Martyrs of Science

by S. Henry Berthoud

  Alas, Stierna was dead. She had died praying to God for Bertel.

  Since then, Monsieur, many years have gone by without Bertel having found a moment of peace and rest. Hunted by a horde of invisible demons, he still marches on without stopping, like Ahasuerus. To his right and his left stand two equally fatal ideas: the memory of Stierna, full of remorse; and the crazy conviction that the creation of a second sun was a great, wise, sublime work! In vain, Monsieur, since the day when he renounced that ridiculous folly, has he refused to open a book of physics; in vain has he carefully avoided contact with the scientists he has met on his travels; everywhere a voice repeats to him:

  You could have created a second sun!

  And that voice is right, Monsieur—at least, I think so. Do we not live in a century in which physics is progressing with great strides and working miracles? Electricity and its study have opened up a new world. With the aid of electricity, Monsieur Becquerel,41 that illustrious scientist, has created veritable precious stones. I have seen little sapphires that have emerged from his laboratories; even for the most expert and experienced lapidary, they do not differ and any respect from the precious stones that nature produces. Monsieur Jacobi42 has made veritable statues by means of electricity, which bear the imprint of the most delicate work with a precision impossible for a skillful sculptor. Finally, Monsieur, Bertel’s sun itself, while the Danish professor rejected it as an absurd dream, was invented by Humphry Davy and perfected by Faraday. Those two celebrated physicists have used means very similar to Bertel’s methods, and arrived at the same results.

  As for the copper balloon, it has been imagined and proven possible by one of the most skillful physicists of our time, Monsieur Prechtel,43 the director of the Polytechnic Institute of Vienna. That scientist has even drawn up plans for the balloon’s construction; in order to realize it, it would be necessary to expend the cost of a frigate.

  If Stierna’s lover had not been discouraged, you see—if he had repelled his doubts, if he had not given in to fear, if he had had an unbreakable faith in himself, and if, finally, Ole’s madness had not disturbed him—given the time, the patience and the will, he would certainly have immortalized his name and created a second sun.

  The stranger, who had let his head fall into his hands and was holding it hidden therein, finally raised it again, displaying features more deeply scored, more downcast and more livid than ever.

  “Bertel, such as he is,” he said, in a sepulchral voice, “accepts his discomfiture with resignation, in expiation of his treason in regard to Stierna. If his sin was great, its punishment is terrible!”

  As he finished these words, he got to his feet, turning away to hide the tears that were running from his lifeless eyes over his sun-bronzed cheeks, and hurriedly walked away.

  The French journalist searched for him in vain that evening during the seven o’clock walk, at the ball, in the gaming halls, and the theater—in sum, everywhere. He did not find the unknown anywhere; no one could give him any information about him.

  The next morning, it transpired that the old man had left the waters of Spa, not only without telling anyone, but also leaving all his luggage and a considerable sum of money behind in the room that he had occupied in the inn where he had been staying.

  SCIENTIFIC FANTASIES

  THE STAR-EATERS

  During the Crimean War, while Colonel de Saint-A***, married scarcely six months before, was fighting under the walls of Sebastopol, his wide, Comtesse Blanche, was living on the banks of the Loire in a Medieval château, transformed into a comfortable habitation by virtue of determination and money.

  The bedroom, in particular, offered a truly singular mixture if the severe luxury of the 14th century and the elegant research of the nineteenth. However, the dressers, in sculpted black oak-wood, the big bed with spiral columns and tapestried canopies, the armchair with fantastically damascened arms, and the fireplace with the Saint-A*** coat of arms, as high as an attic in the Rue de Helder, harmonized in a charming fashion with the brocade draperies, the lace curtains, the Boule furniture and a piano, a masterpiece by Érard.

  A decoratively-woven carpet had replaced the sheaves of reeds that had covered the worn floor of the room four centuries earlier, although it is true that the floorboards had given way to a parquet of exotic wood, which embellished itself in summer with incrustations, arabesques and designs as precious as the marvels of the carpet that covered and hid it in winter.

