III. THE AGONY

In the early days of December an old man of some seventy years of age

pursued his way along the Rue de Varenne, in spite of the falling rain.

He peered up at the door of each house, trying to discover the address

of the Marquis Raphael de Valentin, in a simple, childlike fashion,

and with the abstracted look peculiar to philosophers. His face plainly

showed traces of a struggle between a heavy mortification and an

authoritative nature; his long, gray hair hung in disorder about a face

like a piece of parchment shriveling in the fire. If a painter had come

upon this curious character, he would, no doubt, have transferred him

to his sketchbook on his return, a thin, bony figure, clad in black, and

have inscribed beneath it: “Classical poet in search of a rhyme.”

When he had identified the number that had been given to him, this

reincarnation of Rollin knocked meekly at the door of a splendid

mansion.

“Is Monsieur Raphael in?” the worthy man inquired of the Swiss in

livery.

“My Lord the Marquis sees nobody,” said the servant, swallowing a huge

morsel that he had just dipped in a large bowl of coffee.

“There is his carriage,” said the elderly stranger, pointing to a fine

equipage that stood under the wooden canopy that sheltered the steps

before the house, in place of a striped linen awning. “He is going out;

I will wait for him.”

“Then you might wait here till to-morrow morning, old boy,” said the

Swiss. “A carriage is always waiting for monsieur. Please to go away. If

I were to let any stranger come into the house without orders, I should

lose an income of six hundred francs.”

A tall old man, in a costume not unlike that of a subordinate in the

Civil Service, came out of the vestibule and hurried part of the

way down the steps, while he made a survey of the astonished elderly

applicant for admission.

“What is more, here is M. Jonathan,” the Swiss remarked; “speak to him.”

Fellow-feeling of some kind, or curiosity, brought the two old men

together in a central space in the great entrance-court. A few blades of

grass were growing in the crevices of the pavement; a terrible silence

reigned in that great house. The sight of Jonathan’s face would have

made you long to understand the mystery that brooded over it, and that

was announced by the smallest trifles about the melancholy place.

When Raphael inherited his uncle’s vast estate, his first care had been

to seek out the old and devoted servitor of whose affection he knew that

he was secure. Jonathan had wept tears of joy at the sight of his young

master, of whom he thought he had taken a final farewell; and when the

marquis exalted him to the high office of steward, his happiness could

not be surpassed. So old Jonathan became an intermediary power between

Raphael and the world at large. He was the absolute disposer of his

master’s fortune, the blind instrument of an unknown will, and a sixth

sense, as it were, by which the emotions of life were communicated to

Raphael.

“I should like to speak with M. Raphael, sir,” said the elderly person

to Jonathan, as he climbed up the steps some way, into a shelter from

the rain.

“To speak with my Lord the Marquis?” the steward cried. “He scarcely

speaks even to me, his foster-father!”

“But I am likewise his foster-father,” said the old man. “If your wife

was his foster-mother, I fed him myself with the milk of the Muses. He

is my nursling, my child, carus alumnus! I formed his mind, cultivated

his understanding, developed his genius, and, I venture to say it, to

my own honor and glory. Is he not one of the most remarkable men of our

epoch? He was one of my pupils in two lower forms, and in rhetoric. I am

his professor.”

“Ah, sir, then you are M. Porriquet?”

“Exactly, sir, but----”

“Hush! hush!” Jonathan called to two underlings, whose voices broke the

monastic silence that shrouded the house.

“But is the Marquis ill, sir?” the professor continued.

“My dear sir,” Jonathan replied, “Heaven only knows what is the matter

with my master. You see, there are not a couple of houses like ours

anywhere in Paris. Do you understand? Not two houses. Faith, that

there are not. My Lord the Marquis had this hotel purchased for him; it

formerly belonged to a duke and a peer of France; then he spent three

hundred thousand francs over furnishing it. That’s a good deal, you

know, three hundred thousand francs! But every room in the house is a

perfect wonder. ‘Good,’ said I to myself when I saw this magnificence;

‘it is just like it used to be in the time of my lord, his late

grandfather; and the young marquis is going to entertain all Paris

and the Court!’ Nothing of the kind! My lord refused to see any one

whatever. ‘Tis a funny life that he leads, M. Porriquet, you understand.

An _inconciliable_ life. He rises every day at the same time. I am the

only person, you see, that may enter his room. I open all the shutters

at seven o’clock, summer or winter. It is all arranged very oddly. As I

come in I say to him:

“‘You must get up and dress, my Lord Marquis.’

“Then he rises and dresses himself. I have to give him his

dressing-gown, and it is always after the same pattern, and of the same

material. I am obliged to replace it when it can be used no longer,

simply to save him the trouble of asking for a new one. A queer fancy!

As a matter of fact, he has a thousand francs to spend every day, and

he does as he pleases, the dear child. And besides, I am so fond of him

that if he gave me a box on the ear on one side, I should hold out the

other to him! The most difficult things he will tell me to do, and yet I

do them, you know! He gives me a lot of trifles to attend to, that I

am well set to work! He reads the newspapers, doesn’t he? Well, my

instructions are to put them always in the same place, on the same

table. I always go at the same hour and shave him myself; and don’t I

tremble! The cook would forfeit the annuity of a thousand crowns that

he is to come into after my lord’s death, if breakfast is not served

_inconciliably_ at ten o’clock precisely. The menus are drawn up for the

whole year round, day after day. My Lord the Marquis has not a thing

to wish for. He has strawberries whenever there are any, and he has the

earliest mackerel to be had in Paris. The programme is printed every

morning. He knows his dinner by rote. In the next place, he dresses

himself at the same hour, in the same clothes, the same linen, that

I always put on the same chair, you understand? I have to see that he

always has the same cloth; and if it should happen that his coat came

to grief (a mere supposition), I should have to replace it by another

without saying a word about it to him. If it is fine, I go in and say to

my master:

“‘You ought to go out, sir.’

“He says Yes, or No. If he has a notion that he will go out, he doesn’t

wait for his horses; they are always ready harnessed; the coachman stops

there _inconciliably_, whip in hand, just as you see him out there.

In the evening, after dinner, my master goes one day to the Opera, the

other to the Ital----no, he hasn’t yet gone to the Italiens, though,

for I could not find a box for him until yesterday. Then he comes in at

eleven o’clock precisely, to go to bed. At any time in the day when

he has nothing to do, he reads--he is always reading, you see--it is a

notion he has. My instructions are to read the _Journal de la Librairie_

before he sees it, and to buy new books, so that he finds them on his

chimney-piece on the very day that they are published. I have orders to

go into his room every hour or so, to look after the fire and everything

else, and to see that he wants nothing. He gave me a little book, sir,

to learn off by heart, with all my duties written in it--a regular

catechism! In summer I have to keep a cool and even temperature with

blocks of ice and at all seasons to put fresh flowers all about. He is

rich! He has a thousand francs to spend every day; he can indulge his

fancies! And he hadn’t even necessaries for so long, poor child! He

doesn’t annoy anybody; he is as good as gold; he never opens his mouth,

for instance; the house and garden are absolutely silent. In short, my

master has not a single wish left; everything comes in the twinkling

of an eye, if he raises his hand, and _instanter_. Quite right, too.

If servants are not looked after, everything falls into confusion. You

would never believe the lengths he goes about things. His rooms are

all--what do you call it?--er--er--_en suite_. Very well; just suppose,

now, that he opens his room door or the door of his study; presto! all

the other doors fly open of themselves by a patent contrivance; and then

he can go from one end of the house to the other and not find a single

door shut; which is all very nice and pleasant and convenient for us

great folk! But, on my word, it cost us a lot of money! And, after all,

M. Porriquet, he said to me at last:

“‘Jonathan, you will look after me as if I were a baby in long clothes,’

Yes, sir, ‘long clothes!’ those were his very words. ‘You will think of

all my requirements for me.’ I am the master, so to speak, and he is

the servant, you understand? The reason of it? Ah, my word, that is just

what nobody on earth knows but himself and God Almighty. It is quite

_inconciliable_!”

“He is writing a poem!” exclaimed the old professor.

“You think he is writing a poem, sir? It’s a very absorbing affair,

then! But, you know, I don’t think he is. He often tells me that he

wants to live like a _vergetation_; he wants to _vergetate_. Only

yesterday he was looking at a tulip while he was dressing, and he said

to me:

“‘There is my own life--I am _vergetating_, my poor Jonathan.’ Now, some

of them insist that that is monomania. It is _inconciliable_!”

“All this makes it very clear to me, Jonathan,” the professor answered,

with a magisterial solemnity that greatly impressed the old servant,

“that your master is absorbed in a great work. He is deep in

vast meditations, and has no wish to be distracted by the petty

preoccupations of ordinary life. A man of genius forgets everything

among his intellectual labors. One day the famous Newton----”

“Newton?--oh, ah! I don’t know the name,” said Jonathan.

“Newton, a great geometrician,” Porriquet went on, “once sat for

twenty-four hours leaning his elbow on the table; when he emerged from

his musings, he was a day out in his reckoning, just as if he had been

sleeping. I will go to see him, dear lad; I may perhaps be of some use

to him.”

“Not for a moment!” Jonathan cried. “Not though you were King of

France--I mean the real old one. You could not go in unless you forced

the doors open and walked over my body. But I will go and tell him you

are here, M. Porriquet, and I will put it to him like this, ‘Ought he

to come up?’ And he will say Yes or No. I never say, ‘Do you wish?’

or ‘Will you?’ or ‘Do you want?’ Those words are scratched out of the

dictionary. He let out at me once with a ‘Do you want to kill me?’ he

was so very angry.”

Jonathan left the old schoolmaster in the vestibule, signing to him to

come no further, and soon returned with a favorable answer. He led the

old gentleman through one magnificent room after another, where every

door stood open. At last Porriquet beheld his pupil at some distance

seated beside the fire.

