Doctor Lerne

by Maurice Renard

  Fortified by repeated draughts of cognac, I abandoned myself to the ecstasy of the moment. “What magnificence, Gambertin!”

  He laughed at me, presaging a tirade.

  “Yes, you can mock,” I told him. “It’s just that I, you see, have a fundamental love of Nature…”

  A noise in the branches behind us interrupted me. We leapt to our feet, but our dazzled eyes, full of stars, saw nothing in the woods but dense shadow. The crackling sounds drew away, then ceased.

  “Damn!” said Gambertin. Then, suddenly, he continued: “Keep a better grip on yourself, Dupont. What a child! I heard your teeth chattering. The cause of that racket was a pig, a vile deserter…”

  “You think that…”

  “But of course. What else could it be?”

  Yes, indeed—what else could it have been? Always that terrible question mark.

  And we resumed our watch.

  I would not have left off looking at the firmament for an empire. I sensed my nerves tightening to the point of hallucination, and I saw a silver night constellated with black dots. When dawn broke, I was shivering and covered in seat—just like Saurien.

  We mounted an investigation. The bushes, scarcely disturbed, did not yield up their secret.

  Gambertin was convinced that the crickets must have scented our presence. As we left, he wanted to modify his plans.

  The next night, we leaned on our elbows at a window in the second-floor corridor, from which we had a view of the park. Unfortunately, the moon rose over the horizon directly in front of us, rendering the catalpas invisible against the dark mass of the forest, so that we could only make out their summits, outlined in silhouette within the lunar halo. By a surfeit of misfortune, that was the time the mystery chose to manifest itself, without actually revealing itself.

  First of all we saw the top of a tree shake, and we understood that its base was being subjected to rough treatment. Then, into the most extreme branches—the illuminated ones—clambered some sort of large bird, and the leaves disappeared one by one. The tree surpassed the forest to such a small extent, however, that we were unable to see the creature in its entirety, the lower part being isolated from the light.

  Although it was negative, we possessed one element of the truth: there were no locusts.

  Gambertin was deep in thought, his brow furrowed.

  “All the same,” I said to him, “That noise yesterday, you know…the railway noise…”

  “Well, what about it?”

  “What if it were…a cry?”

  “A cry? I’ve heard all the voices in creation—no, it wasn’t a cry. However…” Abruptly, he said: “Let’s go to bed. I’m asleep on my feet.”

  He didn’t go to sleep, though. His footsteps resounded incessantly, and I was awake too, trying to construct some chains of reasoning. They all led to incoherence.

  At first light, I ran to the catalpas and subjected them to a serious examination. Two observations resulted therefrom.

  The bird—if that is what it was—was no longer leaving the ribs. Nothing remained of the foliage of its latest victim. The bark had been scraped away from the trunk half way up, to an extent of about a meter.

  Other than that, nothing remarkable.

  What could one infer? I sat down on the edge of the wood to reflect on that more easily, in the shade of a plane-tree. One of the lower leaves attracted my attention. With one bound, I plucked it. It was sticky—coated with saliva, one would have thought—and bore a trace which, cutting into it, left the imprint of a V with wavy arms.

  That imprint was not unfamiliar to me. My eyes searched for it. Where had they seen it before? Ah! Gambertin had drawn it on his wall. It was…but no! Impossible!

  I ran to the orangery and compared the imprint with Gambertin’s sketch. The similarity was flagrant. The tip of a beak identical to those of iguanodons had nibbled that leaf.

  Gambertin came in. Stammering, I told him what I had discovered.

  “That’s insane!” he cried. “A living iguanodon!”

  “But it’s not a matter of that,” I told him. “I thought of a bird, since we saw one…”

  “No bird has a beak built like that.”

  I had a silly idea then, and could not stop myself saying: “That beak has disappeared, but since birds are descendants of the iguanodon, were there not, in prehistoric eras, pterodactyls equipped with them?”

  “Never! The first inhabitants of the air possessed beaks armed with fangs from end to end. Were they exclusively carnivorous or omnivorous? I don’t know. In any case, their bite left teeth-marks; that I can affirm.”

  “Well, Gambertin, in that case, either I’m mad, or an iguanodon is taking a stroll in your woods by night.”

  “It’s inadmissible! Inadmissible!” repeated Gambertin. Nevertheless, sparks were gleaming in his eyes, and I divined that the enraged maniac ardently desired that which he was denying. “An animal as heavy as that would have left footprints,” he said.

  “The ground is as hard as if it were frozen.”

  “But how could a dinosaur have succeeded in surviving in good health into our era?”

  I remained mute.

  “You can see that it’s madness—madness!” He compared the sketch with the leaf. “And you say that the ribs are being eaten now? But why weren’t they always? And the bark bears the marks of claws? But why were the tufts of foliage left to begin with? And what about that drool…that ruminant drool? Dupont, I think that I’m going crazy too. With this accursed sun, that’s not impossible. It’s important to interrogate someone reasonable, in order to find out whether we’re both mad.”

  V.

  “Someone reasonable,” Gambertin had said.

  For four leagues around, there were no truly discerning men but schoolteachers and parish priests. The poor hamlet did not have a school, but a church had been set up there, in a sort of grange with a pigeon-loft for a bell-tower. Its previous incumbent had died recently and the new one was straight out of the seminary. Although he paid little heed to the world of the present, it happened that Gambertin knew him. “I don’t like ecclesiastics much,” he said. “Their ideas and mine have nothing in common—but this one’s young. Having no experience of life, he’s still sincere. Let’s go find the young pastor.”

  Abbé Ridel welcomed us with jovial deference and a frank gaze, without putting his hands in his sleeves.