  At present, the carpet was still covering the parquet, for April had only just begun to blazon the escutcheon of the zodiac with the bull of Taurus; belated snow veiled the pathways and the flower-beds of the garden and dusted the branches, scarcely in bud, of a stand of squat trees that grew directly beneath the Comtesse’s windows. These tall bushes occupied the location of a profound ditch that had been full of water in Feudal times, but was dry today and partly filled in by the rubble of collapses, invasions of vegetation and the patient and indefatigable leveler called time.

  One morning, when the pretty chatelaine had received good news from the Crimea, and she was dreaming simultaneously of the past and future, with her forehead leaning against one of the large windows of her room, she noticed a very busy bird. It was building its nest at the top of an old pollarded oak. From the window, the comtesse could look down on the work, which was approaching completion, only lacking a few twigs to form a neat little construction, composed of moss and roots bound together by reeds. A soft bed of linen, feathers, down, silk and cotton carpeted the nest’s interior.

  The female bird was working alone, seizing a blade of grass or a dry stem, stopping, running, looking, plaiting and weaving. The male, perched on a nearby branch, was whistling his most beautiful song, like a savage of the Rocky Mountains, leaving the housework to his companion—but he was hunting on her behalf, also like the Sioux. While singing, he kept a keen lookout all around. At the slightest movement in the grass or under the snow, he launched himself forward, skimmed the soil, brought back to his female and placed in her beak—without keeping any for himself—the entire produce of his swoop, always provided that, by hazard, the swoop in question had been productive. I say by hazard because, alas, more times than not, he returned disappointed, with his beak empty, to resume the place he had quit and recommence his fruitlessly-interrupted song.

  The Comtesse did not take long to sympathize with the young household. She appropriated beetle-larvae destined for the nourishment of the pheasants, and threw a handful to the two blackbirds.

  The latter, without the slightest apprehension, raced to pick up the meal-worms and then flew to the window to see where that living manna had come from. The Comtesse resumed her distribution.

  The blackbirds found the process so much to their taste that, a week hence, they were taping the window with their beaks, casually coming into the room and taking their nourishment from the young woman’s slender white fingers, and, if necessary, cleverly tracking down the porcelain vase containing the larvae for which they showed themselves so gluttonous. A large cork sealed the vase, but with two thrusts of the beak, the blackbird and his mate caused the cork to leap out, and the pillage commenced.

  The Comtesse, whose isolation was cheered up by the society of these winged friends, let them do as they wished, and even encouraged them—all the more so when five blue-green eggs, specked confusedly with rust, laid by the female in the nest, were succeeded, after twenty days of incubation, by five little yellow beaks, always chirping, always open and always insatiable.

  The chicks, introduced by their parents, soon exhibited the same free-and-easy attitude toward the Comtesse. More than once they woke her up at daybreak, so forcefully were they tapping at the windows and so shrilly were they crying out with impatience and hunger. It was necessary to see them when she finally gave in to their desire—it was, I insist, necessary to see them flying on to her arms, breast and head, pecking her, caressing her, and then, having paid their tribute of affection, darting and ferre
ting everywhere. They took no account of the protests of the chambermaid, nor of the thrusts of the beak of the large grey parrot, which were more brutal than well-aimed. The residence was theirs; I can guarantee that they made more than ample use of it!

  A few months later, toward the end of September, the Comte had returned to his château, with seven wounds, fortunately scarring over, with the rank of brigadier-general and the sash of the Légion d’honneur. Sprawled in a large armchair, still pale and weak, he was savoring the ineffable benefits of convalescence. The Comtesse, seated at the piano, had just finished playing one of those old melodies of Northern France, the naïve grace and simple motifs of which reminded the general of his love-affair with Blanche and the good times when, without her having yet confessed that she loved him, she had played the songs of her homeland for him, as she did that evening.

