The Alchemist

By H. P. Lovecraft

High up, crowning the grassy summit of a swelling mound 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
honoured 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 footstep 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 Comtes 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 grottoes 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 the 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
that 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 dusk of the spectral wood that clothes the
sides 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 Comtes 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 dwelt 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, and
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 disappearances of many
small peasant children were laid at the dreaded door of these two. Yet
through the dark natures of the father and the 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 Comte. 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 Comte laid hands on the aged wizard,
and ere he released his murderous hold his victim was no more. Meanwhile
joyful servants were proclaiming aloud 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 Comte and his associates
turned away from the lowly abode of the alchemists, 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
Comte, he pronounced in dull yet terrible accents the curse that ever
afterward haunted the house of C----.

    "May ne'er a noble of thy murd'rous line
    Survive to reach a greater age than thine!"

spake he, when, suddenly leaping backwards into the black wood, he drew
from his tunic a phial of colourless liquid which he threw in the face
of his father's slayer as he disappeared behind the inky curtain of the
night. The Comte 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 meadow-land around the
hill.

Thus time and the want of a reminder dulled the memory of the curse in
the minds of the late Comte's family, so that when Godfrey, innocent
cause of the whole tragedy and now bearing the title, was killed by an
arrow whilst hunting, at the age of thirty-two, there were no thoughts
save those of grief at his demise. But when, years afterward, the next
young Comte, Robert by name, was found dead in a nearby field from no
apparent cause, the peasants told in whispers that their seigneur had
but lately passed his thirty-second birthday when surprised by early
death. Louis, son to Robert, was found drowned in the moat at the same
fateful age, and thus down through the centuries ran the ominous
chronicle; Henris, Roberts, Antoines, and Armands snatched from happy
and virtuous lives when a little below the age of their unfortunate
ancestor at his murder.

That I had left at most but eleven years of further existence was made
certain to me by the words which I read. My life, previously held at
small value, now became dearer to me each day, as I delved deeper and
deeper into the mysteries of the hidden world of black magic. Isolated
as I was, modern science had produced no impression upon me, and I
laboured as in the Middle Ages, as wrapt as had been old Michel and
young Charles themselves in the acquisition of demonological and
alchemical learning. Yet read as I might, in no manner could I account
for the strange curse upon my line. In unusually rational moments, I
would even go so far as to seek a natural explanation, attributing the
early deaths of my ancestors to the sinister Charles Le Sorcier and his
heirs; yet having found upon careful inquiry that there were no known
descendants of the alchemist, I would fall back to my occult studies,
and once more endeavour to find a spell that would release my house from
its terrible burden. Upon one thing I was absolutely resolved. I should
never wed, for since no other branches of my family were in existence, I
might thus end the curse with myself.

As I drew near the age of thirty, old Pierre was called to the land
beyond. Alone I buried him beneath the stones of the courtyard about
which he had loved to wander in life. Thus was I left to ponder on
myself as the only human creature within the great fortress, and in my
utter solitude my mind began to cease its vain protest against the
impending doom, to become almost reconciled to the fate which so many of
my ancestors had met. Much of my time was now occupied in the
exploration of the ruined and abandoned halls and towers of the old
chateau, which in youth fear had caused me to shun, and some of which
old Pierre had once told me had not been trodden by human foot for over
four centuries. Strange and awsome were many of the objects I
encountered. Furniture, covered by the dust of ages and crumbling with
the rot of long dampness met my eyes. Cobwebs in a profusion never
before seen by me were spun everywhere, and huge bats flapped their bony
and uncanny wings on all sides of the otherwise untenanted gloom.

Of my exact age, even down to days and hours, I kept a most careful
record, for each movement of the pendulum of the massive clock in the
library tolled off so much more of my doomed existence. At length I
approached that time which I had so long viewed with apprehension. Since
most of my ancestors had been seized some little while before they
reached the exact age of the Comte Henri at his end, I was every moment
on the watch for the coming of the unknown death. In what strange form
the curse should overtake me, I knew not; but I was resolved at least
that it should not find me a cowardly or a passive victim. With new
vigour I applied myself to my examination of the old chateau and its
contents.

