The precise and immediate objective that he is required to attain if he is not to pass to the rank of a vulgar crook, returns all his lucidity to him in an instant; he struggles with the energy of a man who has thrown himself into a gulf in order to learn to swim. He only emerges from his laboratory to eat in haste and sleep for a few hours. His trials multiply; discouragement succeeds hope; then enthusiasm burst forth; success crowns his enterprise. His oxygenated water can be produced for less than a shilling.
That is a fortune, in a short time. This time, he glimpses the final goal with a delirious joy. Destiny is disarmed; misfortune releases its quivering prey; a glorious glimmer of dawn rises over the horizon of France.
Feverish impatience comes to assail him. The glacial wind that sometimes passes over his forehead warns him that Death is hovering close by; his heart, worn out by so much anguish, might suddenly cease beating; his bronchi, corroded by the pestilential fog, need to breathe his native air; he is in haste to return to Paris; exile weighs so heavily upon the soul of the banished.
Sir Arthur Frey, glimpsing millions, talks about establishing a vast factory; thousands of liters have already been ordered and he has not yet undertaken any advertising.
“It’s necessary that I return to France immediately. I’ll sell you my share of the partnership,” proposes Dr. Iblan.
“How much?”
“Two thousand pounds and ten per cent of the future profits.”
The bargain is too advantageous not to be accepted.
The dissociation agreement, drafted without delay, is signed by the interested parties. Sir Arthur, an excellent fellow at heart, even though his commercial conscience permits him to sell damaged merchandise as first rate produce, experiences a real solicitude for such a competent and disinterested auxiliary, and urges him to shorten his absence as much as possible; the factory needs his enlightenment, the direction will be his as soon as he returns.
Dr. Iblan thanks him, takes his check and hastens to cash it; then he runs of the Monks Agency, reintroduces himself, and asks for authentic French identity documents.
Chapter XXXV
Mr. Monks’ little eyes blink, and his face, the color of cooks crab, lights up in keen satisfaction.
“We have a dozen, you can take your choice. What age are you? At first sight one would estimate fifty-five or fifty-six.”
“That almost exactly right.”
“A few years more or less are no obstacle,” says the book-dealer. “Edgar! Go to the reserve; bring me the French identity papers between fifty and sixty.” He turns back to his client. “Please wait for a few moments; as you might suppose, I keep my papers in a safe place. People can come and search here as much as they please; they wouldn’t find a single dubious document among all these papers.”
The sales clerk came back half an hour later and handed two files to his employer.
“Only two,” says Mr. Monks, a trifle disappointed. “I thought I had more.”
Dr. Iblan scans the files that the businessman hands to him after having examined them rapidly himself. One is that of a mariner, a native of Paimpol, the other that of a Dauphinois, a small manufacturer of braid. He cannot dissimulate a slight grimace; the two identities offered to him are not at all seductive.
It would be strange, to say the least, if a former Breton mariner or an obscure braid-maker were the author of Dynamic Chemistry.
“That’s all I have between fifty and sixty, but I can guarantee the honorability of the two individuals.”
“How do you procure these documents?” he hazards, not without anxiety.
“Oh, that’s my secret, Monsieur,” replies Mr. Monks, sharply, “and the question is indiscreet.”
“I don’t want to be accused later of having stolen them, or seeing the man whose name and titles I’ve usurped appearing before me.”
“Nothing of that sort is to be feared, Monsieur. I can’t tell you our method of procedure, but I can guarantee that my dossiers are authentic and that they belonged to honest men, dead today without anyone ever having worried about them, and buried under other names. The latter of the two you opened is that of a French refugee who came here after the Commune, who created resources here and because of that, did not want to take advantage of the amnesty. It’s among political refugees, I must confess, that we have the best chance of encountering relatively honest individuals. The other Frenchmen who come to London are far from offering the same guarantees. You could assume the skin of a thief or murderer, but that wouldn’t be in your interest or mine. Although all our precautions are taken, we don’t want the name of the Monks Agency pronounced in the court of assizes, and it never has been. You must have noticed that I sometimes speak in the plural; that’s to admit to you that I’m simply a representative, and that there are people behind me who have the greatest interest in not being compromised. It’s therefore important for the prosperity of the agency and our security that I don’t deceive my clients, and as they—present company excepted, of course—are almost always flawed individuals, it’s necessary that I dissimulate them under the mask of an honest man.”
