I take leave of the mushrooms with regret: there would be so many other
questions to solve concerning them! Why do the maggots eat the Satanic
bolete and scorn the imperial mushroom? How is it that they find
delicious what we find poisonous and why is it that what seems exquisite
to our taste is loathsome to theirs? Can there be special compounds in
mushrooms, alkaloids, apparently, which vary according to the botanical
genus? Would it be possible to isolate them and study their properties
fully? Who knows whether medical science could not employ them in
relieving our ailments, even as it employs quinine, morphia and other
alkaloids? One might inquire into the cause of the liquefaction of the
coprini, which is spontaneous, and that of the boletes, which is brought
about by the maggots. Do both cases come within the same category?
Does the coprinus digest itself by virtue of a pepsin similar to the
maggots'? One would like to discover the oxidizable substance that gives
the luminous mushroom its soft, white light, which is like the beams of
the full moon. It would be interesting to know whether certain boletes
turn blue owing to the presence of an indigo which is more liable
to change than dyers' indigo and whether the green of the so-called
delicious milk mushroom when bruised is due to a like cause.
All these patient chemical investigations would tempt me, if the
rudimentary equipment of my laboratory and especially the irrevocable
flight of age-worn hopes permitted it. The day has passed for it now;
there is no time left to me. No matter: let us talk chemistry once more,
for a little while; and, for want of something better, let us revive old
memories. If the historian, now and again, takes a small place in the
story of his animals, the reader will kindly excuse him: old age is
prone to these reminiscences, the bloom of later days.
I have received, in all, two lessons of a scientific character in the
course of my life: one in anatomy and one in chemistry. I owe the first
to the learned naturalist Moquin-Tandon, who, on our return from
a botanizing expedition to Monte Renoso, in Corsica, showed me the
structure of a Snail in a plate filled with water. It was short and
fruitful. From that moment, I was initiated. Henceforth, I was to wield
the scalpel and decently to explore an animal's interior without any
other guidance from a master. The second lesson, that of chemistry, was
less fortunate. I will tell you what happened.
In my normal school, the scientific teaching was on an exceedingly
modest scale, consisting mainly of arithmetic and odds and ends
of geometry. Physics was hardly touched. We were taught a little
meteorology, in a summary fashion: a word or two about a red moon, a
white frost, dew, snow and wind; and, with this smattering of rustic
physics, we were considered to know enough of the subject to discuss the
weather with the farmer and the plowman.
Of natural history, absolutely nothing. No one thought of telling us
anything about flowers and trees, which give such zest to one's aimless
rambles, nor about insects, with their curious habits, nor about stones,
so instructive with their fossil records. That entrancing glance through
the windows of the world was refused us. Grammar was allowed to strangle
life.
Chemistry was never mentioned either: that goes without saying. I knew
the word, however. My casual reading, only half-understood for want of
practical demonstration, had taught me that chemistry is concerned with
the shuffle of matter, uniting or separating the various elements. But
what a strange idea I formed of this branch of study! To me it smacked
of sorcery, of alchemy and its search for the philosopher's stone. To my
mind, every chemist, when at work, should have had a magic wand in his
hand and the wizard's pointed, star studded cap on his head.
An important personage who sometimes visited the school, in his capacity
as an honorary lecturer, was not the man to rid me of those foolish
notions. He taught physics and chemistry at the grammar school. Twice a
week, from eight to nine o'clock in the evening, he held a free public
class in an enormous building adjacent to our schoolhouse. This was
the former Church of Saint-Martial, which has today become a Protestant
meeting house.
It was a wizard's cave certainly, just as I had pictured it. At the top
of the steeple, a rusty weathercock creaked mournfully; in the dusk,
great Bats flew all around the edifice or dived down the throats of the
gargoyles; at night, Owls hooted upon the copings of the leads. It was
inside, under the immensities of the vault, that my chemist used to
perform. What infernal mixtures did he compound? Should I ever know?