  When she had quit the piano and taken the convalescent’s hands in hers once again, airborne voices, which had nothing human about them, suddenly repeated the last phrases of the tune that the Comtesse had played.

  “Are there other fairies than you here, then?” the general asked, smiling, without understanding what he had heard.

  “Fairies, no—but goblins, yes,” she replied, opening the window and uttering a light cry of summons.

  Seven little stars became visible in the air then, which were flying, wheeling, rising up and descending, spiraling outside the window.

  Then the seven stars went out, and a flock of blackbirds—not counting the general’s moustache—boldly invaded the drawing-room and settled on Blanche’s arms and head—after which the birds resumed their flight in the garden via the window.

  “Which explains the singers,” said the general. “In fact, they’re not the first musicians of that sort I’ve heard. In the Rue du Petit-Musc, in the Celestines’ barracks, the blackbirds that nest in the trees in the courtyard repeat my regiment’s trumpet-fanfares...but the stars! What of the stars?”

  “They intrigue me as much as you, my friend. Never have I seen that phosphorescence shining in the beaks of my protégés.” Laughing, she added: “Perhaps it’s an light-show they’ve put on to celebrate the return of their liege lord to his domains.”

  “By God!” replied the Comte. “I’m not the friend and pupil of General Levaillant44 for nothing. One day, under Arab fire, while crossing a ditch in order to reckon with those clowns, he perceived a rare insect in the grass of the verge, stopped his horse dead, dismounted, picked up the beetle, stuffed it into the finger of one of his gloves, got back in the saddle, and then chased after the Bedouins so furiously that two hours later, their leader surrendered and led forth the horse of submission. Give me your arm, Blanche, and let’s go into the garden to see what’s going on.”

  They headed into the grounds, approached the raised bank, and found the blackbirds occupied in pecking amid a veritable sea of light. At every instant, one of the birds took flight, holding in its beak a sort of little star, which shone for a few seconds and then went out, never to light up again—after which the blackbird returned to the quarry and repeated the operation.

  The general leaned over, plunged his hand into the heat-less flame that was undulating over the surface of the ground, and picked up a handful of earth, in which he saw five or six of the myriapod insects that entomologists call Scolopendra, and which popular parlance, with its picturesque energy, calls centipedes. These Scolopendra belonged to the smallest species, which is designated by the epithet electrica.45

  For some times, the Comtesse and the general contemplated the strange spectacle of a flame fifty centimeters long and broad, which bore no resemblance to any other flame, and in which hundreds of Scolopendra were swarming. On the general’s orders, a gardener dug in the soil around the phosphorescent mass, and the displaced soil was literally covered with droplets of fire. One might have thought that an invisible sprinkler wielded by a fairy had distributed a luminous rain everywhere the spade had touched the earth. If one crushed a little of that soil in one’s hands, it left shiny streaks there.

  “You see, dear Blanche,” the general said, “how nature is pleased to dress the most humble and seemingly obscure of creatures with her splendors. Do you know why Scolopendra not only shine with a mysterious gleam but also spread so much light over everything that surrounds them? Nature has gratified them with such beacons in order that they might send one another signals of love, like Hero and Leander.”

  “And so that they might reveal their hiding-place to my little star-eaters! Here they are, all seven of them, coming back to the Scolopendra hunt! Let’s leave them to it. All the more so because the night is cool and I don’t think that humidity is exactly a remedy effective against chills and incompletely-scarred wounds.”

  “She’s right!” sighed the general. “To seek to understand the ultimate causes of creation is one of the insensate dreams of humankind. As we were informed by the almoner who cared for us in the Crimea, the Imitation has all too much reason to say: Falluntur saepe hominum sensus in judicando.46

  “Yes!” the Comtesse interjected, laughing. “We should not take so much pride in appearances. See how our beautiful and mysterious stars of a little while ago have become no more than worms, and our star-eaters no more than blackbirds.”

