Locus Solus

by Raymond Roussel

  The aureole was generated without any gradation by the two circles brushing against each other in contrary directions, the combination of yellow and blue giving it its rich shade of green. As a result of the two motions canceling each other out, it remained still, narrow and clearly defined, while its superb brilliance contrasted with the faintness of the cones, which were completely invisible to the naked eye.

  Taking a dead emerald for dissection, Canterel found in its head two imperceptible white cones made of dry, hard material, likewise standing upright base to base. They were adhering by their respective tips to the two poles of a tiny spherical chamber, in the upper part of which he had just made a lateral aperture with his scalpel.

  Guessing the truth, the professor discharged a strong electric current at the appropriate spot and, as he had foreseen, the white cones pivoted in opposite directions. At the same time a moderately bright halo formed just above them, originating from two radiant cones which the lens revealed.

  The puzzle was then solved. Under the influence of a temporary contentment, the emeralds, through some subtle innervation, sent a discharge into the white cones, which at once projected a radiant image of themselves into the air. That the two factitious bases brushed against each other was explained by a degree of swelling and overlapping in the luminous aerial substance — for those of the actual cones merely remained close neighbors. It seemed to Canterel that although the appearance of the halos served to express any kind of satisfaction whatsoever, like the purr of a cat, its significance must be primarily amorous and constitute a sort of mating signal like the glow-worm’s light.

  The professor pursued his anatomical investigations further. The vertex of each actual cone passed through an aperture in the spherical chamber and was fixed to the center of a small, free white disc outside it, parallel to the plane of the halo. This bore a circular row of nerve filaments, short ramifications of a single fiber, whose magnetic influence produced a gyratory motion resembling in its origin that of an electric motor. As the disc turned, it transmitted its momentum to the cone, with which it was in fact united.

  His eye still lensed, Canterel purposely scratched the lower cone with a steel point and saw, as he expected, a photogenic blue line shine over the emerald like an enlarged version of the sharp abrasion. The upper cone, when submitted to the same test, gave an identical result higher up, in yellow. Then the professor drew some scratches in various directions and suddenly obtained reproductions of all his original drawings, accurately enlarged, in the form of thin lights in mid-air — blue or yellow according to which cone was cut into.

  His secret speculations were confirmed by these linear apparitions, for they showed him how the cones, in full rotation, exposed their entire surface to the friction of the air enclosed in the spherical chamber and generated their luminous counterparts, flawless and complete, which were promptly extinguished once they came to rest. Attributing the contrast between the two colors produced to some difference in their material, Canterel deposited a drop of a certain preparation on each cone with a fine brush — and did indeed obtain two dissimilar reactions.

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  Whether placed upright or at an angle, sideways or upside down, each emerald always wore its halo in the same way, like an aureole decorating the top of its head — for the two double cones appeared to move round one long imaginary axis. Seeking the reason for this constancy in the luminous shape’s relative orientation, the professor noticed that a slight disparity of hue distinguished the two hemispheres of the chamber, which was made of two quite distinct white substances. After separating them with his scalpel and pulling out the cones and nerves, he then possessed two caps whose poles were delicately pierced — one of them still showing the opening contrived in it with a view to the previous observations.

  When Canterel passed the two light objects in turn through the cones of light created, to the strains of “The Bluebells of Scotland,” by a live emerald, he saw, with the aid of his lens, that the upper hemisphere was endowed with a particular transparency, possessed, it must be added, by many other substances already tested; the shape was quite undisturbed by it, as immovably indifferent as a beam of sunshine when a pane of glass is waved in it. The lower hemisphere, on the other hand, brought confusion everywhere, for it was an impenetrable obstacle against which the atoms of light battered higgledy-piggledy, finding it not only quite impervious, but antipathetic and repellent. Thus was explained how the lower half of the spherical chamber fulfilled the function of a reflector in the insect’s head; being provided besides with a slight curvature of a special, highly magnifying kind, it constantly projected the whole luminous shape to a distance.

  The reason for the dermal cavities, unfathomable by the naked eye, was thrown into relief by the disclosures of the magnifying glass: the upper aerial cone, whose revolution gave it a power of penetration, would drive its vertex into a pore and imperiously distend it.

  Canterel was at first astonished that a mere impalpable luminosity should be powerful enough to broach a person’s skin — but he remembered that in America, according to reliable witnesses, a wisp of straw made to rotate violently by a terrible hurricane had imbedded itself deeply of its own accord in the wood of a telegraph pole. So a rapid spinning motion could enable some frail body to overcome one harder than itself, a fact which was all the more striking in the present case, because, in brushing aside the skin (and a host of other substances), it remained transparent to light.

  When Canterel perceived that the cavities never bled, owing to the inimitable delicacy of the perforating process, he suddenly recalled a circumstance connected with the famous placets of the alchemist Paracelsus, whom, apart from his charlatanism, he admired as one of the most powerful minds of the sixteenth century.

