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The Alchemist by H.P. Lovecraft
The Alchemist
by H.P. Lovecraft
1908
High up, crowning the grassy summit of a swelling mount whose sides are wooded
near the base with the gnarled trees of the primeval forest stands the old
chateau of my ancestors. For centuries its lofty battlements have frowned down
upon the wild and rugged countryside about, serving as a home and stronghold for
the proud house whose honored line is older even than the moss-grown castle
walls. These ancient turrets, stained by the storms of generations and crumbling
under the slow yet mighty pressure of time, formed in the ages of feudalism one
of the most dreaded and formidable fortresses in all France. From its
machicolated parapets and mounted battlements Barons, Counts, and even Kings had
been defied, yet never had its spacious halls resounded to the footsteps of the
invader.
But since those glorious years, all is changed. A poverty but little above the
level of dire want, together with a pride of name that forbids its alleviation
by the pursuits of commercial life, have prevented the scions of our line from
maintaining their estates in pristine splendour; and the falling stones of the
walls, the overgrown vegetation in the parks, the dry and dusty moat, the
ill-paved courtyards, and toppling towers without, as well as the sagging
floors, the worm-eaten wainscots, and the faded tapestries within, all tell a
gloomy tale of fallen grandeur. As the ages passed, first one, then another of
the four great turrets were left to ruin, until at last but a single tower
housed the sadly reduced descendants of the once mighty lords of the estate.
It was in one of the vast and gloomy chambers of this remaining tower that I,
Antoine, last of the unhappy and accursed Counts de C-, first saw the light of
day, ninety long years ago. Within these walls and amongst the dark and shadowy
forests, the wild ravines and grottos of the hillside below, were spent the
first years of my troubled life. My parents I never knew. My father had been
killed at the age of thirty-two, a month before I was born, by the fall of a
stone somehow dislodged from one of the deserted parapets of the castle. And my
mother having died at my birth, my care and education devolved solely upon one
remaining servitor, an old and trusted man of considerable intelligence, whose
name I remember as Pierre. I was an only child and the lack of companionship
which this fact entailed upon me was augmented by the strange care exercised by
my aged guardian, in excluding me from the society of the peasant children whose
abodes were scattered here and there upon the plains that surround the base of
the hill. At that time, Pierre said that this restriction was imposed upon me
because my noble birth placed me above association with such plebeian company.
Now I know tht its real object was to keep from my ears the idle tales of the
dread curse upon our line that were nightly told and magnified by the simple
tenantry as they conversed in hushed accents in the glow of their cottage
hearths.
Thus isolated, and thrown upon my own resources, I spent the hours of my
childhood in poring over the ancient tomes that filled the shadow-haunted
library of the chateau, and in roaming without aim or purpose through the
perpetual dust of the spectral wood that clothes the side of the hill near its
foot. It was perhaps an effect of such surroundings that my mind early acquired
a shade of melancholy. Those studies and pursuits which partake of the dark and
occult in nature most strongly claimed my attention.
Of my own race I was permitted to learn singularly little, yet what small
knowledge of it I was able to gain seemed to depress me much. Perhaps it was at
first only the manifest reluctance of my old preceptor to discuss with me my
paternal ancestry that gave rise to the terror which I ever felt at the mention
of my great house, yet as I grew out of childhood, I was able. to piece together
disconnected fragments of discourse, let slip from the unwilling tongue which
had begun to falter in approaching senility, that had a sort of relation to a
certain circumstance which I had always deemed strange, but which now became
dimly terrible. The circumstance to which I allude is the early age at which all
the Counts of my line had met their end. Whilst I had hitherto considered this
but a natural attribute of a family of short-lived men, I afterward pondered
long upon these premature deaths, and began to connect them with the wanderings
of the old man, who often spoke of a curse which for centuries had prevented the
lives of the holders of my title from much exceeding the span of thirty-two
years. Upon my twenty-first birthday, the aged Pierre gave to me a family
document which he said had for many generations been handed down from father to
son, and continued by each possessor. Its contents were of the most startling
nature, and its perusal confirmed the gravest of my apprehensions. At this time,
my belief in the supernatural was firm and deep-seated, else I should have
dismissed with scorn the incredible narrative unfolded before my eyes.
