“You see, you’re interested nevertheless in the future of unpowered flight,” I say, to break the silence.
He makes a gesture of protest.
“Oh, don’t exaggerate! I found myself in a position to procure that seeker some satisfaction. His wings are too narrow, the center of gravity of the apparatus is set too low. And yet, he understood the problem. If he listens to me, tomorrow he’ll fly like a bird.” Then, in an ironic tone: “Isn’t it customary to grant small favors to those condemned to die?”
I keep quiet. What point is there is persisting?
In any case, we’ve arrived at our rickety château.
As soon as the threshold is crossed, Tourte, in a white apron, contrasting with the face, reddened by the fire of the oven, hands Roger a letter.
He opens it, scans it, and flies into a fury again.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Here, read it.”
It’s a letter from Philippe, the old domestic who serves as a concierge at the villa in Fontenay. Two banal pages to say that everything is in order, as at Monsieur’s departure; one page of salutations. Then, at the bottom, a postscript that makes me jump.
I ought to tell Monsieur that Monsieur Jobert presented himself at four o’clock yesterday, asking to speak to Monsieur. I told him that Monsieur was absent.
The return to the scene of that individual caused me an indefinable malaise. But what could be the objective of that tireless pursuit?
“Perhaps Jobert wanted to solicit a re-entry into grace in your regard?”
My supposition provoked a shake of the head on the chemist’s part—but the arrival of the station cart deflected attention to another object.
He supervised the unloading of various parcels. Until dusk, we were occupied in unpacking the crates sent from Paris.
First there were thick crystal tanks that Roger had placed in the middle of the empty space behind the house.
“This will be what I’ll call our cold trap,” he declared. “With four nuclei of that sort, I can bring the world to its end.”
I let him talk, and helped him to install other apparatus of current usage in meteorological observatories.
Afterwards, it was necessary to distribute a whole series of maximum and minimum thermometers. One was set at ground level, another lodged in a shell-hole ten meters deep, which we were obliged to dry out first. It was hard work dredging the white mud of the calcareous soil. My pupils at Louis-le-Grand would have laughed if they could have seen their philosophy professor in his shirt-sleeves, like a well-digger.
“Now I need a thermometer on the roof, as high as possible,” Roger murmured.
“I’ll climb up,” said Tourte, sketching a joyful caper.
Poor boy! Your destiny, to which ours was linked in an extraordinary fashion, obliged you to be an accomplished gymnast and daredevil!
The work took us until nightfall.
Surprised by the darkness, Roget consented to put off filling the tanks with the Omega acid, and the entrance on stage of the radium, until the next day.
For my part, I was exhausted. So, after a summary dinner, I wasn’t sorry to go up to my bedroom and find my poor camp-bed.
V. Drama, Heroism and Folly
Roger’s imperative voice extracted me from slumber.
“Quickly, get up!” my friend shouted. “It’s four o’clock. The wind’s favorable. If you want to, come and see Mayrol fly.”
I got dressed in haste.
We arrived at the terrain just as the young pilot had finished his preparations for take-off.
At the sight of the apparatus, Roger’s face brightened. “He’s followed my advice!” he said. “His center of gravity seems appropriate, the wings are now aligned with the axis of horizontal stability. Ha ha! We might see some interesting things!”
I couldn’t see any of the improvements mentioned, which might have existed only in Roger’s hallucinated eyes, but I approved of what he said regardless.
To my great surprise, though, as soon as he saw us, the young man ran toward us. His extended hands sought those of the chemist.
“Oh, Monsieur, my dear Monsieur, how I thank you. Without great confidence, I confess—forgive me, but I’ve already had so many disappointments—I adapted my supportive surface to the mathematical points fixed by your drawing. I twisted my ailerons according to our sketch. Well, at dawn I made a trial; it seemed to me that my apparatus was a hundred kilos lighter, that it was supported in the air with an unusual force.”
“It doesn’t astonish me,” said Roger, with amazing self-assurance.
Mayrol contemplated him, with a passionate admiration painted in his gaze. “But who are you, then, to have given me, without even knowing me, an idea from which I might obtain glory and money? For I sense that this time, I shall get there!”
“Me! My young friend, if you knew who I am, you’d doubtless lavish me with more execration than gratitude. I’m the Man of the Apocalypse.”
For a moment, Mayrol was silent, disconcerted by those strange words. Without lingering any longer in astonishment, however, he installed himself on the seat of his apparatus, and made a gesture bidding the gawkers to stand aside.
The alerion was launched. To everyone’s amazement, it rose twenty meters in an admirable fashion. Then the great white bird began to describe circles with a perfect regularity.
The spectators, whose number was increasing by the minute, were astonished and ecstatic.
The pilot seemed sure of himself. No oscillation indicted any disequilibrium. Occasional abrupt downward plunges were halted by a graceful upward curve toward the sky.
“One would think it were a seagull flying over the waves!”
That reflection by an officer rendered the appearance of that extraordinary flight exactly.
And I repeated the thought that Livry had a considerable part in the success that seemed increasingly certain.
It was marvelous—and how troubling!
Troubling?
