My first step, of course, was to find suitable apartments. These I
obtained, after a couple of days' search, in Fourth Avenue; a very
pretty second-floor unfurnished, containing sitting-room, bedroom,
and a smaller apartment which I intended to fit up as a laboratory. I
furnished my lodgings simply, but rather elegantly, and then devoted
all my energies to the adornment of the temple of my worship. I
visited Pike, the celebrated optician, and passed in review his
splendid collection of microscopes,--Field's Compound, Higham's,
Spencer's, Nachet's Binocular, (that founded on the principles of
the stereoscope,) and at length fixed upon that form known as
Spencer's Trunnion Microscope, as combining the greatest number of
improvements with an almost perfect freedom from tremor. Along with
this I purchased every possible accessory,--drawtubes, micrometers,
a _camera-lucida_, lever-stage, achromatic condensers, white cloud
illuminators, prisms, parabolic condensers, polarizing apparatus,
forceps, aquatic boxes, fishing-tubes, with a host of other articles,
all of which would have been useful in the hands of an experienced
microscopist, but, as I afterwards discovered, were not of the
slightest present value to me. It takes years of practice to know
how to use a complicated microscope. The optician looked
suspiciously at me as I made these wholesale purchases. He evidently
was uncertain whether to set me down as some scientific celebrity or
a madman. I think he inclined to the latter belief. I suppose I was
mad. Every great genius is mad upon the subject in which he is
greatest. The unsuccessful madman is disgraced, and called a lunatic.
Mad or not, I set myself to work with a zeal which few scientific
students have ever equalled. I had everything to learn relative to
the delicate study upon which I had embarked,--a study involving the
most earnest patience, the most rigid analytic powers, the steadiest
hand, the most untiring eye, the most refined and subtile
manipulation.
For a long time half my apparatus lay inactively on the shelves of
my laboratory, which was now most amply furnished with every
possible contrivance for facilitating my investigations. The fact was
that I did not know how to use some of my scientific accessories,--
never having been taught microscopies,--and those whose use I
understood theoretically were of little avail, until by practice I
could attain the necessary delicacy of handling. Still, such was the
fury of my ambition, such the untiring perseverance of my experiments,
that, difficult of credit as it may be, in the course of one year I
became theoretically and practically an accomplished microscopist.
During this period of my labors, in which I submitted specimens of
every substance that came under my observation to the action of my
lenses, I became a discoverer,--in a small way, it is true, for I
was very young, but still a discoverer. It was I who destroyed
Ehrenberg's theory that the _Volcox globator_ was an animal, and
proved that his "monads" with stomachs and eyes were merely phases
of the formation of a vegetable cell, and were, when they reached
their mature state, incapable of the act of conjugation, or any true
generative act, without which no organism rising to any stage of life
higher than vegetable can be said to be complete. It was I who
resolved the singular problem of rotation in the cells and hairs of
plants into ciliary attraction, in spite of the assertions of
Mr. Wenham and others, that my explanation was the result of an
optical illusion.
But notwithstanding these discoveries, laboriously and painfully
made as they were, I felt horribly dissatisfied. At every step I
found myself stopped by the imperfections of my instruments. Like
all active microscopists, I gave my imagination full play. Indeed,
it is a common complaint against many such, that they supply the
defects of their instruments with the creations of their brains. I
imagined depths beyond depths in Nature which the limited power of
my lenses prohibited me from exploring. I lay awake at night
constructing imaginary microscopes of immeasurable power, with which
I seemed to pierce through all the envelopes of matter down to its
original atom. How I cursed those imperfect mediums which necessity
through ignorance compelled me to use! How I longed to discover the
secret of some perfect lens whose magnifying power should be limited
only by the resolvability of the object, and which at the same time
should be free from spherical and chromatic aberrations, in short
from all the obstacles over which the poor microscopist finds
himself continually stumbling! I felt convinced that the simple
microscope, composed of a single lens of such vast yet perfect power,
was possible of construction. To attempt to bring the compound
microscope up to such a pitch would have been commencing at the
wrong end; this latter being simply a partially successful endeavor
to remedy those very defects of the simple instrument, which, if
conquered, would leave nothing to be desired.