It was upon one of the longest of all my excursions of discovery in the
deserted portion of the castle, less than a week before that fatal hour
which I felt must mark the utmost limit of my stay on earth, beyond
which I could have not even the slightest hope of continuing to draw
breath, that I came upon the culminating event of my whole life. I had
spent the better part of the morning in climbing up and down half ruined
staircases in one of the most dilapidated of the ancient turrets. As the
afternoon progressed, I sought the lower levels, descending into what
appeared to be either a mediaeval place of confinement, or a more
recently excavated storehouse for gunpowder. As I slowly traversed the
nitre-encrusted passageway at the foot of the last staircase, the paving
became very damp, and soon I saw by the light of my flickering torch
that a blank, water-stained wall impeded my journey. Turning to retrace
my steps, my eye fell upon a small trap-door with a ring, which lay
directly beneath my feet. Pausing, I succeeded with difficulty in
raising it, whereupon there was revealed a black aperture, exhaling
noxious fumes which caused my torch to sputter, and disclosing in the
unsteady glare the top of a flight of stone steps. As soon as the torch,
which I lowered into the repellent depths, burned freely and steadily, I
commenced my descent. The steps were many, and led to a narrow
stone-flagged passage which I knew must be far underground. This passage
proved of great length, and terminated in a massive oaken door,
dripping with the moisture of the place, and stoutly resisting all my
attempts to open it. Ceasing after a time my efforts in this direction,
I had proceeded back some distance toward the steps, when there suddenly
fell to my experience one of the most profound and maddening shocks
capable of reception by the human mind. Without warning, =I heard the
heavy door behind me creak slowly open upon its rusted hinges=. My
immediate sensations are incapable of analysis. To be confronted in a
place as thoroughly deserted as I had deemed the old castle with
evidence of the presence of man or spirit, produced in my brain a horror
of the most acute description. When at last I turned and faced the seat
of the sound, my eyes must have started from their orbits at the sight
that they beheld. There in the ancient Gothic doorway stood a human
figure. It was that of a man clad in a skull-cap and long mediaeval
tunic of dark colour. His long hair and flowing beard were of a terrible
and intense black hue, and of incredible profusion. His forehead, high
beyond the usual dimensions; his cheeks, deep sunken and heavily lined
with wrinkles; and his hands, long, claw-like and gnarled, were of such
a deathly, marble-like whiteness as I have never elsewhere seen in man.
His figure, lean to the proportions of a skeleton, was strangely bent
and almost lost within the voluminous folds of his peculiar garment. But
strangest of all were his eyes; twin caves of abysmal blackness;
profound in expression of understanding, yet inhuman in degree of
wickedness. These were now fixed upon me, piercing my soul with their
hatred, and rooting me to the spot whereon I stood. At last the figure
spoke in a rumbling voice that chilled me through with its dull
hollowness and latent malevolence. The language in which the discourse
was clothed was that debased form of Latin in use amongst the more
learned men of the Middle Ages, and made familiar to me by my prolonged
researches into the works of the old alchemists and demonologists. The
apparition spoke of the curse which had hovered over my house, told me
of my coming end, dwelt on the wrong perpetrated by my ancestor against
old Michel Mauvais, and gloated over the revenge of Charles Le Sorcier.
He told me how the young Charles had escaped into the night, returning
in after years to kill Godfrey the heir with an arrow just as he
approached the age which had been his father's at his assassination; how
he had secretly returned to the estate and established himself, unknown,
in the even then deserted subterranean chamber whose doorway now framed
the hideous narrator; how he had seized Robert, son of Godfrey, in a
field, forced poison down his throat and left him to die at the age of
thirty-two, thus maintaining the foul provisions of his vengeful curse.
At this point I was left to imagine the solution of the greatest mystery
of all, how the curse had been fulfilled since that time when Charles Le
Sorcier must in the course of nature have died, for the man digressed
into an account of the deep alchemical studies of the two wizards,
father and son, speaking most particularly of the researches of Charles
Le Sorcier concerning the elixir which should grant to him who partook
of it eternal life and youth.

