Martyrs of Science

by S. Henry Berthoud

  Suddenly, a cannon-shot was head in the distance. The artillery of the port replied with a salvo, and a steam-boat was seen on the waves, whose flag, flying at half-mast, trailed sadly in the Thames as a sign of mourning.

  Then there was a tumultuous rumor among the crowd, soon succeeded by a profound and pious silence. Everyone bared their heads, and some knelt down. One poor devil, either by virtue of carelessness or because he had emptied, while awaiting the boat’s arrival, more tankards of beer that was appropriate, kept his hat on; acts of violence were committed against him. The police had a great deal of difficulty preventing him from being thrown into the Thames. They only got him away by pretending to arrest him and promising to take him to prison as a punishment for his culpable irreverence.

  In the meantime, the steamer reached the quay and disembarked beneath the catafalque. Immediately, the military band played the most lugubrious tunes, the drums beat a slow measure, and there was a moment when all eyes were filled with tears.

  When these honors had been rendered to the mortal remains brought by the steamboat, a numerous deputation of important individuals, mostly bald-headed, advanced to the foot of the catafalque. There, the chairman, in a sonorous voice, pronounced Sir William Congreve’s eulogy. He listed the numerous and illustrious services rendered by the deceased to science and the fatherland. He painted a picture of that celebrated man devoting his life and his fortune to his studies, to giving the means of victory to England. He spoke dolorously about the great invention on which Congreve had been working when death struck him.

  “Without his premature death,” he proclaimed, “perhaps England, already so powerful, would be marching even more proudly at the head of the nations of the world. Her redoubtable fleets might be tripled; the tempest would no longer be redoubtable for them; and steam, that great and sublime invention, that motive force that will be the admiration of future centuries, would find itself effaced and vanquished.”

  He wiped away a tear, and added: “Although God did not want to permit Congreve to realize his almost-divine idea, and he recalled him before his time, the fatherland knows nevertheless that the great engineer would have overcome all the difficulties of his project; only a few obstacles, of no real importance, still prevented it from being put into execution. Thus, although we do not enjoy the benefit with which he wanted to endow his country, we nevertheless owe an eternal and boundless gratitude to the great man who created it. Let us engrave the name of Congreve on our public monuments, let us teach our children to repeat it with veneration.”

  Sobs interrupted the voice of the worthy chairman. Hurrahs replied to him from all directions, attesting to the great sympathy that the orator had encountered in his audience, and to the extent that the sentiments of regret and veneration for Congreve were shared—sentiments that he had just expressed with so much eloquence and sympathy.

  Two or three more speeches followed, after which, various deputations placed wreaths on the coffin.

  First there were the artillerymen, for whom Congreve had invented the pockets that bore his name and had won them so many victories.

  Then came the whalers. For, if the fatigues and perils of their rude profession had diminished, that was because of Congreve, the illustrious Congreve.

  Five or six bodies of workmen, who owed to Congreve important ameliorations in the machines and implements of which they made use, followed the whalers, but the individual who made the greatest impression on the witnesses of the scene was a mutilated old soldier whose life Congreve had saved on the battlefield in Spain, and ho had found in the engineer a constant and generous benefactor. He related how Congreve had carried him, dying, how he had fought the enemy for him, and the cares by which he had succeeded in curing him. He added the delicacy with which a generous pension had been paid to him every year, without its provider wishing to be identified.

  “But I knew, myself,” he added. “Although my benefactor tried to hide it, I read in his eyes the joy that my happiness caused him, and my heart told me that that happiness was his work. My God, who else would have taken an interest in an old invalid like me?”

  Needless to say, that story caused tears to flow from those who heard it, and from all directions blessings were heaped on the name of Congreve, “the friend of the people, the benefactor of the country and the most generous and disinterested of men.”

  When the general emotion had clamped down somewhat, a hearse pulled by four richly-harnessed horses advanced to receive the coffin—but the people did not want to allow the horses to do their work. The reins were cut, and everyone began to pull the carriage, which traversed the principal streets of the city of London in that fashion; for, without taking account of the itinerary planned in advance to take the coffin to the house where a mail coach as waiting to transport it to Staffordshire, they proceeded to parade it through every district, in order that all the citizens could pay their regretful respects to the great man whose loss it was necessary to deplore.

  While these tumultuous and enthusiastic scenes were unfolding, and Congreve’s remains were subjected to an apotheosis on the part of the people who had driven him mad by dint of ingratitude and injustice, two young men clad in black had a second coffin disembarked in solitude. That coffin, covered in a black cloth, was Diana’s.

  The two young men had remained on the ship, sad, silent and almost indignant, during the ovation given to Congreve’s coffin.

  “They’re making a god of the man they murdered,” one said to the other.

  “This poor victim also owes her death to them,” added the other, on whose face the mortal ravages of malady and despair were visibly legible.

  “It’s the story of almost all great men,” put in an old Protestant minister charge with saying the final prayers over the white coffin. “After the hemlock, the apotheosis.”

  “But this angel, this young woman they killed in killing her uncle...”

  “Her recompense is there,” the old man said, pointing to the sky.

