to the letter, while inwardly praising his acuity and foresight. Hello would not in fact receive the celestial warning until age had armed her against her adversaries, and when she did search the cushion, which in view of its august origin was in no danger of being lost, she would be bound to look for some symbolic meaning in the extraordinary gift to a grown woman of a simple, unsophisticated toy. Eventually the puppet’s pink dress and missing eye would necessarily suggest the jester Le Quillec to her questing mind and she would go to consult him. Moreover, if by their odious insistence the related princes managed to extract the secret of the blue cushion from Hello while she was still a helpless child, they would have no reason to persist as far as the most essential confession that a heavenly sign was awaited, because their good fortune would seem complete, and when an odd, amusing doll emerged from the thick stuffing — without the precious document they were hoping for — seeing the gift was so appropriate to the recipient’s age, this would seem merely to indicate the fond whim of a father who wished to make his present doubly attractive by hiding it in an ingenious and unexpected place. The object, of no palpable significance, would of course be handed over to Hello, who for the time being would confine herself to playing with it. She would realize abruptly later — on the day of the heavenly apparition — that only then had the hour struck for her to examine the cushion. She would notice how the juvenility of the gift jarred with her full-blown youth, and this would at once start a fruitful chain of thought: recollecting the toy’s two striking peculiarities, she would draw the required parallel that would lead her directly to Le Quillec.

  Soon Kourmelen died. His brothers, taking advantage of Hello’s youth to rally their followers, unleashed civil war, each attempting to seize power. But without the sacred gold to reconstitute the Load not one of them managed to have himself recognized as king. In vain were new words tried for opening Morne-Vert’s inflexible gate, now particularly alluring as the monarchical ingot’s resting place. When her uncles beset her with questions, as a likely recipient for some paternal disclosure that might lead them to their goal, Hello was able to keep her secret quite intact.

  From then onward anarchy ravaged the kingdom, since Hello herself could not become queen until she possessed the Load.

  Still tricked out in pink, Le Quillec, provided with a life pension bequeathed on him by Kourmelen, entertained old courtiers in the public walks, countering their gibes with his shrewd repartee.

  Time passed, and Hello, now eighteen, began thinking incessantly of the heavenly token foretold by her father, hoping that she would then be given a means to save the country, which had been utterly ruined by a period of uninterrupted confusion and civil strife.

  One evening in July, as the young princess was returning alone, her arms laden with flowers, to the ancestral castle where she passed each summer, the long clouds lying on the horizon began to blaze with a magnificent red luster from the sun that had just set. Stopping to admire the enchanted evening, Hello noticed that certain slender wisps of cloud were curving strangely under the influence of the breeze, until, in vague letters, they formed the word:

  NOW

  The word soon became ragged in the sky. But Hello, her heart pounding, had recognized by its celestial nature the promised warning. It was now that she must act.

  On returning to the castle, she opened the cushion, which she had never failed to treat with the greatest devotion and solicitude — so well justified by the sanctifying contact of her mother’s hands that it did not seem suspicious. Disappointed at first at finding only the puppet inside, she pondered at length, spurred to deep thought by the toys’ evident inconsistency with her age.

  Suddenly, from the color of its dress and the eye socket’s emptiness, the girl perceived a suggestion of Le Quillec in the enigmatic doll. She summoned the jester to the castle and told him everything.

  Le Quillec in turn transmitted to her the secrets with which he had been entrusted, beseeching her to go at once to Morne-Vert and follow the clouds’ command with prompt obedience — an urgent command intentionally sent at a most propitious moment when none of the would-be usurpers, mutually exhausted just then by their excessive strife, could effectively hinder the progress of a legitimate queen in possession of the ingot fetish, once she aroused general enthusiasm in her wake.

  Hello immediately set off in an enormous litter, escorted by the jester who intentionally disclosed the real object of their journey everywhere, inducing many fervent supporters to join the procession in their impatience to witness the memorable event that was destined to bring the era of ruin and anarchy to an end. So the young princess reached Morne-Vert in the midst of a vast throng — which delighted Le Quillec, for he was anxious to have witnesses at the scene of identification.

  Secretly whispering the proper sentence, the jester opened the gate and walked through the cave to the appointed spot while a part of the crowd followed him, at his request, to verify the absence of any collusion in his slightest gesture. Kourmelen’s marmoreal block was pointed out by Le Quillec, then lifted by many hands and carried outside, and the gate, still wide open, did not close — so very brief was their visit — until the last of the intruders had departed.

  The jester removed the concealing layer of sand to let everyone see the late king’s signature on the upper surface of the block beside the dynastic ingot, which it thus authenticated.

  Hello went away to Gloannic, carrying off the green block placed intact beside her in a corner of her litter. Amidst wild ovations caused by the expedition’s success, her popular following swelled at each halt. To stop her advance the pretenders harangued their troops in vain, for when the remarkable discovery became known all came of their own accord to range themselves under the happy princess’s banner, bewitched by the ingot’s magical crown.

  Borne in triumph to her palace, Hello had the Load restored from the original gold, and one day, to wild cries of “Long live the Queen!,” she publicly placed it upon her head. When evening came, Jouël’s star was seen to be shining even more brightly than usual.

  The sovereign next desired to restore her country’s fortunes with the millions in the cave, and their exploitation was promptly organized. To enable workmen with picks to come and go, the formula for the gate was divulged — and soon, thanks to the mass of gold extracted from the green marble’s inner depths, the kingdom prospered. Happy at last and beloved by her people, Hello showered favors on Le Quillec.

  In a burst of joyous exultation, a statue was commissioned, rep­resenting the young queen with the crown on her head — which was placed in the depth of a certain spacious niche, like the image of a saint. Beneath it three colored reliefs commemorated the sublime adventure.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Now examination proved that it was this very niche that had been unearthed by the most recent excavations carried out by the society of which Canterel was a shareholder. A simp
le enquiry showed that, at the time of the discovery, the missing statue, broken into a thousand pieces, was lying obscured and sheltered by the niche, which had been overturned by the cataclysm that had buried it long ago.

  The professor coveted this venerable object, whose very existence endowed the legend with a curious element of truth. By firmly out-bidding everyone at the auction he was fortunate enough to purchase it. Setting it in his park, he left the stone shelter empty for six years, finding no statue whose age and value made it worthy of such a precious lodging — lately merited by the ancient and glorious Federal, which found a shelter there from wind and rain.

  After casting a last look at the double curiosity, we started after Canterel, who was already ahead of us on the rising path.

  2

  The vegetation became sparser as we ascended and soon the ground was bare on every side. At the top we came in sight of a broad promenade which was completely bare and very smooth.

  We advanced a few paces toward a spot where a sort of paving implement stood, similar in construction to the punners — or paving beetles — used for leveling roads. Though made entirely of metal, the paving beetle seemed light and was suspended from a small, pale yellow aerostat, the lower part of which flared out into a circular mouth, calling to mind the silhouette of a hot air balloon.

  The ground beneath it was decorated in the strangest fashion. Over quite an extensive area human teeth were placed at intervals in all directions, displaying a great variety of shapes and colors. Some were dazzling white, contrasting with incisors of smokers which provided the complete range of brown and chestnut. All tints of yellow found their place in the weird collection, from the palest straw colors to the darkest tawny shades. Blue teeth, both light and dark, contributed to this riot of colors, completed by a mass of black teeth and by the pale or gaudy reds of many a bloodstained root. They varied infinitely in shape and size — huge molars and monstrous canines jostled almost imperceptible milk teeth. A glint of metal blossomed here and there, derived from fillings or gold caps.