Raphael was reading the paper. He sat in an armchair wrapped in a

dressing-gown with some large pattern on it. The intense melancholy that

preyed upon him could be discerned in his languid posture and feeble

frame; it was depicted on his brow and white face; he looked like some

plant bleached by darkness. There was a kind of effeminate grace about

him; the fancies peculiar to wealthy invalids were also noticeable. His

hands were soft and white, like a pretty woman’s; he wore his fair hair,

now grown scanty, curled about his temples with a refinement of vanity.

The Greek cap that he wore was pulled to one side by the weight of its

tassel; too heavy for the light material of which it was made. He

had let the paper-knife fall at his feet, a malachite blade with gold

mounting, which he had used to cut the leaves of the book. The amber

mouthpiece of a magnificent Indian hookah lay on his knee; the enameled

coils lay like a serpent in the room, but he had forgotten to draw out

its fresh perfume. And yet there was a complete contradiction between

the general feebleness of his young frame and the blue eyes, where all

his vitality seemed to dwell; an extraordinary intelligence seemed to

look out from them and to grasp everything at once.

That expression was painful to see. Some would have read despair in

it, and others some inner conflict terrible as remorse. It was the

inscrutable glance of helplessness that must perforce consign its

desires to the depths of its own heart; or of a miser enjoying in

imagination all the pleasures that his money could procure for him,

while he declines to lessen his hoard; the look of a bound Prometheus,

of the fallen Napoleon of 1815, when he learned at the Elysee the

strategical blunder that his enemies had made, and asked for twenty-four

hours of command in vain; or rather it was the same look that Raphael

had turned upon the Seine, or upon his last piece of gold at the

gaming-table only a few months ago.

He was submitting his intelligence and his will to the homely

common-sense of an old peasant whom fifty years of domestic service had

scarcely civilized. He had given up all the rights of life in order to

live; he had despoiled his soul of all the romance that lies in a wish;

and almost rejoiced at thus becoming a sort of automaton. The better to

struggle with the cruel power that he had challenged, he had followed

Origen’s example, and had maimed and chastened his imagination.

The day after he had seen the diminution of the Magic Skin, at his

sudden accession of wealth, he happened to be at his notary’s house. A

well-known physician had told them quite seriously, at dessert, how

a Swiss attacked by consumption had cured himself. The man had never

spoken a word for ten years, and had compelled himself to draw six

breaths only, every minute, in the close atmosphere of a cow-house,

adhering all the time to a regimen of exceedingly light diet. “I will be

like that man,” thought Raphael to himself. He wanted life at any price,

and so he led the life of a machine in the midst of all the luxury

around him.

The old professor confronted this youthful corpse and shuddered; there

seemed something unnatural about the meagre, enfeebled frame. In the

Marquis, with his eager eyes and careworn forehead, he could hardly

recognize the fresh-cheeked and rosy pupil with the active limbs,

whom he remembered. If the worthy classicist, sage critic, and general

preserver of the traditions of correct taste had read Byron, he would

have thought that he had come on a Manfred when he looked to find Childe

Harold.

“Good day, pere Porriquet,” said Raphael, pressing the old

schoolmaster’s frozen fingers in his own damp ones; “how are you?”

“I am very well,” replied the other, alarmed by the touch of that

feverish hand. “But how about you?”

“Oh, I am hoping to keep myself in health.”

“You are engaged in some great work, no doubt?”

“No,” Raphael answered. “Exegi monumemtum, pere Porriquet; I have

contributed an important page to science, and have now bidden her

farewell for ever. I scarcely know where my manuscript is.”

“The style is no doubt correct?” queried the schoolmaster. “You, I hope,

would never have adopted the barbarous language of the new school, which

fancies it has worked such wonders by discovering Ronsard!”

“My work treats of physiology pure and simple.”

“Oh, then, there is no more to be said,” the schoolmaster answered.

“Grammar must yield to the exigencies of discovery. Nevertheless, young

man, a lucid and harmonious style--the diction of Massillon, of M. de

Buffon, of the great Racine--a classical style, in short, can never

spoil anything----But, my friend,” the schoolmaster interrupted

himself, “I was forgetting the object of my visit, which concerns my own

interests.”

Too late Raphael recalled to mind the verbose eloquence and elegant

circumlocutions which in a long professorial career had grown habitual

to his old tutor, and almost regretted that he had admitted him; but

just as he was about to wish to see him safely outside, he promptly

suppressed his secret desire with a stealthy glance at the Magic Skin.

It hung there before him, fastened down upon some white material,

surrounded by a red line accurately traced about its prophetic outlines.

Since that fatal carouse, Raphael had stifled every least whim, and

had lived so as not to cause the slightest movement in the terrible

talisman. The Magic Skin was like a tiger with which he must live

without exciting its ferocity. He bore patiently, therefore, with the

old schoolmaster’s prolixity.

Porriquet spent an hour in telling him about the persecutions directed

against him ever since the Revolution of July. The worthy man, having

a liking for strong governments, had expressed the patriotic wish that

grocers should be left to their counters, statesmen to the management of

public business, advocates to the Palais de Justice, and peers of France

to the Luxembourg; but one of the popularity-seeking ministers of the

Citizen King had ousted him from his chair, on an accusation of Carlism,

and the old man now found himself without pension or post, and with no

bread to eat. As he played the part of guardian angel to a poor nephew,

for whose schooling at Saint Sulpice he was paying, he came less on his

own account than for his adopted child’s sake, to entreat his former

pupil’s interest with the new minister. He did not ask to be reinstated,

but only for a position at the head of some provincial school.

QRaphael had fallen a victim to unconquerable drowsiness by the time

that the worthy man’s monotonous voice ceased to sound in his ears.

Civility had compelled him to look at the pale and unmoving eyes of

the deliberate and tedious old narrator, till he himself had reached

stupefaction, magnetized in an inexplicable way by the power of inertia.

“Well, my dear pere Porriquet,” he said, not very certain what the

question was to which he was replying, “but I can do nothing for you,

nothing at all. _I wish very heartily_ that you may succeed----”

All at once, without seeing the change wrought on the old man’s sallow

and wrinkled brow by these conventional phrases, full of indifference

and selfishness, Raphael sprang to his feet like a startled roebuck.

He saw a thin white line between the black piece of hide and the red

tracing about it, and gave a cry so fearful that the poor professor was

frightened by it.

“Old fool! Go!” he cried. “You will be appointed as headmaster! Couldn’t

you have asked me for an annuity of a thousand crowns rather than a

murderous wish? Your visit would have cost me nothing. There are a

hundred thousand situations to be had in France, but I have only

one life. A man’s life is worth more than all the situations in the

world.--Jonathan!”

Jonathan appeared.

“This is your doing, double-distilled idiot! What made you suggest

that I should see M. Porriquet?” and he pointed to the old man, who was

petrified with fright. “Did I put myself in your hands for you to tear

me in pieces? You have just shortened my life by ten years! Another

blunder of this kind, and you will lay me where I have laid my father.

Would I not far rather have possessed the beautiful Foedora? And I have

obliged that old hulk instead--that rag of humanity! I had money enough

for him. And, moreover, if all the Porriquets in the world were dying of

hunger, what is that to me?”

Raphael’s face was white with anger; a slight froth marked his trembling

lips; there was a savage gleam in his eyes. The two elders shook with

terror in his presence like two children at the sight of a snake. The

young man fell back in his armchair, a kind of reaction took place in

him, the tears flowed fast from his angry eyes.

“Oh, my life!” he cried, “that fair life of mine. Never to know a kindly

thought again, to love no more; nothing is left to me!”

He turned to the professor and went on in a gentle voice--“The harm

is done, my old friend. Your services have been well repaid; and my

misfortune has at any rate contributed to the welfare of a good and

worthy man.”

His tones betrayed so much feeling that the almost unintelligible

words drew tears from the two old men, such tears as are shed over some

pathetic song in a foreign tongue.

“He is epileptic,” muttered Porriquet.

“I understand your kind intentions, my friend,” Raphael answered

gently. “You would make excuses for me. Ill-health cannot be helped, but

ingratitude is a grievous fault. Leave me now,” he added. “To-morrow or

the next day, or possibly to-night, you will receive your appointment;

Resistance has triumphed over Motion. Farewell.”

The old schoolmaster went away, full of keen apprehension as to

Valentin’s sanity. A thrill of horror ran through him; there had been

something supernatural, he thought, in the scene he had passed through.

He could hardly believe his own impressions, and questioned them like

one awakened from a painful dream.

“Now attend to me, Jonathan,” said the young man to his old servant.

“Try to understand the charge confided to you.”

“Yes, my Lord Marquis.”

“I am as a man outlawed from humanity.”

“Yes, my Lord Marquis.”

“All the pleasures of life disport themselves round my bed of death,

and dance about me like fair women; but if I beckon to them, I must die.

Death always confronts me. You must be the barrier between the world and

me.”

“Yes, my Lord Marquis,” said the old servant, wiping the drops of

perspiration from his wrinkled forehead. “But if you don’t wish to

see pretty women, how will you manage at the Italiens this evening? An

English family is returning to London, and I have taken their box for

the rest of the season, and it is in a splendid position--superb; in the

first row.”

Raphael, deep in his own deep musings, paid no attention to him.

“Do you see that splendid equipage, a brougham painted a dark brown

color, but with the arms of an ancient and noble family shining from

the panels? As it rolls past, all the shop-girls admire it, and look

longingly at the yellow satin lining, the rugs from la Savonnerie,

the daintiness and freshness of every detail, the silken cushions and

tightly-fitting glass windows. Two liveried footmen are mounted behind

this aristocratic carriage; and within, a head lies back among

the silken cushions, the feverish face and hollow eyes of Raphael,

melancholy and sad. Emblem of the doom of wealth! He flies across Paris

like a rocket, and reaches the peristyle of the Theatre Favart. The

passers-by make way for him; the two footmen help him to alight, an

envious crowd looking on the while.”

“What has that fellow done to be so rich?” asks a poor law-student, who

cannot listen to the magical music of Rossini for lack of a five-franc

piece.

