Ever Smaller

by Albert Bleunard

  The reading of the minutes was concluded. The president, still according to the time-honored formula, added: “Are there any comments on the minutes? The minutes are accepted.” Then, having solidly adjusted his spectacles on his nose, he continued: “Professor Collioure has the floor, for an important communication.”

  All faces turned to the professor, who immediately began to speak, in these terms:

  “Gentlemen and dear colleagues, you know that I spent the greater part of my vacation traveling in Italy. Now, having chanced to stop in a little town in the vicinity of Florence named Montepulciano, I had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of an old and venerable scientist by the name of Al-Harik, who is much occupied with the sciences that we cultivate with so much fervor in the Hyperpsychical Society of Perpignan.

  “Al-Harik told me about the very interesting research that he was carrying out at that time, of which he expected marvelous results. Knowing that I was a professor of physics and chemistry, he questioned me about the new phenomena recently discovered in electricity, principally regarding the analogies existing between luminous waves and electrical waves.

  “I left without being able to discover the exact nature of his research. He had only given me vague and uninteresting information—except that, as we parted, he assured me that, in view of the god relationship that we had established, he would hasten to bring my up to date with his research.

  “I had completely forgotten my old scientist from Montepulciano when a fortnight later, I received the following letter:

  “Monsieur,

  “I am happy to inform you that I have attained my goal: I have succeeded in rendering humans as small as I wish…”

  Collioure was interrupted in his reading at that moment by the exclamations of the entire assembly.

  For a few minutes there was a frightful racket for a few minutes, some people denying the possibility of such a discovery, others opining that the Italian scientist had made the greatest discovery of the century. They divided into two opposed camps: those who were for and those who were against. Tempers gradually became heated; cries were uttered, even howls. Two members were threatening to come to blows when the president thought it his duty to intervene to re-establish order. He shook his hand-bell, but it did not make any sound. It had not been used for two years, calm as the sessions usually were, and rust had caused the clapper to fall out. The doctor, who was unaware of this circumstance, continued to shake it frenetically, assuming that he racket was preventing him from hearing the instrument.

  On seeing the doctor’s arm waving, while holding the bell, silence descended abruptly. Amazingly enough, no one heard anything, even though Paradou was still ringing. Then there was a general outburst of laughter. Paradou shared in the hilarity himself.

  Finally, calm was restored, and Professor Collioure continued reading his letter:

  “Would you please inform your colleagues in the Hyperpsychical Society of Perpignan of my discovery. I shall place myself at your disposal and that of your colleagues, who will surely want to accompany you to prove, by numerous experiments, the reality of my discovery.

  “Notify me a fortnight in advance of the date of your arrival.”

  A great silence followed the reading of this letter. Collioure was the first to resume speaking.

  “I regret infinitely,” he said, “being unable to respond to the invitation that is addressed to us, but I am absolutely committed to remain here by my duties.”

  “You could ask the rector for a fortnight’s leave,” observed the president.

  “There’s no use,” the professor replied. “He’d refuse.”

  “Then let’s wait for the Easter vacation,” said the doctor. “You’ll be free then.”

  “Again, impossible,” Collioure replied. “I’m expecting a new baby at exactly that time.”

  “We’ll go without you, then,” said Soleihas. “A journey to Italy is very tempting at this time of year. I’ll put my name down on the list of travelers to Montepulciano.”

  “Me too! Me too!” replied all the society’s members, in chorus.

  The president was somewhat embarrassed. They could not go to visit Al-Harik 40 strong.

  “But can you affirm that these experiments will be free of danger?” asked Canigou, one of the stout grocers of Perpignan. “Personally, I value my skin above all else.”

  “In that regard, my dear Monsieur,” the professor replied, “I can’t swear to anything. I have absolutely no knowledge as to what these experiments will be.”

  “In that case,” the grocer said, “I’m not going.”

  “Me neither,” echoed another member.

  “Nor me,” said all the rest, in chorus.

