LERNE CHANGES HIS METHOD OF ATTACK
When I was in the black hide of the bull, I had sworn to myself, if my
original shape were ever restored to me, to flee away at once, with or
without Emma; and yet the autumn was growing old, and I had not yet
left Fonval.
The fact was, my treatment was now the exact reverse of what it had
been. To begin with, I disposed of my time as I liked.
The first use that I made of that liberty was to go to the shambles
in the forest-clearing, and there efface all traces of my visit.
A favoring god had _not_ decreed that during the time I had lived
a bucolic life in the meadow, somebody should come there, and the
assistants should remark the violation of the sepulcher.
Either they had changed their cemetery, or my uncle no longer dissected
anything, except tiny creatures, of which the dogs left no trace, or
else experiments _in animâ vili_ were completely abandoned.
Let me say that I proved to my satisfaction a detail which lifted a
great weight from my heart. I had been afraid that the soul of the
unhappy Klotz had been transferred into some animal carefully kept in
hiding; but his remains themselves, although marvelously recalling
Baudelaire’s famous poem, refuted me. The brain of the dead man, marked
as it was with numerous and deep sinuosities, still visible, whilst
bearing witness to his humanity, was proof of a murder pure and simple,
thank Heaven!
So I enjoyed a large measure of freedom, and besides, an affectionate
and repentant Lerne had shown himself at my bedside while I was
convalescent. Oh, not the Lerne of long ago, the companion of my Aunt
Lidivine; no, but he was no longer the grim and bloodthirsty host, who
had received me in the manner in which one shows people the door.
When he saw me up and about, my uncle brought Emma in, and said to her
in my presence, that I was cured of a passing touch of lunacy, and that
she might now adore me as much as she liked.
“For my part,” he continued, “I give up emotions no longer suitable
to my age. You shall have Emma. All I ask of you is not to leave me.
A sudden solitude would increase my distress, which you can easily
understand, and which both of you will pardon. This distress will pass.
Work will get the better of it. Do not be afraid, my dear; the chief
part of my profit shall be for you! Nothing has been changed with
regard to that, and Nicolas shall be mentioned in the partnership deed
and in my will. You may love one another in peace.”
With these words he went off to his electrical machines.
Emma showed no astonishment at anything. Trustful and simpleminded, she
had accepted my uncle’s speech with a clapping of hands.
I, knowing him to be an actor, might have told myself that he was
feigning kindness, in order to keep me in the house; that either he was
afraid of what I might reveal or that he was hatching some new project;
but the two Circeean operations had rather troubled my memory and my
reasoning powers.
“Why,” said I to myself, “why doubt this man, who has, of his own free
will, rescued me from the most awful position? He perseveres in the
good way, and all is for the best.”
At the sight of my laborious and domesticated Professor, who could have
believed in his victims, and in a trap which he had laid for me, in the
assassination of Klotz, in the distress of Nell? She never ceased her
howlings to the stars, suffering from the troubles which I had endured;
for she was still there, and it puzzled me that Lerne should continue
the punishment of a fault which must appear much less now that Emma no
longer interested him.
I resolved to confide in my uncle.
“Nicolas,” he said, “you have put your finger on my greatest anxiety,
but what is to be done? In order to reëstablish the right order of
things in this affair, it is absolutely necessary that the body of
Macbeth should come back here. By what stratagem are we to persuade his
father to send him back? Try to find one. Help me. I promise to act
without delay as soon as one or the other of us has found a solution.”
This reply had dissipated my last feelings of dislike. I did not ask
myself why Lerne had metamorphosed himself so as to give in so easily
and quickly.
My belief was that the Professor had at last been restored to wisdom;
and in default of the other virtues, which would no doubt appear in
due order, his rectitude of long ago seemed to me to be born again,
rectitude which was as great as the erudition which had never abandoned
him, and as evident as _it_ was.
And Lerne’s erudition was almost inexhaustible. Each day I was more and
more convinced of it.
We resumed our walks, and he profited by them to discourse learnedly
about everything we came across--a leaf led him on to botany,
entomology was suggested by a beetle; a drop of rain let loose upon
my admiration a deluge of chemistry, and when we had got to the edge
of the forest, I had heard from Lerne’s lips the lecturing of a whole
collegeful of dons.
But, it was there, at the edge of the woods and fields that one should
have seen him. After the last tree had been passed, he never failed to
stop, hauled himself up to the top of a boundary stone, and held forth
concerning the Universe, in presence of the plains and the heavens.
He described things so ingeniously, that one could believe one saw
Nature unfold and open to the very depths of the earth, and to the very
ends of Infinity.