  The theory of placets seemed to him above all an astonishingly precocious insight of genius, for despite its crude metaphysical basis it was very close to the modern scientific principles of vaccines and opotherapy.

  Paracelsus regarded each component of the human body as a thinking individual with an observing mind of its own, which enabled it to know itself better that anyone else could do. When it became ill, it knew what remedy could cure it and, in order to make its priceless revelation, only awaited questions cleverly put by a shrewd doctor who would wisely limit his true role to this.

  Starting from this idea, the alchemist had devised a certain number of white powders, named “placets,” endowed with various definite properties. Each one, charged with an interrogative mission, acted specifically on a certain organ, which then promptly secreted an unknown and easily collected substance which constituted, by way of reply, the remedy required. The name, by itself, taken in its strict Latin sense of “May it please . . . ,” disclosed the metaphysical core of the idea. It was as a humble supplicant that Paracelsus addressed himself with conviction to the organs, seen as mysterious powers needing to be coaxed.

  A certain placet would affect the liver, which then poured into the bloodstream (whence it could easily be tapped) a substance capable of dispelling hepatic disturbances; another would incite the stomach to release, by the same route, a drug effective against all kinds of dyspepsia; a third would adjure the heart to provide the sovereign essence to be given to cardiac patients. Every organ of the body of a healthy person, when thus exhorted by its special placet, would manufacture a certain ingredient which Paracelsus recovered, in order to administer it to the sick.

  There were a few exceptional placets which, instead of being swal­lowed, had a direct mode of application. Thus one of the petition powders spread over the eye itself, considered as an intelligent being, procured a universal eye salve in the lachrymal flux — while another, covering that perspicacious entity, the skin, gave rise by suppuration to a radical balm for all cutaneous disorders.

  In fact, in view of the completely dogmatic speculations of Paracelsus, who in all good faith thought he was consulting
wise intelligences and gathering their instructions, there was no certainty that this method would bear fruit. The famous powders could have possessed no curative virtue, since they were actually harmless local stimulants, whose formulae have come down to us. The idea, despite its sterility, was of very great interest when considered as a precursor of the system which was to revolutionize medicine later, with Jenner and Pasteur. According to Comte, Paracelsus represented the theological era of the vaccine principle, which attained its positivist period afterward, following an imperceptible metaphysical transition.

  The certainty, acquired by Canterel from his studies, that in the sixteenth century the word “placet” served to indicate a request, confirmed his idea that Paracelsus believed in the free agency of the sovereign powers he entreated.

  Now amid a hundred examples in his voluminous monograph on the placets, de vero medici mandato, Paracelsus cites the following noteworthy fact.

  The alchemist’s friend Lethias, the explorer, had been particularly interested in a West African Negro tribe, from the point of view of its dialect. To enable him to continue at home with some idiomatic studies commenced on the spot, he had brought back the most intelligent person, Milneo by name, who had only agreed to follow him on condition that he should be accompanied by his dusky partner, Docenn.

  Milneo had long suffered from a certain skin disease endemic in his native land. When Lethias returned to Europe, he took his protégé, with a view to having him treated, to Paracelsus, who, following his doctrines strictly to the letter, considered that a Negro skin could only be cured by the action of a remedy released by one of its own kind.

  He applied an ad-hoc quantity of placet to the arm of Docenn who, being sprung from the same tribe, was clearly the person for the experiment. Soon a suppuration began, whose unwonted tinge denoted a reaction different from that of European skins, vindicating the choice of a subject of black race. In the fluid, Paracelsus for the first time observed some red globules, which he submitted to analysis; much to his surprise they yielded chiefly “carbon, sulphur and saltpeter,” the elements of gunpowder, which Roger Bacon had invented three centuries before. But the minute grains were saturated in the secretion that had carried them and, even after various attempts at desiccation, they remained without the capacity to explode.

  The alchemist wished to know whether the formation of the gunpowder preceded the onset of the humidifying sweat, for he was proud of the unexpectedness of his discovery and considered that obtaining a violent explosion would throw it into vivid relief. An affirmative conclusion imposed itself when, shortly after laying the placet down in the course of a fresh experiment, he collected several fluid-free globules by burrowing with delicate steel instruments into the skin of Docenn — who, being inured to injury, suffered this without complaint. However this method of extraction gave rise to bleeding from which Paracelsus was never able to protect the globules, which were then swamped and lost, despite his infinite precautions.

  Meanwhile the alchemist employed the fluid as a soothing drug, provided by the skin upon request, and cured Milneo — whose illness had evidently cleared up of its own accord.

  With this story in mind Canterel had compounded the relevant placet, whose formula, taken from the monograph, gave precise quantities of sodium hydroxide, arsenious anhydride, ammonium chloride, calcium silicate and potassium nitrate as the basic constituents.

  Out of curiosity, he spread it over the skin of a black person, and found in the expected suppuration many globules which yielded on analysis essentially the three substances named by the alchemist.

