# The Writings of Prosper Mérimée/Volume 5/Lokis/1

LOKIS
I
"THÉODORE," said Professor Wittembach, "please give me that manuscript-book, bound in parchment, which is laid on the second shelf above my writing-desk—no, not that one, but the small octavo volume. I copied all the notes of my journal of 1866 in it—at least those that relate to Count Szémioth."
The Professor put on his glasses, and, amid profound silence, read the following:—
"LOKIS,"
with this Lithuanian proverb as a motto:
"Miszka su Lokiu, Abu du tokiu."
When the first translation of the Holy Scriptures into the Lithuanian language appeared in ​London, I published in the Scientific and Literary Gazette of Koenigsberg, an article wherein, while rendering full justice to the efforts of the learned interpreter and to the pious motives of the Bible Society, I pointed out several slight errors, and showed, moreover, that this version could only be useful to one portion of the Lithuanian people.
Indeed, the dialect from which they translated is hardly intelligible to the inhabitants of the districts where the Jomaitic tongue, commonly called Jmoudic, is spoken, namely, in the Palatinate of Samogitia. This language is, perhaps, nearer akin to the Sanskrit than to High Lithuanian. In spite of the furious criticisms which this observation drew down upon me from a certain well-known professor of the Dorpat University, it so far enlightened the members of the Committee of the Bible Society that they lost no time in making me a flattering offer to direct and supervise an edition of the Gospel of St. Matthew into Samogitian. I was too much occupied at the time with my researches in Trans-Uralian dialects to undertake a more extended work comprising all four of the Gospels. Deferring my marriage with Mlle. Gertrude Weber, I went to Kowno (Kaunas) for the purpose of collecting all the linguistic records, whether ​printed or in MSS., of Jmoudic, that I could lay hands on. I did not overlook, of course, old ballads (daïnos), tales, or legends (pasakos) which would furnish me with material for a Jomaitic vocabulary, a work which must necessarily precede that of translation.
I had been given a letter of introduction to the young Count Michel Szémioth, whose father, I was told, had come into the possession of the famous Catechismus Samogiticus of Father Lawiçki. It was so rare that its very existence had been disputed, particularly by the Dorpat professor to whom allusion has been already made. In his library I should find, according to the information given me, an old collection of daïnos, besides ballads in old Prussian. Having written to Count Szémioth to lay the object of my visit before him, I received a most courteous invitation to spend as much time at his Castle of Médintiltas as my researches might need. He ended his letter by very gracefully saying that he prided himself upon speaking Jmoudic almost as well as his peasants, and would be only too pleased to help me in what he termed so important and interesting an undertaking. Besides being one of the wealthiest landowners in Lithuania, he was of the same evangelical faith of which I had the honour to ​be a minister. I had been warned that the Count was not without a certain peculiarity of character, but he was very hospitable, especially towards all who had intellectual tastes. So I set out on my journey to Médintiltas.
At the Castle steps I was met by the Count's steward, who immediately led me to the rooms prepared for me.
"M. le Comte," he said, "is most sorry not to be able to dine with you to-day. He has a bad headache, a malady he is unfortunately subject to. If you do not prefer to dine in your room you can dine with the Countess's doctor, Dr. Froeber. Dinner will be ready in an hour; do not trouble to dress for it. If you have any orders to give, there is the bell."
He withdrew, making me a profound salute. The room was of immense size, comfortably furnished, and decorated with mirrors and gilding. One side of it looked out upon a garden, or rather the park belonging to the Castle, and the other upon the principal entrance. Notwithstanding the statement that there was no need to dress, I felt obliged to get my black coat out of my trunk, and was in my shirt-sleeves busy unpacking my simple luggage when the sound of carriage wheels attracted me to the window which looked on the court. A handsome ​barouche had just come in. It contained a lady in black, a gentleman, and a woman dressed in the Lithuanian peasant costume, but so taU and strong-looking that at first I took her for a man in disguise. She stepped out first; two other women, not less robust in appearance, were al- ready standing on the steps. The gentleman leant over the lady dressed in black, and, to my great surprise, xinbuckled a broad leather belt which held her to her seat in the carriage. I no- ticed that this lady had long white hair, very much dishevelled, and that her large, wide- opened eyes were vacant in expression. She looked like a waxen figure. After having untied her, her companion spoke to her very respect- fully, hat in hand; but she appeared not to pay the slightest attention to him. He then turned to the servants and made a slight sign with his head. Immediately the three women took hold of the lady in black, lifted her out as though she were a feather, and carried her into the Castle, in spite of her efforts to cling to the carriage. The scene was witnessed by several of the house servants, who did not appear to think it anything extraordinary.