Raphael walked slowly along the gangway; he expected no enjoyment from

these pleasures he had once coveted so eagerly. In the interval before

the second act of Semiramide he walked up and down in the lobby, and

along the corridors, leaving his box, which he had not yet entered, to

look after itself. The instinct of property was dead within him already.

Like all invalids, he thought of nothing but his own sufferings. He was

leaning against the chimney-piece in the greenroom. A group had gathered

about it of dandies, young and old, of ministers, of peers without

peerages, and peerages without peers, for so the Revolution of July had

ordered matters. Among a host of adventurers and journalists, in fact,

Raphael beheld a strange, unearthly figure a few paces away among

the crowd. He went towards this grotesque object to see it better,

half-closing his eyes with exceeding superciliousness.

“What a wonderful bit of painting!” he said to himself. The stranger’s

hair and eyebrows and a Mazarin tuft on the chin had been dyed black,

but the result was a spurious, glossy, purple tint that varied its hues

according to the light; the hair had been too white, no doubt, to

take the preparation. Anxiety and cunning were depicted in the narrow,

insignificant face, with its wrinkles incrusted by thick layers of red

and white paint. This red enamel, lacking on some portions of his face,

strongly brought out his natural feebleness and livid hues. It was

impossible not to smile at this visage with the protuberant forehead

and pointed chin, a face not unlike those grotesque wooden figures that

German herdsmen carve in their spare moments.

An attentive observer looking from Raphael to this elderly Adonis would

have remarked a young man’s eyes set in a mask of age, in the case of

the Marquis, and in the other case the dim eyes of age peering forth

from behind a mask of youth. Valentin tried to recollect when and

where he had seen this little old man before. He was thin, fastidiously

cravatted, booted and spurred like one-and-twenty; he crossed his arms

and clinked his spurs as if he possessed all the wanton energy of

youth. He seemed to move about without constraint or difficulty. He

had carefully buttoned up his fashionable coat, which disguised his

powerful, elderly frame, and gave him the appearance of an antiquated

coxcomb who still follows the fashions.

For Raphael this animated puppet possessed all the interest of an

apparition. He gazed at it as if it had been some smoke-begrimed

Rembrandt, recently restored and newly framed. This idea found him a

clue to the truth among his confused recollections; he recognized the

dealer in antiquities, the man to whom he owed his calamities!

A noiseless laugh broke just then from the fantastical personage,

straightening the line of his lips that stretched across a row of

artificial teeth. That laugh brought out, for Raphael’s heated fancy, a

strong resemblance between the man before him and the type of head

that painters have assigned to Goethe’s Mephistopheles. A crowd

of superstitious thoughts entered Raphael’s sceptical mind; he

was convinced of the powers of the devil and of all the sorcerer’s

enchantments embodied in mediaeval tradition, and since worked up by

poets. Shrinking in horror from the destiny of Faust, he prayed for the

protection of Heaven with all the ardent faith of a dying man in God and

the Virgin. A clear, bright radiance seemed to give him a glimpse of

the heaven of Michael Angelo or of Raphael of Urbino: a venerable

white-bearded man, a beautiful woman seated in an aureole above the

clouds and winged cherub heads. Now he had grasped and received the

meaning of those imaginative, almost human creations; they seemed to

explain what had happened to him, to leave him yet one hope.

But when the greenroom of the Italiens returned upon his sight he

beheld, not the Virgin, but a very handsome young person. The execrable

Euphrasia, in all the splendor of her toilette, with its orient pearls,

had come thither, impatient for her ardent, elderly admirer. She was

insolently exhibiting herself with her defiant face and glittering

eyes to an envious crowd of stockbrokers, a visible testimony to the

inexhaustible wealth that the old dealer permitted her to squander.

Raphael recollected the mocking wish with which he had accepted the old

man’s luckless gift, and tasted all the sweets of revenge when he beheld

the spectacle of sublime wisdom fallen to such a depth as this,

wisdom for which such humiliation had seemed a thing impossible. The

centenarian greeted Euphrasia with a ghastly smile, receiving her

honeyed words in reply. He offered her his emaciated arm, and went

twice or thrice round the greenroom with her; the envious glances and

compliments with which the crowd received his mistress delighted him; he

did not see the scornful smiles, nor hear the caustic comments to which

he gave rise.

“In what cemetery did this young ghoul unearth that corpse of hers?”

asked a dandy of the Romantic faction.

Euphrasia began to smile. The speaker was a slender, fair-haired youth,

with bright blue eyes, and a moustache. His short dress coat, hat tilted

over one ear, and sharp tongue, all denoted the species.

“How many old men,” said Raphael to himself, “bring an upright,

virtuous, and hard-working life to a close in folly! His feet are cold

already, and he is making love.”

“Well, sir,” exclaimed Valentin, stopping the merchant’s progress, while

he stared hard at Euphrasia, “have you quite forgotten the stringent

maxims of your philosophy?”

“Ah, I am as happy now as a young man,” said the other, in a cracked

voice. “I used to look at existence from a wrong standpoint. One hour of

love has a whole life in it.”

The playgoers heard the bell ring, and left the greenroom to take their

places again. Raphael and the old merchant separated. As he entered

his box, the Marquis saw Foedora sitting exactly opposite to him on the

other side of the theatre. The Countess had probably only just come, for

she was just flinging off her scarf to leave her throat uncovered, and

was occupied with going through all the indescribable manoeuvres of a

coquette arranging herself. All eyes were turned upon her. A young peer

of France had come with her; she asked him for the lorgnette she had

given him to carry. Raphael knew the despotism to which his successor

had resigned himself, in her gestures, and in the way she treated her

companion. He was also under the spell no doubt, another dupe beating

with all the might of a real affection against the woman’s cold

calculations, enduring all the tortures from which Valentin had luckily

freed himself.

Foedora’s face lighted up with indescribable joy. After directing her

lorgnette upon every box in turn, to make a rapid survey of all the

dresses, she was conscious that by her toilette and her beauty she had

eclipsed the loveliest and best-dressed women in Paris. She laughed

to show her white teeth; her head with its wreath of flowers was never

still, in her quest of admiration. Her glances went from one box to

another, as she diverted herself with the awkward way in which a Russian

princess wore her bonnet, or over the utter failure of a bonnet with

which a banker’s daughter had disfigured herself.

All at once she met Raphael’s steady gaze and turned pale, aghast at the

intolerable contempt in her rejected lover’s eyes. Not one of her exiled

suitors had failed to own her power over them; Valentin alone was proof

against her attractions. A power that can be defied with impunity is

drawing to its end. This axiom is as deeply engraved on the heart of

woman as in the minds of kings. In Raphael, therefore, Foedora saw the

deathblow of her influence and her ability to please. An epigram of his,

made at the Opera the day before, was already known in the salons of

Paris. The biting edge of that terrible speech had already given the

Countess an incurable wound. We know how to cauterize a wound, but we

know of no treatment as yet for the stab of a phrase. As every other

woman in the house looked by turns at her and at the Marquis, Foedora

would have consigned them all to the oubliettes of some Bastille; for in

spite of her capacity for dissimulation, her discomfiture was discerned

by her rivals. Her unfailing consolation had slipped from her at last.

The delicious thought, “I am the most beautiful,” the thought that at

all times had soothed every mortification, had turned into a lie.

At the opening of the second act a woman took up her position not very

far from Raphael, in a box that had been empty hitherto. A murmur of

admiration went up from the whole house. In that sea of human faces

there was a movement of every living wave; all eyes were turned upon the

stranger lady. The applause of young and old was so prolonged, that when

the orchestra began, the musicians turned to the audience to request

silence, and then they themselves joined in the plaudits and swelled the

confusion. Excited talk began in every box, every woman equipped herself

with an opera glass, elderly men grew young again, and polished the

glasses of their lorgnettes with their gloves. The enthusiasm subsided

by degrees, the stage echoed with the voices of the singers, and order

reigned as before. The aristocratic section, ashamed of having yielded

to a spontaneous feeling, again assumed their wonted politely frigid

manner. The well-to-do dislike to be astonished at anything; at the

first sight of a beautiful thing it becomes their duty to discover the

defect in it which absolves them from admiring it,--the feeling of all

ordinary minds. Yet a few still remained motionless and heedless of the

music, artlessly absorbed in the delight of watching Raphael’s neighbor.

Valentin noticed Taillefer’s mean, obnoxious countenance by Aquilina’s

side in a lower box, and received an approving smirk from him. Then he

saw Emile, who seemed to say from where he stood in the orchestra, “Just

look at that lovely creature there, close beside you!” Lastly, he saw

Rastignac, with Mme. de Nucingen and her daughter, twisting his gloves

like a man in despair, because he was tethered to his place, and could

not leave it to go any nearer to the unknown fair divinity.

Raphael’s life depended upon a covenant that he had made with himself,

and had hitherto kept sacred. He would give no special heed to any

woman whatever; and the better to guard against temptation, he used

a cunningly contrived opera-glass which destroyed the harmony of the

fairest features by hideous distortions. He had not recovered from the

terror that had seized on him in the morning when, at a mere expression

of civility, the Magic Skin had contracted so abruptly. So Raphael was

determined not to turn his face in the direction of his neighbor. He sat

imperturbable as a duchess with his back against the corner of the box,

thereby shutting out half of his neighbor’s view of the stage, appearing

to disregard her, and even to be unaware that a pretty woman sat there

just behind him.

His neighbor copied Valentin’s position exactly; she leaned her elbow

on the edge of her box and turned her face in three-quarter profile upon

the singers on the stage, as if she were sitting to a painter. These

two people looked like two estranged lovers still sulking, still turning

their backs upon each other, who will go into each other’s arms at the

first tender word.

