The Devil in Love Page 2

  The outsider’s view of English manners and the clichés of English popular fiction which is presented in Le Lord impromptu is understandably jaundiced, and it is not entirely suprising that in spite of its setting and subject- matter the novel was not translated into English until 1927. Few English commentators have had a kind word to say about the work, but it certainly demonstrates that Cazotte was not a one-book writer and although the story is utterly incredible it is the most coherently-plotted of all his works.

  Le Diable amoureux is by far the most original of Cazotte’s works, taking fantastic fiction into fields which were then entirely fresh. The idea of erotic temptation was by no means new, ( the danger posed by demonic succubi having been included in the preaching of churchmen for several centuries,) but the idea that myth arose from and remained connected with erotic dreams was.

  Although there is a point in Le Diable amoureux when Alvaro wonders whether his entire adventure has been delusory there cannot possibly be any suggestion that it could all have been the dream of a single night.

  Although many of Alvaro’s adventures are written off as purely subjective experiences there is no doubt that Biondetta is real and that her attendance upon the hero extends over a long period.

  Cazotte was later to say that the work as originally envisaged had two parts, the first describing Alvaro’s seduction and the second following his subsequent career as the devil’s minion. He explained the non-publication of the second part (which, if it ever existed, has been lost) by saying that it was too dark to be welcomed by an audience in search of amusement and distraction. The removal of the second part was initially compounded by a softening of the first part; in the version presented in the first edition Biondetta does not complete her seduction but gives away her true nature by her calmness in the face of the storm, and is commanded to vanish – which she does, after briefly showing her true form for a second time. This abrupt conclusion proved unsatisfactory, however, and so Cazotte added (or perhaps restored) the episode of the farmhouse, in which Alvaro finally yields to temptation.

  The rewritten ending certainly provides a more interesting climax, but it also has the effect of significantly compromising the moralizing of the story. Alvaro’s mother, whose memory and image have functioned throughout the plot as a metaphorical guardian angel protecting Alvaro against Biondetta’s wiles is again invoked as a saviour, but it is not at all clear that Alvaro’s salvation from the consequences of his weakness is appropriate.

  Had Cazotte stuck to his original plan, and let Alvaro become a living servant of the devil, his story would appear very different to the modern reader; it would be an important prototype of Gothic fantasy. Indeed, insofar as Le Diable amoureux was influential upon the work of other writers it seems to have nourished Gothic writers far more than writers in a lighter vein. Critics are uncertain as to whether it should be counted among the influences of Matthew Gregory Lewis’s gaudy tale of horror The Monk (1796), which features erotic temptation in a more lurid vein, but it seems not unlikely, given the fact that Lewis was sufficiently familiar with French work of the period to write his own conclusion to Hamilton’s Four Facardins for an English edition. There is no doubt, though, that Cazotte was read and much admired by the most important writers of terror tales, E. T. A. Hoffman and Ludwig Tieck. In the form in which Le Diable amoureux has actually been handed down, however, it is more closely related to a kind of fantasy which was to become much more openly sceptical of received ideas of good and evil.

  In the truncated tale with the revised ending Biondetta does the hero no lasting harm at all, and his romantic adventure with her might thus be counted (although this was not the author’s intention) entirely to his credit. For this reason, Le Diable amoureux stands at the head of a series of daringly sceptical works which gradually muster more and more sympathy for the supposed agents of evil; it has clear thematic links with Théophile Gautier’s ‘La morte amoureuse’ (1836; tr. as ‘The Dead Leman’ and ‘Clarimonde’), whose title may well carry a deliberate echo, and with such stories by Anatole France as ‘Leslie Wood’ (1892) and La révolte des anges (1914; tr. as Revolt of the Angels.) In these stories the pleasure-denying morality of the church is severely questioned, and ultimately condemned, and though that was not Cazotte’s aim it is easy enough to believe that – like Milton, according to Blake – he was ‘of the devil’s party without knowing it’. The modern reader who follows Alvaro’s affair with the ever obliging Biondetta can hardly help but find her charming even while refusing to be duped by the false explanation of her nature which she gives.