  “Come on,” said the president, “we have to decide. Are we going or aren’t we?”

  “Let’s draw lots,” said one voice.

  “Let’s take a vote,” said another.

  “If you’ll permit,” Collioure put in, “I propose we sent the members of the committee: Dr. Paradou and our colleagues Soleihas and Camaret.”

  “Thank you for the preference,” said the dentist, “but I don’t want to go if there’s any danger.”

  “If there is,” observed the president, “You’ll be excused from taking part in the experiments. Personally, I’d very much like to see them.”

  “Me too,” added the vice-president.

  “All right,” Camaret replied. “I’ll go with you, then.”

  “Is the proposal accepted?” asked Collioure.

  “Yes, yes,” replied the members.

  “Very well—I’ll write to Montepulciano this evening,” said the professor, “and you can set off as soon as the reply has arrived.”

  With these words, the incident was closed. The president gave the floor to another member of the Hyperpsychical Society of Perpignan, and the session continued.

  II. Arrival in Montepulciano.

  A week after the memorable session of the Hyperpsychical Society of Perpignan to which we have made our readers witnesses, we find Dr. Paradou, Soleihas and Camaret comfortably installed in a first class carriage on their way to Montepulciano. They are on the railway line that goes from Siena to Empoli, which goes through a picturesque mountainous region.

  Let us stop with them at Montepulciano station, some seven or eight kilometers from the town. From there one can see the houses arranged in tiers on the side of a high hill. The panorama is quite charming; there is nothing to be seen but cheerful hills and wooded mountains as far as the eye can see, with Mount Amiata as the final plane of the horizon. That mountain has an altitude of 1700 meters, which makes it the highest in Italy after Etna.

  The country is extremely fertile. There is a difficult climb along a dusty path to the town, amid fruit trees and sparse mulberry-bushes in the wheat-fields, clumps of green oaks between hedges of honeysuckle and dog-roses. How beautiful Italy is before the heat-waves of summer!

  The three friends went to the only hotel in the town, situated in the little Piazza Marzocco, so-called because of the lion on top of the column that overlooks the piazza. A single hotel might seem insufficient for a town of 13,000 inhabitants, but it must be remembered that strangers are rare in Montepulciano, in spite of the beauty of its surrounding region, its artistic curiosities and it situation on a major railway line.

  The town comprises a single street, admittedly very long and often changing its name, which gives the inhabitants the illusion that they possess several of them. That unique street is called the Via Garibaldi at the lower end, the Via Poliziano in the middle and the Via Cavour at the upper end. Well-paved, like all the streets in the towns of northern Italy, it is bordered by a few fine houses, among which the most remarkable of all is the Palazzo Bucelli, with its Etruscan bas-reliefs.

  At the top of the hill, the Piazza Grande possesses Montepulciano’s principal monuments: the cathedral, the town hall, the praetorium and the Palazzo Contucci and the Palazzo Tarugi.

  The travele
rs’ first concern, having freshened up, was to find the house of the scientist Al-Harik. The hotelier told them that the man in question lived near the Church of the Misericordia in the topmost part of the town, so they went up as far as the Piazza Victor-Emmanuel, turned left and reached a small flat area in front of the church. From that flat area the view extends into the distance over all the surrounding countryside at to the high summits of the mountains.

  Al-Harik’s house was easy to recognize by the only description they had, of a little garden set in front and opening on to the square. Paradou lifted a heavy iron knocker, which, on falling back, made a dull sound. An old maidservant immediately came to open the door, and introduced the visitors into a sort of humid courtyard shaded by tall trees with thick foliage and surrounded by flowerbeds ornamented with bushes and flowers. The house did not seem at all remarkable from the outside. It was a commonplace building, devoid of ornamentation and whitened with chalk. High narrow windows fitted with solid iron bars gave it a somewhat inhospitable appearance.