It was in this mood of mind that I became a constructive microscopist.
After another year passed in this new pursuit, experimenting on
every imaginable substance,--glass, gems, flints, crystals,
artificial crystals formed of the alloy of various vitreous materials,--
in short, having constructed as many varieties of lenses as Argus
had eyes, I found myself precisely where I started, with nothing
gained save an extensive knowledge of glass-making. I was almost
dead with despair. My parents were surprised at my apparent want of
progress in my medical studies, (I had not attended one lecture
since my arrival in the city,) and the expenses of my mad pursuit
had been so great as to embarrass me very seriously.
I was in this frame of mind one day, experimenting in my laboratory
on a small diamond,--that stone, from its great refracting power,
having always occupied my attention more than any other,--when a
young Frenchman, who lived on the floor above me, and who was in the
habit of occasionally visiting me, entered the room.
I think that Jules Simon was a Jew. He had many traits of the Hebrew
character: a love of jewelry, of dress, and of good living. There
was something mysterious about him. He always had something to sell,
and yet went into excellent society. When I say sell, I should
perhaps have said peddle; for his operations were generally confined
to the disposal of single articles,--a picture, for instance, or a
rare carving in ivory, or a pair of duelling-pistols, or the dress
of a Mexican _caballero_. When I was first furnishing my rooms, he
paid me a visit, which ended in my purchasing an antique silver lamp,
which he assured me was a Cellini,--it was handsome enough even for
that,--and some other knick-knacks for my sitting-room. Why Simon
should pursue this petty trade I never could imagine. He apparently
had plenty of money, and had the _entrée_ of the best houses in the
city,--taking care, however, I suppose, to drive no bargains within
the enchanted circle of the Upper Ten. I came at length to the
conclusion that this peddling was but a mask to cover some greater
object, and even went so far as to believe my young acquaintance to
be implicated in the slave-trade. That, however, was none of my
affair.
On the present occasion, Simon entered my room in a state of
considerable excitement.
"_Ah! mon ami_!" he cried, before I could even offer him the
ordinary salutation, "it has occurred to me to be the witness of the
most astonishing things in the world. I promenade myself to the
house of Madame -----. How does the little animal--_le renard_--name
himself in the Latin?"
"Vulpes," I answered.
"Ah! yes, Vulpes. I promenade myself to the house of Madame Vulpes."
"The spirit medium?"
"Yes, the great medium. Great Heavens! what a woman! I write on a
slip of paper many of questions concerning affairs the most secret,--
affairs that conceal themselves in the abysses of my heart the most
profound; and behold! by example! what occurs? This devil of a woman
makes me replies the most truthful to all of them. She talks to me
of things that I do not love to talk of to myself. What am I to think?
I am fixed to the earth!"
"Am I to understand you, M. Simon, that this Mrs. Vulpes replied to
questions secretly written by you, which questions related to events
known only to yourself?"
"Ah! more than that, more than that," he answered, with an air of
some alarm. "She related to me things----But," he added, after a
pause, and suddenly changing his manner, "why occupy ourselves with
these follies? It was all the Biology, without doubt. It goes without
saying that it has not my credence.--But why are we here, _mon ami_?
It has occurred to me to discover the most beautiful thing as you
can imagine.--a vase with green lizards on it composed by the great
Bernard Palissy. It is in my apartment; let us mount. I go to show
it to you."
I followed Simon mechanically; but my thoughts were far from Palissy
and his enamelled ware, although I, like him, was seeking in the
dark after a great discovery. This casual mention of the spiritualist,
Madame Vulpes, set me on a new track. What if this spiritualism
should be really a great fact? What if, through communication with
subtiler organisms than my own, I could reach at a single bound the
goal, which perhaps a life of agonizing mental toil would never
enable me to attain?
While purchasing the Palissy vase from my friend Simon, I was
mentally arranging a visit to Madame Vulpes.