An individual came in, with a clean-shaven face like the blade of a knife, a turned-up nose, anxious eyes, severe but dirty attire and the obsequious manners of a sacristan.
“You have news, Mr. Box?”
The man made a sign of the head indicating the stranger.
“You can talk, he’s a French client.”
The newcomer looked at the client with a grimace that he probably believed to be a smile. “It’s a French civil estate that I’ve brought,” he hastened to announce, with a kind of ironic unction. “I believe I’ve arrived at an opportune moment; not only is the gentleman almost the same age, but he even resembles the honorable gentleman.” He passed a wad of papers to Mr. Monks. “I’ve had my eye on them for three weeks,” he added. “The worthy fellow didn’t want to resign himself to dying.”
“When did he die?” interrogated the fake bookseller.
“Yesterday. He’s in the process of being buried; I’ll wager that the grave isn’t yet filled in.”
“All the formalities have been completed?”
“All of them; the devil himself would only see smoke.”
“That’s good. Leave us, Mr. Box.”
Mr. Monks immediately set about examining the documents that had just been brought to him. Grunts of satisfaction escaped him after reading each one.
“Here’s something that will suit you admirably if you care to pay the price. “It’s a civil estate in the names of Jacques Bilan.”
“Jacques Bilan!” exclaimed the stranger, utterly amazed. “An anagram of Albin! That’s the one I need—that’s the one I want!”
He took the file. The documents were numerous and presented the most serious characteristic of authenticity: a birth certificate establishing, by a strange coincidence, that Jacques Bilan had been born in Perpignan on the twenty-eighth of December 18**,31 very day when Louis Albin had been born in Paris; certificates of baptism and first communion; documents establishing that the deceased had received first orders in a seminary in his native city, a bachelor’s diploma from the University of Toulouse, four inscriptions in the École de Médecine in Paris.
They had studied together, then?
He recalled his memories, vaguely evoking the silhouette of an excitable Pyrenean whose Republican opinions had impressed him. The pile also contained an appointment as Chief of a Battalion of the Commune, awarded by Flourens, and several testimonials by merchants of heads of institutions, one of which related that Jacques Bilan had shown a great deal of intelligence, activity and rectitude in the employment confided to him but that he had sometimes given evidence of an independence not in accordance with his subordinate position. That description was far from displeasing the exile; it proved that Jacques Bilan had not lived without dignity.
“This Jacques Bilan died yesterday?” he asked.
“Dead and buried under an assumed name�
��which is to say, alive, if you buy these documents from me; but I won’t press you, seek information. Although I have every confidence in the marvelous flair of Mr. Box, it’s prudent for you to take account for yourself that, outside of his political condemnations, no defect has tarnished the reputation of the deceased.”
“He wasn’t an anarchist, at least?”
“Anarchist! An amnestied Communard!” exclaimed Mr. Monks, laughing. “It’s the first time that I’d have seen that: reactionary, mitigated, reformed, re-entered the fold, rosewater socialist, perhaps, but anarchist, never. Name me one of them who’s in the public eye! Then again, the anarchists are of all nationalities; nine out of ten of them are agents provocateurs charged with discovering their projects.”
“And what’s the price of this dossier?”
Certain that the client had made his decision, Mr. Monks made elevated demands. That title of Chief of a Battalion of the Commune appeared to have considerable importance in his eyes; thanks to that, an adroit man could not fail to have himself elected as a député or bag a prefecture. After long haggling, he consented to sell it for six hundred pounds, and the exile, who was sighing after Paris, accepted the bargain, subject to enquiries.