Now and again his neighbor’s ostrich feathers or her hair came in

contact with Raphael’s head, giving him a pleasurable thrill, against

which he sternly fought. In a little while he felt the touch of the

soft frill of lace that went round her dress; he could hear the gracious

sounds of the folds of her dress itself, light rustling noises full of

enchantment; he could even feel her movements as she breathed; with the

gentle stir thus imparted to her form and to her draperies, it seemed

to Raphael that all her being was suddenly communicated to him in

an electric spark. The lace and tulle that caressed him imparted

the delicious warmth of her bare, white shoulders. By a freak in

the ordering of things, these two creatures, kept apart by social

conventions, with the abysses of death between them, breathed together

and perhaps thought of one another. Finally, the subtle perfume of aloes

completed the work of Raphael’s intoxication. Opposition heated his

imagination, and his fancy, become the wilder for the limits imposed

upon it, sketched a woman for him in outlines of fire. He turned

abruptly, the stranger made a similar movement, startled no doubt at

being brought in contact with a stranger; and they remained face to

face, each with the same thought.

“Pauline!”

“M. Raphael!”

Each surveyed the other, both of them petrified with astonishment.

Raphael noticed Pauline’s daintily simple costume. A woman’s experienced

eyes would have discerned and admired the outlines beneath the modest

gauze folds of her bodice and the lily whiteness of her throat. And

then her more than mortal clearness of soul, her maidenly modesty, her

graceful bearing, all were unchanged. Her sleeve was quivering with

agitation, for the beating of her heart was shaking her whole frame.

“Come to the Hotel de Saint-Quentin to-morrow for your papers,” she

said. “I will be there at noon. Be punctual.”

She rose hastily, and disappeared. Raphael thought of following Pauline,

feared to compromise her, and stayed. He looked at Foedora; she seemed

to him positively ugly. Unable to understand a single phrase of the

music, and feeling stifled in the theatre, he went out, and returned

home with a full heart.

“Jonathan,” he said to the old servant, as soon as he lay in bed,

“give me half a drop of laudanum on a piece of sugar, and don’t wake me

to-morrow till twenty minutes to twelve.”

“I want Pauline to love me!” he cried next morning, looking at the

talisman the while in unspeakable anguish.

The skin did not move in the least; it seemed to have lost its power to

shrink; doubtless it could not fulfil a wish fulfilled already.

“Ah!” exclaimed Raphael, feeling as if a mantle of lead had fallen away,

which he had worn ever since the day when the talisman had been given to

him; “so you are playing me false, you are not obeying me, the pact is

broken! I am free; I shall live. Then was it all a wretched joke?” But

he did not dare to believe in his own thought as he uttered it.

He dressed himself as simply as had formerly been his wont, and set out

on foot for his old lodging, trying to go back in fancy to the happy

days when he abandoned himself without peril to vehement desires, the

days when he had not yet condemned all human enjoyment. As he walked

he beheld Pauline--not the Pauline of the Hotel Saint-Quentin, but the

Pauline of last evening. Here was the accomplished mistress he had so

often dreamed of, the intelligent young girl with the loving nature and

artistic temperament, who understood poets, who understood poetry, and

lived in luxurious surroundings. Here, in short, was Foedora,

gifted with a great soul; or Pauline become a countess, and twice a

millionaire, as Foedora had been. When he reached the worn threshold,

and stood upon the broken step at the door, where in the old days he had

had so many desperate thoughts, an old woman came out of the room within

and spoke to him.

“You are M. Raphael de Valentin, are you not?”

“Yes, good mother,” he replied.

“You know your old room then,” she replied; “you are expected up there.”

“Does Mme. Gaudin still own the house?” Raphael asked.

“Oh no, sir. Mme. Gaudin is a baroness now. She lives in a fine house

of her own on the other side of the river. Her husband has come back.

My goodness, he brought back thousands and thousands. They say she could

buy up all the Quartier Saint-Jacques if she liked. She gave me her

basement room for nothing, and the remainder of her lease. Ah, she’s

a kind woman all the same; she is no more proud to-day than she was

yesterday.”

Raphael hurried up the staircase to his garret; as he reached the last

few steps he heard the sounds of a piano. Pauline was there, simply

dressed in a cotton gown, but the way that it was made, like the gloves,

hat, and shawl that she had thrown carelessly upon the bed, revealed a

change of fortune.

“Ah, there you are!” cried Pauline, turning her head, and rising with

unconcealed delight.

Raphael went to sit beside her, flushed, confused, and happy; he looked

at her in silence.

“Why did you leave us then?” she asked, dropping her eyes as the flush

deepened on his face. “What became of you?”

“Ah, I have been very miserable, Pauline; I am very miserable still.”

“Alas!” she said, filled with pitying tenderness. “I guessed your fate

yesterday when I saw you so well dressed, and apparently so wealthy; but

in reality? Eh, M. Raphael, is it as it always used to be with you?”

Valentin could not restrain the tears that sprang to his eyes.

“Pauline,” he exclaimed, “I----”

He went no further, love sparkled in his eyes, and his emotion

overflowed his face.

“Oh, he loves me! he loves me!” cried Pauline.

Raphael felt himself unable to say one word; he bent his head. The young

girl took his hand at this; she pressed it as she said, half sobbing and

half laughing:--

“Rich, rich, happy and rich! Your Pauline is rich. But I? Oh, I ought

to be very poor to-day. I have said, times without number, that I would

give all the wealth upon this earth for those words, ‘He loves me!’ O

my Raphael! I have millions. You like luxury, you will be glad; but you

must love me and my heart besides, for there is so much love for you

in my heart. You don’t know? My father has come back. I am a wealthy

heiress. Both he and my mother leave me completely free to decide my own

fate. I am free--do you understand?”

Seized with a kind of frenzy, Raphael grasped Pauline’s hands and kissed

them eagerly and vehemently, with an almost convulsive caress. Pauline

drew her hands away, laid them on Raphael’s shoulders, and drew him

towards her. They understood one another--in that close embrace, in

the unalloyed and sacred fervor of that one kiss without an

afterthought--the first kiss by which two souls take possession of each

other.

“Ah, I will not leave you any more,” said Pauline, falling back in her

chair. “I do not know how I come to be so bold!” she added, blushing.

“Bold, my Pauline? Do not fear it. It is love, love true and deep and

everlasting like my own, is it not?”

“Speak!” she cried. “Go on speaking, so long your lips have been dumb

for me.”

“Then you have loved me all along?”

“Loved you? _Mon Dieu_! How often I have wept here, setting your room

straight, and grieving for your poverty and my own. I would have sold

myself to the evil one to spare you one vexation! You are MY Raphael

to-day, really my own Raphael, with that handsome head of yours, and

your heart is mine too; yes, that above all, your heart--O wealth

inexhaustible! Well, where was I?” she went on after a pause. “Oh yes!

We have three, four, or five millions, I believe. If I were poor, I

should perhaps desire to bear your name, to be acknowledged as your

wife; but as it is, I would give up the whole world for you, I would

be your servant still, now and always. Why, Raphael, if I give you my

fortune, my heart, myself to-day, I do no more than I did that day when

I put a certain five-franc piece in the drawer there,” and she pointed

to the table. “Oh, how your exultation hurt me then!”

“Oh, why are you rich?” Raphael cried; “why is there no vanity in you? I

can do nothing for you.”

He wrung his hands in despair and happiness and love.

“When you are the Marquise de Valentin, I know that the title and the

fortune for thee, heavenly soul, will not be worth----”

“One hair of your head,” she cried.

“I have millions too. But what is wealth to either of us now? There is

my life--ah, that I can offer, take it.”

“Your love, Raphael, your love is all the world to me. Are your thoughts

of me? I am the happiest of the happy!”

“Can any one overhear us?” asked Raphael.

“Nobody,” she replied, and a mischievous gesture escaped her.

“Come, then!” cried Valentin, holding out his arms.

She sprang upon his knees and clasped her arms about his neck.

“Kiss me!” she cried, “after all the pain you have given me; to blot out

the memory of the grief that your joys have caused me; and for the sake

of the nights that I spent in painting hand-screens----”

“Those hand-screens of yours?”

“Now that we are rich, my darling, I can tell you all about it. Poor

boy! how easy it is to delude a clever man! Could you have had white

waistcoats and clean shirts twice a week for three francs every month to

the laundress? Why, you used to drink twice as much milk as your money

would have paid for. I deceived you all round--over firing, oil, and

even money. O Raphael mine, don’t have me for your wife, I am far too

cunning!” she said laughing.

“But how did you manage?”

“I used to work till two o’clock in the morning; I gave my mother half

the money made by my screens, and the other half went to you.”

They looked at one another for a moment, both bewildered by love and

gladness.

“Some day we shall have to pay for this happiness by some terrible

sorrow,” cried Raphael.

“Perhaps you are married?” said Pauline. “Oh, I will not give you up to

any other woman.”

“I am free, my beloved.”

“Free!” she repeated. “Free, and mine!”

She slipped down upon her knees, clasped her hands, and looked at

Raphael in an enthusiasm of devotion.

“I am afraid I shall go mad. How handsome you are!” she went on, passing

her fingers through her lover’s fair hair. “How stupid your Countess

Foedora is! How pleased I was yesterday with the homage they all paid to

me! SHE has never been applauded. Dear, when I felt your arm against my

back, I heard a vague voice within me that cried, ‘He is there!’ and I

turned round and saw you. I fled, for I longed so to throw my arms about

you before them all.”

“How happy you are--you can speak!” Raphael exclaimed. “My heart is

overwhelmed; I would weep, but I cannot. Do not draw your hand away.

I could stay here looking at you like this for the rest of my life, I

think; happy and content.”

“O my love, say that once more!”

“Ah, what are words?” answered Valentin, letting a hot tear fall on

Pauline’s hands. “Some time I will try to tell you of my love; just now

I can only feel it.”

“You,” she said, “with your lofty soul and your great genius, with that

heart of yours that I know so well; are you really mine, as I am yours?”