  Ironically, if the imagery of Cazotte’s tale lent inspiration to those who wanted to argue that the devil was not as black as the church painted him, it also offered some inspiration for those who wanted to believe that all seductive women had a little of the devil in them. Thus Baudelaire sometimes invoked Cazotte while lamenting his unhappy relationships with the opposite sex, and there is an echo of Le Diable amoureux in Barbey d’ Aurevilly’s collection Les Diaboliques (1874; tr. as Weird Women and The She – Devils.)

  It has to be admitted that the importance of Cazotte’s tale is largely historical; so many tales of diabolical bargain have been published since 1772 that it cannot help but seem pale and hesitant by comparison with the best of them. But it remains very readable, and holds its essential fascination for anyone who can read it with an awareness of its context. It is astonishing that it has been out of print in the English language for more than half a century (and had been out of print before that for nearly a hundred years).

  It would be premature to conclude this introduction without mentioning an episode which has probably contributed more to Cazotte’s posthumous celebrity than anything which he actually did or wrote, and that is the prophecy which he is said to have issued early in 1788. This became famous enough to seem appropriate as the very first matter to come under consideration the last time anyone had the privilege of introducing one of Cazotte’s books to an English audience (Storm Jameson, in the 1927 edition of A Thousand and One Follies and His Most Unlooked-For Lordship.)

  According to the story, Cazotte, whose reputation as a Martinist mystic was by then secure, told a sceptical gathering of the cream of the French intelligentsia – including the most celebrated of the philosophers of progress, the Marquis de Condorcet – exactly what fates would befall them in the coming years. Inevitably, so the story goes, these great men of the Age of Reason declined to believe that so many of them would die on the scaffold or in prison; nor would they credit Cazotte’s further insistence that the king and queen would be included among the victims of the coming Terror.

  This prophecy has one point in common with all great prophecies – which is to say that there is no record of it whatsoever in advance of the events which it supposedly foretold. Jean-Francois de La Harpe, who claimed to have been present, left a very elaborate account of it in his papers, but this was not published until 1806, by which time La Harpe was dead and could not be questioned about it. One suspects, of course, that the gifts of hindsight might conceivably have been brought to the assistance of La Harpe’s memory when he wrote his account, and there is written evidence to supplement the conviction born of common sense, that La Harpe intended his account as an allegory rather than a memoir (it was probably intended to dramatize the inconceivability, in 1788, of his post-revolution conversion from free thought to Catholicism). Needless to say, though, the prophecy was very widely quoted, and has frequently been advanced as good evidence of the indubitable superhuman powers of the illuminati and all who follow in their footsteps.

  What the story of the supposed prophecy actually tells us, of course, is that the love-affair which the nobility of eighteenth century France had with the substance of fantasy was not quite the superficial dalliance that it seemed. The comedy and the burlesque, as always, masked real anxieties and touched upon deep – seated doubts. Even the greatest figures of the Enlightenment succumbed to the temptation to involve themsel
ves with such writings – not only Diderot but also Voltaire (with whom Cazotte was acquainted and of whom he disapproved) – and proved by their example that even the most frothy literary confections could be fully-loaded with caustic sarcasm.

  Jacques Cazotte was not in the same intellectual league as Diderot and Voltaire, and this shows in the comparison of their various fantastic fictions as well as in the fact that he eventually plumped for Mysticism instead of Reason, but he was a player of the same great game, which should by no means be written off as a trivial and insignificant amusement of no relevance to more serious affairs. As J. R. R. Tolkien has reminded us, he whose imagination is too closely bound by a straitjacket of actuality cannot properly see where the bounds of Reason lie, and what the implications of Reason truly are. Unless we can understand nonsense we cannot clearly see sense; that is why works like Le Diable amoureux are important, not only in the history of literature, but in the furnishing of intelligent minds.

