II

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, Hingham'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--draw-tubes, 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

afterward 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 valuable purchases.

He evidently was uncertain whether to set me down as some scientific

celebrity or a madman. I think he was 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 equaled. 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 subtle 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 implements--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 _Volvox 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 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 micro-scopes

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 simplest 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 _entree_ 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 of 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 enameled ware, although I, like him, was seeking in the dark a great

discovery. This casual mention of the spiritualist, Madame Vulpes,

set me on a new track. What if, through communication with more subtle

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.