The paper carried me back to the days of the thirteenth century, when the old
castle in which I sat had been a feared and impregnable fortress. It told of a
certain ancient man who had once dwelled on our estates, a person of no small
accomplishments, though little above the rank of peasant, by name, Michel,
usually designated by the surname of Mauvais, the Evil, on account of his
sinister reputation. He had studied beyond the custom of his kind, seeking such
things as the Philosopher's Stone or the Elixir of Eternal Life, and was reputed
wise in the terrible secrets of Black Magic and Alchemy. Michel Mauvais had one
son, named Charles, a youth as proficient as himself in the hidden arts, who had
therefore been called Le Sorcier, or the Wizard. This pair, shunned by all
honest folk, were suspected of the most hideous practices. Old Michel was said
to have burnt his wife alive as a sacrifice to the Devil, and the unaccountable
disappearance of many small peasant children was laid at the dreaded door of
these two. Yet through the dark natures of the father and son ran one redeeming
ray of humanity; the evil old man loved his offspring with fierce intensity,
whilst the youth had for his parent a more than filial affection.
One night the castle on the hill was thrown into the wildest confusion by the
vanishment of young Godfrey, son to Henri, the Count. A searching party, headed
by the frantic father, invaded the cottage of the sorcerers and there came upon
old Michel Mauvais, busy over a huge and violently boiling cauldron. Without
certain cause, in the ungoverned madness of fury and despair, the Count laid
hands on the aged wizard, and ere he released his murderous hold, his victim was
no more. Meanwhile, joyful servants were proclaiming the finding of young
Godfrey in a distant and unused chamber of the great edifice, telling too late
that poor Michel had been killed in vain. As the Count and his associates turned
away from the lowly abode of the alchemist, the form of Charles Le Sorcier
appeared through the trees. The excited chatter of the menials standing about
told him what had occurred, yet he seemed at first unmoved at his father's fate.
Then, slowly advancing to meet the Count, he pronounced in dull yet terrible
accents the curse that ever afterward haunted the house of C-.
`May ne'er a noble of they murd'rous line
Survive to reach a greater age than thine!'
spake he, when, suddenly leaping backwards into the black woods, he drew from
his tunic a phial of colourless liquid which he threw into the face of his
father's slayer as he disappeared behind the inky curtain of the night. The
Count died without utterance, and was buried the next day, but little more than
two and thirty years from the hour of his birth. No trace of the assassin could
be found, though relentless bands of peasants scoured the neighboring woods and
the meadowland around the hill.
=========================
The Alchemist by H.P. Lovecraft
The Alchemist
by H.P. Lovecraft
1908
High up, crowning the grassy summit of a swelling mount whose sides are wooded
near the base with the gnarled trees of the primeval forest stands the old
chateau of my ancestors. For centuries its lofty battlements have frowned down
upon the wild and rugged countryside about, serving as a home and stronghold for
the proud house whose honored line is older even than the moss-grown castle
walls. These ancient turrets, stained by the storms of generations and crumbling
under the slow yet mighty pressure of time, formed in the ages of feudalism one
of the most dreaded and formidable fortresses in all France. From its
machicolated parapets and mounted battlements Barons, Counts, and even Kings had
been defied, yet never had its spacious halls resounded to the footsteps of the
invader.
But since those glorious years, all is changed. A poverty but little above the
level of dire want, together with a pride of name that forbids its alleviation
by the pursuits of commercial life, have prevented the scions of our line from
maintaining their estates in pristine splendour; and the falling stones of the
walls, the overgrown vegetation in the parks, the dry and dusty moat, the
ill-paved courtyards, and toppling towers without, as well as the sagging
floors, the worm-eaten wainscots, and the faded tapestries within, all tell a
gloomy tale of fallen grandeur. As the ages passed, first one, then another of
the four great turrets were left to ruin, until at last but a single tower
housed the sadly reduced descendants of the once mighty lords of the estate.
It was in one of the vast and gloomy chambers of this remaining tower that I,
Antoine, last of the unhappy and accursed Counts de C-, first saw the light of
day, ninety long years ago. Within these walls and amongst the dark and shadowy
forests, the wild ravines and grottos of the hillside below, were spent the
first years of my troubled life. My parents I never knew. My father had been
killed at the age of thirty-two, a month before I was born, by the fall of a
stone somehow dislodged from one of the deserted parapets of the castle. And my
mother having died at my birth, my care and education devolved solely upon one
remaining servitor, an old and trusted man of considerable intelligence, whose
name I remember as Pierre. I was an only child and the lack of companionship
which this fact entailed upon me was augmented by the strange care exercised by
my aged guardian, in excluding me from the society of the peasant children whose
abodes were scattered here and there upon the plains that surround the base of
the hill. At that time, Pierre said that this restriction was imposed upon me
because my noble birth placed me above association with such plebeian company.
