IV

There was a light in Simon's room as I entered my house. A vague

impulse urged me to visit him. As I opened the door of his sitting-room

unannounced, he was bending, with his back toward me, over a Carcel

lamp, apparently engaged in minutely examining some object which he held

in his hands. As I entered, he started suddenly, thrust his hand into

his breast pocket, and turned to me with a face crimson with confusion.

"What!" I cried, "poring over the miniature of some fair lady? Well,

don't blush so much; I won't ask to see it."

Simon laughed awkwardly enough, but made none of the negative

protestations usual on such occasions. He asked me to take a seat.

"Simon," said I, "I have just come from Madame Vulpes."

This time Simon turned as white as a sheet, and seemed stupefied, as

if a sudden electric shock had smitten him. He babbled some incoherent

words, and went hastily to a small closet where he usually kept his

liquors. Although astonished at his emotion, I was too preoccupied with

my own idea to pay much attention to anything else.

"You say truly when you call Madame Vulpes a devil of a woman," I

continued. "Simon, she told me wonderful things to-night, or rather

was the means of telling me wonderful things. Ah! if I could only get a

diamond that weighed one hundred and forty carats!"

Scarcely had the sigh with which I uttered this desire died upon my lips

when Simon, with the aspect of a wild beast, glared at me savagely, and,

rushing to the mantelpiece, where some foreign weapons hung on the wall,

caught up a Malay creese, and brandished it furiously before him.

"No!" he cried in French, into which he always broke when excited. "No!

you shall not have it! You are perfidious! You have consulted with that

demon, and desire my treasure! But I will die first! Me, I am brave! You

can not make me fear!"

All this, uttered in a loud voice, trembling with excitement, astounded

me. I saw at a glance that I had accidentally trodden upon the edges of

Simon's secret, whatever it was. It was necessary to reassure him.

"My dear Simon," I said, "I am entirely at a loss to know what you mean.

I went to Madame Vulpes to consult with her on a scientific problem,

to the solution of which I discovered that a diamond of the size I just

mentioned was necessary. You were never alluded to during the evening,

nor, so far as I was concerned, even thought of. What can be the meaning

of this outburst? If you happen to have a set of valuable diamonds in

your possession, you need fear nothing from me. The diamond which I

require you could not possess; or, if you did possess it, you would not

be living here."

Something in my tone must have completely reassured him, for his

expression immediately changed to a sort of constrained merriment,

combined however, with a certain suspicious attention to my movements.

He laughed, and said that I must bear with him; that he was at certain

moments subject to a species of vertigo, which betrayed itself in

incoherent speeches, and that the attacks passed off as rapidly as they

came.

He put his weapon aside while making this explanation, and endeavored,

with some success, to assume a more cheerful air.

All this did not impose on me in the least. I was too much accustomed

to analytical labors to be baffled by so flimsy a veil. I determined to

probe the mystery to the bottom.

"Simon," I said gayly, "let us forget all this over a bottle of

Burgundy. I have a case of Lausseure's _Clos Vougeot_ downstairs,

fragrant with the odors and ruddy with the sunlight of the Cote d'Or.

Let us have up a couple of bottles. What say you?"

"With all my heart," answered Simon smilingly.

I produced the wine and we seated ourselves to drink. It was of a famous

vintage, that of 1848, a year when war and wine throve together, and its

pure but powerful juice seemed to impart renewed vitality to the system.

By the time we had half finished the second bottle, Simon's head, which

I knew was a weak one, had begun to yield, while I remained calm as

ever, only that every draught seemed to send a flush of vigor through

my limbs. Simon's utterance became more and more indistinct. He took to

singing French _chansons_ of a not very moral tendency. I rose suddenly

from the table just at the conclusion of one of those incoherent verses,

and, fixing my eyes on him with a quiet smile, said, "Simon, I have

deceived you. I learned your secret this evening. You may as well be

frank with me. Mrs. Vulpes--or rather, one of her spirits--told me all."

