Read Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James for Free Online

crucifix, that he was conscious of a movement toward him on the part of the demon, and that he screamed with the voice of an animal in hideous pain.
    Pierre and Bertrand, the two sturdy little serving-men, who rushed in, saw nothing, but felt themselves thrust aside by something that passed out between them, and found Dennistoun in a swoon.
    They sat up with him that night, and his two friends were at St. Bertrand by nine o’clock next morning. He himself, though still shaken and nervous, was almost himself by that time, and his story found credence with them, though not until they had seen the drawing and talked with the sacristan.
    Almost at dawn the little man had come to the inn on some pretense, and had listened with the deepest interest to the story retailed by the landlady. He showed no surprise.
    “It is he—it is he! I have seen him myself,” was his only comment. And to all questionings but one reply was vouchsafed: “
Deux fois je l’ai vu
;
mille fois je l’ai senti
.” He would tell them nothing of the provenance of the book, nor any details of his experiences. “I shall soon sleep, and my rest will be sweet. Why should you trouble me?” he said. †
    We shall never know what he or Canon Alberic de Mauléon suffered. At the back of that fateful drawing were some lines of writing which may be supposed to throw light on the situation:
    Contradictio Salomonis cum demonio nocturno.
    Albericus de Mauleone delineavit.
    V. Deus in adiutorium. Ps. Qui habitat.
    Sancte Bertrande, demoniorum effugator, intercede pro me miserrimo.
    Primum uidi nocte 12mi Dec. 1694: uidebo mox ultimum. Peccaui et passus sum, plura adhuc passurus. Dec. 29, 1701.
†
    I have never quite understood what was Dennistoun’s view of the events I have narrated. He quoted to me once a text from Ecclesiasticus: “Some spirits there be that are created for vengeance, and in their fury lay on sore strokes.” On another occasion he said: “Isaiah was a very sensible man; doesn’t he say something about night monsters living in the ruins of Babylon? These things are rather beyond us at present.”
    Another confidence of his impressed me rather, and I sympathized with it.
    We had been, last year, to Comminges, to see Canon Alberic’s tomb. It is a great marble erection with an effigy of the Canon in a large wig and soutane, and an elaborate eulogy of his learning below.
    I saw Dennistoun talking for some time with the Vicar of St. Bertrand’s, and as we drove away he said to me: “I hope it isn’t wrong. You know I am a Presbyterian—but I—I believe there will be ‘saying of Mass and singing of dirges’ for Alberic de Mauléon’s rest.”
    Then he added, with a touch of the Northern British in his tone, “I had no notion they came so dear.”
    The book is in the Wentworth Collection at Cambridge. The drawing was photographed and then burned by Dennistoun on the day when he left Comminges on the occasion of his first visit.

Lost Hearts
    I T WAS, AS FAR AS I CAN ASCERTAIN , in September of the year 1811 that a post-chaise drew up before the door of Aswarby Hall, in the heart of Lincolnshire.
    The little boy who jumped out as soon as it had stopped, looked about him with the keenest curiosity during the short interval that elapsed between the ringing of the bell and the opening of the hall door.
    He saw a tall, square, redbrick house, built in the reign of Anne. A stone-pillared porch had been added in the purest classical style of 1790; the windows of the house were many, tall and narrow, with small panes and thick white woodwork. A pediment, pierced with a round window, crowned the front.
    There were wings to right and left, connected by curious glazed galleries, supported by colonnades, with the central block. These wings plainly contained the stables and offices of the house. Each was surmounted by an ornamental cupola with a gilded vane.
    An evening light shone on the building, making the window-panes glow like so many