  The young man smiled, a celestial hope animating his visage.

  “Yes,” he said, “yes. Those whom humans separate down here...”

  “God reunites in his bosom for eternity,” added the minister, in a grave voice.

  Translator’s afterword

  In England the name of Sir William Congreve (1772-1828) has been somewhat eclipsed by that of the famous dramatist who shared his name, but not his title. Few people know that it to Congreve the inventor that the “rocket’s red glare” mentioned in the American national anthem, in relation to the siege of Fort Henry, was due to a device of his invention. In fact, his rockets were not every effective as weapons of war, although it could be argued that they were to first step on the long road to Apollo 11. His adaptation of rockets for the propulsion of whalers’ harpoons was also limited in its applicability, although he did indeed help to make the production of gunpowder easier and safer, and his invention of a new kind of paper for banknotes was sufficiently effective as a safeguard against forgery that modern techniques have merely refined it. He obtained numerous other patents, and did, indeed, publish plans for a method of propelling ships without the employment of oars, sails or steam, but he also published plans for a perpetual motion machine, and both devices exhibited more optimism than practicality.

  Congreve was the comptroller of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich and the M.P. for Plymouth from 1814 until his death, and was also chairman of the Equitable Loam Bank and a director of several companies, one of which was responsible for a share issue that resulted in charges being brought against its directors in the Court of Chancery in 1826. It is conceivable that Congreve was not involved in or aware of the share issue, but he immediately fled to France, where he lived for two years before dying on 16 May 1828 in Toulouse. His young wife and three children went with him. The court took most of that time to reach a decision, but decided shortly before his death that the share issue was clearly fraudulent. Congreve was buried in Toulouse with militar
y honors; he did not die in an asylum, and his body was not returned to England.

  Everything in Berthoud’s story is, therefore, a tissue of fantasies built around the name of a real individual and a few of his actual achievements. The endeavor is not, however, entirely out of keeping with the spirit of its era. Berthoud was acquainted with Paul Lacroix, alias Bibliophile Jacob, Edgar Quinet and Jules Michelet, the French Romantic Movement’s three leading historians, two of whom also wrote significant works of fanciful fiction, while the third—Michelet—became notorious, occasioning the observation that “no historian ever cared less about accuracy.” Berthoud was also familiar with the best-selling works of the Toulousian Étienne Lamothe-Langon, which mostly consisted of fake memoirs attributed to real historical individuals, which were extremely cavalier in their inventions.

  THE CAULDRON OF BICÊTRE

  In 1835 I went to Bicêtre regularly three times a week in order to follow the lecture course on mental alienation offered by one of our most intelligent and knowledgeable doctors, F .31 The rest of the day was employed in anatomical studies and dissections, in which I was supervisee by an intern of the establishment, Dr. Émile D***, to whom the art of surgery owes one of the most remarkable books on pregnancy and childbirth.

  To serve and assist us in the most difficult parts of our work we had an orderly at the hospital whom epilepsy had reduced, at least apparently, to a condition bordering on stupidity. He was a machine who received, with a remarkable facility, the impulsion one gave to him and carried it out with a mechanical perfection. He was never in default and never exceeded the orders he received. He did not understand anything but the literal meaning of what was said to him, but by way of compensation, he never fell into the more perilous inconvenience of subalterns who aim at intelligence. He did not interpret, and did not seek to understand. I can still see him, with his vacillating gait, his pale cheeks, his deep-set eyes with their scintillating irises, and his mouth, sometimes disfigured by horrible convulsions.

  The faithful bearer of a copper cauldron from which he was never separated, he rarely spoke, and his voice resembled the broken sounds that emerge from an unhealthy larynx. In any case, attentive without slowness, dexterous without arrogance, humble without baseness, he resembled one of those genies that a talisman renders subject to the will of a magician and resigns himself to a power he knows to be invincible. More than once I suspected in Jean—that was his name—more intelligence than he consented to show: a word, a gesture or a glance betrayed it, but he would immediately resume is vulgar appearance, warily on is guard against my observations and ever ready to disconcert them.

  One evening, however, I resolved to penetrate the mystery with which he surrounded himself—if, indeed, he did surround himself with mystery. Retained by bad weather and obliged to stay the night at Bicêtre, I left a bottle of champagne on the table after supper. Jean had a habit of appropriating our dessert; he therefore took possession, as usual, of everything that there was on the table.

  When he reached the bottle of champagne, he picked it up with the conviction that he would find it empty, and was surprised when its weight informed him that it was almost full. A kind of convulsive tremor passed through all his limbs, tensed and knotted by his malady. His vitreous eyes became as resplendent as the eyes of a cat in the dark, and he replaced the bottle on the table—after which he examined the walls of the room slowly, and arrested his crazed gaze on the door of the study in which we were lurking. In that attitude, he waited attentively.

  After a few seconds, he returned to the table, put the cork firmly in the bottle and went to put it with the silverware in the old oak dresser that formed, with two rickety chairs, the dining-room furniture.

  That was not what I wanted.

  “That bottle is for you, Jean!” I exclaimed.