  The professor quickly reached an understanding of the phenomenon when he recalled that the human organism harbours carbon and sulphur. Being rich in potassium nitrate, the placet provided the saltpetre directly, while its sodium hydroxide and arsenious anhydride components had a very great affinity for carbon and sulphur respectively and captured the particles of these two substances scattered through the skin. Now the special pigment which colors the skins of Negroes possesses numerous chemical affinities and attracts seven different substances, including sodium hydroxide, arsenious anhydride and potassium nitrate. The sodium hydroxide and arsenious anhydride, bringing their recently acquired supplies of carbon and sulphur, came under its influence at the same time as the saltpetre — and from these chance encounters, through some internal kneading motion of the skin in travail preparing its secretion, the globules sprang. The essential part played by the pigment explained the absence, which Canterel verified, of any mysterious globules in the analogous reactions of white subjects.

  The professor, too, became extremely interested in getting gunpowder from such a source to explode, and he, in his turn, employed delicate steel instruments; but, like Paracelsus, he came up against the im­possibility of conducting a premature search deep in the skin for the sensational globules — which were hopelessly drenched when collected in the fluid — without swamping them in the blood resulting from the inevitable cuts.

  Now this is where the emeralds’ luminous equipment could enable him to attain his end, by its delicate manner of exploring the dermis without rupturing blood vessels.

  One evening the professor applied the usual placet to the skin of a black person and, before any suppuration had occurred, attacked it with eight invisible points of light to the strains of “The Bluebells of Scotland,” performed as a duet by one musical rectangle under the vocal guidance of Felicité, who in this way, at Canterel’s request, employed the only means of obtaining an intensely perforating radiation from the emeralds. But the professor, with the lens screwed into his eye, observed that the ethereal cones traversed the skin quite easily without opening it, like rays of light passing through glass. The pores of the Negro epidermis, notoriously tougher than our own, offered too much resistance to the point of the aerial pivot, which then behaved as with all materials transparent to its element. Other black subjects, both men and women, provided the same negative result.

  The professor refused to admit defeat, hoping that the pores might become penetrable when dilated by the phenomenon of horripilation — known as “gooseflesh” or “petite mort.”

  Cold having proved inadequate, Canterel determined to try the effect of some lively terror — which he did not attempt to inspire in Negroes long transplanted in Europe and with too much confidence in our laws, which prohibit all violence.

  He remembered that he had been deeply and personally moved at a recent exhibition of Vollon’s work, before the celebrated Dancing girl with Fruit, considered to be the great painter’s masterpiece. Its theme, inspired by a Sudanese custom, was expressed as follows in the catalogue:

  “Every year, at Kuka, according to a semi-religious tradition, when the nutritive trees bend their heavily laden boughs, the first of the fruit harvest, born by a dancing girl, must be solemnly laid as an offering at the feet of the sovereign, surrounded by his court, at the close of a dance figure bristling with difficulties; if a single fruit falls during the dance, the ballerina is instantly put to death and another one recommences the figure, with the same capital punishment in store for her should she likewise make a sudden slip. According to the superstitious belief which explains such severity, if the first load is not delivered intact to the sovereign, a plague of locusts will infallibly destroy the remainder of the harvest, at the same time ravaging all the crops; now the fall of one of the offered fruits at once constitutes a threat in connection with this devastating scourge, to avert which the culprit’s immediate death is required. In the perpetual terror inspired in these lands by frequent famines due to locusts, the natives do not hesitate to sacrifice a few dancing girls, for they believe that in this way thousands of lives are saved. As the offering to the sovereign necessarily calls for the highest luxury, it always comprises a great number of fruits piled up in tall pyramids in three primitive baskets which the almeh, during her complicated and lively dance, holds in a daunting state of equilibriu
m upon the top of her head and on the fleshy surfaces of her hands, spread well apart. Since these conditions make the problem difficult, several victims are often sacrificed right away for accidentally unburdening themselves, before one of them has the good fortune triumphantly to attain the goal. Thus the wretched girls are in the grip of the most cruel terror during the performance of their task.”

  Vollon, who combined an uncontested mastery in the execution of human figures with his celebrated gift for the magnificent treatment of fruit, found a marvelous subject here for his genre of painting. He had the good sense to adopt, in preference to any other, the tragic moment when the fruit slipped, choosing a large and attractive berry to fill the latter’s role. He had charged his heroine’s features with dramatic terror, and as she saw two executioners leap upon her about to strike, she still had her feet gracefully crossed in a choreographic step and was turned full toward the sovereign, who was seated among his dignitaries on the right. The fruit in the three unstable baskets had a miraculous solidity, and the fatal berry was of a glowing crimson; all the black personages were alive — while the whole had an amazing verisimilitude which compelled even the least knowledgeable to admire it. Canterel had gazed at the famous canvas for a long time, astonished to find certain superstitions perpetuated among primitive peoples in the teeth of evidence. As a matter of fact, the arrival of the locusts in spite of the successful completion of the dance ought often to have destroyed the creed — but it persisted nevertheless, just as, for example, the belief in the immediate power of rainmakers, whose practices assuredly only very occasionally give results, due in any case to chance.