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THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/autdiabolusautniOOfiel AUT DIABOLUS AUT NIHIL AND OTHER TALES ABOLUS NIHIL AND OTHER TALES By X. L. author of "little hand and muckle gold" SECOND EDITION METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET, W.C. LONDON WALTER BESANT, Esq. AS A SLIGHT TRIBUTE OF ADMIRAITON TO THE AUTHOR AND OF ESTEEM TO THE FRIEND 1C6SC81 PREFACE On the appearance in Blackwood's Magazine of " Aut Diabolus aut Nihil," one of the leading literary journals of this country, while speaking of the story in most undeservedly flattering terms, intimated that considerable speculation was rife as to the identity of the characters in this sketch. Of course, had the matter ended there it would have been of not the slightest importance, but names having been mentioned, not only in newspapers, but in society, and the names of intimate friends of mine, I venture to take advantage of the opportunity afforded me by the republication of this story, to give an emphatic and unqualified denial to the rumour that the characters in this little drama are portraits—at least, so far as those gentlemen are concerned who are my personal friends. The Abbe Hurel, " the eloquent preacher of viii PREFACE the Madeleine," one of the most deh'ghtful men living, and one who has been a very dear and intimate friend of mine for the past seven- teen years, is certainly not the original of the abbe of my story ; nor is my friend the Due dc Montmorency the original of the Due de Frontignan, to whom, indeed, he bears not the slightest resemblance. Paul Demidoff I knew but slightly, and only towards the close of his life. He was a very trivial voluptuary and flippant cynic—a man quite content with being merely an Apollo and a millionaire. He is obviously, therefore, not the original of Prince Pomerant- seff. The facts connected with this little story are simple enough. Some years ago that most perfect type of French chivalry, General de Charette, the Christian knight sans peur et sans rcproc/ie, told me that a curd (whether in Paris or not I don't remember, nor can I recall whether he said he knew him personally) had, after preaching on the personality of the devil, been invited by someone to attend a sdance and see his Satanic Majesty, and had accepted the invitation and seen the Prince of Evil. That was all. It was a very meagre episode as narrated ty the great Pontifical PREFACE ix Zouave, and the devil seen by his cure was a very ordinary and uninteresting devil, in nowise resembling the Prince of Evil whom Pomerant- seff and his friends show to the Abbe Girod. I may say in conclusion, that whereas of course all the characters in this little story are sketched from life in a broad and general way, the only real portrait which it contains is that of his Satanic Majesty himself My description of the Prince of Evil is—as indeed many of my readers will recognise at once —a photograph taken from life. I have to thank the proprietors of Blackwood's Magazine, Macmillath Magazine, Pall Mall Magazine, and Temple Bar, for having kindly permitted me to republish these tales. X. L. CONTENTS PAGF, AUT DIACOLUS AUT NIHIL I A WALTZ OF CHOPIN 63 A KISS OF JUDAS 145 THE STRANGE STORY OF A DIAMOND . 227 THE LUCK OF THE DEVIL 265 AUT DIABOLUS AUT NIHIL THE TRUE STORY OF A HALLUCINATION " -prpos ruv fiZv, hu-rvioy iffriaifiiSa,;"—ArISTOPHANIS Sif^xj;. "Again, I believe that all that use sorceries, incantations, and spells, are not witches, or, as we term them, magicians ; I conceive there is a traditional magic, not learned immediately from the devil, but at second-hand from his scholars, who, having once the secret betrayed, are able and do empirically practise without his advice ; they proceeding upon the principles of nature, where actives aptly conjoined to disposed passives will, under any master, produce their effects."—SiR Thomas Browne : Rel. Med. CHAPTER I To be ordained has been looked upon for many- years in this country as the best, speediest, and safest way of " making gentlemen " of such bipeds as stand in sore need of the transfonnation. As we are all by baptism spiritually cleansed of all blemish, so is the son of the tra,desman, 2 AUT DIABOLUS AUT NIHIL doctor, solicitor, or what not, socially regenerated by taking holy orders. Now this bewildering wholesale social accepta- tion of theninety-and-nine who positively decline to stray, finding it a much more profitable policy to stay quietly in the fold nibbling the fodder, is peculiar to Protestai'.t communities, and we do not find the same social indulgence extended to spiritual advisers in Roman Catholic countries. In climes still fascinated