  At the age of twenty-five I was a captain in the king’s guard at Naples; we kept our own company much of the time, and lived after the manner of young men, that is, gaming and womanising, as long as our purses could bear it; and we would philosophize in our quarters when we no longer had any other resources.

  One evening, after we had exhausted ourselves through all manner of argument around a very small bottle of Cyprus wine and a few dried chestnuts, conversation turned to the Cabbala and cabbalists.

  One of our number claimed that it was a true science, whose workings were certainties; four of the youngest amongst us objected that it was a mass of absurdities, a source of knavery, fit to dupe the credulous and to amuse children.

  The oldest amongst us, Flemish by origin, was smoking his pipe with an absent air and saying nothing. I was struck by his cool, withdrawn demeanour, in such contrast with the prevailing deafening racket, and this prevented me from taking part in a conversation that was too ill- ordered to hold any interest for me.

  We were in the pipe-smoker’s room; the hour was becoming late; the crowd broke up and we remained alone, the older man and me.

  He continued to smoke unperturbed; I continued sitting there, my elbows on the table, without saying a word. At last my man broke the silence.

  “Young man,” he said, “you have just been listening to a lot of sound and fury; why did you retire from the mêlèe?’

  “Because,” I replied, I prefer to keep silent rather than to approve or censure things I know nothing of. I do not even know what the word Cabbala means.”

  “It has several meanings,” he told me; “but we are not concerned with them, we are concerned with the thing itself. Do you believe in the possible existence of a science which teaches the transformation of metals and the bringing of spirits under our control?”

  “I know nothing of spirits, beginning with my own, except that I am sure of its existence. As for metals, I know the value of a carlino at gaming, at the inn and elsewhere, but I cannot state or deny anything as to the essence of either spirit or metal, or as to the modifications and processes of which they are susceptible.”

  “My young comrade, I like your ignorance; it is as good as others’ learning; at least you are not misguided, and if you are not educated, you are capable of becoming so. I like your disposition, the frankness of your character, your uprightness of spirit; I know a little more than the common ruck of mortals; swear the greatest discretion on your word of honour, promise me to conduct yourself with prudence, and you shall be my pupil.”

  “My dear Soberano, your invitation is most acceptable. Curiosity is my besetting passion. I may admit to you that by nature I have little eagerness for our ordinary body of knowledge; it has always seemed to me too limited, and I had already divined this exalted sphere to which you would help me to ascend. Tell me, what is the first key to the science of which you speak? Judging by what our comrades were saying in their debate, it is the spirits themselves who teach us; can one ally oneself with them?”

  “You have said the word, Alvaro; one would learn nothing on one’s own; and as to the feasibility of our liaisons, I shall give you incontrovertible proof of it.”

  As he was finishing these words, he was also finishing his pipe; he knocked three times to empty out the little remaining ash, put it down near me on the table. He raised his voice: “Calderon,” said he, “come and get my pipe, light it and bring it back to me.” He had hardly formulated his order than I saw the pipe disappear; and, before I could consider the means, or enquire as to the nature of the mysterious Calderon who was the recipient of his command, the lit pipe was back again, and my interlocutor had resumed his occupation.

  He continued thus for some time, less to savour the tobacco than to bask in the surprise he had engendered; then, rising, he said: “I am on duty at dawn, I must get some sleep. You should go back to bed too; be prudent; we shall see each other again.”

  I withdrew full of curiosity and athirst for new ideas, promising myself my fill of them soon with the help of Soberano. I saw him the next day and during those that followed; this passion filled me entirely; I became his shadow.

  I asked him a thousand questions; he avoided some and answered others, in the tone of an oracle. Finally, I pressed him as to the religion of his fellows. “It is natural religion,” he replied. We entered into a few details; all this tallied with my intentions rather than my principles; but I wanted to attain my goal and could not vex him.

