by Jay Lake
“I hope so, Van Tricasse.”
“There are more pressing matters to decide.”
“No doubt; the question of the leather-market, for instance.”
“What, is it still burning?”
“Still burning, and has been for the last three weeks.”
“Have we not decided in council to let it burn?”
“Yes, Van Tricasse—on your motion.”
“Was not that the surest and simplest way to deal with it?”
“Without doubt.”
“Well, let us wait. Is that all?”
“All,” replied the counsellor, scratching his head, as if to assure himself that he had not forgotten anything important.
“Ah!” exclaimed the burgomaster, “haven’t you also heard something of an escape of water which threatens to inundate the low quarter of Saint Jacques?”
“I have. It is indeed unfortunate that this escape of water did not happen above the leather-market! It would naturally have checked the fire, and would thus have saved us a good deal of discussion.”
“What can you expect, Niklausse? There is nothing so illogical as accidents. They are bound by no rules, and we cannot profit by one, as we might wish, to remedy another.”
It took Van Tricasse’s companion some time to digest this fine observation.
“Well, but,” resumed the Counsellor Niklausse, after the lapse of some moments, “we have not spoken of our great affair!”
“What great affair? Have we, then, a great affair?” asked the burgomaster.
“No doubt. About lighting the town.”
“O yes. If my memory serves me, you are referring to the lighting plan of Doctor Ox.”
“Precisely.”
“It is going on, Niklausse,” replied the burgomaster. “They are already laying the pipes, and the works are entirely completed.”
“Perhaps we have hurried a little in this matter,” said the counsellor, shaking his head.
“Perhaps. But our excuse is, that Doctor Ox bears the whole expense of his experiment. It will not cost us a sou.”
“That, true enough, is our excuse. Moreover, we must advance with the age. If the experiment succeeds, Quiquendone will be the first town in Flanders to be lighted with the oxy—What is the gas called?”
“Oxyhydric gas.”
“Well, oxyhydric gas, then.”
At this moment the door opened, and Lotchè came in to tell the burgomaster that his supper was ready.
Counsellor Niklausse rose to take leave of Van Tricasse, whose appetite had been stimulated by so many affairs discussed and decisions taken; and it was agreed that the council of notables should be convened after a reasonably long delay, to determine whether a decision should be provisionally arrived at with reference to the really urgent matter of the Oudenarde gate.
The two worthy administrators then directed their steps towards the street-door, the one conducting the other. The counsellor, having reached the last step, lighted a little lantern to guide him through the obscure streets of Quiquendone, which Doctor Ox had not yet lighted. It was a dark October night, and a light fog overshadowed the town.
Niklausse’s preparations for departure consumed at least a quarter of an hour; for, after having lighted his lantern, he had to put on his big cow-skin socks and his sheep-skin gloves; then he put up the furred collar of his overcoat, turned the brim of his felt hat down over his eyes, grasped his heavy crow-beaked umbrella, and got ready to start.
When Lotchè, however, who was lighting her master, was about to draw the bars of the door, an unexpected noise arose outside.
Yes! Strange as the thing seems, a noise—a real noise, such as the town had certainly not heard since the taking of the donjon by the Spaniards in 1513—terrible noise, awoke the long-dormant echoes of the venerable Van Tricasse mansion.
Some one knocked heavily upon this door, hitherto virgin to brutal touch! Redoubled knocks were given with some blunt implement, probably a knotty stick, wielded by a vigorous arm. With the strokes were mingled cries and calls. These words were distinctly heard:—
“Monsieur Van Tricasse! Monsieur the burgomaster! Open, open quickly!”
The burgomaster and the counsellor, absolutely astounded, looked at each other speechless.
This passed their comprehension. If the old culverin of the château, which had not been used since 1385, had been let off in the parlour, the dwellers in the Van Tricasse mansion would not have been more dumbfoundered.
Meanwhile, the blows and cries were redoubled. Lotchè, recovering her coolness, had plucked up courage to speak.
“Who is there?”