It is the day for his visit. He comes to see us with no pointed cap:
in ordinary garb, in fact, with nothing very queer about him. He bursts
into our schoolroom like a hurricane. His red face is half-buried in the
enormous stiff collar that digs into his ears. A few wisps of red hair
adorn his temples; the top of his head shines like an old ivory ball. In
a dictatorial voice and with wooden gestures, he questions two or three
of the boys; after a moment's bullying, he turns on his heel and goes
off in a whirlwind as he came. No, this is not the man, a capital fellow
at heart, to inspire me with a pleasant idea of the things which he
teaches.
Two windows of his laboratory look out upon the garden of the school.
One can just lean on them; and I often come and peep in, trying to make
out, in my poor brain, what chemistry can really be. Unfortunately,
the room into which my eyes penetrate is not the sanctuary but a mere
outhouse where the learned implements and crockery are washed. Leaden
pipes with taps run down the walls; wooden vats occupy the corners.
Sometimes, those vats bubble, heated by a spray of steam. A reddish
powder, which looks like brick dust, is boiling in them. I learn that
the simmering stuff is a dyer's root, known as madder, which will
be converted into a purer and more concentrated product. This is the
master's pet study.
What I saw from the two windows was not enough for me. I wanted to see
farther, into the very classroom. My wish was satisfied. It was the end
of the scholastic year. A stage ahead in the regular work, I had just
obtained my certificate. I was free. A few weeks remain before the
holidays. Shall I go and spend them out of doors, in all the gaiety of
my eighteen summers? No, I will spend them at the school which, for two
years past, has provided me with an untroubled roof and my daily crust.
I will wait until a post is found for me. Employ my willing service as
you think fit, do with me what you will: as long as I can study, I am
indifferent to the rest.
The principal of the school, the soul of kindness, has grasped my
passion for knowledge. He encourages me in my determination; he proposes
to make me renew my acquaintance with Horace and Virgil, so long since
forgotten. He knows Latin, he does; he will rekindle the dead spark
by making me translate a few passages. He does more: he lends me an
Imitation with parallel texts in Latin and Greek. With the first text,
which I am almost able to read, I will puzzle out the second and thus
increase the small vocabulary which I acquired in the days when I was
translating Aesop's Fables. It will be all the better for my future
studies. What luck! Board and lodging, ancient poetry, the classical
languages, all the good things at once!
I did better still. Our science master--the real, not the honorary
one--who came twice a week to discourse of the rule of three and
the properties of the triangle, had the brilliant idea of letting
us celebrate the end of the school year with a feast of learning. He
promised to show us oxygen. As a colleague of the chemist in the grammar
school, he obtained leave to take us to the famous laboratory and there
to handle the object of his lesson under our very eyes. Oxygen, yes,
oxygen, the all-consuming gas; that was what we were to see on the
morrow. I could not sleep all night for thinking of it.
Thursday afternoon came at last. As soon as the chemistry lesson is
over, we were to go for a walk to Les Angles, the pretty village over
yonder, perched on a steep rock. We were therefore in our Sunday best,
our out-of-doors clothes: black frock coats and tall hats. The whole
school was there, some thirty of us, in the charge of an usher, who knew
as little as we did of the things which we were about to see. We crossed
the threshold of the laboratory, not without excitement. I entered a
great nave with a Gothic roof, an old, bare church through which one's
voice echoed, into which the light penetrated discreetly through stained
glass windows set in ribs and rosettes of stone. At the back were huge
raised benches, with room for an audience of many hundreds; at the other
end, where the choir once was, stood an enormous chimney mantel; in the
middle was a large, massive table, corroded by the chemicals. At one end
of this table was a tarred tub, lined inside with lead and filled with
water. This, I at once learned, was the pneumatic trough, the vessel in
which the gases were collected.
The professor begins the experiment. He takes a sort of large, long
glass bulb, bent abruptly in the region of the neck. This, he informs
us, is a retort. He pours into it, from a screw of paper, some black
stuff that looks like powdered charcoal. This is manganese dioxide,
the master tells us. It contains in abundance, in a condensed state
and retained by combination with the metal, the gas which we propose to
obtain. An oily looking liquid, sulfuric acid, an excessively powerful
agent, will set it at liberty. Thus filled, the retort is placed on a
lighted stove. A glass tube brings it into communication with a bell jar
full of water on the shelf of the pneumatic trough. Those are all the
preparations. What will be the result? We must wait for the action of
heat.