Now I know tht its real object was to keep from my ears the idle tales of the
dread curse upon our line that were nightly told and magnified by the simple
tenantry as they conversed in hushed accents in the glow of their cottage
hearths.
Thus isolated, and thrown upon my own resources, I spent the hours of my
childhood in poring over the ancient tomes that filled the shadow-haunted
library of the chateau, and in roaming without aim or purpose through the
perpetual dust of the spectral wood that clothes the side of the hill near its
foot. It was perhaps an effect of such surroundings that my mind early acquired
a shade of melancholy. Those studies and pursuits which partake of the dark and
occult in nature most strongly claimed my attention.
Of my own race I was permitted to learn singularly little, yet what small
knowledge of it I was able to gain seemed to depress me much. Perhaps it was at
first only the manifest reluctance of my old preceptor to discuss with me my
paternal ancestry that gave rise to the terror which I ever felt at the mention
of my great house, yet as I grew out of childhood, I was able. to piece together
disconnected fragments of discourse, let slip from the unwilling tongue which
had begun to falter in approaching senility, that had a sort of relation to a
certain circumstance which I had always deemed strange, but which now became
dimly terrible. The circumstance to which I allude is the early age at which all
the Counts of my line had met their end. Whilst I had hitherto considered this
but a natural attribute of a family of short-lived men, I afterward pondered
long upon these premature deaths, and began to connect them with the wanderings
of the old man, who often spoke of a curse which for centuries had prevented the
lives of the holders of my title from much exceeding the span of thirty-two
years. Upon my twenty-first birthday, the aged Pierre gave to me a family
document which he said had for many generations been handed down from father to
son, and continued by each possessor. Its contents were of the most startling
nature, and its perusal confirmed the gravest of my apprehensions. At this time,
my belief in the supernatural was firm and deep-seated, else I should have
dismissed with scorn the incredible narrative unfolded before my eyes.
The paper carried me back to the days of the thirteenth century, when the old
castle in which I sat had been a feared and impregnable fortress. It told of a
certain ancient man who had once dwelled on our estates, a person of no small
accomplishments, though little above the rank of peasant, by name, Michel,
usually designated by the surname of Mauvais, the Evil, on account of his
sinister reputation. He had studied beyond the custom of his kind, seeking such
things as the Philosopher's Stone or the Elixir of Eternal Life, and was reputed
wise in the terrible secrets of Black Magic and Alchemy. Michel Mauvais had one
son, named Charles, a youth as proficient as himself in the hidden arts, who had
therefore been called Le Sorcier, or the Wizard. This pair, shunned by all
honest folk, were suspected of the most hideous practices. Old Michel was said
to have burnt his wife alive as a sacrifice to the Devil, and the unaccountable
disappearance of many small peasant children was laid at the dreaded door of
these two. Yet through the dark natures of the father and son ran one redeeming
ray of humanity; the evil old man loved his offspring with fierce intensity,
whilst the youth had for his parent a more than filial affection.
One night the castle on the hill was thrown into the wildest confusion by the
vanishment of young Godfrey, son to Henri, the Count. A searching party, headed
by the frantic father, invaded the cottage of the sorcerers and there came upon
old Michel Mauvais, busy over a huge and violently boiling cauldron. Without
certain cause, in the ungoverned madness of fury and despair, the Count laid
hands on the aged wizard, and ere he released his murderous hold, his victim was
no more. Meanwhile, joyful servants were proclaiming the finding of young
Godfrey in a distant and unused chamber of the great edifice, telling too late
that poor Michel had been killed in vain. As the Count and his associates turned
away from the lowly abode of the alchemist, the form of Charles Le Sorcier
appeared through the trees. The excited chatter of the menials standing about
told him what had occurred, yet he seemed at first unmoved at his father's fate.
Then, slowly advancing to meet the Count, he pronounced in dull yet terrible
accents the curse that ever afterward haunted the house of C-.
`May ne'er a noble of they murd'rous line
Survive to reach a greater age than thine!'
spake he, when, suddenly leaping backwards into the black woods, he drew from
his tunic a phial of colourless liquid which he threw into the face of his
father's slayer as he disappeared behind the inky curtain of the night. The
Count died without utterance, and was buried the next day, but little more than
two and thirty years from the hour of his birth. No trace of the assassin could
be found, though relentless bands of peasants scoured the neighboring woods and
the meadowland around the hill.