His words knew equally well how to dig into the hills to lay bare the
_strata_ of the soil, as to bring near to us, the better to discourse
about them, the invisible planets.
He knew how to analyze the vapor of the clouds, as well as to show the
origin of the cold wind--to evoke prehistoric landscapes, and to prove
in the same way the unending future of the countryside.
He roamed in spirit with his eyes over the immense panorama, from the
hut near at hand, to those wide horizons--the distant tints of blue.
In a few words each thing was defined, explained, and illuminated by
commentary, and as he made sweeping gestures to every point of the
compass, to draw attention now to a river, and now to a steeple,
his outspread arms seemed to lengthen into rays, like those of a
lighthouse, which sheds its long protecting beams over the countryside.
The return to Fonval usually took place in less scientific
circumstances. My uncle continued his speculations which he would
keep to himself, assuming them, I suppose, to be too abstruse for my
intelligence, and he hummed as he went along, his favorite air, which I
suppose he had learnt from one of his assistants, “_Rum fil dum._”
Once we got back, he hastened to the laboratory, or the hothouse.
We varied these walks with expeditions in the motor-car, and then my
uncle put himself astride another hobby-horse. He classed my vehicle
in its rank amongst animal categories, showed the creatures of to-day,
of yesterday, and of to-morrow, among which, no doubt, the automobile
would take its place, and this prophecy finished up with a warm
panegyric of my 80 h. p.
He wanted to learn how to drive the engine. It was an easy business. In
three lessons I made him a past master. He always drove now, and I did
not complain, as ever since the two severings and two re-joinings of
the optic nerves, any long strain tired my eyes.
My left ear had not yet recovered all the sensibility one could have
wished, but I did not dare to talk about it to Lerne for fear of adding
one more to the many remorseful thoughts that seemed to haunt him.
* * * * *
It was at the end of one of those pleasure trips that I happened, in
cleaning my car--a thing I had to do myself--to find between the back
and the cushion of Lerne’s seat, a little note-book which had slipped
from his pocket. I put it away in mine, with the intention of restoring
it to him.
My curiosity got the better of me. On regaining my room, and without
rejoining the Professor, I examined my find. It was a diary crammed
full of rapid notes and figures sketched in pencil. It resembled the
daily record of some research--a laboratory journal.
The figures conveyed no meaning to my eyes. The text was composed
mainly of German terms (more especially) and French ones, too. The
terms seemed to be chosen in either language, as inspiration directed.
The _ensemble_ did not have any meaning for me. However, I discovered
a piece of less chaotic literature dated the day before, in which I
thought I could recognize a _résumé_ of the preceding pages; and the
fact of my understanding some French words, and the sense which they
assumed (once they were put together) awoke in me both an inveterate
detective and a new-born linguist.
Among such words were the following substantives, connected by German
words: “transmission of thought,” “electricity,” “brains,” “batteries.”
With the help of a dictionary which I stole from my uncle’s room, I
deciphered this sort of cryptogram, in which, fortunately, the same
expressions frequently recurred. Here is a translation of it--I give
it for what it is worth, unfitted as I am for this task, and driven to
haste as I was by the necessity of restoring the note-book as soon as
possible:
“Conclusions dated the 30th: Aim pursued: Exchange of personalities
_without_ exchange of brains.... Basis of research: Ancient experiments
have proved that everybody possesses a soul; for the soul and the life
are inseparable, and all organisms, between their birth and death,
enjoy a more or less developed soul according as they are higher or
lower in the scale of existence. Thus, from man to moss, passing
through the polypi, each living being has its own soul. Do not plants
sleep, breathe and digest? Why should they not think?
“This proves that there is a soul where there is no brain.
“So the soul and the brain are independent of one another.
“Consequently, souls can be exchanged with one another without the
brains being exchanged....
“EXPERIMENTS IN TRANSMISSION.
“Thought is the electricity of which our brains are the batteries or
the accumulators--I do not know yet; but what is certain, is that the
transmission of the mental fluid takes place in a manner analogous to
that of the electric fluid.
“The experiment of the 4th proves that thought is transmitted
by conductors. That of the 10th, that it is transmitted without
conductors, on the ether waves.
“Subsequent experiments have shown a weak spot which I now set down.
“A soul which is projected into an organism unknown to this latter,
compresses, so to speak, a soul which is there, without being able to
expel it; the projected soul--the soul which has broken loose from the
body--is itself kept bound to its organism by a sort of inexplicable
mental ‘attachment,’ which nothing up till now has been able to cut.