The duplicate of the birth certificate, which arrived a week later from Perpignan, the favorable testimony of English businessmen to whom he addressed himself and the affirmations of Mr. Box, who said he was a friend of the deceased and had known him for twenty years, convinced him to conclude the bargain definitively.
Impatient to leave, he returned to the agency, paid the agreed sum and emerged on to Holborn Hill under the fateful name of Jacques Bilan.
He immediately proceeded with the transformation that the new identity required. It was necessary that Jacques Bilan did not resemble the American doctor too closely. The indications given by Mr. Box facilitated the metamorphosis. He wore his hair short, a moustache, a goatee, and, pale, thin and dressed modestly, but with the characteristic good taste of the French, no longer had any but a distant resemblance to the exotic Dr. Iblan. It was, in any case, a year since the latter had quit Paris; no one would be thinking about him any longer.
How should he proceed? The obtaining of the official titles that he had believed so necessary had not been of any great utility; he ought, above all, now that he was able to do so, publish his work, and then launch himself body and soul into the combat that the scientific event would unleash. Great as the power of his contradictors was, they could not rest the evidence cited, the experiments carried out. Admitting, at the worst, that he was recognized as Dr. Iblan and was obliged to resume the road of exile, his glory would be no less definitively established and he would think later about the fashion in which, at the opportune moment, he would unveil his true identity.
He went to bid farewell to Sir Arthur Frey, who strove to retain him once again.
“Would it be indiscreet to ask you the reason for such a hasty departure?”
“The necessity of rapidly publishing a history of Alchemy and Chemistry that will place me in the first rank.”
“Why can’t you publish it here?”
“I could, if necessary, but various reasons push me toward Paris. It’s there, and nowhere but there, that I must go. And then, this air stifles me, this climate is killing me, and homesickness is tormenting me.” In a voice tremulous with emotion or anger, he added: “Perhaps there’s also a motive that it’s almost shameful to admit. Hatred has entered my heart; there are brows that I want to see furrowed with anxiety and eyes that I want to see shedding tears. I’m no longer the benevolent and indulgent being I once was, the individual who had only known the suffering of others. Today, I’ve been hungry, I’ve been cold, I’ve wept, I’ve descended into all the hells of poverty; prison cells and lunatic asylums have delivered me to vindictive thoughts. I’ve asked myself—how many times!—whether honest, noble and delicate sentiments aren’t primarily the results of environment and education.
“Wretched, I didn’t judge men and things in the fashion that I’d appreciated them in times of wellbeing and glory; I pitied those I had scorned, I forgave those I had condemned, and, on the other hand, I began to hate those I had admired and loved. Even though the disinherited and the humble, in recompense for my sympathy, have brought me some help in the accomplishment of my projects, contact with them has humiliated and soiled me, after the mediocrity if the powerful, the stupidity of the crowd have ridiculed my genius.
“The necessity of living has forced me to resort to lying. A prostitute gave me bread and I was obliged to give her in exchange all the gratitude and nobility that remained in my heart, a part of my blood and years of my life. Now, Sir Arthur, if you knew the man that I was before all that, you would wonder in amazement how it is possible that I can still be alive. It is therefore necessary that my triumph bursts forth in the place where I have suffered so much. That will be my sole vengeance, but it will strike in the heart the legion of those who have persecuted me. Then, all my dolors, all my bitterness will be forgotten forever, and I shall be able to die content. I shall have crowned with glory a double life, one of extraordinary wellbeing, the other of inconceivable suffering. No mortal will be able to equal me; I shall be illustrious among the illustrious, and when I lift the thick veil that covers me, cries of admiration raised from all the corners of the globe will bear my name to the clouds!”
Jacques Bilan had raised himself up to his full height; his voice was vibrant, his eyes flashing. Did he not believe that he was finally going to accomplish the work of Truth?
