Martyrs of Science

by S. Henry Berthoud

  The Baron hastened to drink the rest of his cherry brandy, put his glass down on the table and got up to greet the stranger, who, after having bowed and sat down in the chair that Notburga offered him, abruptly said to the Baron: “Will you sell me Heidenloch Castle, sir?”

  The Baron, amazed by this proposition, which he had scarcely expected, looked the stranger up and down. He was still a young man, short, with an agreeable physiognomy, although he wore a full beard, which was very rare in Germany at that time, and his eyes darted a singular gleam through the large blue-tinted lenses of his spectacles.

  “I’m waiting for your reply,” the unknown man said, smiling.

  “In truth,” said the Baron, “I’m not at all sure what to say. The old castle is no use to me at all, but it’s the heritage that my ancestors have left me, and I’m wondering whether it might not be disrespectful to them to sell it to a stranger.”

  “Is that all that’s stopping you? Then lease it to me for ninety-nine years and three hundred and sixty-four days.”

  “That’s an excellent means of settling the matter,” said the Baron, rubbing his hands.

  “And how much rent do you want for Heidenloch?”

  “What do you think of a hundred florins a year?”

  “I’d rather pay for the whole ninety-nine years and three hundred and sixty-four days at once. I’ll offer you eighty thousand florins.”

  The Baron had great difficulty in repressing a cry of joy, and his broad face was covered with a sudden red flush.

  “Eighty thousand florins,” repeated the unknown man.

  “I accept, gladly.”

  “Wait—that’s not all. If I find the buried treasures in the uncultivated grounds of the castle that I suspect to be buried there, or precious objects of any kind whatsoever, I’ll give a fifth share to your daughter.”

  The Baron’s face darkened. “I very much doubt that you’ll find any treasure at Heidenloch. If that’s the reason you’re buying the castle, I fear that you’re making a bad bargain.”

  The young man smiled again. “That’s my concern. Would you care to come to Heidelberg tomorrow, to the office of the notary Kalisch. You’ll find your eighty thousand florins and the contract all ready to sign.”

  With that, the singular individual bowed, and, without adding another word, departed with such promptitude that the Baron could neither escort him nor return his bow. So the Baron let himself fall back into his chair, drank a second glass of cherry liqueur to steady his mind, and looked at his daughter.

  “Well, Notburga,” he said, shaking his head, “what do you think of that?”

  “I think, Father, that it’s an excellent arrangement, which will triple our income.”

  “And will serve you as a dowry, my love. Ha ha! Now you can marry whomever you wish—even a councilor. Eight thousand florins! What worries me is the buried treasures he mentioned. Is there, in fact, anything hidden under the ruins of the castle?”

  “Don’t worry about that, Father. Since the young man’s paying you ten thousand times what you estimated that the wretched rubble to be worth, let’s wish him the best of luck finding heaps of gold and diamonds.”

  “You’re right, as always, my girl. Right—I’ll go sign the document in Heidelberg tomorrow.” Suddenly, he jumped out of his chair. “His name! He didn’t tell me his name! Am I the victim of some kind of trick? Is someone playing games with me?”

  “Who would think of playing tricks on poor folk like us?” the young woman replied. “The young man’s honest and genial face ought to drive away any such idea. Come on, Father, go and water your flowers, as usual, before we go to bed. Then, after having thanked God for the unexpected blessing he’s given us, let’s sleep peacefully until tomorrow.”

  Sleep peacefully! That was easy to say, but not so easy to do, alas. Needless to say, the Baron did not sleep a wink all night, and he left for Heidelberg earlier than was necessary.

  He went straight to the notary’s office. He had scarcely given his name than the latter started to laugh. That laughter chilled the Baron, who thought once again that he might be the victim of a practical joke.

  “Ha ha!” said the notary—a short man who seemed to have the ambition of one day rivaling the famous Great Tun of Heidelberg, which contained I don’t know how many liters.80 “Doesn’t this affair seem to you like a dream?”