  “Alas, that’s the story of all human things. From far away it’s something, but at close range, nothing.”47

  “A century ago, La Fontaine voiced the truths that we are discovering at present…I even think that they were already past their first freshness in his time...”

  “You’re right, we repeat things continually,” the general replied. Placing his lips on Blanche’s forehead, he murmured: “There’s nothing true and lasting but love!”

  “Yes, when it lasts,” she replied, laughing.

  “Since when do angels speak ill of God?” asked the general, leaning with even more tenderness on his wife’s arm.

  And they went back indoors on that beautiful Autumn night, forgetting the star-eaters—forgetting everything, except their tenderness.

  LUMINOUS FLOWERS

  The Chinese truly are a singular people! All the discoveries of European science and industry are recorded in their books, especially in their popular legends. One might think them miners who exploit diamond mines according to their whim but have no idea how to extract the precious stone from its matrix.

  In the Chinese encyclopedia entitled Fayuan-Zhulin, book LII, there is the story of a princess named Me-Chi, with whom Racmi, the king of the land of Djambouli, was greatly enamored. Mei-Chi could not consent to give her hand to Racmi, because the prince offered her gifts that were magnificent but vulgar, and she only wanted to marry a monarch who could create unknown marvels for her.

  One evening, after sunset, Racmi arrived at Mei-Chi’s house. Mounted on a meek and well-dressed elephant, he was preceded by a thousand lantern-bearers and followed by a cortege of bayaderes, who were dancing and causing the air to resound with their songs.

  From her window, the young woman shouted to the king; “Do you think that I’ve never seen a richly-clad elephant or heard bayaderes singing before?”

  “Divine beauty,” Racmi replied, “deign to climb on to this elephant; allow yourself to be conducted by the choir of bayaderes to my palace, and, if you do not see there that which you have never seen before, I swear an oath never to mention the word love in your presence again.”

  Mei-Chi shrugged her shoulders, and replied that, not believing a word of what he had said, she would go to his palace in order to rid herself of his obsessive love once and for all.

  So she climbed up on to the elephant, and allowed herself to be taken to the king’s home. Racmi showed her into a gallery full of plants, especially nasturtiums, the favorite flowers of the Chinese. Scarcely had Mei-Chi come in than the thousands of torches lighting in the gallery were extinguished. All the flowers began to glow, and two red birds sang the following verses:

  You do not wish, O Mei-Chi,

 
Charming but pitiless tiger.

  You do not wish all hearts

  To light up for your beauty

  How can they not burn

  Since all inanimate things light up

  And burn in your presence

  With a celestial and supernatural flame.

  Mei-Chi wiped away a tear and allowed her hand to fall into the hand of the happy Racmi. Then, suddenly excited, she cried: “It wasn’t you, Prince, who had the idea of giving me this fête; it was suggested to you by someone else.”

  “Yes,” he replied, “first by love, and then by the Buddha.”

  Mei-Chi sighed. “I have given you my hand,” she said. “Keep it. Nevertheless, it’s to the Buddha that I should have accorded it.”

  She said that to torment the prince, adds the satirical story-teller of Peking, for she knew full well that princes can purchase ideas, but hardly ever have any of their own.

  There is no lack of talking birds in Europe, beginning with the blackbirds of the Celestine barracks, which, from the treetops where they perch freely, repeat the fanfares of the municipal guards’ trumpets on a daily basis.

  As for flowers that glow, they exist, and I have seen then, no less recently than yesterday.

  Outside the official society of science there is in Paris a small group of individuals who modestly and silently devote to persistent studies the scarce leisure time left to them by the labors from which they wearily obtain their daily bread. Some have just entered into life and are beginning to trace the furrow of their future there; others, grown old beneath the harness of industry or administration, are reaching the end of their career. All, without exception, can only covertly, often at the expense of their sleep and always at the cost of sacrifices exorbitant for their slender purses, deliver themselves to a passion that is imperious and despotic, as all passions that one is able freely to satisfy.