“For ever and ever, my sweet creature,” said Raphael in an uncertain

voice. “You shall be my wife, my protecting angel. My griefs have always

been dispelled by your presence, and my courage revived; that angelic

smile now on your lips has purified me, so to speak. A new life seems

about to begin for me. The cruel past and my wretched follies are hardly

more to me than evil dreams. At your side I breathe an atmosphere of

happiness, and I am pure. Be with me always,” he added, pressing her

solemnly to his beating heart.

“Death may come when it will,” said Pauline in ecstasy; “I have lived!”

Happy he who shall divine their joy, for he must have experienced it.

“I wish that no one might enter this dear garret again, my Raphael,”

said Pauline, after two hours of silence.

“We must have the door walled up, put bars across the window, and buy

the house,” the Marquis answered.

“Yes, we will,” she said. Then a moment later she added: “Our search for

your manuscripts has been a little lost sight of,” and they both laughed

like children.

“Pshaw! I don’t care a jot for the whole circle of the sciences,”

Raphael answered.

“Ah, sir, and how about glory?”

“I glory in you alone.”

“You used to be very miserable as you made these little scratches and

scrawls,” she said, turning the papers over.

“My Pauline----”

“Oh yes, I am your Pauline--and what then?”

“Where are you living now?”

“In the Rue Saint Lazare. And you?”

“In the Rue de Varenne.”

“What a long way apart we shall be until----” She stopped, and looked at

her lover with a mischievous and coquettish expression.

“But at the most we need only be separated for a fortnight,” Raphael

answered.

“Really! we are to be married in a fortnight?” and she jumped for joy

like a child.

“I am an unnatural daughter!” she went on. “I give no more thought to my

father or my mother, or to anything in the world. Poor love, you don’t

know that my father is very ill? He returned from the Indies in very

bad health. He nearly died at Havre, where we went to find him. Good

heavens!” she cried, looking at her watch; “it is three o’clock already!

I ought to be back again when he wakes at four. I am mistress of the

house at home; my mother does everything that I wish, and my father

worships me; but I will not abuse their kindness, that would be wrong.

My poor father! He would have me go to the Italiens yesterday. You will

come to see him to-morrow, will you not?”

“Will Madame la Marquise de Valentin honor me by taking my arm?”

“I am going to take the key of this room away with me,” she said. “Isn’t

our treasure-house a palace?”

“One more kiss, Pauline.”

“A thousand, _mon Dieu_!” she said, looking at Raphael. “Will it always

be like this? I feel as if I were dreaming.”

They went slowly down the stairs together, step for step, with arms

closely linked, trembling both of them beneath their load of joy. Each

pressing close to the other’s side, like a pair of doves, they reached

the Place de la Sorbonne, where Pauline’s carriage was waiting.

“I want to go home with you,” she said. “I want to see your own room and

your study, and to sit at the table where you work. It will be like old

times,” she said, blushing.

She spoke to the servant. “Joseph, before returning home I am going to

the Rue de Varenne. It is a quarter-past three now, and I must be back

by four o’clock. George must hurry the horses.” And so in a few moments

the lovers came to Valentin’s abode.

“How glad I am to have seen all this for myself!” Pauline cried,

creasing the silken bed-curtains in Raphael’s room between her fingers.

“As I go to sleep, I shall be here in thought. I shall imagine your dear

head on the pillow there. Raphael, tell me, did no one advise you about

the furniture of your hotel?”

“No one whatever.”

“Really? It was not a woman who----”

“Pauline!”

“Oh, I know I am fearfully jealous. You have good taste. I will have a

bed like yours to-morrow.”

Quite beside himself with happiness, Raphael caught Pauline in his arms.

“Oh, my father!” she said; “my father----”

“I will take you back to him,” cried Valentin, “for I want to be away

from you as little as possible.”

“How loving you are! I did not venture to suggest it----”

“Are you not my life?”

It would be tedious to set down accurately the charming prattle of the

lovers, for tones and looks and gestures that cannot be rendered alone

gave it significance. Valentin went back with Pauline to her own door,

and returned with as much happiness in his heart as mortal man can know.

When he was seated in his armchair beside the fire, thinking over the

sudden and complete way in which his wishes had been fulfilled, a cold

shiver went through him, as if the blade of a dagger had been plunged

into his breast--he thought of the Magic Skin, and saw that it had

shrunk a little. He uttered the most tremendous of French oaths, without

any of the Jesuitical reservations made by the Abbess of Andouillettes,

leant his head against the back of the chair, and sat motionless, fixing

his unseeing eyes upon the bracket of the curtain pole.

“Good God!” he cried; “every wish! Every desire of mine! Poor

Pauline!----”

He took a pair of compasses and measured the extent of existence that

the morning had cost him.

“I have scarcely enough for two months!” he said.

A cold sweat broke out over him; moved by an ungovernable spasm of rage,

he seized the Magic Skin, exclaiming:

“I am a perfect fool!”

He rushed out of the house and across the garden, and flung the talisman

down a well.

“_Vogue la galere_,” cried he. “The devil take all this nonsense.”

So Raphael gave himself up to the happiness of being beloved, and led

with Pauline the life of heart and heart. Difficulties which it would

be somewhat tedious to describe had delayed their marriage, which was to

take place early in March. Each was sure of the other; their affection

had been tried, and happiness had taught them how strong it was. Never

has love made two souls, two natures, so absolutely one. The more they

came to know of each other, the more they loved. On either side there

was the same hesitating delicacy, the same transports of joy such as

angels know; there were no clouds in their heaven; the will of either

was the other’s law.

Wealthy as they both were, they had not a caprice which they could not

gratify, and for that reason had no caprices. A refined taste, a feeling

for beauty and poetry, was instinct in the soul of the bride; her

lover’s smile was more to her than all the pearls of Ormuz. She

disdained feminine finery; a muslin dress and flowers formed her most

elaborate toilette.

Pauline and Raphael shunned every one else, for solitude was abundantly

beautiful to them. The idlers at the Opera, or at the Italiens, saw this

charming and unconventional pair evening after evening. Some gossip

went the round of the salons at first, but the harmless lovers were

soon forgotten in the course of events which took place in Paris; their

marriage was announced at length to excuse them in the eyes of the

prudish; and as it happened, their servants did not babble; so their

bliss did not draw down upon them any very severe punishment.

One morning towards the end of February, at the time when the

brightening days bring a belief in the nearness of the joys of spring,

Pauline and Raphael were breakfasting together in a small conservatory,

a kind of drawing-room filled with flowers, on a level with the garden.

The mild rays of the pale winter sunlight, breaking through the thicket

of exotic plants, warmed the air somewhat. The vivid contrast made by

the varieties of foliage, the colors of the masses of flowering shrubs,

the freaks of light and shadow, gladdened the eyes. While all the rest

of Paris still sought warmth from its melancholy hearth, these two were

laughing in a bower of camellias, lilacs, and blossoming heath. Their

happy faces rose above lilies of the valley, narcissus blooms, and

Bengal roses. A mat of plaited African grass, variegated like a carpet,

lay beneath their feet in this luxurious conservatory. The walls,

covered with a green linen material, bore no traces of damp. The

surfaces of the rustic wooden furniture shone with cleanliness. A

kitten, attracted by the odor of milk, had established itself upon the

table; it allowed Pauline to bedabble it in coffee; she was playing

merrily with it, taking away the cream that she had just allowed the

kitten to sniff at, so as to exercise its patience, and keep up the

contest. She burst out laughing at every antic, and by the comical

remarks she constantly made, she hindered Raphael from perusing the

paper; he had dropped it a dozen times already. This morning picture

seemed to overflow with inexpressible gladness, like everything that is

natural and genuine.

Raphael, still pretending to read his paper, furtively watched Pauline

with the cat--his Pauline, in the dressing-gown that hung carelessly

about her; his Pauline, with her hair loose on her shoulders, with a

tiny, white, blue-veined foot peeping out of a velvet slipper. It was

pleasant to see her in this negligent dress; she was delightful as some

fanciful picture by Westall; half-girl, half-woman, as she seemed to

be, or perhaps more of a girl than a woman, there was no alloy in

the happiness she enjoyed, and of love she knew as yet only its first

ecstasy. When Raphael, absorbed in happy musing, had forgotten the

existence of the newspaper, Pauline flew upon it, crumpled it up into

a ball, and threw it out into the garden; the kitten sprang after the

rotating object, which spun round and round, as politics are wont to do.

This childish scene recalled Raphael to himself. He would have gone on

reading, and felt for the sheet he no longer possessed. Joyous laughter

rang out like the song of a bird, one peal leading to another.

“I am quite jealous of the paper,” she said, as she wiped away the tears

that her childlike merriment had brought into her eyes. “Now, is it not

a heinous offence,” she went on, as she became a woman all at once, “to

read Russian proclamations in my presence, and to attend to the prosings

of the Emperor Nicholas rather than to looks and words of love!”

“I was not reading, my dear angel; I was looking at you.”

Just then the gravel walk outside the conservatory rang with the sound

of the gardener’s heavily nailed boots.

“I beg your pardon, my Lord Marquis--and yours, too, madame--if I am

intruding, but I have brought you a curiosity the like of which I never

set eyes on. Drawing a bucket of water just now, with due respect, I

got out this strange salt-water plant. Here it is. It must be thoroughly

used to water, anyhow, for it isn’t saturated or even damp at all. It is

as dry as a piece of wood, and has not swelled a bit. As my Lord Marquis

certainly knows a great deal more about things than I do, I thought I

ought to bring it, and that it would interest him.”

Therewith the gardener showed Raphael the inexorable piece of skin;

there were barely six square inches of it left.

“Thanks, Vaniere,” Raphael said. “The thing is very curious.”

“What is the matter with you, my angel; you are growing quite white!”

Pauline cried.

“You can go, Vaniere.”

“Your voice frightens me,” the girl went on; “it is so strangely

altered. What is it? How are you feeling? Where is the pain? You are in

pain!--Jonathan! here! call a doctor!” she cried.

“Hush, my Pauline,” Raphael answered, as he regained composure. “Let us

get up and go. Some flower here has a scent that is too much for me. It

is that verbena, perhaps.”

