Finally, there was one symptom that could not help but impress me forcefully: well before the usual date of their departure, the swallows were flying south.
I have always judged the instinct of animals to be superior to the anticipations of humans. Were we really threatened by an exceedingly precocious winter of exceptional rigor?
That fortuitous accord between Roger’s hallucinatory predictions and the reality of facts ended up troubling me in a singular fashion. In vain I waited for a change in the weather, one of those abrupt releases of a soft warm humidity that normally succeed dry and cool periods—but the days passed without modifying the state of the atmosphere, the meteorological bulletins recorded increasingly sullen temperatures, to the great joy of the chemist and my increasing nervousness
It was then that, the following week, an event occurred that was to furnish a new aliment to my anguish.
VIII. The Sower of Cataclysm
I have omitted to say that, to Livry’s secret satisfaction, all efforts to pick up the trail of Jobert had remained vain.
At one moment, it had been suspected that the murder had taken refuge in his mother’s house near Algiers. The window of a farmer, the woman lived at Bouffarik. But a search carried out in the poor old lady’s home had demonstrated that Jobert was not there. That he had gone there after the crime was possible, even probable if one put weight on certain indications. Perhaps Jobert had yielded to the desire to embrace his old mother before leaving the country, and the old woman’s denials did not determine anything with regard to that particular point; a mother does not betray her son! At any rate, everything indicated that the criminal had reached Algiers and had succeeded in embarking for an unknown destination.
Such was the state of the information on which the police were relying when there were earthquakes in the vicinity of Douera and Bouffarik, which plunged the region into consternation and terror.
The newspapers of the epoch have described in detail the frightful panic of the first moment, the villages in ruins, the dead and the living buried under the rubble, and also the noble rivalry of the rescuers coming from all directions.
While deploring that public misfortune I would doubtless only have taken a distant interest in those events if Roger had not given them a truly singular interpretation.
“You haven’t guessed what had happened?” he asked me, after having read the news relating to the cataclysm attentively.
As I did not grasp the significance of the question I remained silent.
“Well,” Roger cut in, “I’m convinced that Jobert has certainly taken refuge in Bouffarik with his mother. There, consciously or unconsciously, he has provoked the catastrophe.”
“The catastrophe?”
“Of course—the earthquake.
I was accustomed to my poor friend’s mystifying speech, but that was truly beyond measure. Following the strategy that I had imposed on myself in such circumstances, I did not pick up the strange affirmation.
Nevertheless, Roger followed his train of thought.
“The suspicion occurred to me immediately. A study of the geological map has confirmed it fully. In the region tested by the cataclysm the ground is constituted by siliceous strata alternating with calcareous layers. Suppress or dilute the layers of marble, chalk or marl and everything collapses, dislocated. You’ve realized the conditions that engender earthquakes.”
Mockingly, he unleashed a few darts at me: “No, however little versed you are in studies of chemistry, you must remember the fundamental experiment: chalk dissolved by acid... What am I saying? I blush to have to remind you of the Latin classics, in which you were taught that Hannibal, in order to cross the Alps, dissolved the rocks with vinegar!38
“Well, I repeat to you, my Omega acid, amalgamated with radium, also enjoys the property of attacking limestone, but in proportions...”
This time, I pricked up my ears; a new horizon had been abruptly revealed to my troubled eyes: a horizon of which Livry took charge of fixing the lines.
“Of course,” he said, in a jovial tone, “I’m preaching to a convert! You’ve even been able to observe that Jobert has been able to volatilize calcareous stone instantaneously, in the form of the millstone doorposts of my laboratory. His recent theft permits him to do things on a larger scale, and undoubtedly, the terrible consequences of his manipulations have escaped him, for they will have encountered the mirage after which Jobert is running inconsiderately—the so-called regeneration of the soil.”
Roger laughed. “A fine regeneration of the soil!”
For myself, I shivered.
For a moment, Roger remained thoughtful; then, in a more serious tone, he said: “Which doesn’t alter the fact that the individual is now becoming very dangerous. I too would be able to ravage the earth, sow ruin, death and destruction here and there, but that would be local destruction, an absurd crime with no tomorrow.
“The end of the world, yes—that’s a grandiose idea, as logical and ordered as a mathematical verity. It’s an almost divine endeavor, in comparison with which a partial hecatomb appears to me to be abominable.”
Full of his subject, Roger paced back and forth in the room, illuminated like a prophet. It was the first time that he had frightened me—really frightened, beyond any nervous sensation or imaginative shock. For the first time, my conviction was shaken.
Why? Because I had seriously envisaged the possible role that he attributed to Jobert. I had seen with my own eyes the solvent effects produced by the Omega acid. It was not unreasonable to calculate effects of the same sort multiplied to an extreme. At an infinitesimal dose, the radium had already determined extraordinarily energetic phenomena. What power could be attributed to the ten grams in Jobert’s possession, to the eighty grams that Livry intended to employ one day? How could the limit be measured of the formidable reactions that might follow, since no laboratory had ever experimented with such quantities?
Thus, I almost admitted the thing that would have seemed insane a few months earlier: a man was able to provoke a cataclysm, an earthquake.