“If the two beings are consenting, the reciprocal transmission fails
for the same reason. The major part of each soul re-installs itself
perfectly well in the organism of its partner, but the troublesome
mental ‘attachment’ prevents each of them from completely quitting the
body from which it is striving to detach itself.
“The simpler the recipient organism is relatively to the transmitting
organism, the more soul can this latter project into a receptacle,
which contains so little of it in the beginning, and the thinner, so
to speak, becomes the ‘attachment’ which keeps fast the mind in the
transmitting body, but it always exists.
“On the 20th I projected myself, mentally, inside Johann--on the 22nd I
invaded a cat, on the 24th an ash tree.
“Access has become easier and easier, and the invasion more and more
complete, but the ‘attachment’ remains.
“I thought the experiment would succeed on a corpse because there was
no fluid to encumber the receptacle to be filled. I had not reflected
that death is not compatible with a soul--that inseparable companion of
life itself. I did not get any results, and the sensation is abominable.
* * * * *
“Theoretically, in order that the ‘attachment’ should be suppressed,
what is required? A receiving organism, which should have no soul at
all (in order that one may lodge one’s own entirely), and yet which
should not be dead, and in other terms, _an organized life which has
never lived_. That is impossible.
“So, in practice, our efforts must tend to the suppression of the
‘attachment’ by means of artifices, which I do not yet perceive....
“Not but what the experiments of this period have yielded curious
results, since we have arrived at the following demonstrable
conclusions:
“(1) The human brain can discharge itself almost entirely into a
plant.
“(2) From man to man, _with mutual consent_, the passage
of personality is accomplished very completely (except for
‘attachment’), which makes those souls, as it were, sister
souls--Siamese mentalities.
“(3) From man to man, _without mutual consent_, the compression
of the receiving soul (under pressure by the other) produces, in
spite of the imperfection of the process, a partial and momentary
incarnation of the transmitting individual.
“A very interesting incarnation this, for it satisfies some of those
_desiderata_, all of which I shall satisfy if I attain the aim at which
I am driving.
“It seems to me unattainable.”
* * * * *
So this is the result of the studies which my uncle had been so
ardently lauding!
The theory was disconcerting. I ought to have been astounded by it;
for there was revealed a tendency towards spiritualist doctrine--very
strange in the case of a materialist like Lerne--and the new doctrine
appeared in the light of a phantasmagoria, which would have made many
eyes open wide behind learned spectacles, erudite pince-nez, and
pedantic monocles.
As for me, I did not discover all the subjects of wonder at first
sight, being still, at that time, somewhat unwell, and I did not
perceive that I had translated a Franco-German _mene mene tekel
upharsin_ destined for _me_!
My attention was concentrated upon these facts--that the _organized
being which had never lived_, did not exist, and that, on the other
hand, the Professor was doubtful of being able to suppress the
“attachment.” So he was foiled. After his former triumphs I expected
any miracle from him; only his inability to perform them would have
astonished me.
* * * * *
I set off to seek my uncle, in order to give him back his note-book.
Barbe (with her corpulent figure), whom I met, told me that he was
walking about in the park. I did not meet him there, but at the edge of
the pond I saw Karl and Wilhelm, who were looking at something in the
water. Those two black-guards inspired me with aversion, because of
their interchanged brains.
Their presence was usually enough to drive me away, but that day, the
sight which kept them on the water’s edge, drew me to them.
This something they were looking at kept jumping out of the water with
a shower of diamond drops; it was a carp. It leaped up, shaking its
fins, which beat the air like wings. One would have said that it was
trying to fly away. The poor creature really was trying to do so!
I had before me that fish which Lerne had dowered with a blackbird’s
soul.
The captive bird--a prey in its scaly flesh to the old aspirations
of its race, and weary of its watery home--was leaping towards an
impossible heaven.
Finally, with a more despairing effort, the creature fell on the shore,
with its gills quivering.
Then Wilhelm seized it, and the assistants departed with their
booty. They apostrophized it, and amused themselves with it like old
ill-conditioned guttersnipes. They were whistling, and imitating
the blackbird’s song in mockery, and then, by way of a laugh, a
great neighing came from their chests, and without knowing it, they
reproduced the sound of a horse’s trumpet much better than they had
that of the winged flute.
I remained dreamily contemplating the pond, that liquid cage in which
the enchanted carp had suffered the haunting desire to fly, and the
regret for a nest. The liquid mirror, a moment disturbed by the fury of
the fish’s leaps, would not have reassumed its leaden calm before the
creature was dead.
Its martyrdom was going to end in the stewpan. How would that of the
other victims finish, the escaped beasts, and Macbeth?