The gentleman who had directed the proceedings drew out his watch, and asked how soon dinner would be ready.
​"In a quarter of an hour, doctor," was the reply.
I guessed at once that this was Dr. Froeber, and that the lady in black was the Countess. From her age I concluded she was the mother of Count Szémioth, and the precautionary measures taken concerning her told me clearly enough that her reason was affected.
Some moments later the doctor himself came to my room.
"As the Count is indisposed," he said to me, "I must introduce myself to you. I am Dr. Froeber, at your service, and I am delighted to make the acquaintance of a savant known to all readers of the Scientific and Literary Gazette of Koenigsberg. Have you been properly waited on?"
I replied to his compliments as well as I could, and told him that if it was time to go down to dinner I was ready to accompany him.
When we were in the dining-hall, a majordomo brought us liqueurs and several piquant and highly spiced dishes on a silver salver to induce appetite, after a northern custom.
"Allow me, sir, in my office as doctor, to recommend a glass of that starka, a true Cognac brandy casked forty years ago. It is a queen of liqueurs. Take a Drontheim anchovy; nothing ​is better for opening and preparing the digestive organs, the most important functions of the body. . . . And now to table. Why do we not speak in German? You come from Koenigsberg, I from Memel; but I took my degree at Jena. We shall be more at ease in that way, and the servants, who only know Polish and Russian, will not understand us." We ate at first in silence; then, after having taken our first glass of Madeira, I inquired of the doctor if the Count were often inconvenienced by the indisposition which deprived us of his presence that night.
"Yes and no," was the doctor's answer. "It depends upon what expeditions he takes."
"How so?"
"When he takes the road to Rosienie, for instance, he comes back with headache and in a savage temper."
"I have been to Rosienie myself without such an experience."
"It depends, Professor," he replied, laughing, "on whether you are in love."
I sighed, thinking of Mlle. Gertrude Weber.
"Does the Count's fiancée, then, live at Rosienie?" I said.
"Yes, in that neighbourhood; but I can not say whether she is affianced to him. She is a ​real flirt, and will drive him off his head, so that he will be in his mother's state."
"Indeed, then her ladyship is . . . an invalid?"
"She is mad, my dear sir, mad; and I was even madder to come here!"
"Let us hope that your able attentions will restore her to reason."
The doctor shook his head, and looked attentively at the colour of the glass of Bordeaux which he held in his hand.
"The man you see before you. Professor, was once surgeon-major in the Kalouga regiment. At Sevastopol we cut off arms and legs from morning till night; not to speak of bombs which came down among us as thick as flies on a galled horse. But, though I was then ill-lodged and ill-fed, I was not so bored as I am here, where I eat and drink of the best, am lodged like a prince, and paid like a Court physician. . . . But liberty, my dear sir! . . . As you can guess, with this she-dragon I have not a moment to call my own."
"Has she been under your care for long? "
"Less than two years; but she has been insane at least twenty-seven, since before the birth of the Count. Did no one tell you this either at Rosienie or Kowno? Listen, then, for it is ​a case on which I should like some day to write an article for the Medical Journal of St. Petersburg. She went mad from fear. . . ."
"From fear? How was such a thing possible?"
"She had a fright. She is of the house of Keystut. . . . Oh, there are no mésalliances in this house. We descend from the Gedymin. . . . Well, Professor, two or three days after her marriage, which took place in the castle where we are dining (I drink to your health . . .), the Count, the father of the present one, went out hunting. Our Lithuanian ladies are regular amazons, you know. The Countess accompanied him to the hunt. . . . She stayed behind, or got in advance of the huntsmen, . . . I do not know which, . . . when, all at once, the Count saw the Countess's little Cossack, a lad of twelve or fourteen, come up at full gallop.
"'Master!' he said, 'a bear has carried off the Countess.'
"'Where?' cried the Count.
"'Over there,' replied the boy-Cossack.
"All the hunt ran towards the spot he pointed out, but no Countess was to be seen. Her strangled horse lay on one side, and on the other her lambswool cloak. They searched and ​beat the wood on all sides. At last a huntsman cried out, 'There is the bear!' and, sure enough, the bear crossed a clearing, dragging the Countess, no doubt for the purpose of devouring her undisturbed, into a thicket, for these beasts are great gourmands; they like to dine at ease, as the monks. Married but a couple of days, the Count was most chivalrous. He tried to fling himself upon the bear, hunting knife in his fist; but, my dear sir, a Lithuanian bear does not let himself be run through like a stag. By good fortune the Count's gun-bearer, a queer, low fellow, so drunk that morning as to be unable to tell a rabbit from a hare, fired his rifle, more than a hundred paces off, without taking care whether the bullet hit the beast or the lady. . . ."