Even more so than I imagined at the time.
Who would have been capable of foreseeing that Livry had just created, with his own hands, the supreme antidote, by which the Earth might escape the evil of death?
Time went by.
Large placards displayed on the ground in succession indicated to the pilot the results acquired.
One hour thirty. One hour fifty...
The alerion continued to rise and descend with a remarkable facility. One gradually got so used to seeing it soaring in the sky that at length, the spectacle became natural, banal, almost tedious.
Roger became impatient.
“Damn it! We’re wasting our time. I’m sure the man will keep flying until his strength runs out. Let’s go...”
He turned round, took a step forward, and then stopped, nailed to the ground.
His face had gone white; his hands were agitated by a convulsive tremor.
I shivered in anguish. Was Roger about to have a fit, there, in public?
Mechanically, my eyes searched the people surrounding us.
Many officers, sportsmen, chauffeurs, a few peasants—and, six paces behind, a group composed of two amazons and two cavaliers: a colonel and a captain of artillery.
Of the two women, the first as red-haired, her hair tight at the temples, her body roughly-hewn, with a mannish appearance. At first glance one divined a horsewoman, sacrificing all coquetry to the practice of her habitual sport. At any rate, I scarcely accorded a glance to the plain and graceless individual in question, who seemed to be there to serve as a counterfoil to the prettiness of her neighbor.
By a striking contrast, the other amazon gave the impression of a being all finesse and charm. A slim figure, as supple as a liana; an ideal face illuminated by large dark blue eyes, slightly sad; tufts of fleecy blonde hair escaping the edges of a straw boater. That ravishing creature almost inspired a sentiment of tender pity with her lily-like fragility.
It was toward her that Roger’s ma
d gaze was directed. Abruptly, I understood.
The unfortunate hazard that, to all indications, it was necessary to expect at any moment, had occurred. It had brought before us Madame Berjac, the daughter of the astronomer Thiérard-Leroy.
Alas, I sensed then the extent to which the sudden and insane passion of my friend was justified.
That adorable woman was one of those predestined to charm and seduce at first glance. Others, like me at that moment, would have been able to admire, to love, such an exquisite work of art, a fragile item of Dresden china perceived in a display-case in a museum. It would have required a truly great assurance of one’s heart and one’s reason to remain insensible before such ideal grace.
An incident as rapid as lightning suspended my reflections. How can I describe the sudden succession of anguishes and fears with which those few seconds were filled?
Amid the acclamations of the increasingly dense crowd, the alerion was approaching the ground, ready to touch down at its point of departure as lightly as a bird. Mayrol had beaten the record for altitude and distance.
At the same moment, however, dominating all the other sounds, a loud cry of distress resounded.
I turned round, and horror gripped me before the imminence of a frightful drama.
Frightened by the large shadow of the apparatus sweeping over the ground and by the precipitate cheers of the spectators, Madame Berjac’s horse has leapt sideways. Then, with a single movement, the beast has reared up on its hind legs. For an inappreciable time it remains in that unstable equilibrium, of which circus exercises only give a faint idea. It is a complete straightening, which horsemen have baptized with the significant expression “the candle.” It constitutes the most redoubtable defense that a horse can oppose, because the weight of the rider and the instinctive action exercised on the reins combine to tip the mount backwards. Then the rider is crushed! A vice clasps the victim between the ground and the mass of the beast seeking a point of support in order to get up again. With the disposition of ladies’ saddles the danger is even more horrible, for the amazon remains the prisoner of the forks sustaining her, and those forks intervene to produce frightful and mortal wounds.
Such is the perilous situation of the frail young woman. One senses, one sees, that she is doomed!
Cries rise up, horrified screams, in which impotence and dolor are mingled.
Pricking his horse with a furious thrust of the spur, Capitaine Berjac launches himself toward his companion, but, frightened in its turn, the animal swerves.
Among the pedestrians, people make as if to run forward.
Before all the rest, a man beside me has bounded forward.
With an incredible leap, of which only a professional acrobat would seem to me to be capable, he leaps at the horse’s head, grabs the reins and clings on to them.
There is a violent shock, and under the effort of that counterweight, Madame Berjac’s mount falls back to the ground. Other people have thrown themselves upon the beast, gripping it everywhere, immobilizing it. In the midst of the crowd I distinguish the savior who has fallen under the hooves of the horse, and then Capitaine Berjac, who carries his inanimate wife away in his arms.
All that, I repeat, has taken place so rapidly that the different phases of the scene have raced ahead of my impressions, my intentions and my movements.
Like my neighbors, I disposed myself to run, to bring help, but I did not have time to put one foot in front of the other before it was all over.
Only then did I recognize Roger as the man who had just been disengaged from between the horse’s hooves. All at once, he is dusted down, asked if he is injured and congratulated for his coolness.
In my turn I approached my friend, and without a word, I squeezed his hands in mine.
“Let’s go, quickly!” he murmured in my ear, in a halting voice. “I can’t take any more!”
Poor Roger. At that moment, I was able to fathom the depth of his incurable wound,
He let in the clutch, and the auto sped away in fourth gear through the stony ruts of a scarcely-traced path, fleeing toward Mourmelon. The machine truly seemed to embrace its master’s rancor.
