But here is my story.
In 1830, I was fifteen years old and was living with my family in a large village in the Tyrol, whose name I am forced to withhold for several personal reasons. Mot more than three generations has passed since my ancestors came to find work in that village. Although they certainly arrived from Switzerland, the direct line of the family was of German descent. The memories that remained of its beginnnings were so inexact and obscure that I was never afforded the oppotunity to draw very precise deductions. I am, in any case, concerned only to ascertain this fact, that my family was of German stock.
There were five of us. My father and my mother were born in that village and received there the limited, modest education appropriate to the petty bourgeoisie. My family possessed some aristocratic traditions, however, traditions whose origins go back to Old Saxon feudalism. Yet the fortune of our house was so paltry that it repressed all our impulses of ambition and pride. My family's customs did not differ in any way from those of the humblest families among the commomn people: my parents had been born and raised among them; their life was a completely blank page. Neither from their society nor from their manner of education could I derive any of those ideas or childhood memories that predispose one to superstition and terror.
The only personage whose life contained something mysterious and inscrutable and who came to join my family, in a sense, was an old uncle said to be bound to us by common interests. I have, however, been entirely unable to decipher the rational grounds of these interests since I came into possession of my family's fortune at his and my father's deaths.
My unclehad reached ninety years of age then--I am speaking of that period from which these memoirs of mine date. He was a tall, imposing figure, although slightly stooped; his facial features were majestic, prominent, I would say almost chiseled; his gait was proud although unsteady from age, his eyes restless and searching, doubly alive in that face whose mobility and expression the years had paralyzed. When he was still young, he had embraced a career in the priesthood, driven by the insistent preassures of his family. Later, he laid aside the cassock and devoted himself to the military; the French Revolution found him in its regiments. He spent forty-two years away from his country, and when he returned--since he had not broken his vows in the Church--he again took up the cassock, which he wore without blemish or pious affectation until his death. He was known to be endowed with a quick yet habitually calm temperament, an indomitable will, and a vast, erudite mind, although he may have done his utmost not to show it. Capable of lofty passions and exceptional courage, he was esteemed an extraordinary man, a noble, outstanding figure. What helped to invest him with this prestige, moreover, was the mystery that concealed his past: a few rumors referred to numerous strange events wherein he was said to have participated. He had certainly performed important services for the Revolution; what services and with what influence he performed them will never be known: he died when he was ninety-six, carrying the secret of his life to the grave.
Everyone knows the customs of village life; I shall not restrain myself from discoursing upon those that were specific to my family. Evey winter evening we used to gather in a vast room on the ground floor and sit in a circle around one of those large fireplaces, so ancient and so comfortable but now abolished by moderntaste, which has substituted small coal stoves for them. My uncle, who lived in a seperate apartment in the same house, sometimes came to join our gatherings, when he was always silent about himself, however, and when asked of the role he played, he diverted the narrative from the subject.
One evening--I remember it as if it were yesterday--we assembled in that room as usual. It was winter, but there was no snow; the frozen, frost-whitened ground reflected the rays of the moon, producing a vibrant white light like an aurora. Everything was silent, and you coulf hear only the irregular hammering of some drops that trickled down from the icicles on the drainpipes. All of a sudden, our conversation was interrupted by theunexpected dull thud of an object thrown into the courtyard from the low perimeter wall. My father rose, went out, and hastened to the gate, which opens onto the street. But he heard nothing more than the noise of some footsteps and saw, down the broad expanse of the street stretching before him, only a few people walking away. Then he picked up a small box that had been thrown on the ground and returned to the room with it. We all gathered around him to examine it. Instead of a box, it turned out to be a huge square bundle, wrapped in old, grayish, rust-stained paper and stitched along the sides with white thread at exact and regular intervals--a feature that declared the office of a woman's hand. The paper, cut here and there by the thread, reddened and worn at the edges, indicated that the bundle had been made some time ago.
My uncle received it from my father's hands, and I saw him tremble and blanch as he examined it. The paper was cut, and hedrew out two dusty old volumes. No sooner had he glanced over them than a cadaverous pallor came over his face, and concealing a more profound feeling of grief and amazement, he said, "How strange!" After a brief moment during which none of us dared speak, he resumed, "It is a manuscript, two volumes of memoirs dating back to the very beginnings of our family. They contain several of our most glorius traditions. I gave these two volumes to a young man who, although he was not a member of our immediate family, was related to us by certain ties which I cannot now reveal. They were the pledge for a promise that time, not I, has prevented me from keeping: yes, time...," he added to himself in a low voice. I knew him at the University of *****, when he was studying theology there; he was guillotined on the Place de la Greve, and his family was destroyed by the revolution, it must be forty years ago now...not one of them survived...How strange!"
After a short interval, he noticed that a very fine reddish dust had accumulated in these pages, and as if recalling some danger, he told us, "Wash your hands."
"Why?"
"Nothing..."
We obeyed. The rest of that evening was spent in silence. My uncle was given to sad thoughts, and one could see that he was trying hard to evoke or drive away some very painful memories. He retired quite early, shut himself in his apartment, and remained there for two days before he appeared again.