  Fortunately, the interior did not correspond to the first impression given by the exterior aspect. There, on the contrary, everything was designed to please the eye. The walls were covered with sumptuous, brightly-colored Oriental tapestries, the arabesques of which affected the most capricious forms and contours. One’s feet trod on rich Persian carpets. The furniture was similarly borrowed from Oriental civilization: broad sofas upholstered in Indian fabrics; chandeliers with multicolored glass and crystal, intermingled with polished copper plates; weapons enriched with precious stones; Arabian chibouks;{1 Chinese sculpted bronzes; Japanese parasols. A thousand trinkets, spreads in profusion on shelves, occupied the attention of the visitors during the few minutes that went by before the arrival of the master of the house, to whom heir cards had been passed.

  It was not Al-Harik who came in but a young woman, little more than a girl, the sight of whom produced a strange sensation in them. Dressed in a simple half-European, half-Oriental costume, her movements were possessed of an incomparable grace and lightness. She was of medium height; her supple and symmetrical body was worthy of inspiring an artist’s chisel—but what was most striking of all was the soft gleam of her dark eyes, bordered with long lashes, which gave her physiognomy an indefinable quality of languor and vague reverie.

  “Gentlemen,” she said, in a soft voice and in pure French, without seeming to notice the disturbance that her arrival had produced, “would you excuse my husband and wait for him for a few minutes. He’s in his laboratory at the moment, detained by a very important experiment.”

  And as the three men, incapable of saying a single word, contented themselves with nodding their heads as a sign of acquiescence, the beautiful creature continued, inviting them to sit down on the sofas, as she did: “Is it really to Monsieur Paradou and his two friends that I have the honor of speaking?”

  “Exactly, Madame,” the doctor replied, rising to his feet and introducing his two companions one after the other. “Monsieur Soleihas, the vice-president, and Monsieur Camaret, the secretary, of the Hyperpsychical Society of Perpignan.”

  The ice was broken; they chatted about one thing and another while they awaited the arrival of Al-Harik—the incidents of the journey; the city of Perpignan, which the young woman had had the opportunity to visit a few years before; and France, which she knew well.

  “Yes, gentlemen,” she told them, “although originally from Egypt, like my husband, I spent part of my childhood in Paris. That’s why I speak French quite well.”

  “Rather say that you speak it admirably well, Madame,” the doctor replied. “Like a true Parisienne.”

  At that moment, the drawing-room door opened and Al-Harik made his entrance. He was a tall, handsome old man, his hair and beard whitened by the years, with a benevolent and profound gaze, as possessed by those who think a great deal and spend their lives investigating the secrets of nature. His high forehead, his eyes sunken into the orbits, his straight nose, the oval shape of his face and his olive-tinted complexion revealed his Asiatic origin. Although he was over 60, his posture was still sturdy and upright. He spoke French with great purity, but with a very pronounced foreign accent, and with greater difficulty than his young wife.

  “Thilda,” he said, turning to her, “you haven’t offered anything to these gentlemen.” Then, addressing his guests, he added: “You must be in need of refreshment; it’s hotter in Italy than in France. The journey wasn’t too tiring?”

  All this was said with a charming affability. Al-Harik would definitely be an amiable study companion.

  Thilda had left the room in order to instruct the maidservant to prepare some refreshments. Paradou introduced his companions again to the aged scientist, and the conversation immediately turned to the purpose of their journey to Montepulciano. After inquiring about the health of Professor Collioure, whose absence he greatly regretted, Al-Harik gave them some information regarding the origin of his astonishing discovery. As is generally the case, it was due in large measure to chance. He intended to divulge it to the scientific world soon, but he wanted to keep the secret or another two or three years—the time necessity, in his opinion, to complete it and bring it to its final perfection. He told the doctor and his companions that they must give their word of honor, in writing, not to attempt to discover that secret.

  He communicated to them, in addition, a few items of information indispensable to the success of is experiments. Not only could he reduce the dimensions of people, but also those of the objects they carried with them. He advised them urgently to equip themselves with a large number of measuring devices: microscopes, binoculars, thermometers, etc. It was especially necessary not to forget photographic apparatus, for they would have the opportunity to see unprecedented spectacles worthy of conservation.