by the scintillations proceeding from the Triple Crown, the priest is not received —that is, familiarly received—apart from his official capacity in society. He is, of course, ever to be forthcoming and at hand as a professional healer of souls when no other or better healer of souls can be found, and when a soul needs healing very badly ; but if he be not a man of culture and refinement,—that is, if he has failed to catch the tricks, manners, and bearings of such—for the mere question of birth is, of course, of minor importance, the laying on of the bishop's hands having smoothed over all that difficulty,—the mere fact of his being a priest does not entitle him to claim any of the privileges elastic title of gentleman accruing to that most ; and many a woman of social rank abroad will readily, gladly— nay, eagerly—confess to, and re- ceive absolution from, a man whose society at her dinner-table she would not tolerate for a moment. — THE TRUE STORY OF A HALLUCINATION 3 We cannot but think that this reserve has its advantages, and that all people of refined feeling benefit by a rule which requires from one seek- ing familiar social recognition the production of some other credential, save only that the pos- tulant be a servant of the Church. At home, we find the spiritual adviser, merely by reason of his office, entitled to lay a claim nay, actually laying a claim—to a place at our dinner- table, to a chair at our club, to the smoking of our cigars, the drinking of our wines, the riding of our horses, the consoling of our wives, and, alas ! the marrying of our daughters, when, in many instances, the social merits of the man himself would hardly justify him, under ordinary circumstances, in aspiring to a closer intimacy with us than may reasonably be ex- pected to arise from the proper exercise of his professional duties in the saving of our souls, and the flogging of our boys. Such a man being so received, in the event of his not being sweet and whole, will hardly think it worth his while to purify himself of his un- cleanness solely for our sakes—nay, in many instances, will take a grotesque and savage delight in endeavouring to widen, by his vul- garities, the deplorable breach which, if we are to believe cynics and scoffers, already exists between St. James's Square and Mount Sinai. 4 AUT DIABOLUS AUT NIHIL Abroad, the priest who would seek to be con- sidered a gentleman, and be received as such in society, must endeavour to imbue himself with some of the refinement innate in those with whom he would fain consort, and thus it hap- pens that he studies with more or less success to imitate such ad iingiicm facti Jicinines as may from time to time swim within his ken. So it is that we not unfrequently find (and oddly enough more often than not in the most exclusive social coteries like that of the Fau- bourg St.-Germain), not only the most charming, refined, and sought-after men to be priests, but also to be men of low birth and origin, who owe, however, their social recognition and success, not to their cloth, but to the grace with which they have learned to wear it. To such a man as this we will now introduce the reader. The career of the Abb^ Girod had been an eminently successful one—successful in every way; and even he himself was forced to acknow- ledge such to be the case as he reviewed his past life, sitting by a blazing fire in his comfortable apartment in the Rue Miromesnil previous to dressing for the Due de Frontignan's dinner-party. Born of poor parents in the south of France, entering the priesthood at an early age, having received but a meagre education, and that chiefly confined to a superficial knowledge of the most THE TRUE STORY OF A HALLUCINATION 5 elementary treatises on theology, he had, in five- and-twenty years, and solely by his own exer- tions, unaided by patronage, obtained a most desirable berth in one of the leading churches in Paris, thereby becoming the recipient of a hand- some income, and being thus enabled to indulge in his rather expensive tastes as dilettante and honime du inonde. The few hours snatched from his parochial duties he had never failed to devote to study, and his application and determination had borne him golden fruit in more ways than one. He had, moreover, so cultivated and made such good use of the rare opportunities afforded him in early life of associating with gentlemen, that when now at length he found his presence in demand at every house in the "Faubourg" where wit and graceful learning were appreci- ated, no one would ever have suspected he had not been nurtured and bred in accordance with the strictest canons of social refinement.

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