In that case…why deny another man the power to bring about an even greater upheaval, by imagining the destructive effect of the acid multiplied a hundredfold, multiplied almost infinitely?
Except that a doubt came to my rescue, to defend me against the definitive invasion of that frightful idea.
At its base, that reasoning depended on an entirely gratuitous hypothesis on Roger’s part: the presence of the murder in Bouffarik on the day of the seismic shock, and the proven correlation between the phenomenon and manipulations of the Omega acid by his former assistant.
That doubt, to which my tottering reason clung, was to be cut away a week later.
There are dates that are landmarks in life. Thus, I will never forget that eighth of October 19 . It was my first lecture since the resumption of classes. In fact, I had been able to make Roger, who wanted to keep me with him, understand that it was necessary for me to resume my position at Louis-le-Grand, at least until the appointment of a substitute: a rule of decency that he could not make me violate, while awaiting the solicitation of a leave of absence that would permit me to devote myself to him.
Deep down, I experienced a secret joy at that resumption of contact with the academic world; for a few hours a week I would live in a saner and less troubling atmosphere than the one in which I had been plunged for two months.
Not that I begrudged the unfortunate Roger the worries, the difficulties and the tribulations. More than ever, I was prepared to sacrifice everything—my repose, my wellbeing, my career—in the attempt to free him from his terrible obsessions. There are duties of friendship that cannot be set aside.
By the very reason of my intentions, however, it seemed good to me to steep myself once again in my natural milieu. In teaching philosophy to others, it seemed to me that I ought to be the first to profit from my instruction.
Thus, I had devoted by initial lesson to Descartes, that great destroyer
of preconceived ideas, that declared enemy of the imagination. Under the cover of admirable philosophy doubled with scholarly genius, I vituperated against the illusion of our senses, the tyranny of illusions, the false steps of reasoning.
In truth, I was speaking for myself.
With the fire of enthusiasm that sincerity gives, I uplifted my audience, I obtained a veritable success.
I left the class with my temples still throbbing, exhausted by physical effort but with a joyful heart, and a serene soul.
It appeared to me that I had reconquered my tranquility and my aplomb.
Joyful and resolute, I was leaving the lycée when someone tapped me on the shoulder.
“I’ve arrived in time to collect you,” pronounced Roger’s voice.
“You? Nothing serious, I hope?”
I had, in fact, left Roger in his laboratory, where he was ardently manufacturing further quantities of his acid, and I knew that the chemist was not easily distracted from his work.
He reassured me with a gesture. “Oh, simply a summons I received this morning from the head of the Sûreté.”
“Ah! The Jobert affair again?”
“You’ve guessed correctly. According to the succinct note I’ve been sent, the blackguard has been found.”
“You see!” I exclaimed, carried away. “Jobert had nothing to do with the earthquake, then, and everything you supposed the other day...”
With a gesture of his hand, Roger invited me to formulate my judgment with more reserve. “Gently—we’ll see what they have to say to us at the Sûreté first. Thinking that the matter might interest you, I made a detour to pick you up.”
He drew me toward his automobile.
Privately, I was counting in advance on a denouement that would complete the annihilation of the troubling suppositions of the preceding days. Already, I was muttering to myself inaudibly: “That will teach you not to get carried away in your hypotheses!”
We arrived at the Prefecture of Police. We were immediately received by Monsieur Régnaud, one of the deputy heads of the Sûreté.
“Well, Monsieur Livry,” the functionary said, “you were right in opposing those who wanted to see Jobert as a thief attracted by the enormous intrinsic value of the radium. He has furnished us himself with proof that he’s a simple madman…a dangerous madman, to be sure.”
“He’s been arrested?” asked the chemist, impatiently.
“No, but he undoubtedly will be, in a matter of days. He’s taken the trouble to notify us of his presence in Messina.”
“How?”
“An imprudence. He’s written to his aged mother in Bouffarik. The letter was intercepted. The missive is sufficient for us to be convinced of his mental state, and also...” The deputy head of the Sûreté grumbled, in a lower voice: “And also the pitiful fashion in which the surveillance of the widow Jobert was exercised. Oh, the provincial police! In brief, by his own confession, our fugitive really did remain hidden in his home town until the day after the catastrophe. In the midst of the panic, without being recognized, he even helped with the rescue of his mother, buried under the rubble of her house. He made himself scarce as soon as he saw the old woman recover her senses. He went to Bougie, embarked on an Italian fishing-smack and reached Sicily. All of that, narrated in his letter, is instructive, but in sum, quite banal. Where the banality ceases is when he explains the cataclysm. In my profession, I’ve often had occasion to examine cases of delusions of grandeur, but rarely like this one.”
And Monsieur Régnaud, his hands on his hips, slowly shook his head as he said what he judged to be an enormity: “Can you imagine that Jobert accuses himself of having provoked the earthquake by means of his imprudent experiments? He asks his old mother, who almost fell victim to it, for forgiveness!”
Roger said nothing; he merely looked at me with an indefinable expression.
As for me, I had become livid.