  “That will be easy,” said the doctor. “Here’s our friend Camaret, who is an excellent photographer.”

  “Finally,” the old man added, “it will be equally necessary to take weapons.”

  “Weapons!” exclaimed Soleihas and the dentist.

  “Oh yes, gentlemen,” Al-Harik replied. “In becoming very tiny, you’ll need to defend yourselves against many enemies that you’re not in the habit of fearing.”

  After refreshing themselves and having a light snack, they went up to the laboratory, situated on the second floor, to inspect the apparatus that would be used in the experiments.

  The apparatus in question—or, at least, the only part visible to the three members of the Hyperpsychical Society of Perpignan—was extraordinarily simple. A vast glass bell-jar, capable of containing four or five people, was set in the middle of the room on a thick plate, similarly made of polished glass. A rope fixed to the top of the bell-jar circled around a pulley solidly fixed to the ceiling, and ended at a windlass placed against the wall. This simple mechanism evidently had no purpose other than to raise and lower the bell-jar.

  More worthy of attracting attention, however, were two thick copper wires, coiled in a spiral, also departing from the summit of the bell-jar and extending into the next room.

  “You’re making use of electricity, then?” asked he doctor.

  “Shh!” relied Al-Harik. “You know that you don’t have the right to interrogate me. Access to the room in which those two wires terminate is absolutely forbidden to you—above all, don’t forget that. You don’t have the right to cross that threshold on any pretext.”

  “We’ll keep our oath,” Paradou replied.

  Privately, the doctor thought that spiritualism must be behind it. Perhaps, also, Al-Harik had discovered a new material force, analogous to electricity, but endowed with even more powerful properties. In any case, before drawing up hypotheses and attempting explanations, it was at least necessary to wait for the results of the first experiment.

  When the inspection of the apparatus was concluded, they went back down to the drawing-room and discussed that first experiment further, which would take place the following d
ay at 9 a.m. exactly.

  “At 9 a.m. tomorrow, gentlemen, without fail,” said the aged scientist, as he accompanied the three friends to the door of his house and shook their hands.

  III. The First Experiment

  At 9 a.m. the following day, in accordance with the arrangement, we find our three friends reunited in Al-Harik’s drawing-room.

  The master of the house did not make them wait long. He came in, shook hands cordially with each of them, and took them up to the second floor. As they went past he kitchen, he ordered the maid to warn her mistress that the experiment was about to begin.

  Al-Harik thought that he ought to give a few necessary instructions first. The first experiment would only last an hour at the most. It was necessary not to get too tired, and simply to familiarize themselves with the change of state. They would also be content with a reduction in size by a factor of a thousand, which was more than sufficient for a start.

  The old man was finishing his instructions when Thilda came into the laboratory in her turn. The young woman was even prettier than the day before; her dark eyes were shining with a strange gleam and it was difficult to support the mysterious fluid that seemed to be emanating from her. Paradou and his companions were powerfully impressed by that singular gaze.

  “My wife will accompany you during this experiment,” said Al-Harik. “It’s necessary that she supervises the progress of the operation and warns me if anything untoward occurs. Her presence won’t inconvenience you; she’ll keep a sufficient distance to leave you alone.”

  The preparations were quite simple. Everyone retained his ordinary costume. On the doctor’s advice, they did not take any instruments. Soleihas, it must be confessed, was only half-convinced of the reality of Al-Harik’s experiments. He expected to see the old scientist recant at the last moment and to hear him confess his impotence. The doctor and the dentist were, by contrast, full of enthusiasm. It had been necessary to moderate Camaret’s ardor; he had wanted to take all the scientific apparatus at once. Although he had been firmly told that the experiment was a simple trial he had loaded himself up nevertheless with his photographic black box,{2 his tripod and his bag containing plates of silver bromide gel.