While I waited, seated in my chair, looking on at everything intently,
the Count François and the Vicomte Antoine silently applied themselves
to a series of mysterious activities. First they took up each piece
of furniture and moved it away from the center of the hall, standing
the chairs in line against the wall, and leaving the whole floor clear
as if in preparation for a ball. Next, and still without exchanging
a syllable, evidently repeating an operation learned from long
experience, they brought out the horse, or easel, of which I have
spoken, and set it up, being careful to adjust it with precision to
the longitudinal axis of the hall, at a point about a third way down
the length thereof. Next they opened the antique chest, and drew from
it a curious object which they handled with great care, carrying it,
with visible effort, to the foot of the horse on which they finally
erected it in a vertical position. I noted that this object was about
as large as an ordinary cart wheel, that it was flat and circular. A
sort of lens, I judged it to be, much like the glass reflector of a
powerful searchlight. Its substance was not crystal, however, but
a material which I could not identify, something translucent rather
than transparent, colorless when viewed with even light, but otherwise
showing brilliant metallic glints, shading from ruby red to emerald
green with a profusion of all the tints of gold. This lustre, moreover,
stood out against the colorless background, as if it came from matter
distinct from the disk itself, though incorporated in the latter’s
substance. You are doubtless acquainted with Danzig brandy, a liquor
which seems filled with particles of floating gold; or with samples
of Leyden ware showing bits of crumpled tinsel sprinkled through the
glass. Such was the dish, or lens, in question.
Finally the two old men stepped cautiously up to their respective
father and grandfather, still rigorously motionless in his strange
_dormeuse_; and avoiding the slightest noise, they slowly, gently,
wheeled him towards a point on the floor which I noticed was marked
off, with geometrical exactitude, by four plaques of glass--one
apparently for each of the four legs of the chair. Indeed, when they
had pushed the old man to the square, the count and the vicomte kneeled
on the floor to make sure that each castor was in the right position.
From all their movements I could see that the operation they were
about to perform was one requiring meticulous accuracy. This chair in
place, they turned to the second _dormeuse_, which, though empty, was
advanced just as carefully and noiselessly, and its position verified
with just as thorough an examination.
Whereupon, the two old men returned to the seats they had previously
occupied, now, however, sitting with their backs against the wall and
their faces turned toward me. During all this time, I, for my part,
had not stirred; nor had I been once disturbed or caused to change my
position in the slightest.
I sat there, observing intently. Things were now arranged as follows
in the room: the two _dormeuses_ and the horse stood at three points
on a straight line running lengthwise of the hall. The two seats faced
each other, with the horse between them but nearer to one than to the
other. Assuming the lens to be a refractor, I concluded from a rough
computation of the angles, that the image passing through it from one
chair would fall exactly into the other.
However, the Marquis Gaspard, his body still relaxed and his eyes
closed, continued to give not a sign of life.
A long silence ensued.