He started with horror. His intoxication seemed for the moment to fade

away, and he made a movement toward the weapon that he had a short time

before laid down, I stopped him with my hand.

"Monster!" he cried passionately, "I am ruined! What shall I do? You

shall never have it! I swear by my mother!"

"I don't want it," I said; "rest secure, but be frank with me. Tell me

all about it."

The drunkenness began to return. He protested with maudlin earnestness

that I was entirely mistaken--that I was intoxicated; then asked me to

swear eternal secrecy, and promised to disclose the mystery to me. I

pledged myself, of course, to all. With an uneasy look in his eyes, and

hands unsteady with drink and nervousness, he drew a small case from his

breast and opened it. Heavens! How the mild lamplight was shivered into

a thousand prismatic arrows as it fell upon a vast rose-diamond that

glittered in the case! I was no judge of diamonds, but I saw at a glance

that this was a gem of rare size and purity. I looked at Simon with

wonder and--must I confess it?--with envy. How could he have obtained

this treasure? In reply to my questions, I could just gather from

his drunken statements (of which, I fancy, half the incoherence was

affected) that he had been superintending a gang of slaves engaged

in diamond-washing in Brazil; that he had seen one of them secrete a

diamond, but, instead of informing his employers, had quietly watched

the negro until he saw him bury his treasure; that he had dug it up and

fled with it, but that as yet he was afraid to attempt to dispose of

it publicly--so valuable a gem being almost certain to attract too

much attention to its owner's antecedents--and he had not been able

to discover any of those obscure channels by which such matters are

conveyed away safely. He added that, in accordance with oriental

practice, he had named his diamond with the fanciful title of "The Eye

of Morning."

While Simon was relating this to me, I regarded the great diamond

attentively. Never had I beheld anything so beautiful. All the glories

of light ever imagined or described seemed to pulsate in its crystalline

chambers. Its weight, as I learned from Simon, was exactly one hundred

and forty carats. Here was an amazing coincidence. The hand of destiny

seemed in it. On the very evening when the spirit of Leeuwenhoek

communicates to me the great secret of the microscope, the priceless

means which he directs me to employ start up within my easy reach! I

determined, with the most perfect deliberation, to possess myself of

Simon's diamond.

I sat opposite to him while he nodded over his glass, and calmly

revolved the whole affair. I did not for an instant contemplate so

foolish an act as a common theft, which would of course be discovered,

or at least necessitate flight and concealment, all of which must

interfere with my scientific plans. There was but one step to be

taken--to kill Simon. After all, what was the life of a little peddling

Jew in comparison with the interests of science? Human beings are taken

every day from the condemned prisons to be experimented on by surgeons.

This man, Simon, was by his own confession a criminal, a robber, and I

believed on my soul a murderer. He deserved death quite as much as any

felon condemned by the laws: why should I not, like government,

contrive that his punishment should contribute to the progress of human

knowledge?

The means for accomplishing everything I desired lay within my reach.

There stood upon the mantelpiece a bottle half full of French laudanum.

Simon was so occupied with his diamond, which I had just restored to

him, that it was an affair of no difficulty to drug his glass. In a

quarter of an hour he was in a profound sleep.

I now opened his waistcoat, took the diamond from the inner pocket in

which he had placed it, and removed him to the bed, on which I laid him

so that his feet hung down over the edge. I had possessed myself of

the Malay creese, which I held in my right hand, while with the other I

discovered as accurately as I could by pulsation the exact locality of

the heart. It was essential that all the aspects of his death should

lead to the surmise of self-murder. I calculated the exact angle at

which it was probable that the weapon, if leveled by Simon's own hand,

would enter his breast; then with one powerful blow I thrust it up to

the hilt in the very spot which I desired to penetrate. A convulsive

thrill ran through Simon's limbs. I heard a smothered sound issue from

his throat, precisely like the bursting of a large air-bubble sent up by

a diver when it reaches the surface of the water; he turned half round

on his side, and, as if to assist my plans more effectually, his right

hand, moved by some mere spasmodic impulse, clasped the handle of the

creese, which it remained holding with extraordinary muscular tenacity.