Chapter XXXVI
The train is engulfed in the Gare St-Lazare; an impatient man gets down, his manner assured, his head held high, his stride feverish. The fiacre he hails takes him rapidly to a hotel on the Boulevard St-Germain, where he registers in the name of Jacques Bilan, selects a room, sets down a heavy suitcase, tidies himself up a little and then goes downstairs again in haste. He mingles with the crowds of students going up and down the Boulevard St-Michel.
The autumn sky is gray, but the air is still mild.
It is about midday; the traveler goes into a restaurant and has lunch with the appetite to which a fortunate event and the joy of homecoming give birth, and then goes back into the crowd and heads for the Jardin du Luxembourg.
The last leaves are littering the ground. The Fontaine des Médicis evokes charming memories of a distant youth and distant amours. Clumps of chrysanthemums open, as of old, their ragged corollas. On the terraces surrounded by balustrades, the queens of France still have the noble attitudes of yore, Pigeons and sparrows still come to feed from childish hands. Amorous couples are still seeking deserted pathways.
Oh, how good it is to live in that elegant and majestic landscape! How sweet it is to breathe that natal air! Jacques Bilan inhales it delightedly; it seems to him that life is entering his lungs, poisoned by the cold mists of English soil.
He goes to the galleries of the Odéon, leafs through new books and periodicals. What delightful moments those shelves enabled him to pass when he as a student!
He goes down toward the École de Médecine; floods of young men, their books and notebooks under their arms, are going to lectures. The temple of blissful routine still maintains its appearance of a Greek monument erected to the glory of Aesculapius, Hippocrates and Galen. It seems that the world is eternally condemned to live on the ill-digested acquisitions of past centuries. If his eyes do not launch a challenging gaze, it is because victory renders him magnanimous and the hour of triumph will not be long in chiming.
He resumes his stroll at a slow pace and pauses, curiously, before the publishers of scientific books. The names of his former pupils are already mingled with those of old masters. If the Sacred Arch incarnates the past, these window displays inform him that thought and toil have not lost their rights and that the efforts of new generations still produce their fruits.
A stout volume surrounded by a strip bearing the legend Just Published attracts his attention. It is
written in German, recently arrived from Dusseldorf, is entitled Principles of Thermodynamic Chemistry and is signed Ludwig Keller.
New publications of that sort are always disquieting, but this one, more than any other, causes him to experience an instinctive contraction of the heart. The near similarity of title astonishes him. The name of Ludwig Keller, which he is seeing for the first time on the cover of a book, seems nevertheless not to be entirely unfamiliar to him.
He goes into the shop, buys the octavo volume and immediately starts to read it. The introduction throws him into an extreme disturbance; he skips pages with a kind of rage, arrives at the final pages, utters a cry of despair and falls over.
Another man, a foreigner, has just published the conclusive experiments that destroy Dr. Albin’s theory.
The sales clerks hasten to help the invalid; a physician who happens to be there lavishes cares upon hm. The unknown man slowly recovers consciousness. Uniformed policemen who have been summoned arrive to take him back to his hotel. He murmurs his name and address, but the malaise has disappeared; he refuses the fiacre and the aid that they offer him, takes the volume that has caused him so much distress, and goes back to his room in haste. Perhaps he has misread, has misunderstood, mistaken his fears for realities?
He locks himself in, reads the volume from beginning to end. Everything, down to the last detail, is there.
His work, if he published it now, would be nothing but a heap of bibliographical research crowned by a flagrant plagiarism.
Anger and rage are mingled with his despair. He takes his manuscripts, useless henceforth, piles them up in the fireplace, sets the alight and watches them burn with cries of hatred and malediction. He remembers now the article that once appeared in the Revue des Sciences. Another, alerted by his polemics, has stolen his glory. And it is poverty, pitiless society, that has robbed him of the just price of his labor. The truth, to be sure, will radiate over the scientific world, but he is not the one who will hold up the torch, even though that honor was due to him.
The Second Life of Doctor Albin Page 35