  “Indeed it does,” relied the Baron. With a forced smile he added: “Is it one? I don’t even know my would-be tenant’s name.”

  “In truth, I didn’t know it myself yesterday evening, and I scarcely know it today. He came to see me looking exactly as you saw him, and deposited two enormous sums of gold on my desk. ‘I’m renting Heidelberg Castle on a long lease,’ he said, ‘for eighty thousand florins. Here they are. Here’s a rough draft of the lease. The Baron will come to sign it tomorrow morning. Pay him and take these two hundred florins for the expenses of the document and your honorarium.’ With that, he disappeared without waiting for my reply.

  “When I had recovered somewhat from my surprise, I read the document. The most skillful man of law in Germany couldn’t have drafted it with more care, except for one condition that made me burst out laughing—the one that grants Fraulein Notburga, your daughter, a fifth of any buried treasures discovered in the castle’s dependencies. Buried treasures! That’s a joke! Buried treasures! An excellent joke!”

  “But in sum, what’s my tenant’s name?”

  “Fritz Saal. Councilor Fritz Saal.”

  “Does he live in Heidelberg?”

  “Who knows? Does he know himself? According to the information I’ve been able to glean, as best I could, since yesterday evening, although he’s still young he’s already traveled the five continents of the world. Sometimes here, sometimes there, he nevertheless possesses, at the gates of the city, bequeathed to him by his uncle, Councilor Gewartius, a house full from top to bottom with bones of every sort, and stones collected from a thousand different places. My head clerk affirms that he saw him, last night, stop at every one of the pebbles on a path, pick them up one after another, and sometimes put them in his pocket. According to the same clerk, when he can’t procure certain stones, he has molds made of them, and he went all the way to Leipzig just to bring back a cast of the famous sandstone found near the Oxen Tower in Köthen, one which the imprint of a six-fingered hand can be seen—not to mention those from the village of Hohentregel, on the gray surface of which imprints of hands and feet can be seen.81 I’d blush to tell you the prices it’s rumored that he pays for these things, for which you or I wouldn’t give a kreutzer.”

  While the notary was speaking, the Baron plunged his hand mechanically into the bags that had become his property, making the beautiful gold coins that they contained clink.”

  “No matter where the good fortune come from, it’s welcome!” he said. “Would you care to buy me, with this capital, some good and reliable bonds, or find me some excellent mortgage that won’t require too much difficulty in administering the income, whose returns I can obtain regularly on a weekly basis?” Having completed this request, he started out on his return journey, not without buying two silk dresses for his daughter and a good quality outfit for his old maidservant.

  When he returned to Notburga and the young woman and the maidservant had admired the presents the Baron had brought them, the latter told them all the strange and mysterious things he had learned about his bizarre tenant, who took on the proportions of a legendary figure in the eyes of the two women.

  It was a full week later when the councilor came to take possession of the old castle, accompanied by a veritable army of workmen. There were at least four hundred of them. The councilor began by giving them orders so lucid and so easily understood, and having them carried out with so much precision, that the ruins of the castle were seen to be transformed, as if by magic, but without losing their picturesque physiognomy, into a habitable dwelling.

  The councilor arranged things in such a ma
nner that not a minute of time could be wasted by any of his workers, and that they never made a superfluous thrust with a pick or a shovel. Thus, the work of several months was completed in a week.

  When the masons and locksmiths left, upholsterers who were almost as numerous arrived with immense carriages. They decorated the interior of the castle, and, still guided by the councilor, always under his piercing eye, they improvised an endeavor that seemed like the work of magicians, it was simultaneously so sumptuous and severe.

  It was common gossip in the village, and even in the Baron’s house, that immense galleries lit by high widows had been constructed, which enclosed a library of more than a hundred thousand volumes, and, which seemed even more serious, a collection of bizarre or gigantic bones careful by arranged on cushions, as if they were made of solid gold—not to mention the minerals marbles, petrifications, animals in bottles full of alcohol, drawers overflowing with seashells, and display cases full of exotic butterflies, animals, birds and reptiles so expertly stuffed that one might think they were alive.