  He shivered, and I thought for a moment that he was about to suffer a fit of epilepsy; his face was covered by a lividity even more sepulchral than usual, and his knees wobbled beneath him. He succeeded in mastering his emotion, but he had to sit down and open a window in order to render an energetic respiration to his oppressed lungs.

  Curious to see what would happen next, I resolved to study Jean without him knowing that he was being watched, I therefore closed the connecting door between the dining room and the study in which we normally sat—after which I extinguished he lamp and pretended to leave by another exit. Instead of going out, I applied my eye to the keyhole.

  Jean was still there, emotional and sitting in front of the bottle.

  Eventually, he got up, took the bottle and placed it between his eye and the candlelight, in such a fashion as to illuminate the liquid contained in the glass envelope. During that contemplation, a smile devoid of intelligence, in which the instinct of gluttony was clearly legible, parted the epileptic’s lips to allow a glimpse of his long yellow teeth. One might have thought that he was studying each of the bubbles of air rising from the bottom of the bottle to burst at the surface of the liquid.

  Gradually, Jean’s face darkened, the intelligence reappeared, and effaced the material expression that I have described. A thousand memories full of bitterness and despair appeared to the poor man’s imagination; a tear rolled down his cheek, hollowed out by misery.

  Suddenly, he emerged from that bleak sadness by means of an abrupt and violent effort, gripped the bottle, tore out the cork, raised it to his lips and drank long draughts from it.

  When he put the bottle back on the table it was more than half empty. Jean was no longer recognizable; a light redness covered his prominent cheekbones, his damp forehead seemed free of the grip of the malady and his gait took on a firm and solid appearance. To cap it all, his hands came together petulantly, and his chest heaved as he sucked in air avidly.

  “Ah!” he exclaimed, with a gesture full of vigor and petulance, “I feel twenty years younger.” He drank again and added: “I can almost see, as in the past, Gabrielle’s white hand pouring me a glass. One might imagine that Désaugiers were about to present his glass to me once more, that we might clink them together cheerfully.”

  And he hummed one of those Bacchic refrains that the members of the Caveau once repeated to the clatter of bottles, in the midst of noisy choruses.32

  I opened the door then and came in. Jean came toward me, held out his hand and accosted me with the manners of a gentleman. “Your wine is delicious!” he exclaimed.

  Curious to return him abruptly from the height of his excitement to the humility of his real situation, I pretended to bump into his copper cauldron, and said, with false ill-humor: “What’s you cauldron doing there, Jean?”

  He gazed coldly at the utensil, from which, by virtue of a kind of monomania, he was never separated, and which he employed for the most bizarre purposes; then, pushing it away with his foot, he said: “To the Devil with the cauldron! I don’t need it any more—for, after all, life is a good thing, and I want to live!”

  As he concluded that Epicurean statement, he kicked the cauldron ten paces behind him, and extended a caressant hand toward the bottle again.

  “Why are you treating your old friend and inseparable companion like that?”

  “Because I want to live, I tell you.”

  “How can the presence of the cauldron be injurious to your health?”

  “It’s evident that you don’t know your history. I was only carrying it with me in the hope of dying soon, because it brings bad luck to anyone who touches it. Anyway, in letting me live it wasn’t giving the lie to its evil influence, for if you knew how ardently I’ve called up death to aid me…! A little while ago I would have received it as a blessing, but I was mad then. Well, in truth, life’s a good thing, isn’t it, my friend?”

  He tapped me on the thigh as he addressed that jovial question to me, and filled his glass to the brim.

  “What’s the story of your cauldron, then?”

  “To begin with, the cauldron is a cooking-pot,” he said, with a roguish expression, “only it
s lid is missing and its side-handles have been replaced by a single iron handle. That cooking-pot’s been at Bicêtre for many years; it was brought here is the 17th century, and had never ceased, ever since, to play a dramatic role. Damn it, my dear chap, I’ll tell you the story; I’m certain that you can make something good out of it; I’d be delighted to make you that little gift. Come on, let’s move to the fireplace—go fetch your lamp, because this odor of tallow candles is odious to me. Stoke up the fire with a fresh log, and listen to me.

  “Have you ever been to Rouen? Yes? Well, you’ll doubtless have noticed an old house two hundred paces from the cathedral, whose pointed gable terminates in a gargoyle in the form of a dragon with a woman’s head. A dealer in wall-hangings has lived in that house for the last twenty years. But in the 17th century, it was the laboratory of a apothecary who was reputed to be dabbling in alchemy. The fact is that he possessed, not only one of the best-stocked pharmacies, producing a considerable income, but a capital of twenty thousand écus. In those days, you know, twenty thousand écus was worth almost twice as much as it is today.

  “Diane Daupats, the apothecary’s daughter, was, in consequence, one of the richest catches in Rouen; a large number of suitors came to ask her father for her hand in marriage. He replied to them all, gently, that his daughter wasn’t old enough yet to take a husband, and that, in any case, he thought that a little love wasn’t a bad thing to put into a household, and, in consequence, that Diane would marry the young man for whom her heart felt a penchant.