“It is I! I! I!”
“Who are you?”
“The Commissary Passauf!”
The Commissary Passauf! The very man whose office it had been contemplated to suppress for ten years. What had happened, then? Could the Burgundians have invaded Quiquendone, as they did in the fourteenth century? No event of less importance could have so moved Commissary Passauf, who in no degree yielded the palm to the burgomaster himself for calmness and phlegm.
On a sign from Van Tricasse—for the worthy man could not have articulated a syllable—the bar was pushed back and the door opened.
Commissary Passauf flung himself into the antechamber. One would have thought there was a hurricane.
“What’s the matter, Monsieur the commissary?” asked Lotchè, a brave woman, who did not lose her head under the most trying circumstances.
“What’s the matter!” replied Passauf, whose big round eyes expressed a genuine agitation. “The matter is that I have just come from Doctor Ox’s, who has been holding a reception, and that there—”
“There?”
“There I have witnessed such an altercation as—Monsieur the burgomaster, they have been talking politics!”
“Politics!” repeated Van Tricasse, running his fingers through his wig.
“Politics!” resumed Commissary Passauf, “which has not been done for perhaps a hundred years at Quiquendone. Then the discussion got warm, and the advocate, André Schut, and the doctor, Dominique Custos, became so violent that it may be they will call each other out.”
“Call each other out!” cried the counsellor. “A duel! A duel at Quiquendone! And what did Advocate Schut and Doctor Gustos say?”
“Just this: ‘Monsieur advocate,’ said the doctor to his adversary, ‘you go too far, it seems to me, and you do not take sufficient care to control your words!’”
The Burgomaster Van Tricasse clasped his hands—the counsellor turned pale and let his lantern fall—the commissary shook his head. That a phrase so evidently irritating should be pronounced by two of the principal men in the country!
“This Doctor Custos,” muttered Van Tricasse, “is decidedly a dangerous man—a hare-brained fellow! Come, gentlemen!”
On this, Counsellor Niklausse and the commissary accompanied the burgomaster into the parlour.
Chapter 4
In which Doctor Ox Reveals Himself as a Physiologist of the First Rank, and as an Audacious Experimentalist.
Who, then, was this personage, known by the singular name of Doctor Ox?
An original character for certain, but at the same time a bold savant, a physiologist, whose works were known and highly estimated throughout learned Europe, a happy rival of the Davys, the Daltons, the Bostocks, the Menzies, the Godwins, the Vierordts—of all those noble minds who have placed physiology among the highest of modern sciences.
Doctor Ox was a man of medium size and height, aged—: but we cannot state his age, any more than his nationality. Besides, it matters little; let it suffice that he was a strange personage, impetuous and hot-blooded, a regular oddity out of one of Hoffmann’s volumes, and one who contrasted amusingly enough with the good people of Quiquendone. He had an imperturbable confidence both in himself and in his doctrines. Always smiling, walking with head erect and shoulders thrown back in a free and unconstrained manner, with a steady gaze, large
open nostrils, a vast mouth which inhaled the air in liberal draughts, his appearance was far from unpleasing. He was full of animation, well proportioned in all parts of his bodily mechanism, with quicksilver in his veins, and a most elastic step. He could never stop still in one place, and relieved himself with impetuous words and a superabundance of gesticulations.
Was Doctor Ox rich, then, that he should undertake to light a whole town at his expense? Probably, as he permitted himself to indulge in such extravagance—and this is the only answer we can give to this indiscreet question.
Doctor Ox had arrived at Quiquendone five months before, accompanied by his assistant, who answered to the name of Gédéon Ygène; a tall, dried-up, thin man, haughty, but not less vivacious than his master.
And next, why had Doctor Ox made the proposition to light the town at his own expense? Why had he, of all the Flemings, selected the peaceable Quiquendonians, to endow their town with the benefits of an unheard-of system of lighting? Did he not, under this pretext, design to make some great physiological experiment by operating in anima vili? In short, what was this original personage about to attempt? We know not, as Doctor Ox had no confidant except his assistant Ygène, who, moreover, obeyed him blindly.
