“Yes, you are the first,” he continued. “All through the Middle Ages
I used to buy Christian souls at fancy rates, building bridges and
cathedrals in a single night in return, and getting swindled out of
my Christian nearly every time that I dealt with a priest--as
history will concede--but making it up on the lay square-dealer now
and then, as _I_ admit; but none of those people ever guessed where
the _real_ big money lay. You are the first.”
I refilled his glass and gave him another Cavour. But he was
experienced, by this time. He inspected the cigar pensively awhile;
then:
“What do you pay for these?” he asked.
“Two cents--but they come cheaper when you take a barrel.”
He went on inspecting; also mumbling comments, apparently to
himself:
“Black--rough-skinned--rumpled, irregular, wrinkled, barky, with
crispy curled-up places on it--burnt-leather aspect, like the shoes
of the damned that sit in pairs before the room doors at home of a
Sunday morning.” He sighed at thought of his home, and was silent a
moment; then he said, gently, “Tell me about this projectile.”
“It is the discovery of a great Italian statesman,” I said. “Cavour.
One day he lit his cigar, then laid it down and went on writing and
forgot it. It lay in a pool of ink and got soaked. By and by he
noticed it and laid it on the stove to dry. When it was dry he lit
it and at once noticed that it didn’t taste the same as it did
before. And so----”
“Did he say what it tasted like before?”
“No, I think not. But he called the government chemist and told him
to find out the source of that new taste, and report. The chemist
applied the tests, and reported that the source was the presence of
sulphate of iron, touched up and spiritualized with vinegar--the
combination out of which one makes ink. Cavour told him to introduce
the brand in the interest of the finances. So, ever since then this
brand passes through the ink factory, with the great result that
both the ink and the cigar suffer a sea change into something new
and strange. This is history, Sire, not a work of the imagination.”
So then he took up his present again, and touched it to the
forefinger of his other hand for an instant, which made it break
into flame and fragrance--but he changed his mind at that point and
laid the torpedo down, saying, courteously:
“With permission I will save it for Voltaire.”
I was greatly pleased and flattered to be connected in even this
little way with that great man and be mentioned to him, as no doubt
would be the case, so I hastened to fetch a bundle of fifty for
distribution among others of the renowned and lamented--Goethe, and
Homer, and Socrates, and Confucius, and so on--but Satan said he had
nothing against those. Then he dropped back into reminiscences of
the old times once more, and presently said:
“They knew nothing about radium, and it would have had no value for
them if they had known about it. In twenty million years it has had
no value for your race until the revolutionizing steam-and-machinery
age was born--which was only a few years before you were born
yourself. It was a stunning little century, for sure, that
nineteenth! But it’s a poor thing compared to what the twentieth is
going to be.”
By request, he explained why he thought so.
“Because power was so costly, then, and everything goes by
power--the steamship, the locomotive, and everything else. Coal, you
see! You have to have it; no steam and no electricity without it;
and it’s such a waste--for you burn it up, and it’s gone! But
radium--that’s another matter! With my nine hundred pounds you could
light the world, and heat it, and run all its ships and machines and
railways a hundred million years, and not use up five pounds of it
in the whole time! And then----”
“Quick--my soul is yours, dear Ancestor; take it--we’ll start a
company!”
But he asked my age, which is sixty-eight, then politely sidetracked
the proposition, probably not wishing to take advantage of himself.
Then he went on talking admiringly of radium, and how with its own
natural and inherent heat it could go on melting its own weight of
ice twenty-four times in twenty-four hours, and keep it up forever
without losing bulk or weight; and how a pound of it, if exposed in
this room, would blast the place like a breath from hell, and burn
me to a crisp in a quarter of a minute--and was going on like that,
but I interrupted and said:
“But _you_ are here, Majesty--nine hundred pounds--and the
temperature is balmy and pleasant. I don’t understand.”
“Well,” he said, hesitatingly, “it is a secret, but I may as well
reveal it, for these prying and impertinent chemists are going to
find it out sometime or other, anyway. Perhaps you have read what
Madame Curie says about radium; how she goes searching among its
splendid secrets and seizes upon one after another of them and
italicizes its specialty; how she says ‘the compounds of radium are
_spontaneously luminous_’--require no coal in the production of
light, you see; how she says, ‘a glass vessel containing radium
_spontaneously charges itself with electricity_’--no coal or water
power required to generate it, you see; how she says ‘radium
possesses the remarkable property of _liberating heat spontaneously
and continuously_’--no coal required to fire-up on the world’s
machinery, you see. She ransacks the pitch-blende for its
radioactive substances, and captures three and labels them; one,
which is embodied with bismuth, she names polonium; one, which is
embodied with barium, she names radium; the name given to the third
was actinium. Now listen; she says ‘_the question now was to
separate the polonium from the bismuth_ ... this is the task that
has occupied us for years and has been a most difficult one.’ For
years, you see--for _years_. That is their way, those plagues, those
scientists--peg, peg, peg--dig, dig, dig--plod, plod, plod. I wish I
could catch a cargo of them for my place; it would be an economy.
Yes, for years, you see. They never give up. Patience, hope, faith,
perseverance; it is the way of all the breed. Columbus and the rest.
In radium this lady has added a new world to the planet’s
possessions, and matched--Columbus--and his peer. She has set
herself the task of divorcing polonium and bismuth; when she
succeeds she will have done--what, should you say?”
“Pray name it, Majesty.”
“It’s another new world added--a gigantic one. I will explain; for
you would never divine the size of it, and she herself does not
suspect it.”
“Do, Majesty, I beg of you.”
“Polonium, freed from bismuth and made independent, is the one and
only power that can control radium, restrain its destructive forces,
tame them, reduce them to obedience, and make them do useful and
profitable work for your race. Examine my skin. What do you think of
it?”
“It is delicate, silky, transparent, thin as a gelatine
film--exquisite, beautiful, Majesty!”
“It is made of polonium. All the rest of me is radium. If I should
strip off my skin the world would vanish away in a flash of flame
and a puff of smoke, and the remnants of the extinguished moon would
sift down through space a mere snow-shower of gray ashes!”