My fellow pupils gather eagerly round the apparatus, cannot come close
enough to it. Some of them play the part of the fly on the wheel and
glory in contributing to the success of the experiment. They straighten
the retort, which is leaning to one side; they blow with their mouths on
the coals in the stove. I do not care for these familiarities with the
unknown. The good natured master raises no objection; but I have never
been able to endure the thronging of a crowd of gapers, who are very
busy with their elbows and force their way to the front row to see
whatever is happening, even though it be merely a couple of mongrels
fighting. Let us withdraw and leave these officious ones to themselves.
There is so much to see here, while the oxygen is being prepared. Let
us make the most of the occasion and take a look round the chemist's
arsenal.
Under the spacious chimney mantel is a collection of queer stoves, bound
round with bands of sheet iron. There are long and short ones, high
and low ones, all pierced with little windows that are closed with
a terracotta shutter. This one, a sort of little tower, is formed of
several parts placed one above the other and each supplied with big
round handles to hold them by when you take the monument to pieces.
A dome, with an iron chimney, tops the whole edifice, which must
be capable of producing a very hell fire to roast a stone of no
significance. Another, a squat one, stretches out like a curved spine.
It has a round hole at either end; and a thick porcelain tube sticks
out from each. It is impossible to conceive the purpose which such
instruments as these can serve. The seekers of the philosopher's stone
must have had many like them. They are torturers' engines, tearing the
metals' secrets from them.
The glass things are arranged on shelves. I see retorts of different
sizes, all with necks bent at a sudden angle. In addition to their long
beak, some of them have a narrow little tube coming out of their bulb.
Look, youngster, and do not try to guess the object of these curious
vessels. I see glasses with feet to them, funnel-shaped and deep; I
stand amazed at strange looking bottles with two or three mouths to
each, at phials swelling into a balloon with a long, narrow tube. What
an odd array of implements! And here are glass cupboards with a host
of bottles and jars, filled with all manner of chemicals. The labels
apprise me of their contents: molybdenite of ammonia, chloride of
antimony, permanganate of potash and ever so many other strange terms.
Never, in all my reading, have I met with such repellent language.
Suddenly, bang! And there is running and stamping and shouting and cries
of pain! What has happened? I rush up from the back of the room. The
retort has burst, squirting its boiling vitriol in every direction. The
wall opposite is all stained with it. Most of my fellow pupils have been
more or less struck. One poor youth has had the splashes full in his
face, right into his eyes. He is yelling like a madman. With the help of
a friend who has come off better than the others, I drag him outside by
main force, take him to the sink, which fortunately is close at hand,
and hold his face under the tap. This swift ablution serves its purpose.
The horrible pain begins to be allayed, so much so that the sufferer
recovers his senses and is able to continue the washing process for
himself.
My prompt aid certainly saved his sight. A week later, with the help of
the doctor's lotions, all danger was over. How lucky it was that I took
it into my head to keep some way off! My isolation, as I stood looking
into the glass case of chemicals, left me all my presence of mind,
all my readiness of resource. What are the others doing, those who got
splashed through standing too near the chemical bomb? I return to the
lecture hall. It is not a cheerful spectacle. The master has come off
badly: his shirtfront, waistcoat and trousers are covered with smears,
which are all smoldering and burning into holes. He hurriedly divests
himself of a portion of his dangerous raiment. Those of us who possess
the smartest clothes lend him something to put on so that he can go home
decently.
One of the tall, funnel-shaped glasses which I was admiring just now is
standing, full of ammonia, on the table. All, coughing and sniveling,
dip their handkerchiefs into it and rub the moist rag over their hats
and coats. In this way, the red stains left by the horrible compound
are made to disappear. A drop of ink will presently restore the color
completely.
And the oxygen? There was no more question, I need hardly say, of that.