  No necromancer had ever had a laboratory more extraordinary and more frightful to behold.

  Abruptly, that great agitation of four hundred incessantly active workmen coming and going, hammering and sawing, carrying and arranging, was succeeded by absolute silence and solitude. From one day to the next no one was any longer to be heard or seen, and if the castle had not been lit up from top to bottom every evening, to the remotest corners, one might have thought that it was uninhabited.

  In spite of custom, Councilor Fritz Saal, when he had settled into his new home, did not pay any neighborly visits to the local landowners. He did not even go to see his landlord, the Baron. When, by chance, he emerged from his abode, he strolled at a leisurely pace strictly within the boundaries of the old castle. A large Newfoundland dog and two men equipped with long implements reminiscent of lances followed him. From time to time, the dog barked; at times, too, the councilor was seen to make a gesture with his hand, and immediately, the men that were following him would drive their implements into the ground, and pull them out against after having driven them in very deeply. The councilor carefully examined the earth that clung to the ends of the lances, which were turned back in a kind of cross, doubtless designed for that purpose, and took specimens of it. Then he resumed his walk, to repeat the same procedure a few steps further on.

  The peasants, who saw all that from afar, ended up taking their new neighbor for a sorcerer looking for treasure, all the more so when other extraordinary things were said about him.

  For instance, he had taken into his service a village girl who knew how to cook fairly well but, on the other hand, had very little understanding of order and forethought. Katt possessed a charming and lively face, which went very well with her blue eyes, blonde hair, youthful complexion and slight turned-up nose, as befits a pretty German country girl. However, she devoted a good deal of time to coquetry and as much to placing an embroidered velvet bonnet as pertly as possible on top of her head as to remembering her master’s orders. So, on several occasions she forgot to go shopping in town, and one evening, when the councilor wanted to take his habitual cup of tea, he found that there was no sugar in the house.

  Now, as I said, Katt was as coquettish as she was negligent, and if she forgot to make sure that nothing as lacking in her master’s house, she never forgot to buy ornamentations of every sorts with the good wages she received.

  Her master said to her: “Katt, since, in spite of my instructions, I’ve run out of sugar this evening, I’ll make some with your clothes.”

  Katt smiled at that threat, which seemed to her to be a joke. But the councilor abruptly tore away Kat’s apron, took off a very pretty colored headscarf she was wearing over her shoulders and her tulle bonnet—a bonnet bought the day before, if you please—threw the lot into an earthenware pot, poured over it the contents of a big bottle of oil of vitriol, which was used to clean the copper and brass, added some water, and put it on the fire.

  After which he had her fetch some chalk, which he mixed with that fantastic stew and let it boil for some time.

  When that singular preparation was cooked to perfection, he fashioned a filter out of paper, made use of it to strain the contents, allowed them to cool and said: “There’s some excellent sugar for this evening.”

  With that he went out, after having drunk a glass of the preparation, the rest of which he had carefully transported into the pantry, which he locked, taking away the key.

  Indeed, a few days later, the liquor had been transformed into crystallized sugar of dazzling whiteness.

  “You see, Katt, how I make sugar,” said the councilor, sugaring his tea with his apron sugar. Next time you forget something, your entire wardrobe will go the same way.”

  Needless to say, from then on, the councilor never ran out of sugar again, and Katt told everyone who cared to listen what a sorcerer she had for a master. When she was asked why she did not leave the service of the reprobate, she cited the fear that he inspired in her and her dread of being bewitched by him if she ever handed in her notice. The worthy girl did not add that her master also paid her excellent wages, and that with him, one could filch a little from the household budget with impunity.

  It is said that one eventually gets used to things that seem very awkward and strange at first. However, after eighteen months or two years of residence in the old castle, Fritz found himself the focal point of the curiosity of his neighbors, and even the townspeople of Heidelberg, more than ever.