Pauline flew upon the innocent plant, seized it by the stalk, and flung

it out into the garden; then, with all the might of the love between

them, she clasped Raphael in a close embrace, and with languishing

coquetry raised her red lips to his for a kiss.

“Dear angel,” she cried, “when I saw you turn so white, I understood

that I could not live on without you; your life is my life too. Lay your

hand on my back, Raphael mine; I feel a chill like death. The feeling

of cold is there yet. Your lips are burning. How is your hand?--Cold as

ice,” she added.

“Mad girl!” exclaimed Raphael.

“Why that tear? Let me drink it.”

“O Pauline, Pauline, you love me far too much!”

“There is something very extraordinary going on in your mind, Raphael!

Do not dissimulate. I shall very soon find out your secret. Give that to

me,” she went on, taking the Magic Skin.

“You are my executioner!” the young man exclaimed, glancing in horror at

the talisman.

“How changed your voice is!” cried Pauline, as she dropped the fatal

symbol of destiny.

“Do you love me?” he asked.

“Do I love you? Is there any doubt?”

“Then, leave me, go away!”

The poor child went.

“So!” cried Raphael, when he was alone. “In an enlightened age, when we

have found out that diamonds are a crystallized form of charcoal, at

a time when everything is made clear, when the police would hale a new

Messiah before the magistrates, and submit his miracles to the Academie

des Sciences--in an epoch when we no longer believe in anything but a

notary’s signature--that I, forsooth, should believe in a sort of _Mene,

Tekel, Upharsin_! No, by Heaven, I will not believe that the Supreme

Being would take pleasure in torturing a harmless creature.--Let us see

the learned about it.”

Between the Halle des Vins, with its extensive assembly of barrels, and

the Salpetriere, that extensive seminary of drunkenness, lies a small

pond, which Raphael soon reached. All sorts of ducks of rare varieties

were there disporting themselves; their colored markings shone in the

sun like the glass in cathedral windows. Every kind of duck in the

world was represented, quacking, dabbling, and moving about--a kind

of parliament of ducks assembled against its will, but luckily without

either charter or political principles, living in complete immunity from

sportsmen, under the eyes of any naturalist that chanced to see them.

“That is M. Lavrille,” said one of the keepers to Raphael, who had asked

for that high priest of zoology.

The Marquis saw a short man buried in profound reflections, caused by

the appearance of a pair of ducks. The man of science was middle-aged;

he had a pleasant face, made pleasanter still by a kindly expression,

but an absorption in scientific ideas engrossed his whole person. His

peruke was strangely turned up, by being constantly raised to scratch

his head; so that a line of white hair was left plainly visible, a

witness to an enthusiasm for investigation, which, like every other

strong passion, so withdraws us from mundane considerations, that we

lose all consciousness of the “I” within us. Raphael, the student and

man of science, looked respectfully at the naturalist, who devoted his

nights to enlarging the limits of human knowledge, and whose very errors

reflected glory upon France; but a she-coxcomb would have laughed,

no doubt, at the break of continuity between the breeches and striped

waistcoat worn by the man of learning; the interval, moreover, was

modestly filled by a shirt which had been considerably creased, for

he stooped and raised himself by turns, as his zoological observations

required.

After the first interchange of civilities, Raphael thought it necessary

to pay M. Lavrille a banal compliment upon his ducks.

“Oh, we are well off for ducks,” the naturalist replied. “The genus,

moreover, as you doubtless know, is the most prolific in the order

of palmipeds. It begins with the swan and ends with the zin-zin duck,

comprising in all one hundred and thirty-seven very distinct varieties,

each having its own name, habits, country, and character, and every one

no more like another than a white man is like a negro. Really, sir,

when we dine off a duck, we have no notion for the most part of the vast

extent----”

He interrupted himself as he saw a small pretty duck come up to the

surface of the pond.

“There you see the cravatted swan, a poor native of Canada; he has come

a very long way to show us his brown and gray plumage and his little

black cravat! Look, he is preening himself. That one is the famous eider

duck that provides the down, the eider-down under which our fine ladies

sleep; isn’t it pretty? Who would not admire the little pinkish white

breast and the green beak? I have just been a witness, sir,” he went on,

“to a marriage that I had long despaired of bringing about; they have

paired rather auspiciously, and I shall await the results very eagerly.

This will be a hundred and thirty-eighth species, I flatter myself, to

which, perhaps, my name will be given. That is the newly matched pair,”

he said, pointing out two of the ducks; “one of them is a laughing goose

(_anas albifrons_), and the other the great whistling duck, Buffon’s

_anas ruffina_. I have hesitated a long while between the whistling

duck, the duck with white eyebrows, and the shoveler duck (_anas

clypeata_). Stay, that is the shoveler--that fat, brownish black rascal,

with the greenish neck and that coquettish iridescence on it. But the

whistling duck was a crested one, sir, and you will understand that I

deliberated no longer. We only lack the variegated black-capped duck

now. These gentlemen here, unanimously claim that that variety of

duck is only a repetition of the curve-beaked teal, but for my own

part,”--and the gesture he made was worth seeing. It expressed at once

the modesty and pride of a man of science; the pride full of obstinacy,

and the modesty well tempered with assurance.

“I don’t think it is,” he added. “You see, my dear sir, that we are not

amusing ourselves here. I am engaged at this moment upon a monograph on

the genus duck. But I am at your disposal.”

While they went towards a rather pleasant house in the Rue du Buffon,

Raphael submitted the skin to M. Lavrille’s inspection.

“I know the product,” said the man of science, when he had turned his

magnifying glass upon the talisman. “It used to be used for covering

boxes. The shagreen is very old. They prefer to use skate’s skin

nowadays for making sheaths. This, as you are doubtless aware, is the

hide of the _raja sephen_, a Red Sea fish.”

“But this, sir, since you are so exceedingly good----”

“This,” the man of science interrupted, as he resumed, “this is quite

another thing; between these two shagreens, sir, there is a difference

just as wide as between sea and land, or fish and flesh. The fish’s skin

is harder, however, than the skin of the land animal. This,” he said, as

he indicated the talisman, “is, as you doubtless know, one of the most

curious of zoological products.”

“But to proceed----” said Raphael.

“This,” replied the man of science, as he flung himself down into his

armchair, “is an ass’ skin, sir.”

“Yes, I know,” said the young man.

“A very rare variety of ass found in Persia,” the naturalist continued,

“the onager of the ancients, equus asinus, the _koulan_ of the Tartars;

Pallas went out there to observe it, and has made it known to science,

for as a matter of fact the animal for a long time was believed to be

mythical. It is mentioned, as you know, in Holy Scripture; Moses forbade

that it should be coupled with its own species, and the onager is yet

more famous for the prostitutions of which it was the object, and which

are often mentioned by the prophets of the Bible. Pallas, as you know

doubtless, states in his _Act. Petrop._ tome II., that these bizarre

excesses are still devoutly believed in among the Persians and the

Nogais as a sovereign remedy for lumbago and sciatic gout. We poor

Parisians scarcely believe that. The Museum has no example of the

onager.

“What a magnificent animal!” he continued. “It is full of mystery;

its eyes are provided with a sort of burnished covering, to which the

Orientals attribute the powers of fascination; it has a glossier and

finer coat than our handsomest horses possess, striped with more or less

tawny bands, very much like the zebra’s hide. There is something pliant

and silky about its hair, which is sleek to the touch. Its powers of

sight vie in precision and accuracy with those of man; it is rather

larger than our largest domestic donkeys, and is possessed of

extraordinary courage. If it is surprised by any chance, it defends

itself against the most dangerous wild beasts with remarkable success;

the rapidity of its movements can only be compared with the flight of

birds; an onager, sir, would run the best Arab or Persian horses to

death. According to the father of the conscientious Doctor Niebuhr,

whose recent loss we are deploring, as you doubtless know, the ordinary

average pace of one of these wonderful creatures would be seven thousand

geometric feet per hour. Our own degenerate race of donkeys can give no

idea of the ass in his pride and independence. He is active and spirited

in his demeanor; he is cunning and sagacious; there is grace about the

outlines of his head; every movement is full of attractive charm. In

the East he is the king of beasts. Turkish and Persian superstition even

credits him with a mysterious origin; and when stories of the prowess

attributed to him are told in Thibet or in Tartary, the speakers mingle

Solomon’s name with that of this noble animal. A tame onager, in short,

is worth an enormous amount; it is well-nigh impossible to catch them

among the mountains, where they leap like roebucks, and seem as if they

could fly like birds. Our myth of the winged horse, our Pegasus, had its

origin doubtless in these countries, where the shepherds could see the

onager springing from one rock to another. In Persia they breed asses

for the saddle, a cross between a tamed onager and a she-ass, and they

paint them red, following immemorial tradition. Perhaps it was this

custom that gave rise to our own proverb, ‘Surely as a red donkey.’ At

some period when natural history was much neglected in France, I think a

traveler must have brought over one of these strange beasts that endures

servitude with such impatience. Hence the adage. The skin that you

have laid before me is the skin of an onager. Opinions differ as to the

origin of the name. Some claim that _Chagri_ is a Turkish word; others

insist that _Chagri_ must be the name of the place where this animal

product underwent the chemical process of preparation so clearly

described by Pallas, to which the peculiar graining that we admire is

due; Martellens has written to me saying that _Chaagri_ is a river----”

“I thank you, sir, for the information that you have given me; it would

furnish an admirable footnote for some Dom Calmet or other, if such

erudite hermits yet exist; but I have had the honor of pointing out to

you that this scrap was in the first instance quite as large as that

map,” said Raphael, indicating an open atlas to Lavrille; “but it has

shrunk visibly in three months’ time----”

“Quite so,” said the man of science. “I understand. The remains of any

substance primarily organic are naturally subject to a process of

decay. It is quite easy to understand, and its progress depends upon

atmospherical conditions. Even metals contract and expand appreciably,

for engineers have remarked somewhat considerable interstices between

great blocks of stone originally clamped together with iron bars. The

field of science is boundless, but human life is very short, so that we

do not claim to be acquainted with all the phenomena of nature.”

