THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET
THE HOUSE OF THE
SECRET
(LA MAISON DES HOMMES VIVANTS)
BY
CLAUDE FARRÈRE
AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY
ARTHUR LIVINGSTON
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 Fifth Avenue
Copyright, 1923
By E. P. Dutton & Company
——
All Rights Reserved
First edition limited to 1500 copies
PRINTED IN THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA
The House of the Secret
I
This day, January 20, 1909, I have decided to set my story down inwriting. Dangerous and terrifying the task! But I must perform it. Forday after tomorrow I shall be dead. Day after tomorrow.... Just twodays! And death from old age! Of this I am as certain as a man can beof anything. What, then, have I to lose by speaking?
Speak I must!
That much I owe to the unsuspecting men and women who are to surviveme. They are in danger; and I must warn them.... Day after tomorrow Ishall be safe. Day after tomorrow I shall be dead.... And this is mytestament and last will, written in my own hand! To all men and women,my brothers and my sisters, I bequeath—a Secret, the Secret. May mydeath serve as a warning to them, one and all! Such is my last will andtestament....
Now I am quite in my right mind—let there[Pg 2] be no doubt of that. I amsound, absolutely sound, in mind and, for that matter, in body. I havenever known what it means to be sick. But I am old, old beyond humanexperience of age. How old, I wonder? Eighty? A hundred? Make it ahundred and fifty! It really doesn’t matter. I have nothing to decidethe question. You might find my birth certificate, papers I may havewritten, people who may have known me. Such things would not help. Noteven my own sensations give me any accurate impression of my actualage. I have been old for such a very few days! I have had no time togrow accustomed to the sudden change. There is no comparison, either,between my absorption of the centuries and ordinary old age—this last,indeed, has never been mine. I became what I am instantaneously, onemay say.
I am cold, inside here, in my blood, in my flesh, in my bones. Andtired, horribly, unendurably tired, with a fatigue that sleep cannotalleviate! My arms and legs are heavy and my joints are stiff. My teethare chattering. I cannot bring them together on my food. I struggle tostand erect; but my shoulders stoop inexorably. I am hard of hearing.My eyes are dim. And these infirmities are the more excruciatingbecause they each are new. No living man, I am sure, has ever beenquite as miserable as I.
But it will all be over in two days! Forty-eight hours! Two thousandeight hundred and forty-eight minutes! What is a matter of two days?The prospect fills my heart with hopefulness; though death, in itself,is a terrible thing, far more terrible than living men imagine. That Iknow, as no one else knows. But I am ready! The