The feast of learning was over. Never mind: the disastrous lesson was a
mighty event for me. I had been inside the chemist's laboratory; I
had had a glimpse of those wonderful jars and tubes. In teaching, what
matters most is not the thing taught, whether well or badly grasped:
it is the stimulus given to the pupil's latent aptitudes; it is the
fulminate awakening the slumbering explosives. One day, I shall obtain
on my own account that oxygen which ill luck has denied me; one day,
without a master, I shall yet learn chemistry.
Yes, I shall learn this chemistry, which started so disastrously. And
how? By teaching it. I do not recommend that method to anybody. Happy
the man who is guided by a master's word and example! He has a smooth
and easy road before him, lying straight ahead. The other follows a
rugged path, in which his feet often stumble; he goes groping into the
unknown and loses his way. To recover the right road, if want of success
have not discouraged him, he can rely only on perseverance, the sole
compass of the poor. Such was my fate. I taught myself by teaching
others, by passing on to them the modicum of seed that had ripened on
the barren moor cleared, from day to day, by my patient plowshare.
A few months after the incident of the vitriol bomb, I was sent to
Carpentras to take charge of junior classes at the college there. The
first year was a difficult one, swamped as I was by the excessive number
of pupils, a set of duffers kept out of the more advanced classes and
all at different stages in spelling and grammar. Next year, my school is
divided into two; I have an assistant. A weeding-out takes place in my
crowd of scatterbrains. I keep the older, the more intelligent ones;
the others are to have a term in the preparatory division. From that day
forward, things are different. Curriculum there is none. In those happy
times, the master's personality counted for something; there was no such
thing as the scholastic piston working with the regularity of a machine.
It was left for me to act as I thought fit. Well, what should I do to
make the school earn its title of 'upper primary'?
Why, of course! Among other things, I shall do some chemistry! My
reading has taught me that it does no harm to know a little chemistry,
if you would make your furrows yield a good return. Many of my pupils
come from the country; they will go back to it to improve their land.
Let us show them what the soil is made of and what the plant feeds on.
Others will follow industrial careers; they will become tanners,
metal founders, distillers; they will sell cakes of soap and kegs of
anchovies. Let us show them pickling, soap making, stills, tannin and
metals. Of course, I know nothing about these things, but I shall learn,
all the more so as I shall have to teach them to the boys; and your
schoolboy is a little demon for jeering at the master's hesitation.
As it happens, the college boasts a small laboratory, containing just
what is strictly indispensable: a receiver, a dozen glass balloons, a
few tubes and a niggardly assortment of chemicals. That will do, if I
can have the run of it. But the laboratory is a sanctum reserved for the
use of the sixth form. No one sets foot in it except the professor and
his pupils preparing for their degree. For me, the outsider, to enter
that tabernacle with my band of young imps would be most unseemly; the
rightful occupant would never think of allowing it. I feel it myself:
elementary teaching dare not aspire to such familiarity with the higher
culture. Very well, we will not go there, so long as they will lend me
the things.
I confide my plan to the principal, the supreme dispenser of those
riches. He is a classics man, knows hardly anything of science, at
that time held in no great esteem, and he does not quite understand the
object of my request. I humbly insist and exert my powers of persuasion.
I discreetly emphasize the real point of the matter. My group of pupils
is a numerous one. It takes more meals at the schoolhouse--the real
concern of a principal--than any other section of the college. This
group must be encouraged, lured on, increased if possible. The prospect
of disposing of a few more platefuls of soup wins the battle for me;
my request is granted. Poor science! All that diplomacy to gain your
entrance among the despised ones, who have not been nourished on Cicero
and Demosthenes!
I am authorized to move, once a week, the material required for my
ambitious plans. From the first floor, the sacred dwelling of the
scientific things, I shall take them down to a sort of cellar where I
give my lessons. The troublesome part is the pneumatic trough. It has
to be emptied before it is carried downstairs and to be filled again
afterwards. A day scholar, a zealous acolyte, hurries over his dinner
and comes to lend me a hand an hour or two before the class begins. We
effect the move between us.
What I am after is oxygen, the gas which I once saw fail so lamentably.
I thought it all out at my leisure, with the help of a book. I will do
this, I will do that, I will go to work in this or the other fashion.