“Pardon the question that I am about to ask you, sir,” Raphael began,

half embarrassed, “but are you quite sure that this piece of skin is

subject to the ordinary laws of zoology, and that it can be stretched?”

“Certainly----oh, bother!----” muttered M. Lavrille, trying to stretch

the talisman. “But if you, sir, will go to see Planchette,” he added,

“the celebrated professor of mechanics, he will certainly discover some

method of acting upon this skin, of softening and expanding it.”

“Ah, sir, you are the preserver of my life,” and Raphael took leave of

the learned naturalist and hurried off to Planchette, leaving the worthy

Lavrille in his study, all among the bottles and dried plants that

filled it up.

Quite unconsciously Raphael brought away with him from this visit,

all of science that man can grasp, a terminology to wit. Lavrille, the

worthy man, was very much like Sancho Panza giving to Don Quixote the

history of the goats; he was entertaining himself by making out a list

of animals and ticking them off. Even now that his life was nearing its

end, he was scarcely acquainted with a mere fraction of the countless

numbers of the great tribes that God has scattered, for some unknown

end, throughout the ocean of worlds.

Raphael was well pleased. “I shall keep my ass well in hand,” cried he.

Sterne had said before his day, “Let us take care of our ass, if we wish

to live to old age.” But it is such a fantastic brute!

Planchette was a tall, thin man, a poet of a surety, lost in one

continual thought, and always employed in gazing into the bottomless

abyss of Motion. Commonplace minds accuse these lofty intellects of

madness; they form a misinterpreted race apart that lives in a wonderful

carelessness of luxuries or other people’s notions. They will spend

whole days at a stretch, smoking a cigar that has gone out, and enter

a drawing-room with the buttons on their garments not in every case

formally wedded to the button-holes. Some day or other, after a long

time spent in measuring space, or in accumulating Xs under Aa-Gg, they

succeed in analyzing some natural law, and resolve it into its elemental

principles, and all on a sudden the crowd gapes at a new machine; or it

is a handcart perhaps that overwhelms us with astonishment by the apt

simplicity of its construction. The modest man of science smiles at

his admirers, and remarks, “What is that invention of mine? Nothing

whatever. Man cannot create a force; he can but direct it; and science

consists in learning from nature.”

The mechanician was standing bolt upright, planted on both feet, like

some victim dropped straight from the gibbet, when Raphael broke in upon

him. He was intently watching an agate ball that rolled over a sun-dial,

and awaited its final settlement. The worthy man had received neither

pension nor decoration; he had not known how to make the right use of

his ability for calculation. He was happy in his life spent on the watch

for a discovery; he had no thought either of reputation, of the outer

world, nor even of himself, and led the life of science for the sake of

science.

“It is inexplicable,” he exclaimed. “Ah, your servant, sir,” he went on,

becoming aware of Raphael’s existence. “How is your mother? You must go

and see my wife.”

“And I also could have lived thus,” thought Raphael, as he recalled the

learned man from his meditations by asking of him how to produce any

effect on the talisman, which he placed before him.

“Although my credulity must amuse you, sir,” so the Marquis ended, “I

will conceal nothing from you. That skin seems to me to be endowed with

an insuperable power of resistance.”

“People of fashion, sir, always treat science rather superciliously,”

said Planchette. “They all talk to us pretty much as the _incroyable_

did when he brought some ladies to see Lalande just after an eclipse,

and remarked, ‘Be so good as to begin it over again!’ What effect do you

want to produce? The object of the science of mechanics is either the

application or the neutralization of the laws of motion. As for motion

pure and simple, I tell you humbly, that we cannot possibly define it.

That disposed of, unvarying phenomena have been observed which accompany

the actions of solids and fluids. If we set up the conditions by

which these phenomena are brought to pass, we can transport bodies or

communicate locomotive power to them at a predetermined rate of speed.

We can project them, divide them up in a few or an infinite number of

pieces, accordingly as we break them or grind them to powder; we can

twist bodies or make them rotate, modify, compress, expand, or extend

them. The whole science, sir, rests upon a single fact.

“You see this ball,” he went on; “here it lies upon this slab. Now,

it is over there. What name shall we give to what has taken place,

so natural from a physical point of view, so amazing from a moral?

Movement, locomotion, changing of place? What prodigious vanity lurks

underneath the words. Does a name solve the difficulty? Yet it is the

whole of our science for all that. Our machines either make direct use

of this agency, this fact, or they convert it. This trifling phenomenon,

applied to large masses, would send Paris flying. We can increase speed

by an expenditure of force, and augment the force by an increase of

speed. But what are speed and force? Our science is as powerless to tell

us that as to create motion. Any movement whatever is an immense power,

and man does not create power of any kind. Everything is movement,

thought itself is a movement, upon movement nature is based. Death is a

movement whose limitations are little known. If God is eternal, be

sure that He moves perpetually; perhaps God is movement. That is

why movement, like God is inexplicable, unfathomable, unlimited,

incomprehensible, intangible. Who has ever touched, comprehended, or

measured movement? We feel its effects without seeing it; we can even

deny them as we can deny the existence of a God. Where is it? Where

is it not? Whence comes it? What is its source? What is its end? It

surrounds us, it intrudes upon us, and yet escapes us. It is evident as

a fact, obscure as an abstraction; it is at once effect and cause. It

requires space, even as we, and what is space? Movement alone recalls

it to us; without movement, space is but an empty meaningless word.

Like space, like creation, like the infinite, movement is an insoluble

problem which confounds human reason; man will never conceive it,

whatever else he may be permitted to conceive.

“Between each point in space occupied in succession by that ball,”

continued the man of science, “there is an abyss confronting human

reason, an abyss into which Pascal fell. In order to produce any

effect upon an unknown substance, we ought first of all to study that

substance; to know whether, in accordance with its nature, it will be

broken by the force of a blow, or whether it will withstand it; if it

breaks in pieces, and you have no wish to split it up, we shall not

achieve the end proposed. If you want to compress it, a uniform impulse

must be communicated to all the particles of the substance, so as to

diminish the interval that separates them in an equal degree. If you

wish to expand it, we should try to bring a uniform eccentric force to

bear on every molecule; for unless we conform accurately to this law,

we shall have breaches in continuity. The modes of motion, sir, are

infinite, and no limit exists to combinations of movement. Upon what

effect have you determined?”

“I want any kind of pressure that is strong enough to expand the skin

indefinitely,” began Raphael, quite of out patience.

“Substance is finite,” the mathematician put in, “and therefore will not

admit of indefinite expansion, but pressure will necessarily increase

the extent of surface at the expense of the thickness, which will be

diminished until the point is reached when the material gives out----”

“Bring about that result, sir,” Raphael cried, “and you will have earned

millions.”

“Then I should rob you of your money,” replied the other, phlegmatic as

a Dutchman. “I am going to show you, in a word or two, that a machine

can be made that is fit to crush Providence itself in pieces like a fly.

It would reduce a man to the conditions of a piece of waste paper; a

man--boots and spurs, hat and cravat, trinkets and gold, and all----”

“What a fearful machine!”

“Instead of flinging their brats into the water, the Chinese ought

to make them useful in this way,” the man of science went on, without

reflecting on the regard man has for his progeny.

Quite absorbed by his idea, Planchette took an empty flower-pot, with a

hole in the bottom, and put it on the surface of the dial, then he

went to look for a little clay in a corner of the garden. Raphael stood

spellbound, like a child to whom his nurse is telling some wonderful

story. Planchette put the clay down upon the slab, drew a pruning-knife

from his pocket, cut two branches from an elder tree, and began to

clean them of pith by blowing through them, as if Raphael had not been

present.

“There are the rudiments of the apparatus,” he said. Then he connected

one of the wooden pipes with the bottom of the flower-pot by way of

a clay joint, in such a way that the mouth of the elder stem was just

under the hole of the flower-pot; you might have compared it to a big

tobacco-pipe. He spread a bed of clay over the surface of the slab, in a

shovel-shaped mass, set down the flower-pot at the wider end of it, and

laid the pipe of the elder stem along the portion which represented the

handle of the shovel. Next he put a lump of clay at the end of the elder

stem and therein planted the other pipe, in an upright position, forming

a second elbow which connected it with the first horizontal pipe in such

a manner that the air, or any given fluid in circulation, could flow

through this improvised piece of mechanism from the mouth of the

vertical tube, along the intermediate passages, and so into the large

empty flower-pot.

“This apparatus, sir,” he said to Raphael, with all the gravity of an

academician pronouncing his initiatory discourse, “is one of the great

Pascal’s grandest claims upon our admiration.”

“I don’t understand.”

The man of science smiled. He went up to a fruit-tree and took down a

little phial in which the druggist had sent him some liquid for catching

ants; he broke off the bottom and made a funnel of the top, carefully

fitting it to the mouth of the vertical hollowed stem that he had set in

the clay, and at the opposite end to the great reservoir, represented

by the flower-pot. Next, by means of a watering-pot, he poured in

sufficient water to rise to the same level in the large vessel and in

the tiny circular funnel at the end of the elder stem.

Raphael was thinking of his piece of skin.

“Water is considered to-day, sir, to be an incompressible body,” said

the mechanician; “never lose sight of that fundamental principle; still

it can be compressed, though only so very slightly that we should regard

its faculty for contracting as a zero. You see the amount of surface

presented by the water at the brim of the flower-pot?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good; now suppose that that surface is a thousand times larger

than the orifice of the elder stem through which I poured the liquid.

Here, I am taking the funnel away----”

“Granted.”

“Well, then, if by any method whatever I increase the volume of that

quantity of water by pouring in yet more through the mouth of the little

tube; the water thus compelled to flow downwards would rise in the

reservoir, represented by the flower-pot, until it reached the same

level at either end.”

“That is quite clear,” cried Raphael.

