The Book of the Beast Read Online Free Page B

had only glimpsed her, for that dream, he saw now, was only a dream. Perhaps the reality was old, toothless and ugly. Be careful. He would spy, and woo her slowly, to see if she was worth the effort.
    With an abrupt easing of the heart, Raoulin ran up the stair, along the corridor, and off through the house, which he left inside another half-hour. He went to join the throng of the City, the religious processions, the hucksters, players, taverns.
    It was as if he had been reprieved from a severe sentence, but this did not occur to him.
    There was a summer storm, the sky the colour of cinders, and the rain falling in remote leaden drops. In the tavern called the Surprise , Joseph tapped Raoulin’s shoulder, and Raoulin, turning with some pleasure to pick up their friendship, was only surprised when Joseph said, straight out like a cough or swear word: “That girl’s dead.”
    The sentence shocked in several ways. Raoulin could not sort them.
    “Eh? Which girl?” he blurted.
    “The little blonde harlot. Shall I say how?” Joseph’s spectacles enlarged his eyes like two monstrous tears.
    “How then?”
    Joseph sighed. “She filled a bladder with some corrosive tincture and squirted it up inside herself.”
    There was a nothingness then, rather than a silence, between them, while the normal racket of the Surprise went on all about. At last Raoulin murmured, “How did she come by such a thing?”
    “Oh, there is a physician for the girls. He practises with the alchemical arts and keeps a cupboard of ointments and mixtures. She visited him on a pretext, and stole the essence. It may be she didn’t understand its strength… They heard her cries but couldn’t save her. A ghastly death.”
    Raoulin had turned deathly sick, as though he himself had been poisoned. His genitals burned. The room trembled as is under water. “And do you blame me for this?”
    “No! Blame you? No. And yet.”
    To his absolute confusion, Raoulin felt the pressure of grief mounting up his senses into his eyes like a wave. He rose suddenly, pushing away from the bench, thrusting by Joseph as if he hated him—he did hate him and was sure the sentiment was shared—and got out into the alley by the wine-shop. Here, leaning on the masonry, he vomited his drink. Good. Good . He should suffer some penance. Where to run? Into a church? Oh God - what had she reckoned, that stupid little trull, with her sweet face and silly mouth, and eyes wise to everything except what she would work on herself.
    He had not even now been able to vomit away the question— Why ? or the cause— himself .
    It was a truth, he had been spared much distress. He was young, and lucky. Death and illness, misery and want, the ancient degree of panic itself, were matters apart from Raoulin. He had read of states and afflictions, in books. But until this hour the wing of night had not brushed him. Scratched by its metallic feathers, he quailed.
    The lead sky leaned on Paradys. Her heights pressed up against it in luminescent stabs. Still the whole impact of the thunder and the rain was not released.
    He beheld above him the cliffs of the Temple-Church. He had gone over much ground, had crossed the river, without seeing. A cruel olivine glare glittered on the holy windows. The processions were done.
    Christ had gone in again and left the world to sin and savagery, and to all the inexplicable shades.
    Raoulin stood a minute on that runnel of path nick-named, by some, “Satan’s Way”, and did not know it.
    Then continued his dreary ascent towards the house called d’Uscaret.
    The storm broke loose on the City at midnight, and roused several thousand sleepers, of whom Raoulin was only one.
    His last thoughts had been of a childish running away. He had wanted to leave it all, the City, the university, the fever of learning, to escape back into the dull safe farm where nothing bad had ever happened to him, or been told to him in any way he had to credit.
    But waking at the blast