III.
I AM about to leave my room after breakfast, when little Victoire
who carries the meals up-stairs in a wooden tray, screams out:—
"Gadé, Missié! ni bête-ni-pié assous dos ou!" There is a thousand-footed
beast upon my back!".
Off goes my coat, which I throw upon the floor;—the little
servant, who has a nervous horror of centipedes, climbs upon a
chair. I cannot see anything upon the
coat, nevertheless;—I
lift it by the collar, turn it about very cautiously—nothing!
Suddenly the child screams again; and I perceive the head close
to my hand;—the execrable thing had been hiding in a perpendicular
fold of the coat, which I drop only just in time to escape getting
bitten. Immediately the centipede becomes invisible. Then I take
the coat by one flap, and turn it over very quickly: just as
quickly does the centipede pass over it in the inverse direction,
and disappear under it again. I have had my first good look at
him: he seems nearly a foot long,—has a greenish-yellow hue
against the black cloth,—and pink legs, and a violet head;—he
is evidently young. … I turn the coat a second time: same
disgusting manreuvre. Undulations of livid color flow over him
as he lengthens and shortens;—while running his shape is but
half apparent; it is only as he makes a half pause in doubling
round and under the coat that the panic of his legs becomes
discernible. When he is fully exposed they move with invisible
rapidity,—like a vibration;—you can see only a sort of pink haze
extending about him,—something to which you would no more dare
advance your finger than to the vapory halo edging a circular
saw in motion. Twice more I turn and re-turn the coat with the
same result;—I observe that the centipede always runs towards
my hand, until I withdraw it: he feints!
With a stick I uplift one portion of the coat after another; and
suddenly perceive him curved under a sleeve,—looking quite
small!—how could he have seemed so large a moment ago? … But
before I can strike him he has flickered over the cloth again,
and vanished; and I discover that he has the power of magnifying
himself,—dilating the disgust of his shape at will: he
invariably amplifies himself to face attack. …
It seems very difficult to dislodge him; he displays astonishing activity
and cunning at finding wrinkles and
folds to hide in. Even at the risk
of damaging various things in the pockets, I stamp upon the coat;
—then lift it up with the expectation of finding the creature dead.
But it suddenly rushes out from some part or other, looking larger
and more wicked than ever,—drops to the floor, and charges at my
feet: a sortie! I strike at him unsuccessfully with the stick:
he retreats to the angle between wainscoting and floor, and runs
along it fast as a railroad train,—dodges two or three pokes,
—gains the door-frame,—glides behind a hinge, and commences to
run over the wall of the stair-way. There the hand of a black
servant slaps him dead.
—"Always strike at the head," the servant tells me; "never
tread on the tail. … This is a small one: the big fellows can
make you afraid if you do not know how to kill them."
… I pick up the carcass with a pair of scissors. It does not
look formidable now that it is all contracted;—it is scarcely
eight inches long,—thin as card-board, and even less heavy. It
has no substantiality, no weight;—it is a mere appearance, a
mask, a delusion. … But remembering the spectral, cunning,
juggling something which magnified and moved it but a moment
ago,—I feel almost tempted to believe, with certain savages,
that there are animal shapes inhabited by goblins. …