  God alone knew how many more-or-less absurd rumors were put about on his account. If he had been seen astride a broomstick flying to the sabbat he could not have been more earnestly accused of acquaintance with the Devil and being his henchman.

  It must be admitted that the singular individual did nothing as other people did, and was quite content to surround himself with mysteries calculated to provoke curiosity. Thus, for example, one morning, he laid waste pitilessly to a market garden and an orchard in order to take away the soil, which was a fine clay. Workmen then enclosed that clay in large containers, carefully sealed, and sent off a hundred thousand kilograms, then two hundred thousand, then five hundred thousand, and then a million. But where was he sending it? That was the question. The councilor escorted each consignment personally to the nearest railway depot, and it was only in the depot that he wrote the destination on the cases in pencil.

  While these consignments were in progress the councilor, with the celerity for which he was well-known, had an entire village built two hundred meters from the castle, on a part of the soil where the famous clay was not found; nothing was lacking: neither a chapel, nor a school, nor a butcher’s shop, nor a bakery. One morning, a veritable army of miners arrived, speaking a German dialect that was difficult to understand even in Heidelberg. Come from God only knew where, they were immediately housed in the newly-constructed village, and, as they found lodging, meat, bread and all the necessities of life there at a good price, and their children received free education, and physicians paid by the councilor treated the sick, they naturally kept apart from the peasants of the neighborhood, of whom they had no need and whose language they could scarcely understand or speak.

  Besides which, those rude workers spent their days and nights digging immense ditches at the bottom of which they were soon spending twelve hours a day, to such good effect that the councilor as soon exporting even more coal than he had exported of the famous clay, and he had to construct a branch railway-line two or three kilometers long at his own expense, which linked the castle to the nearest depot.

  Now, a kilometer of railway line costs a million.

  His small army of workmen, his manner of doing things his own way, the famous story of Katt’s apron, recounted, repeated, commented upon, exaggerated, disfigured, and most of all the isolation in which the councilor enabled his workers to live, and lived himself, justified only too well the rumors of sorcery that were running around on his accoun
t.

  Thus, it was not without emotion that one day, Fraulein Notburga, who was alone in the house, saw the councilor come in, to whom she had not spoken since the day he had come to ask to lease the old castle.

  He bowed profoundly to the young woman, inquired as to the Baron’s health, and, while expressing his regret and not being able to say hello him, added that it was Fraulein Notburga that he had come to see.

  The latter blushed to the whites of her eyes, and offered the councilor an armchair. He sat down in it and took off his blue spectacles in order to wipe away the dust that the journey had deposited on them. Notburga had difficulty suppressing an exclamation of surprise, for the councilor’s face, deprived of the villainous lenses that hid his eyes, became truly charming. The councilor then seemed to be scarcely thirty years old, and his physiognomy possessed as much distinction as intelligence and mildness.

  “Fraulein,” he said, smiling at the expression of surprise that Notburga could not hide, “I have simply come to acquit myself of a debt. I owe you a fifth of the hidden treasures that I’ve been able to discover in the grounds of the old castle, and this is the total amount due, which I have the honor of bringing you.”

  Expressing himself thus, he deposited a small sandalwood box on Notburga’s work table, got to his feet, respectfully took his leave of the young woman, and returned to Heidenloch.

  A few moments later, he Baron came home and found his daughter supporting her chin in her hand, having not yet thought about opening the box.

  While she was telling him about the councilor’s visit, the Baron turned the key and found in the box a bond for forty thousand florins, payable on presentation at the richest bank in Heidelberg.

  “So that devil of a councilor really is a sorcerer, as they say!” exclaimed the Baron.

  “Perhaps,” replied a voice that caused the worthy man to turn pale.

  He turned round abruptly, and found himself face to face with the councilor.

  “Baron,” he said, laughing, “I’ve retraced my steps because it seems to me that a chatelaine ought to know her domain. Now, as Fraulein Notburga owns a fifth of my subterranean treasures, is it not her duty, and in her interest, to visit the places where they are found and the men who exploit them on her behalf?”