Beyond this there was no apparent struggle. The laudanum, I presume,

paralyzed the usual nervous action. He must have died instantly.

There was yet something to be done. To make it certain that all

suspicion of the act should be diverted from any inhabitant of the house

to Simon himself, it was necessary that the door should be found in the

morning _locked on the in-side_. How to do this, and afterward escape

myself? Not by the window; that was a physical impossibility. Besides,

I was determined that the windows _also_ should be found bolted. The

solution was simple enough. I descended softly to my own room for

a peculiar instrument which I had used for holding small slippery

substances, such as minute spheres of glass, etc. This instrument was

nothing more than a long, slender hand-vise, with a very powerful grip

and a considerable leverage, which last was accidentally owing to the

shape of the handle. Nothing was simpler than, when the key was in the

lock, to seize the end of its stem in this vise, through the keyhole,

from the outside, and so lock the door. Previously, however, to doing

this, I burned a number of papers on Simon's hearth. Suicides almost

always burn papers before they destroy themselves. I also emptied some

more laudanum into Simon's glass--having first removed from it all

traces of wine--cleaned the other wine-glass, and brought the bottles

away with me. If traces of two persons drinking had been found in the

room, the question naturally would have arisen, Who was the second?

Besides, the wine-bottles might have been identified as belonging to me.

The laudanum I poured out to account for its presence in his stomach, in

case of a _post-mortem_ examination. The theory naturally would be that

he first intended to poison himself, but, after swallowing a little of

the drug, was either disgusted with its taste, or changed his mind from

other motives, and chose the dagger. These arrangements made, I walked

out, leaving the gas burning, locked the door with my vise, and went to

bed.

Simon's death was not discovered until nearly three in the afternoon.

The servant, astonished at seeing the gas burning--the light streaming

on the dark landing from under the door--peeped through the keyhole and

saw Simon on the bed.

She gave the alarm. The door was burst open, and the neighborhood was in

a fever of excitement.

Every one in the house was arrested, myself included. There was an

inquest; but no clew to his death beyond that of suicide could be

obtained. Curiously enough, he had made several speeches to his friends

the preceding week that seemed to point to self-destruction. One

gentleman swore that Simon had said in his presence that "he was tired

of life." His landlord affirmed that Simon, when paying him his last

month's rent, remarked that "he should not pay him rent much longer."

All the other evidence corresponded--the door locked inside, the

position of the corpse, the burned papers. As I anticipated, no one

knew of the possession of the diamond by Simon, so that no motive was

suggested for his murder. The jury, after a prolonged examination,

brought in the usual verdict, and the neighborhood once more settled

down to its accustomed quiet.

V

The three months succeeding Simon's catastrophe I devoted night and day

to my diamond lens. I had constructed a vast galvanic battery, composed

of nearly two thousand pairs of plates: a higher power I dared not use,

lest the diamond should be calcined. By means of this enormous engine

I was enabled to send a powerful current of electricity continually

through my great diamond, which it seemed to me gained in lustre every

day. At the expiration of a month I commenced the grinding and polishing

of the lens, a work of intense toil and exquisite delicacy. The great

density of the stone, and the care required to be taken with the

curvatures of the surfaces of the lens, rendered the labor the severest

and most harassing that I had yet undergone.