In appearance, at least, Doctor Ox had agreed to light the town, which had much need of it, “especially at night,” as Commissary Passauf wittily said. Works for producing a lighting gas had accordingly been established; the gasometers were ready for use, and the main pipes, running beneath the street pavements, would soon appear in the form of burners in the public edifices and the private houses of certain friends of progress. Van Tricasse and Niklausse, in their official capacity, and some other worthies, thought they ought to allow this modern light to be introduced into their dwellings.
If the reader has not forgotten, it was said, during the long conversation of the counsellor and the burgomaster, that the lighting of the town was to be achieved, not by the combustion of common carburetted hydrogen, produced by distilling coal, but by the use of a more modern and twenty-fold more brilliant gas, oxyhydric gas, produced by mixing hydrogen and oxygen.
The doctor, who was an able chemist as well as an ingenious physiologist, knew how to obtain this gas in great quantity and of good quality, not by using manganate of soda, according to the method of M. Tessié du Motay, but by the direct decomposition of slightly acidulated water, by means of a battery made of new elements, invented by himself. Thus there were no costly materials, no platinum, no retorts, no combustibles, no delicate machinery to produce the two gases separately. An electric current was sent through large basins full of water, and the liquid was decomposed into its two constituent parts, oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen passed off at one end; the hydrogen, of double the volume of its late associate, at the other. As a necessary precaution, they were collected in separate reservoirs, for their mixture would have produced a frightful explosion if it had become ignited. Thence the pipes were to convey them separately to the various burners, which would be so placed as to prevent all chance of explosion. Thus a remarkably brilliant flame would be obtained, whose light would rival the electric light, which, as everybody knows, is, according to Cassellmann’s experiments, equal to that of eleven hundred and seventy-one wax candles—not one more, nor one less.
It was certain that the town of Quiquendone would, by this liberal contrivance, gain a splendid lighting; but Doctor Ox and his assistant took little account of this, as will be seen in the sequel.
The day after that on which Commissary Passauf had made his noisy entrance into the burgomaster’s parlour, Gédéon Ygène and Doctor Ox were talking in the laboratory which both occupied in common, on the ground-floor of the principal building of the gas-works.
“Well, Ygène, well,” cried the doctor, rubbing his hands. “You saw, at my reception yesterday, the cool-bloodedness of these worthy Quiquendonians. For animation they are midway between sponges and coral! You saw them disputing and irritating each other by voice and gesture? They are already metamorphosed, morally and physically! And this is only the beginning. Wait till we treat them to a big dose!”
“Indeed, master,” replied Ygène, scratching his sharp nose with the end of his forefinger, “the experiment begins well, and if I had not prudently closed the supply-tap, I know not what would have happened.”
“You heard Schut, the advocate, and Custos, the doctor?” resumed Doctor Ox. “The phrase was by no means ill-natured in itself, but, in the mouth of a Quiquendonian, it is worth all the insults which the Homeric heroes hurled at each other before drawing their swords, Ah, these Flemings! You’ll see what we shall do some day!”
“We shall make them ungrateful,” replied Ygène, in the tone of a man who esteems the human race at its just worth.
“Bah!” said the doctor; “what matters it whether they think well or ill of us, so long as our experiment succeeds?”
“Besides,” returned the assistant, smiling with a malicious expression, “is it not to be feared that, in producing such an excitement in their respiratory organs, we shall somewhat injure the lungs of these good people of Quiquendone?”
“So much the worse for them! It is in the interests of science. What would you say if the dogs or frogs refused to lend themselves to the experiments of vivisection?”
It is probable that if the frogs and dogs were consulted, they would offer some objection; but Doctor Ox imagined that he had stated an unanswerable argument, for he heaved a great sigh of satisfaction.
“After all, master, you are right,” replied Ygène, as if quite convinced. “We could not have hit upon better subjects than these people of Quiquendone for our experiment.”