Above all, we will run no risks, perhaps of blinding ourselves; for it
is once more a question of heating manganese dioxide with sulfuric acid.
I am filled with misgivings at the recollection of my old school fellow
yelling like mad. Who cares? Let us try for all that: fortune favors the
brave! Besides, we will make one prudent condition, from which I
shall never depart: no one but myself shall come near the table. If an
accident happen, I shall be the only one to suffer; and, in my opinion,
it is worth a burn or two to make acquaintance with oxygen.
Two o'clock strikes; and my pupils enter the classroom. I purposely
exaggerate the likelihood of danger. They are all to stay on their
benches and not stir. This is agreed. I have plenty of elbow room. There
is no one by me, except my acolyte, standing by my side, ready to help
me when the time comes. The others look on in profound silence, reverent
towards the unknown.
Soon the gaseous bubbles come "gloo-glooing" through the water in the
bell jar. Can it be my gas? My heart beats with excitement. Can I have
succeeded without any trouble at the first attempt? We will see. A
candle blown out that moment and still retaining a red tip to its wick
is lowered by a wire into a small test jar filled with my product.
Capital! The candle lights with a little explosion and burns with
extraordinary brilliancy. It is oxygen right enough.
The moment is a solemn one. My audience is astounded and so am I, but
more at my own success than at the relighted candle. A puff of vainglory
rises to my brow; I feel the fire of enthusiasm run through my veins.
But I say nothing of these inner sensations. Before the boys' eyes, the
master must appear an old hand at the things he teaches. What would the
young rascals think of me if I allowed them to suspect my surprise,
if they knew that I myself am beholding the marvelous subject of
my demonstration for the first time in my life? I should lose their
confidence, I should sink to the level of a mere pupil.
Sursum corda! Let us go on as if chemistry were a familiar thing to me.
It is the turn of the steel ribbon, an old watch spring rolled corkscrew
fashion and furnished with a bit of tinder. With this simple lighted
bait, the steel should take fire in a jar filled with my gas. And it
does burn; it becomes a splendid firework, with cracklings and a blaze
of sparks and a cloud of rust that tarnishes the jar. From the end of
the fiery coil a red drop breaks off at intervals, shoots quivering
through the layer of water left at the bottom of the vessel and embeds
itself in the glass which has suddenly grown soft. This metallic tear,
with its indomitable heat, makes every one of us shudder. All stamp and
cheer and applaud. The timid ones place their hands before their faces
and dare not look except through their fingers. My audience exults; and
I myself triumph. Ha, my friends, isn't it grand, this chemistry!
All of us have red letter days in our lives. Some, the practical men,
have been successful in business; they have made money and hold their
heads high in consequence. Others, the thinkers, have gained ideas;
they have opened a new account in the ledger of nature and they silently
taste the hallowed joys of truth. One of my great days was that of my
first acquaintance with oxygen. On that day, when my class was over and
all the materials put back in their place, I felt myself grow several
inches taller. An untrained workman, I had shown, with complete success,
that which was unknown to me a couple of hours before. No accident
whatever, not even the least stain of acid.
It is, therefore, not so difficult nor so dangerous as the pitiful
finish of the Saint Martial lesson might have led me to believe. With
a vigilant eye and a little prudence, I shall be able to continue. The
prospect is enchanting.
And so, in due season, comes hydrogen, carefully contemplated in my
reading, seen and reseen with the eye of the mind before being seen with
the eyes of the body. I delight my little rascals by making the hydrogen
flame sing in a glass tube, which trickles with the drops of water
resulting from the combustion; I make them jump with the explosions of
the thunderous mixture. Later, I show them, with the same invariable
success, the splendors of phosphorus, the violent powers of chlorine,
the loathsome smells of sulfur, the metamorphoses of carbon and so on.
In short, in a series of lessons, the principal nonmetallic elements and
their compounds are passed in review during the course of the year.
The thing was bruited abroad. Fresh pupils came to me, attracted by the
marvels of the school. Additional places were laid in the dining hall;
and the principal, who was more interested in the profits on his beans
and bacon than in chemistry, congratulated me on this accession of
boarders. I was fairly started. Time and an indomitable will would do
the rest.