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  BETELGUESE

  _A TRIP THROUGH HELL_

  By JEAN LOUIS De ESQUE

  _Author of "The Flight of a Soul", etc._


  JERSEY CITY
  CONNOISSEUR'S PRESS
  1908



  Copyright, 1907 and 1908, by
  _Jean Louis de Esque_
  _Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, E. C._
  _All Rights Reserved_




TO

  Those that felt the wand of Muse--
  Queen Posy's shaft of subtle art--
  Seared to the distant heights of blue,
  Past onyx lees that Sunsets dyed,
  And put to Vellum Couplets' fuse,
  Sped same to Fate with timid heart,
  Then shed dim tears in Sorrow's pew,
  This work's respectfully inscribed.




PREFACE


To the readers of this poem an apology is needed for affixing thereto a
praem. Some friends of mine have been plaguing me beyond the restrictive
line of Patience for the true cause of conceiving the accompanying
collection of words, balderdash or what you will, some even asseverating
with the eruditeness of an Aristole that it was a nebulous idea, an
embryonic form of thought hibernating within the cavities of my sinciput's
inner apex, the remnants of that wild phantasmagoric dream of "vicious,
vulpine labyrinths of hell," partly expounded in my "The Flight of a
Soul."

Now to satisfy everybody but my friends I throw my prejudices to the winds
and confess, to wit: That I, with the buckler of Will, wooed Oblivion on
September the sixth at exactly 5 P.M., having been up at my desk mauling
and drubbing the English language with a vengeance for thirty-six
consecutive hours, and that I awoke at 12.30 A.M. that selfsame night with
the entire contents of the accompanying----? (have as yet not decided in
what category the critics will consign this weird hypotyposis of the
Supernal) jingling through my tired brain. I set to work at exactly 12.45
A.M. and wrote until our esteemed companions of the nocturnal hours ceased
their unloved music (mosquitos), 5.05 A.M., hied myself back to bed and
hypothecated as many winks as Dame Slumber saw fit to allot to me, who am
at continued war with her silent wand. The same tactics were employed
during the succeeding fifteen nights, wherein I penned eight thousand one
hundred and sixteen (8116) lines. This is the truth, the whole and
integral truth, and nothing but the unexpurgated truth, so help me Muse
(she's blind as a bat) and Satan, of whom I've writ in such an unbecoming
manner that, henceforth, I must perforce seek my future Elysian in other
haunts than those of the above named Cosmopoietic's own, for fear that his
uncoped wrath may blast me into an ape-faced minstrel or, like one
red-haired varlet draped with the cognomen of "Nero," use my unbleached
bones for illuminating the highway to his insidiate lair.

To the readers this question may present itself, to wit: Why place Hell in
the bowels of Betelguese? Why not the sun or moon?

In the first instance the former sphere is eliminated as a possibility on
account of its nature. Being a huge nucleous mass of aeriform fluid,
nothing containing animal or vegetable life could possibly exist either
on or within its bowels. The moon, too, is excluded for the same reason as
is our earth, it having at one time been a part of the latter, broken off
by one of the giant planets long before the pleioncene era. Betelguese
being a celestial pariah, an outcast, the largest of all known comets or
outlawed suns in the universe; and, further, so long as Hell has not been
definitely placed, why not figure this hybrid planet as a possibility?

Astronomers throughout the world remember the colossal outburst in the
constellation Perseus that occurred on February 20, 1901, when one sun
exploded, or two made collision with appalling force. It was observed
through telescopes and could be seen with the naked eye in full daylight.
Both suns were destroyed as suns--that is, they were turned into thin gas
and vanished from sight of the largest telescope within less than a year.

Had each sun been the centre of a system of eight worlds like our sun; and
imagine each world, sixteen in all, to be inhabited with human beings;
then they all perished in a short time after collision and died of what
the astronomers call "fervent heat."

Vega, far more larger than our sun, appears stationary. Our sun, with its
family of moons and comets, is moving toward it at the fearful pace of
fourteen miles per second. At its present rate of speed--and if Vega is
really a "fixed" planet--then our sun would reach it in 320,000 years.
However, it is a known certainty that the quantity of matter that is
invisible is so much greater than the visible that the visible may be
ignored. There may, too, be hundreds of millions of dark bodies, extinct
constellations far larger than our own sun. Any one of these could
approach our solar system and annihilate it with its impact for, in
passing the orbit of the earth on their way around the sun, they attain a
regular velocity of 26-1/2 miles per second. If one of these dark comets
should overtake the earth and strike it, the velocity of impact would be
about eight miles per second; but if it should meet the earth in a head-on
collision, the speed, when it struck, would be forty-five miles per
second, a momentum beyond the power of the brain to fathom--indeed, man
can not think of sixty miles per minute. Let a solid nucleous collide with
the earth and imagination would reel at the result.

The earth moves over 18-1/2 miles every second, and this added to or
subtracted from 26-1/2 makes 45 or 8. If a comet should strike at right
angles to the direction of the earth's motion the speed of collision would
be 26-1/2 miles. But 8, 26-1/2 or even 15 would hurl destruction if large
enough.

A visible change is taking place in the giant sun Betelguese. Its nebulae
is slowly but surely disappearing. One hundred years hence it may be a
dark planet, invisible to even the most powerful telescope. However, Hell
will reign on, through eons and eons; and, if this sun, or any other,
contains its kingdom, and mankind lives for another thousand years or
more, those who should be so unfortunate as to miss the jagged heights to
Paradise need not worry, for glozing imps will lead them to the fasthold
of Typhon's weird home. Have no fear.

September 22d, MCMVII.




WHEN I AM