In the month of August eighteen ninety-one, shortly after I had heard, at Bayreuth, TannhÄuser, Tristan and Parsifal, for the ninth time, I spent a fortnight in the verdant Marienthal near the ancient city of Essenach.

The room I occupied looked out on the west upon the lofty Wartburg, and on the east upon Mount Horsel, that peak which used to be called by priests and poets the Venusberg. The star of Wolfram appeared in the bright sky of this land of Wagner.

I was then so prone to sun that after leaning my elbows once upon the sill of the western window before Luther’s towers I determined never to return there even in my dreams. The Venusberg attracted me to it.

Alone, among all the neighbouring peaks which with their coverings of black firs or fertile meadows formed a garment for the earth, the Venusberg was bare and like a woman’s swelling breast. Sometimes the rosy dawn cast purple flesh-like tints upon it. It palpitated; truly at certain hours of the evening it seemed to live, and then it appeared as if Thuringia, like a divinity reclining in a green and black tunic, allowed the blood of her desires to mount to the summit of her bare breast.

Throughout the long evenings of each day I watched the transfiguration of the hill of Venus. I gazed at it from afar. I did not approach it. It pleased me not to believe in its natural existence, for exquisite is the pleasure of simplifying realities into the pure aspect of their symbols, and remaining at such a distance that the eye is not forced to see things as they are. I was afraid that once for all the illusion would vanish never to return on the day when I set my foot upon the mountain itself.

Yet one morning I started. At first I followed the Gotha Road, which is intersected by bridges and streams overgrown with verdure; then a path through the fields. I had not lifted my eyes from the meadows when three hours later I reached the end of it. Then I looked before me.

Seen from near at hand, Mount Horsel was bare and reddish, without earth, verdure, or water upon it; it appeared to be burned up by an internal fire as if the legendary curse continued to arrest at its base all the fresh vegetation which gave life to the other mountains. The path I followed was made of stones and dead lichen, and was sometimes quite indistinct amid a stony desert, while at other times it was narrowly enclosed between high and rusty rocks. It ascended to the summit, where a little grey house had been built with thick walls to stand against the violence of the wind.

I entered the house and discovered that I could lunch there. Lunch upon the Venusberg! That would be the last step to my disenchantment. I accepted the idea, to my shame, willingly enough, for in spite of everything I was hungry.

The two daughters of the inn-keeper, who was absent, served me upon a little table a Wiener Schnitzl, which was perhaps more Saxon than Austrian, and a bottle of Niersteiner. This was reality indeed. The clean, light dining-room, the white curtains at the windows, the freshly-cleaned floor, a light bedroom visible through an open door, all succeeded in convincing me that I was not lunching with magicians, as for a moment, alas! I had hoped. The two young girls were two good spirits who would take no part in the damnation of the country.

It is true that at the conclusion of the meal the elder discreetly retired and the younger one gave me a smile of invitation which proved her natural goodness; but at German inns the servants hardly fix any precise limits to the kindness they bestow upon young travellers, and that fact does not generally mean that they have made a compact with a goddess of darkness.

We talked. She was obliging enough to understand my German, though I spoke it something like a negro from the Cameroons. I asked her for some topographical information of the country. She gave it to me with a very good grace.

“Don’t forget,” she said, “to visit the grotto.”

“What grotto?”

“The Venushoehle.”

“Is there a grotto of Venus?”

“Yes! that is its name; I don’t know why; you must not go down the mountain without seeing it.”

Uneasy and almost jealous, I wanted to know whether many strangers came to see this grotto, whose name alone had made me quiver.

The young girl sadly replied—

“No one! You see the mountain is not lofty enough to tempt climbers, and it is too high for walkers. Occasionally at very distant intervals a sportsman from Essenach comes to lunch or to spend the night here; but you are the first Frenchman I have seen since my birth.”

“Which is the way to the grotto?”

“Take the path to the left. You will get there in five minutes. Perhaps you will find at the entrance a man seated upon a stone. Pay no attention to what he says: he is mad.”

So there was a grotto of Venus in the flanks of the Horselberg! But then the country of TannhÄuser had retained the whole of its terrible legend.

The grotto of the Goddess was really there. And the man was there too.

It was small, elliptical at the top, crowned with fine dark briars, and appeared as the necessary symbol of the mountain, as another justification of the old German tale still more striking than the carnal aspect of the Venusberg on the horizon. The interior, into which I gazed, was dark, narrow and low. Pools of water and dark recesses made up its dark floor. It was difficult to enter without becoming mud-stained, but some incomprehensible charm attracted me into the humid darkness.

“Where are you going?” the man said shortly.

“To the bottom of the grotto.”

“To the bottom of the grotto? But there is no bottom to it, sir. It is the mouth of the earth.”

“Good,” I said patiently. “I will not go far. I shall soon return.”

His hollow cheeks grew purple. He hit his stick with his fist.