  “You give the spirits orders,” I said to him; “I want to be in contact with them, as you are. That is my dearest wish.”

  “You are impatient, comrade, you have not been through your period of trial; you have fulfilled none of the conditions through which one may approach this sublime category with impunity…”

  “Will it take long?”

  “Two years, perhaps…”

  “Then I shall abandon the whole thing,” I cried; “I would die of impatience in the meanwhile. You are cruel, Soberano. You cannot imagine the intensity of the desire you have awakened in me; it is all-consuming…”

  “Young man, I credited you with more prudence; you make me tremble for yourself and me. What! Would you venture to call up spirits without any of the necessary preparation?”

  “Well? What could happen to me?”

  “I am not saying that anything harmful would necessarily befall you; if they have power over us, it is given to them by our own weakness, our faintheartedness. Essentially, we are born to command them…”

  “Oh, I shall surely command!”

  “Yes, you are mettlesome indeed; but what if you lose your head, if they suddenly alarm you?”

  “If it is simply a matter of not fearing them, I shall defy them to alarm me.”

  “What! If you saw the Devil himself?”

  “I’d pull his devilish ears for him!”

  “Bravo. If you are so sure of yourself, you can take the plunge and I promise you my assistance. Next Friday, I invite you to dine with two of our initiates, and we shall embark upon our adventure.”

  It was only Tuesday; no gallant assignation had ever been awaited with such eagerness. At last the moment arrived; I met two unprepossessing men in Soberano’s rooms and we dined. The conversation touched upon neutral matters.

  After dinner, a walk in the direction of Portici was suggested. Upon our arrival, the remains of those most august monuments, now crumbling, shattered, scattered, bramble-ridden, aroused unaccustomed ideas in me. “Here,” said I , “we see the power of time over the pride and industry of men.” We proceeded through the ruins and at last, more or less groping our way through the debris, we arrived at a place whose darkness was untouched by any external light.

  My comrade was leading me by the arm; he stopped walking, and I stood still. Then one of the company lit a candle. The place was illuminated, albeit feebly, and I saw that we were under a fairly well-preserved vault, some twenty feet high, and with four exits.

  Utter silence was observed. Using his cane, my comrade dre
w a circle around him in the light sand that covered the ground, and emerged from it after tracing several characters. “Enter this pentacle, amigo,” said he, “and leave it only on good authority…”

  “Explain yourself more clearly: on what authority should I leave it?”

  “You may leave it when you are in a position of command; but until that time, should fear cause you to take a false step, you would be running the gravest risk.”

  Then he gave me a short, insistent formula for the calling up of spirits, mingled with a few words I shall never forget.

  “Pronounce the spell firmly,” he told me, “and then call Beelzebub clearly three times, and above all do not forget what you promised to do.”

  I remembered that I had boasted that I would pull the devil’s ears. “I shall keep my word,” I told him, not wishing to appear ignominious by failing to take up the challenge.

  “We wish you much success,” he said; “when you have finished, kindly let us know. You are standing directly opposite the door through which you must leave in order to rejoin our company.” They withdrew.

  Never had braggart landed himself in tighter corner. I was on the point of calling them back; but it would have been too demeaning, as well as tantamount to abandoning all my hopes. I stood firm, and pondered for a moment. They are trying to frighten me, I thought; they want to see if I am a coward. Those who are testing me are but two steps away and, after I have spoken the spell, I must be prepared for them to make some attempt to scare me. I must stand fast; I must have the last laugh.

  This deliberation was quite short, although somewhat disturbed by the hooting of the owls nesting in the surrounding trees, and indeed within my cave itself.

  Slightly reassured by my reflections, I crouched down and dug in my heels; I pronounced the formula in a clear, unwavering voice; and, rising to a crescendo, three times, in staccato fashion, I called Beelzebub.