“Monsieur,” said the Marquis Gaspard to me, “it was a great pleasure to
be able to allow you this hour you so much desired. I hope it came up
fully to your expectations.”
He was standing in the center of the large hall to which I had just
returned--taller he seemed to me than formerly, with a carriage more
erect and eyes agleam with a brighter, more imperious flame.
The candles along the wall had been put out; only the two lamps to
the right and left of the fireplace were still lighted, and the Count
François was busy lowering the wicks of these.
“Monsieur,” the marquis continued, “will you not kindly take your place
for what we still have to do?”
He pointed to the deep chair in which he himself had been resting
before I left the room.
I was anxious to betray no uneasiness whatever. I advanced without
hesitation to the seat appointed and calmly sat down.
“Antoine!” the count called.
I was in that one of the two chairs which seemed nearest to the great
lens. Facing me, and some ten or twelve paces away was the other
seat, its arms opening toward me. It was empty. The stuffed cushions
on the back of my chair, of the seat, arms and head-rest, seemed to
accommodate my body perfectly; so that I was not conscious of any
weight or fatigue at all. I stiffened nevertheless when I saw what the
Vicomte Antoine was about to do. At his father’s call, the younger man
stepped forward in my direction carrying in his hand a sort of dark
lantern, much larger than the one which had lighted our path over the
mountains.
“Look out! Look out, Monsieur!” he called, noticing that I had fixed my
eyes in some alarm upon him. “Turn your head the other way, or you may
be blinded.”
He slipped the shutter over the spot-light aside. I was bathed from
head to foot in a harsh raw light which was all the more painful from
the relative darkness of the rest of the room. I closed my eyes at
first. When I opened them again, I avoided the stream of radiance that
was turned upon me, and looked past it to one side, toward the lens and
the empty chair beyond the latter.
Despite my efforts to control myself, I trembled, stupidly trembled,
at what I saw. The chair was no longer empty; someone, or rather,
something, was occupying it--the luminous shadow of a man seated,
a shadow of myself, in fact. Of this I furnished proof at once by
raising my arm, a movement which the shadow repeated with absolute
fidelity. Now I understood; the hypothesis I had formed when the lens
was first brought out was the correct one; the second chair was fixed
on the spot where the image of the other chair, passing through the
lens, would fall. The moment a vivid light was thrown upon me in that
darkened room, my image became visible over there. There was nothing
so mysterious in all that so far. I was somewhat ashamed of my first
quiver of fright.
After a second or so, the vicomte closed his lantern again, and the
image disappeared. Then only did I remember something very strange,
which at first had not occurred to me. If the apparatus nearby were an
ordinary lens, my image, as I had just observed it, should have been
upside down, my feet above my head. Now such was not the case. It was
right side up, a thing which I could not account for then, and have not
been able to account for since.
Meanwhile, there had been a question, delivered in the shrill falsetto
of the marquis:
“Is the image clear?”
The vicomte’s low-pitched voice responded:
“Perfectly, Monsieur!”
I had let my head fall back against the prop behind it; and it half
buried itself in the upholstery, which sustained its weight so evenly
and firmly that I am sure I could have fainted and yet still have kept
to the same position without bending my neck. The field of my vision
was proportionately reduced, however: I could see no one now except the
Count François, who was still watching his lamps, turning them by this
time so low that a faint blue flicker only was visible around the wicks.
The marquis asked another question, and this time of me:
“Monsieur, you are well seated in your chair, quite comfortable, quite
relaxed? It is very important that you should be, I caution you!”