There was a series of terrible jolts, shocks to break the springs. For a moment I feared that Roger, vanquished by sickness of living, might precipitate himself voluntarily toward a mortal catastrophe.
An abrupt application of the brake nearly sent me hurtling over the hood.
“Hold tight, there,” muttered the driver, in the irritated tone that was the surest indication of his interior turmoil.
We had just stopped less than a meter from an immense haycart blocking the Rue de Mourmelon, into which we had plunged. With imperative blasts of the horn, Roger forced it to let him pass.
Before I had recovered from my emotion, the auto had traversed the village and stopped in front of the gate of our sullen dwelling.
Roger went up to his room and shut himself in. I judged that it was best to respect that grim isolation.
In any case, Roger reappeared against at lunch time.
Sitting facing me, he dispatched his meal without saying a word, and then, having swallowed the last mouthful, he said: “To work! I want the experiment to be in full swing by the end of the week, so that we’re feeling the first effects of the cold.
With a sardonic smile, he added: “The lovers of equitation can enjoy the time they have left. Before autumn, I promise them a Siberian temperature. At least the amazons will remain by the fireside.”
I abstained from any reflection.
VI. Jobert’s Letter
The next day, from dawn onwards, the chemist applied himself to delicate and slow manipulations. As meticulously as if he were carrying out a real experiment, he distributed the Omega acid. In successive layers, the syrupy liquid was spread out in the glass tanks. With scrupulous attention, Roger supervised the crystallization of the liquid, in such a fashion, he claimed, as to render the mass perfectly homogeneous.
My role was limited to following the chemist’s work as a mere spectator. Roger had insisted on distributing the radium personally in the gelatinous mass formed by the aid.
With the aid of a long hollow platinum needle, he introduced traces of the precious substance particle by particle, in such a way as to impregnate the crystalline block. Eventually, the monotonous gesture seemed to make my skin crawl.
The ringing of the bell by the postman bringing the morning mail offered me a pretext to escape momentarily. I ran to the gate.
There was a letter addressed to me. I opened the envelope. A piece of lined paper escaped from it—vulgar letter paper of the liked that is usually offered in cafés to customers who ask for “something to write on.”
At the first glance I deciphered Jobert’s signature, a jerky, jagged scrawl with downstrokes interrupted by jumps.
In that scrawled page a graphologist would have discovered indications of envy, rage, pride and also a clearly emphasized cerebral derangement.
In fact, it was a veritable ultimatum that, via my intermediary, Jobert was addressing to Livry.
Judge for yourselves:
Monsieur Paul Lefort
Your friend Livry can hide at the Camp de Châlons, but I have penetrated the goal of the secret experiment he is preparing. I can foresee its incalculable consequences: to transform into arable land the chalky steppes of dusty Champagne, to change deserts into pastureland and heaths into forests. Now, having contributed to his works since their outset, it is only just that I participate in the glory of the grandiose results. Knowing that you are the only person possessing any influence over Livry, I am using your intermediary to make him understand his duty and to express my formal desires.
Either Livry will summon me and associate me with his work, not as an assistant but as a collaborator treated on a footing of absolute equality, or he will make me a gift in full property of the quantity of radium necessary to continue my research on the modification of calcareous matter on my own—a quantity tha
t I fix at twenty grams.
My science is worth as much as his, and I cannot admit that his insolent wealth gives him the power to humiliate my poverty and arrest the impetus of my genius. In the scientific domain, as in any other, property is theft. Thus, equal shares, if he does not want to exhaust my patience and my resignation.
With best wishes, sincerely,
Jobert
The author of that statement was truly endowed with a strong dose of unconsciousness or effrontery. I judged that it was better to bring my friend up to date with the situation. I would see what he said.
More pensive than irritated, the chemist listened to a brief account of his ex-assistant’s actions and movements since the day he had left the laboratory at Fontenay. He frowned on taking cognizance of the letter, and then nodded his head, as if those incoherent lines seemed perfectly normal to him.
In sum, the audacious pretentions of the rogue did not make him unduly indignant. He contented himself with pinching his lips, and they looked me in the face.
“Your Jobert possesses what we call scientific intuition, you know. I wouldn’t have thought him that strong.”
I couldn’t help smiling at that unexpected appreciation. “Let’s see—if I’ve understood correctly, Jobert intends to regenerate infertile soil, and become a benefactor of humankind. Now, it seems to me that you’re marching toward an exactly opposite goal; instead of creating, you intend to destroy.”
“That’s true—but Jobert has nevertheless glimpsed one of the applications of my method, and that’s not bad. Even so, it would be unfortunate if he took the theory too far, and especially the practice, for then...”
Roger left the sentence dangling.
“Then?” I prompted.
“Nothing. There’s no need to develop my hypothesis, firstly because Jobert doesn’t possess a sufficient quantity of radium, and secondly because you wouldn’t understand a word of my explanations.”
As the play of my features must have testified some resentment at that appreciation, however, my savant friend deigned to talk.
On the Brink of the World's End Page 24