“We—could—not,” said the doctor, slowly articulating each word.
“Have you felt the pulse of any of them?”
“Some hundreds.”
“And what is the average pulsation you found?”
“Not fifty per minute. See—this is a town where there has not been the shadow of a discussion for a century, where the carmen don’t swear, where the coachmen don’t insult each other, where horses don’t run away, where the dogs don’t bite, where the cats don’t scratch—a town where the police-court has nothing to do from one year’s end to another—a town where people do not grow enthusiastic about anything, either about art or business—a town where the gendarmes are a sort of myth, and in which an indictment has not been drawn up for a hundred years—a town, in short, where for three centuries nobody has struck a blow with his fist or so much as exchanged a slap in the face! You see, Ygène, that this cannot last, and that we must change it all.”
“Perfectly! perfectly!” cried the enthusiastic assistant; “and have you analyzed the air of this town, master?”
“I have not failed to do so. Seventy-nine parts of azote and twenty-one of oxygen, carbonic acid and steam in a variable quantity. These are the ordinary proportions.”
“Good, doctor, good!” replied Ygène. “The experiment will be made on a large scale, and will be decisive.”
“And if it is decisive,” added Doctor Ox triumphantly, “we shall reform the world!”
Chapter 5
In which the Burgomaster and the Counsellor Pay a Visit to Doctor Ox, and what Follows.
The Counsellor Niklausse and the Burgomaster Van Tricasse at last knew what it was to have an agitated night. The grave event which had taken place at Doctor Ox’s house actually kept them awake. What consequences was this affair destined to bring about? They could not imagine. Would it be necessary for them to come to a decision? Would the municipal authority, whom they represented, be compelled to interfere? Would they be obliged to order arrests to be made, that so great a scandal should not be repeated? All these doubts could not but trouble these soft natures; and on that evening, before separating, the two notables had “decided” to see each other the next day.
On the next morning, then, before dinner, the Burgomaster Van Tricasse proceeded in person to the Counsellor Niklausse’s ho
use. He found his friend more calm. He himself had recovered his equanimity.
“Nothing new?” asked Van Tricasse.
“Nothing new since yesterday,” replied Niklausse.
“And the doctor, Dominique Custos?”
“I have not heard anything, either of him or of the advocate, André Schut.”
After an hour’s conversation, which consisted of three remarks which it is needless to repeat, the counsellor and the burgomaster had resolved to pay a visit to Doctor Ox, so as to draw from him, without seeming to do so, some details of the affair.
Contrary to all their habits, after coming to this decision the two notables set about putting it into execution forthwith. They left the house and directed their steps towards Doctor Ox’s laboratory, which was situated outside the town, near the Oudenarde gate—the gate whose tower threatened to fall in ruins.
They did not take each other’s arms, but walked side by side, with a slow and solemn step, which took them forward but thirteen inches per second. This was, indeed, the ordinary gait of the Quiquendonians, who had never, within the memory of man, seen any one run across the streets of their town.
From time to time the two notables would stop at some calm and tranquil crossway, or at the end of a quiet street, to salute the passers-by.
“Good morning, Monsieur the burgomaster,” said one.
“Good morning, my friend,” responded Van Tricasse.
“Anything new, Monsieur the counsellor?” asked another.
“Nothing new,” answered Niklausse.
But by certain agitated motions and questioning looks, it was evident that the altercation of the evening before was known throughout the town. Observing the direction taken by Van Tricasse, the most obtuse Quiquendonians guessed that the burgomaster was on his way to take some important step. The Custos and Schut affair was talked of everywhere, but the people had not yet come to the point of taking the part of one or the other. The Advocate Schut, having never had occasion to plead in a town where attorneys and bailiffs only existed in tradition, had, consequently, never lost a suit. As for the Doctor Custos, he was an honourable practitioner, who, after the example of his fellow-doctors, cured all the illnesses of his patients, except those of which they died—a habit unhappily acquired by all the members of all the faculties in whatever country they may practise.