At last the eventful moment came; the lens was completed. I stood

trembling on the threshold of new worlds. I had the realization of

Alexander's famous wish before me. The lens lay on the table, ready to

be placed upon its platform. My hand fairly shook as I enveloped a drop

of water with a thin coating of oil of turpentine, preparatory to

its examination, a process necessary in order to prevent the rapid

evaporation of the water. I now placed the drop on a thin slip of glass

under the lens, and throwing upon it, by the combined aid of a prism and

a mirror, a powerful stream of light, I approached my eye to the minute

hole drilled through the axis of the lens. For an instant I saw nothing

save what seemed to be an illuminated chaos, a vast, luminous abyss. A

pure white light, cloudless and serene, and seemingly limitless as space

itself, was my first impression. Gently, and with the greatest care, I

depressed the lens a few hairbreadths. The wondrous illumination

still continued, but as the lens approached the object a scene of

indescribable beauty was unfolded to my view.

I seemed to gaze upon a vast space, the limits of which extended far

beyond my vision. An atmosphere of magical luminousness permeated the

entire field of view. I was amazed to see no trace of animalculous

life. Not a living thing, apparently, inhabited that dazzling expanse.

I comprehended instantly that, by the wondrous power of my lens, I had

penetrated beyond the grosser particles of aqueous matter, beyond the

realms of infusoria and protozoa, down to the original gaseous globule,

into whose luminous interior I was gazing as into an almost boundless

dome filled with a supernatural radiance.

It was, however, no brilliant void into which I looked. On every side I

beheld beautiful inorganic forms, of unknown texture, and colored with

the most enchanting hues. These forms presented the appearance of what

might be called, for want of a more specific definition, foliated clouds

of the highest rarity--that is, they undulated and broke into vegetable

formations, and were tinged with splendors compared with which the

gilding of our autumn woodlands is as dross compared with gold. Far away

into the illimitable distance stretched long avenues of these gaseous

forests, dimly transparent, and painted with prismatic hues of

unimaginable brilliancy. The pendent branches waved along the fluid

glades until every vista seemed to break through half-lucent ranks of

many-colored drooping silken pennons. What seemed to be either fruits or

flowers, pied with a thousand hues, lustrous and ever-varying, bubbled

from the crowns of this fairy foliage. No hills, no lakes, no rivers,

no forms animate or inanimate, were to be seen, save those vast auroral

copses that floated serenely in the luminous stillness, with leaves and

fruits and flowers gleaming with unknown fires, unrealizable by mere

imagination.

How strange, I thought, that this sphere should be thus condemned to

solitude! I had hoped, at least, to discover some new form of animal

life, perhaps of a lower class than any with which we are at present

acquainted, but still some living organism. I found my newly discovered

world, if I may so speak, a beautiful chromatic desert.

While I was speculating on the singular arrangements of the internal

economy of Nature, with which she so frequently splinters into atoms our

most compact theories, I thought I beheld a form moving slowly through

the glades of one of the prismatic forests. I looked more attentively,

and found that I was not mistaken. Words can not depict the anxiety with

which I awaited the nearer approach of this mysterious object. Was it

merely some inanimate substance, held in suspense in the attenuated

atmosphere of the globule, or was it an animal endowed with vitality

and motion? It approached, flitting behind the gauzy, colored veils of

cloud-foliage, for seconds dimly revealed, then vanishing. At last the

violet pennons that trailed nearest to me vibrated; they were gently

pushed aside, and the form floated out into the broad light.

It was a female human shape. When I say human, I mean it possessed the

outlines of humanity; but there the analogy ends. Its adorable beauty

lifted it illimitable heights beyond the loveliest daughter of Adam.

I can not, I dare not, attempt to inventory the charms of this divine

revelation of perfect beauty. Those eyes of mystic violet, dewy and

serene, evade my words. Her long, lustrous hair following her glorious

head in a golden wake, like the track sown in heaven by a falling star,

seems to quench my most burning phrases with its splendors. If all the

bees of Hybla nestled upon my lips, they would still sing but hoarsely

the wondrous harmonies of outline that inclosed her form.