His enthusiasm had seemed for the moment to remove from his terrible
eyes the hatred that had at first so haunted them, but suddenly the
fiendish glare returned, and with a shocking sound like the hissing of a
serpent, the stranger raised a glass phial with the evident intent of
ending my life as had Charles Le Sorcier, six hundred years before,
ended that of my ancestor. Prompted by some preserving instinct of
self-defense, I broke through the spell that had hitherto held me
immovable, and flung my now dying torch at the creature who menaced my
existence. I heard the phial break harmlessly against the stones of the
passage as the tunic of the strange man caught fire and lit the horrid
scene with a ghastly radiance. The shriek of fright and impotent malice
emitted by the would-be assassin proved too much for my already shaken
nerves, and I fell prone upon the slimy floor in a total faint.

When at last my senses returned, all was frightfully dark, and my mind
remembering what had occurred, shrank from the idea of beholding more;
yet curiosity overmastered all. Who, I asked myself, was this man of
evil, and how came he within the castle walls? Why should he seek to
avenge the death of poor Michel Mauvais, and how had the curse been
carried on through all the long centuries since the time of Charles Le
Sorcier? The dread of years was lifted off my shoulders, for I knew that
he whom I had felled was the source of all my danger from the curse; and
now that I was free, I burned with the desire to learn more of the
sinister thing which had haunted my line for centuries, and made of my
own youth one long-continued nightmare. Determined upon further
exploration, I felt in my pockets for flint and steel, and lit the
unused torch which I had with me. First of all, the new light revealed
the distorted and blackened form of the mysterious stranger. The hideous
eyes were now closed. Disliking the sight, I turned away and entered the
chamber beyond the Gothic door. Here I found what seemed much like an
alchemist's laboratory. In one corner was an immense pile of a shining
yellow metal that sparkled gorgeously in the light of the torch. It may
have been gold, but I did not pause to examine it, for I was strangely
affected by that which I had undergone. At the farther end of the
apartment was an opening leading out into one of the many wild ravines
of the dark hillside forest. Filled with wonder, yet now realizing how
the man had obtained access to the chateau, I proceeded to return. I had
intended to pass by the remains of the stranger with averted face, but
as I approached the body, I seemed to hear emanating from it a faint
sound, as though life were not yet wholly extinct. Aghast, I turned to
examine the charred and shrivelled figure on the floor.

Then all at once the horrible eyes, blacker even than the seared face in
which they were set, opened wide with an expression which I was unable
to interpret. The cracked lips tried to frame words which I could not
well understand. Once I caught the name of Charles Le Sorcier, and again
I fancied that the words "years" and "curse" issued from the twisted
mouth. Still I was at a loss to gather the purport of his disconnected
speech. At my evident ignorance of his meaning, the pitchy eyes once
more flashed malevolently at me, until, helpless as I saw my opponent to
be, I trembled as I watched him.

Suddenly the wretch, animated with his last burst of strength, raised
his hideous head from the damp and sunken pavement. Then, as I remained,
paralyzed with fear, he found his voice and in his dying breath screamed
forth those words which have ever afterward haunted my days and my
nights. "Fool," he shrieked, "can you not guess my secret? Have you no
brain whereby you may recognize the will which has through six long
centuries fulfilled the dreadful curse upon your house? Have I not told
you of the great elixir of eternal life? Know you not how the secret of
Alchemy was solved? I tell you, it is I! I! =I! that have lived for six
hundred years to maintain my revenge=, FOR I AM CHARLES LE SORCIER!"

                                                      H. P. LOVECRAFT.