“Ah! you will soon be back! Ha! ha! you think you can go in and out of there at will. Do you think this grotto is a lift or a geological curiosity? Are you a Cook’s tourist, or do you come from a natural history museum? Have you come to write your name upon the rock, or to gather stones for your collection? You think you are about to discover here subterranean lakes, blind fish, architectural stalactites and rocky arches covered with crystals! You are going to study the geology of the Venushoehle. Ha! ha! that is admirable! Are you, too, a madman like the others? You, also, do not understand. You then are not aware that Venus is there in the flesh with millions of her nymphs around her and they are more living than you are, since they are immortal.”

“Sir,” I said, “I believe what you tell me; but you very much misjudge me if you think that the presence of Venus will prevent me from entering here.”

“Hell!” he cried.

“I should not be displeased to earn it as the price of her favours.”

The madman made a gesture which evidently meant: “You do not understand me at all.” Then he put his hands to his forehead and began to speak.

“Horselberg! or rather Hoelenberg, the Mountain of Hell! they come to thee without being warned of thy eternal horrors, thou who waitest for the pure, punishest the chaste, and will consume in eternity the wicked misers of the flesh. They will have lived their lonely lives as rebels to the great law divine, and they will not know thy atrocious burning till the day when, by the power of the Sword, the Harbinger of Souls will plunge them into the abyss. They have eyes and they see not, ears have they and they hear not, they have mouths and they do not.... My God, they are mad! mad! mad!”

Suddenly turning to me he shouted—

“How can you think that the Venusberg can become a place of damnation when it is hell itself.”

I made a movement.

“Alas!” he groaned. “Alas! My God!” (his hands fell from his eyes to his beard) “Alas! shall I be the only living person to know the truth, the truth, the truth. Will it be all in vain that the patriarchs have placed Venus as the terrible antithesis of God, and will no one understand that she is Satan? Is it all in vain that ancient tradition has painted the satyrs with horns, black tail, goat’s legs and cloven hoofs: will no one realize that they are demons? With regard to the flames of hell, will no one in the world understand that they are thousands of naked women dancing ...” (he struck the earth) “there beneath our feet!”

He shuddered.

“Ever since man has thought, written and learned, he has said, repeated and cried out that there is no worse torture than love. How is it he has not foreseen that in the world of eternal torture that punishment alone will be inflicted upon him! What other could he imagine more terrible than it?”

He then assumed a position as if he were gazing into the distance and waved his hand.

“Yes,” he said, “it is there ... it is there.... On the day when we shall be nothing but rotting corpses and souls maddened by terror, there we shall go in crowds, all of us, all sinners, to burn in that horrible fire which is Lust. Every day and every hour we shall experience desire, even to the extent of suffering, for more and more beautiful women, and at the moment of possession we shall see them, as on earth, vanish in smoke. But that which is here a spasm, a fear, a cry, a sob,—which suffices to prepare the curse of a human life—will be there a perpetual tremor, uninterrupted anguish, and the punishment of years, of centuries and of centuries. Ah! God! such is the destiny which awaits me.”

His eyes became fixed upon a stone on the ground. Nodding his head he went on in a strangely changed voice—

“I have lived an evil life, sir; this is the reason. I was born of Protestant parents in the Mountain of Wartburg, that same one where Luther, more than three centuries ago, taught his evil doctrine. I spent my youth in piety, and led a noble and austere life. But from my fourteenth year I could not look at a woman without being assailed by terrible desire. I curbed it, after fierce struggles which left me in the morning with a forehead bathed in sweat and trembling face. I thought I could remain pure by living without love, mad that I was, and blind to my own interests. To remain pure I would have killed myself with my own hand before committing any sin. Those who have not experienced nightly combats between religious duty and the frantic desires of the body have not known sorrow. I struggled thus for a shadow, and now I know that I struggled against God. And later I got married, sir, but married only in the eyes of the world. The woman and I had sworn only to unite our souls. That was how, little by little, I was damned for my fault of lying every day to the law of life; and afterwards there was not time for me to follow the path I had missed in my youth. Ah! cursed be virgins! for the love they have repulsed during their brief existence will justly be their punishment in their future state.”

He seized me by the arm.

“Listen! The sun is sinking. Now is the time. Every evening I come here, and sweetly the Goddess sings. She calls me from afar; she attracts me. I come just as at the day of my death, at the day of my fall into the Venushoehle. Ah! do not say a word. She is about to speak to us.”

I do not know whether it was these last few words, the man’s expression, or the grasp of his hand which persuaded me that he was speaking truly—but tremors ran through me and I listened.

I expected, not as an accident, but with the absolute exactness of prevision, the event predicted by the madman.

I can only compare my state of mind to that of a traveller who, after seeing the lightning, and knowing how far the storm is, waits for the thunder.

The time which separated me from the prodigy decreased first by a quarter, then a half, then three-quarters, and at the precise moment which I had anticipated as the end of my waiting, a breath of perfumes carried up to us the languishing echo of a ... Voice!

Here ends the Book of Seven Stories by Pierre Louÿs.

Explicit Laus Veneris.

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.