She swept out from between the rainbow-curtains of the cloud-trees into

the broad sea of light that lay beyond. Her motions were those of some

graceful naiad, cleaving, by a mere effort of her will, the clear,

unruffled waters that fill the chambers of the sea. She floated forth

with the serene grace of a frail bubble ascending through the still

atmosphere of a June day. The perfect roundness of her limbs formed

suave and enchanting curves. It was like listening to the most spiritual

symphony of Beethoven the divine, to watch the harmonious flow of lines.

This, indeed was a pleasure cheaply purchased at any price. What cared

I if I had waded to the portal of this wonder through another's blood.

I would have given my own to enjoy one such moment of intoxication and

delight.

Breathless with gazing on this lovely wonder, and forgetful for an

instant of everything save her presence, I withdrew my eye from the

microscope eagerly. Alas! as my gaze fell on the thin slide that lay

beneath my instrument, the bright light from mirror and from prism

sparkled on a colorless drop of water! There, in that tiny bead of dew,

this beautiful being was forever imprisoned. The planet Neptune was not

more distant from me than she. I hastened once more to apply my eye to

the microscope.

Animula (let me now call her by that dear name which I subsequently

bestowed on her) had changed her position. She had again approached the

wondrous forest, and was gazing earnestly upward. Presently one of the

trees--as I must call them--unfolded a long ciliary process, with which

it seized one of the gleaming fruits that glittered on its summit, and,

sweeping slowly down, held it within reach of Animula. The sylph took

it in her delicate hand and began to eat. My attention was so entirely

absorbed by her that I could not apply myself to the task of determining

whether this singular plant was or was not instinct with volition.

I watched her, as she made her repast, with the most profound attention.

The suppleness of her motions sent a thrill of delight through my frame;

my heart beat madly as she turned her beautiful eyes in the direction of

the spot in which I stood. What would I not have given to have had the

power to precipitate myself into that luminous ocean and float with her

through those grooves of purple and gold! While I was thus breathlessly

following her every movement, she suddenly started, seemed to listen

for a moment, and then cleaving the brilliant ether in which she was

floating, like a flash of light, pierced through the opaline forest and

disappeared.

Instantly a series of the most singular sensations attacked me. It

seemed as if I had suddenly gone blind. The luminous sphere was still

before me, but my daylight had vanished. What caused this sudden

disappearance? Had she a lover or a husband? Yes, that was the solution!

Some signal from a happy fellow-being had vibrated through the avenues

of the forest, and she had obeyed the summons.

The agony of my sensations, as I arrived at this conclusion, startled

me. I tried to reject the conviction that my reason forced upon me. I

battled against the fatal conclusion--but in vain. It was so. I had no

escape from it. I loved an animalcule.

It is true that, thanks to the marvelous power of my microscope, she

appeared of human proportions. Instead of presenting the revolting

aspect of the coarser creatures, that live and struggle and die, in

the more easily resolvable portions of the water-drop, she was fair and

delicate and of surpassing beauty. But of what account was all that?

Every time that my eye was withdrawn from the instrument it fell on a

miserable drop of water, within which, I must be content to know, dwelt

all that could make my life lovely.

Could she but see me once! Could I for one moment pierce the mystical

walls that so inexorably rose to separate us, and whisper all that

filled my soul, I might consent to be satisfied for the rest of my life

with the knowledge of her remote sympathy.

It would be something to have established even the faintest personal

link to bind us together--to know that at times, when roaming through

these enchanted glades, she might think of the wonderful stranger who

had broken the monotony of her life with his presence and left a gentle

memory in her heart!

But it could not be. No invention of which human intellect was capable

could break down the barriers that nature had erected. I might feast my

soul upon her wondrous beauty, yet she must always remain ignorant

of the adoring eyes that day and night gazed upon her, and, even when

closed, beheld her in dreams. With a bitter cry of anguish I fled from

the room, and flinging myself on my bed, sobbed myself to sleep like a

child.