“After that,” the functionary concluded, “the wretch seems to require alienists rather than the court of assizes. In the meantime, we’ve taken steps to alert the Italian police and request his extradition. In a few days, I hope, we’ll have him in Paris.”
As if in a fog, I saw my companion get up and take his leave of the deputy chief.
I stiffened myself in order to imitate him, and stood up.
In the broad administrative corridor, cold and bare, I was prey to a veritable vertigo. I had to lean on Livry’s arm in order not to fall.
“Why, what’s the matter?” said my friend, solicitously. “Are you feeling…faint?”
What was the matter!
For the first time since the beginning of the affair, the wall of incredulity that had protected me against definitive terror had been split; through that fissure, the last resistance attempted by my reason in revolt was about to drain away.
The veil of doubt had decidedly torn, allowing the fact to appear.
Mad, Roger undoubtedly was, in everything connected with his amour for Monsieur Thiérard-Leroy’s daughter, but as soon as he was lodged in his scientific domain, madness gave way to an admirable clarity of sight—as witness the prodigious result of the advice given, off the cuff, to Guy Mayrol.
Amid the disorder of my thoughts in distress, that was the first proof that presented itself. A few days before, departing from the cliff of Boulogne, the aviator had made child’s play of traversing the Channel and landing in a suburb of London. Then, only the day before, the newspapers had been full of his new exploit: Mayrol had launched himself from the summit of the Ballon d’Alsace, and after reaching an altitude of more than fifteen hundred meters, and flying over the valleys of the Saône and the Rhône, a blast of the mistral had carried him beyond Avignon.
In the course of the interviews to which he was obliged to submit, the hero of the day reported that a great part of his success was due to a mysterious unknown man, who had appeared and disappeared like the good genie of a tale, leaving behind him only a phantom name: the Man of the Apocalypse. And the press continued to discuss, to comment on and enliven Mayrol’s confidence, surrounded henceforth with the Hoffmannesque attraction of the fantastic.
But I knew the truth: the Man of the Apocalypse was Livry.
Then, to complete the foundations of my judgment, came those striking coincidences—more than coincidences, realizations—corresponding to events announced by the chemist: the increasing marked lowering of the temperature; the duly-explained sorceries that were narrowly attached to Jobert’s actions.
After that, how was it possible to persist in a blind negation?
Now, Roger, the friend of my childhood, the companion of my joys and troubles, appeared to me as the superhuman genius of annihilation and Death!
The simple role that I had attributed to myself was finished. It was no longer a matter of watching over a madman with prudent and compassionate attention. I had to enter into a struggle with a Force whose immeasurable power I already suspected.
No matter! The situation was revealed in such a way that I was condemned to march over my heart, to strangle my nerves, to stifle my self-esteem. Everything was effaced before a new instinct, which I discovered in my inner depths in those minutes of fearful suggestion: the instinct of survival—but an instinct enlarged beyond the interests of my own individuality.
Does Nature act, unknown to us, at opportune moments, to defend her creation and her creatures?
When a poor head allows itself to be invaded by such thoughts, there is nothing astonishing, is there, in seeing the body that supports it collapse?
The keen air outside whipped my blood. I straightened up again. I breathed out dely.
“There—that’s better!” said Roger, as he installed me in his automobile.
“Yes. It was so hot in the offices of the Sûreté...”
Roger smiled in a Machiavellian fashion. “They’ve turned up the heating—and but that’s only the beginning!” And in a tone of triumphant satisfaction: “In the plain of Châlons, for tw
o days, it’s been cold enough to split stones.”
IX. The Release
“Are you asleep, Paul?”
It was the morning of the fifteenth of October when Roger came into my bedroom on tiptoe to murmur those words in my ear. His voice was grave; it was not accentuated by the amicable familiarity with which he came to wake me up when he needed me before the time I normally got up.
“I’m not asleep,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
Before replying, Roger turned the commutator placed at the head of my bed. The electric bulb lit up.
Then I was able to look at my friend. He was very pale; his tremulous hands were holding an unfolded newspaper.
In a muted tone that revealed a profound emotion, he pronounced: “You know, my projects might be modified completely...” He waved his arm in a veritably solemn gesture. “The world might live!”
To that colossal affirmation, I opposed a banal interrogation: “Why?”
“Because Capitaine Berjac is dead!”
Dazed, I was voiceless.
Roger held out Le Matin to me, which was delivered to the villa every day at six o’clock. With his finger, he indicated an article headlined: Icy Autumn.
First there was a sequence of dispatches coming from the eastern region, all signaling the disastrous precocity of winter cold. At Epernay, the thermometer had reached seventeen degrees below zero. At Sillery, the docks of the Vesle canal had been icebound for two days. Then a subheading made me shiver: First victim: an officer drowned while skating.
My heart constricted, I read the item:
Reims, 14 October, 9 p.m.
A serious accident has just plunged our region into consternation...
I read on without reading, my eyes only retaining the conclusion:
Capitaine Berjac leaves a young wife, the daughter of Monsieur Thiérard-Leroy, director of the Observatoire de Paris.
We salute with respect the grief that has struck that honorable family, as well as the officers of the 306th artillery.
On the Brink of the World's End Page 26