“But there is this difference,” the other went on. “Suppose that the

thin column of water poured into the little vertical tube there exerts

a force equal, say, to a pound weight, for instance, its action will

be punctually communicated to the great body of the liquid, and will be

transmitted to every part of the surface represented by the water in the

flower-pot so that at the surface there will be a thousand columns of

water, every one pressing upwards as if they were impelled by a force

equal to that which compels the liquid to descend in the vertical tube;

and of necessity they reproduce here,” said Planchette, indicating to

Raphael the top of the flower-pot, “the force introduced over there, a

thousand-fold,” and the man of science pointed out to the marquis the

upright wooden pipe set in the clay.

“That is quite simple,” said Raphael.

Planchette smiled again.

“In other words,” he went on, with the mathematician’s natural stubborn

propensity for logic, “in order to resist the force of the incoming

water, it would be necessary to exert, upon every part of the large

surface, a force equal to that brought into action in the vertical

column, but with this difference--if the column of liquid is a foot in

height, the thousand little columns of the wide surface will only have a

very slight elevating power.

“Now,” said Planchette, as he gave a fillip to his bits of stick,

“let us replace this funny little apparatus by steel tubes of suitable

strength and dimensions; and if you cover the liquid surface of the

reservoir with a strong sliding plate of metal, and if to this metal

plate you oppose another, solid enough and strong enough to resist any

test; if, furthermore, you give me the power of continually adding water

to the volume of liquid contents by means of the little vertical tube,

the object fixed between the two solid metal plates must of necessity

yield to the tremendous crushing force which indefinitely compresses it.

The method of continually pouring in water through a little tube, like

the manner of communicating force through the volume of the liquid to a

small metal plate, is an absurdly primitive mechanical device. A brace

of pistons and a few valves would do it all. Do you perceive, my dear

sir,” he said taking Valentin by the arm, “there is scarcely a substance

in existence that would not be compelled to dilate when fixed in between

these two indefinitely resisting surfaces?”

“What! the author of the _Lettres provinciales_ invented it?” Raphael

exclaimed.

“He and no other, sir. The science of mechanics knows no simpler nor

more beautiful contrivance. The opposite principle, the capacity of

expansion possessed by water, has brought the steam-engine into

being. But water will only expand up to a certain point, while its

incompressibility, being a force in a manner negative, is, of necessity,

infinite.”

“If this skin is expanded,” said Raphael, “I promise you to erect a

colossal statue to Blaise Pascal; to found a prize of a hundred thousand

francs to be offered every ten years for the solution of the grandest

problem of mechanical science effected during the interval; to find

dowries for all your cousins and second cousins, and finally to build an

asylum on purpose for impoverished or insane mathematicians.”

“That would be exceedingly useful,” Planchette replied. “We will go to

Spieghalter to-morrow, sir,” he continued, with the serenity of a man

living on a plane wholly intellectual. “That distinguished mechanic has

just completed, after my own designs, an improved mechanical arrangement

by which a child could get a thousand trusses of hay inside his cap.”

“Then good-bye till to-morrow.”

“Till to-morrow, sir.”

“Talk of mechanics!” cried Raphael; “isn’t it the greatest of the

sciences? The other fellow with his onagers, classifications, ducks, and

species, and his phials full of bottled monstrosities, is at best only

fit for a billiard-marker in a saloon.”

The next morning Raphael went off in great spirits to find Planchette,

and together they set out for the Rue de la Sante--auspicious

appellation! Arrived at Spieghalter’s, the young man found himself in a

vast foundry; his eyes lighted upon a multitude of glowing and roaring

furnaces. There was a storm of sparks, a deluge of nails, an ocean

of pistons, vices, levers, valves, girders, files, and nuts; a sea of

melted metal, baulks of timber and bar-steel. Iron filings filled your

throat. There was iron in the atmosphere; the men were covered with it;

everything reeked of iron. The iron seemed to be a living organism; it

became a fluid, moved, and seemed to shape itself intelligently after

every fashion, to obey the worker’s every caprice. Through the uproar

made by the bellows, the crescendo of the falling hammers, and the

shrill sounds of the lathes that drew groans from the steel, Raphael

passed into a large, clean, and airy place where he was able to inspect

at his leisure the great press that Planchette had told him about. He

admired the cast-iron beams, as one might call them, and the twin bars

of steel coupled together with indestructible bolts.

“If you were to give seven rapid turns to that crank,” said Spieghalter,

pointing out a beam of polished steel, “you would make a steel bar spurt

out in thousands of jets, that would get into your legs like needles.”

“The deuce!” exclaimed Raphael.

Planchette himself slipped the piece of skin between the metal plates

of the all-powerful press; and, brimful of the certainty of a scientific

conviction, he worked the crank energetically.

“Lie flat, all of you; we are dead men!” thundered Spieghalter, as he

himself fell prone on the floor.

A hideous shrieking sound rang through the workshops. The water in

the machine had broken the chamber, and now spouted out in a jet of

incalculable force; luckily it went in the direction of an old furnace,

which was overthrown, enveloped and carried away by a waterspout.

“Ha!” remarked Planchette serenely, “the piece of skin is as safe and

sound as my eye. There was a flaw in your reservoir somewhere, or a

crevice in the large tube----”

“No, no; I know my reservoir. The devil is in your contrivance, sir; you

can take it away,” and the German pounced upon a smith’s hammer, flung

the skin down on an anvil, and, with all the strength that rage gives,

dealt the talisman the most formidable blow that had ever resounded

through his workshops.

“There is not so much as a mark on it!” said Planchette, stroking the

perverse bit of skin.

The workmen hurried in. The foreman took the skin and buried it in the

glowing coal of a forge, while, in a semi-circle round the fire, they

all awaited the action of a huge pair of bellows. Raphael, Spieghalter,

and Professor Planchette stood in the midst of the grimy expectant

crowd. Raphael, looking round on faces dusted over with iron filings,

white eyes, greasy blackened clothing, and hairy chests, could have

fancied himself transported into the wild nocturnal world of German

ballad poetry. After the skin had been in the fire for ten minutes, the

foreman pulled it out with a pair of pincers.

“Hand it over to me,” said Raphael.

The foreman held it out by way of a joke. The Marquis readily handled

it; it was cool and flexible between his fingers. An exclamation of

alarm went up; the workmen fled in terror. Valentin was left alone with

Planchette in the empty workshop.

“There is certainly something infernal in the thing!” cried Raphael,

in desperation. “Is no human power able to give me one more day of

existence?”

“I made a mistake, sir,” said the mathematician, with a penitent

expression; “we ought to have subjected that peculiar skin to the action

of a rolling machine. Where could my eyes have been when I suggested

compression!”

“It was I that asked for it,” Raphael answered.

The mathematician heaved a sigh of relief, like a culprit acquitted by a

dozen jurors. Still, the strange problem afforded by the skin interested

him; he meditated a moment, and then remarked:

“This unknown material ought to be treated chemically by re-agents. Let

us call on Japhet--perhaps the chemist may have better luck than the

mechanic.”

Valentin urged his horse into a rapid trot, hoping to find the chemist,

the celebrated Japhet, in his laboratory.

“Well, old friend,” Planchette began, seeing Japhet in his armchair,

examining a precipitate; “how goes chemistry?”

“Gone to sleep. Nothing new at all. The Academie, however, has

recognized the existence of salicine, but salicine, asparagine,

vauqueline, and digitaline are not really discoveries----”

“Since you cannot invent substances,” said Raphael, “you are obliged to

fall back on inventing names.”

“Most emphatically true, young man.”

“Here,” said Planchette, addressing the chemist, “try to analyze this

composition; if you can extract any element whatever from it, I christen

it diaboline beforehand, for we have just smashed a hydraulic press in

trying to compress it.”

“Let’s see! let’s have a look at it!” cried the delighted chemist; “it

may, perhaps, be a fresh element.”

“It is simply a piece of the skin of an ass, sir,” said Raphael.

“Sir!” said the illustrious chemist sternly.

“I am not joking,” the Marquis answered, laying the piece of skin before

him.

Baron Japhet applied the nervous fibres of his tongue to the skin; he

had skill in thus detecting salts, acids, alkalis, and gases. After

several experiments, he remarked:

“No taste whatever! Come, we will give it a little fluoric acid to

drink.”

Subjected to the influence of this ready solvent of animal tissue, the

skin underwent no change whatsoever.

“It is not shagreen at all!” the chemist cried. “We will treat this

unknown mystery as a mineral, and try its mettle by dropping it in a

crucible where I have at this moment some red potash.”

Japhet went out, and returned almost immediately.

“Allow me to cut away a bit of this strange substance, sir,” he said to

Raphael; “it is so extraordinary----”

“A bit!” exclaimed Raphael; “not so much as a hair’s-breadth. You may

try, though,” he added, half banteringly, half sadly.

The chemist broke a razor in his desire to cut the skin; he tried to

break it by a powerful electric shock; next he submitted it to the

influence of a galvanic battery; but all the thunderbolts his science

wotted of fell harmless on the dreadful talisman.

It was seven o’clock in the evening. Planchette, Japhet, and Raphael,

unaware of the flight of time, were awaiting the outcome of a final

experiment. The Magic Skin emerged triumphant from a formidable

encounter in which it had been engaged with a considerable quantity of

chloride of nitrogen.

“It is all over with me,” Raphael wailed. “It is the finger of God! I

shall die!----” and he left the two amazed scientific men.

“We must be very careful not to talk about this affair at the Academie;

our colleagues there would laugh at us,” Planchette remarked to the

chemist, after a long pause, in which they looked at each other without

daring to communicate their thoughts. The learned pair looked like

two Christians who had issued from their tombs to find no God in the

heavens. Science had been powerless; acids, so much clear water; red

potash had been discredited; the galvanic battery and electric shock had

been a couple of playthings.

“A hydraulic press broken like a biscuit!” commented Planchette.

“I believe in the devil,” said the Baron Japhet, after a moment’s

silence.