Oh, Macbeth! how to deliver him!
On the water, now becalmed in deep repose, a last ripple was spreading
its circles, and the depths of the firmament were reflected in its
mirror again. The evening star was shining in the depths of the
lake millions of leagues away, but at will, it was possible, on the
contrary, to imagine it floating on the surface, and the leaves of the
water-lilies, crescents and half-circles, seemed like reflections of
the moon at its successive ages, which had remained there, slumbering
in that chill water.
Macbeth! I thought once more. Macbeth! What about _him_?
At this moment there was the sound of a distant bell at the main door.
Somebody at this hour of the day! Nobody ever came!...
I retraced my steps to the _château_ at a rapid pace, asking myself for
the first time what would happen to Nicolas if the Law descended on
Fonval.
Hiding behind the corner of the _château_, I ventured a glance. Lerne
was standing at the door reading a telegram that moment received, and I
came out from my hiding-place.
“Here, uncle,” said I, “here is a pocket-book. It belongs to you, I
think. You left it in the car....”
But the rustling of petticoats made me turn round.
Emma was coming to us, radiant in that sunset, in which her hair
seemed, every evening, to gain a new wealth of red light--with a tune
sounding on her lips, like a rose between her teeth.
She came straight on, and her gait was that of a dance.
The bell had interested her also. She inquired about the telegram. The
Professor did not reply.
“Oh, what’s the matter?” said she. “What’s the matter, again, _mon
Dieu_?”
“Is it so grave, uncle?” I asked in my turn.
“No,” replied Lerne. “Donovan is dead, that’s all.”
“Poor fellow,” said Emma. Then after a silence: “Is it not better
to be dead than mad? After all it is the best thing for him. Come,
Nicolas, you are not going to put on a face like that! Come!”
And she seized my hand, and dragged me to the _château_.
Lerne went away in the other direction.
I was prostrated. “Let me alone,” I said, “let me alone. Donovan, the
poor wretch. Let me alone. You cannot know! Let me alone, I say.”
A maddening fear came over me. Leaving Emma I ran after my uncle and
joined him at the laboratory. He was talking to Johann, and showing him
the telegram. The German disappeared into the house at the very moment
that I accosted the Professor.
“Uncle, you have not told him anything, have you? You have not said
anything to Johann?”
“Yes, why?”
“Oh, but he will inform the others, and the others will repeat it
before Nell! Nell will know it, uncle, that is certain. They will tell
her, and Donovan’s soul will learn that it no longer has a human body.
It must not be! It must not be!”
“There is no danger, Nicolas, I assure you.”
“No danger! Those men are scoundrels, I tell you! Let me prevent this
catastrophe! Time is passing, let me in, I entreat you! Please, for a
second, I entreat you! Damn it all, I will pass!”
The lessons I had learned from the bull stood me in good stead; I
charged head first.
My uncle fell back on the grass, and with a blow of my fist I opened
the already half open door. At this, Johann, who was on the watch
behind it, fell back, bleeding at the nose, and then I penetrated to
the courtyard, and decided to take away the dog at any hazard, and
never again be separated from it.
The pack slipped into their kennels. I saw Nell immediately. They had
given her a kennel apart from the others. Her great starved, hairless,
wretched body was lying against the grating.
I called out, “Donovan, Donovan!” She did not budge.
The eyes of the dogs gleamed in the depths of their somber huts, and
some of them growled.
“Donovan! Nell!” I had an intuition of the truth. There also the scythe
of Death had done its work. Yes, Nell also was cold and stiff. A chain
twisted round her neck seemed to have strangled her. I was going to
make sure of this, when Lerne and Johann showed themselves at the
entrance of the courtyard.
“Villains,” I cried, “you have killed her.”
“No, on my honor, I swear,” declared my uncle. “They found her this
morning, exactly as you see.”
“Do you think, then, that she did it of her own accord--that she put an
end to herself? Oh, what a horrible end!”
“Perhaps,” said Lerne. “However, there is another solution, and a more
likely one. A supreme convulsion, I think, twisted the chain. The body
was sickly. Hydrophobia declared itself some days ago. I hide nothing
from you, Nicolas. I am not exculpating myself in any way. You can see
that.”
“Oh,” I cried, in terror, “rabies.”
Lerne went on quietly, “It is possible, also, that another reason for
this death escapes us. They found the dog at 8 o’clock this morning
still warm. The death had taken place an hour before, and,” added he,
“Macbeth succumbed at 7 o’clock--just at the same instant.”
“From what did he die?”
“He died of rabies also.”