"And he killed the bear? "
"Stone dead. It takes a tipsy man to hit like that. There are also predestined bullets, Professor. There are sorcerers here who sell them at a moderate price. . . . The Countess was terribly torn, unconscious, of course, and had one leg broken. They carried her home, and she recovered consciousness, but her reason had gone. They took her to St. Petersburg for a special consultation of four doctors, who glittered with orders. They said that Madam was enceinte, and that a favourable turn might be ​expected after her delivery. She was to be kept in fresh air in the country, and given whey and codeine. Each physician received about a hundred roubles. Nine months later the Countess gave birth to a fine, healthy boy, but where was the 'favourable turn'? Ah, yes, indeed . . . there was nothing but redoubled frenzy. The Count showed her her son. In novels that never fails to produce a good effect. 'Kill it! kill the beast!' she yelled; a little longer, and she would have wrung his neck. Ever since there have been phases of stupid imbecility, alternating with violent mania. There is a strong suicidal tendency. We are obliged to strap her down to make her take fresh air, and it takes three strong servants to hold her in. Nevertheless, Professor, I ask you to note this fact, when I have exhausted my Latin on her without making her obey me, I have a resort that quietens her. I threaten to cut off her hair. I fancy she must have had very beautiful hair at one time. Vanity! It is the sole human feeling left. Is it not odd? If I could experiment upon her as I chose, I might perhaps be able to cure her."
"By what method? "
"By thrashing her. I cured in that way twenty peasant women in a village where the ​terrible Russian madness (the hurlement) had broken out. One woman begins to howl, then her companion follows, and in three days' time the whole village is howling mad. I put an end to it by flogging them. (Take a little chicken, it is very tender.) The Count would never allow me to try the experiment."
"What! you wanted him to consent to your atrocious treatment? "
"Oh, he had known his mother so little, and besides it was for her good; but tell me, Professor, have you ever held that fear could drive anyone mad?"
"The Countess's situation was frightful . . . to find herself in the claws of a savage beast!"
"All the same, her son does not take after her. A year ago he was in exactly the same predicament, but, thanks to his coolness, he had a marvellous escape."
"From the claws of a bear?"
"A she-bear, the largest seen for some time. The Count wanted to attack her, boar-spear in hand, but with one back stroke she parried the blade, clutched the Count, and felled him to the ground as easily as I could upset this bottle. He ​cunningly feigned death. . . . The bear smelt and sniffed him, then, instead of tearing him to pieces, she gave him a lick with her tongue. He had the presence of mind not to move, and she went on her way."
"She thought that he was dead. I have been told that these animals will not eat a dead body."
"We will endeavour to believe that is so, and abstain from making personal investigation of the question. But, apropos of fear, let me tell you what happened at Sevastopol. Five or six of us were sitting behind the ambulance of the famous bastion No. 5, round a pot of beer which had been brought us. The sentry cried, 'A shell!' and we all lay flat on our stomachs. No, not all of us: a fellow named . . . but it is not necessary to give his name . . . a young officer who had just come to us, remained standing up, holding his glass full, just when the shell burst. It carried off the head of my poor comrade André Speranski, a brave lad, and broke the pitcher, which, fortunately, was nearly empty. When we got up after the explosion we saw, in the midst of the smoke, that our friend had swallowed his last mouthful of beer just as though nothing had happened. We dubbed him a hero. The following day I met ​Captain Ghédéonof coming out of the hospital, 'I dine with you fellows to-day,' he said, 'and to celebrate my return I will stand the champagne.' We sat down to the table, and the young officer of the beer was there. He did not wait for the champagne. A bottle was being uncorked near him, and fizz! the cork hit him on the temple. He uttered a cry and fainted away. Believe me, my hero had been devihshly afraid the first time, and his drinking the beer instead of getting out of the way showed that he had lost the control of his mind, and only unconscious mechanical movements remained to him. Indeed, Professor, the human mechanism———"
"Sir," said a servant who had just come into the room, "Jdanova says that the Countess will not take her food."
"Devil take her!" growled the doctor. "I must go to her. When I have made my she-dragon eat, Professor, if agreeable to you, we will take a hand at préférence or at douratchki." I expressed my regret that I was ignorant of the games, and, when he had gone to see the invalid, I went up to my room and wrote to Mlle. Gertrude.
* ↑ "The two together make a pair"; word for word, Michon (Michael) with Lokis, both are the same. Michaelium cum Lokide, ambo [duo] ipsissimi.
* ↑ The Russian for one possessed is "a howler"; klikoucha, the root of which is klik, clamour, howling.