  We chatted about his parishioners. “Excellent folk,” he said, “but haunted by diabolical terrors. It’s not God that attracts them but the Inferno that makes them recoil towards Heaven—it’s as simple that. Satan, they don’t see—no simulacrum represents him—so they perceive him everywhere; while God is the painted statue of the cross, not a representative image but an idol. God Himself is there and not elsewhere; He’s there, devoid of strength, devoid of danger for them…but oh, the unknown! With what power it’s endowed!”

  These words were in astonishing accordance with our own situation. Gambertin winked at me, and Abbé Ridel went up a notch in our estimation.

  “Don’t you want to resume your favorite studies in the peace of the countryside?” asked Gambertin, slyly. “To go deeper into the branch of science or literature whose study you preferred at the seminary?”

  “I hoped to devote myself to archaeology,” the priest replied, with a resigned smile, “but I have to devote myself entirely to my flock. I’m learning medicine. The doctor lives a long way away, and in the snows of winter it’s a difficult journey. Besides, doing archaeology in a region devoid of any monument…”

  “Yes, archaeology,” said my friend. “A fine enough thing…it’s the paleontology of houses…it begins where the other finishes.” He breathed in. “I’m a paleontologist, Monsieur le Curé.”

  “I know, Monsieur le Comte.”

  “A paleontologist…you might say that I’m not the stuff of which churchwardens are made…”

  “Why is that? I don’t see any incompatibility.”

  �
��Eh?” exclaimed Gambertin. “How do you expect me to believe in the creation of the world in seven days when I can put my finger on the proof that it was constituted slowly by accumulation over millennia? How can I admit the sudden appearance of a human couple emerging as adults in the midst of forests already old at birth and covered in ripe fruit as soon as fabricated, when all my endeavors demonstrate the irrespirability of the primordial atmosphere, that age transforms individuals and evolution metamorphoses species? Finally, why that long inaction of God since…the origin of eternity, if I may express myself thus? And your so-called universal Deluge, which, in reality, was localized around Mount Ararat. And Noah’s Ark, Monsieur le Curé, what about Noah’s Ark?”

  “Monsieur le Comte, in an era when no one believed that science was indispensable to happiness, Saint Augustine would have replied to you: ‘Miracles can only originate from God. Their existence demonstrates His, and their grandeur proves His omnipotence.’ But Saint Augustine is no longer sufficient for modern men, who are so much improved—are they not?—by education. Today, exegesis interprets the Bible to everyone’s satisfaction.”

  “Ah! Monsieur Médecin-Malgré-Lui—you’ve changed all that!”8

  “Entirely—but the Mosaic texts dealing with cosmogony were not revealed, only inspired. Thus, private interpretations are permitted, where the Church has made no pronouncement. Elohim, according to Genesis…”

  And the curé embarked upon a learned discussion that I cannot recall, my desire to reproduce it notwithstanding. Satanic memory! At any rate, I remember that it was lengthy and that Gambertin, in order not to interrupt it, invited Abbé Ridel to dinner at the château.

  For myself, in spite of the haunting quality of the mystery to which we were neighbors, I followed the debate with a certain emotion, in the hope that Science might ultimately justify the assertion of supernatural dogma by means of tangible evidence. I was always of the opinion of the man who was speaking, though, and, as a result, my indecision increased as the arguments in both directions piled up.

  To sum up, the antagonists were very nearly in agreement on the majority of points, but, in retracing the history of the world and having arrived at the problem of determining where the first cells came from, Gambertin declared: “Up to this point, everything is explicable by Science, which will clarify this phenomenon like the others when it has sufficiently powerful means at its disposal.” To which the curé, after having argued against the theory of spontaneous generation, replied: “Why wait for the uncertain future when the productive Will of God satisfies our anxieties so simply?”

  They appeared to me to be turning, each in an opposite direction, in a vicious circle, all the more stubbornly because they had an auditor.

  One of the curé’s reproaches was, however, well-founded. Observing the library, he pointed out to Gambertin the overly partial choice of his books. “There are biologists and philosophers,” he said, “Spencer, Haeckel, Darwin, Diderot, even Voltaire, and Lucretius—the Darwinism of antiquity—but to defend us I only see one Bible, without commentary, and one saint’s history for children. What have you done with Quatrefages,9 with…”

  Gambertin interrupted him very impolitely and replied—inappropriately, in my opinion—that he did not care for books written in Chinese either, because he did not understand that language.

  The dispute had excited him. Judging that his irritation might lead him to regrettable vehemence, I pointed out the opaque clouds that were encumbering the long-deserted sky. The curé wanted to get back to the village before the rain started.

  “Well,” said Gambertin, after his departure, “he didn’t seem to take us for madmen.”

  “We’ll soon know how we stand up there,” I retorted. “Look!”

  The rain began to fall in torrents. It didn’t stop until the following day.

  On seeing the foliage less dusty and the fields cheered up, Thomas and his wife filled the château with their loud joy. I assume that the entire population was in concert with them, thus celebrating the fecundating rain. For us, it was a revelatory rain, which blessed us more than anyone.

  Without giving the appearance of heading for it, in order not to attract undue attention on Thomas’s part, we went to the grove of catalpas like idle strollers. The mud had not been disturbed, and the hypothesis of a bird regained its preponderance. As we were wandering in the vicinity, however, the appearance of a plane-tree attracted our attention. It had suffered the same fate as the catalpas. Its branches were denuded to the same height and the trunk exhibited the characteristic scratches. At the foot of the tree, the damp and trampled soil showed us the footprint of a gigantic bird. That did not absolutely set aside the presumption in favor of a bird larger than usual, and I thought with terror of Sinbad the Sailor’s roc—but I had the idea of following the trail.

  In places the track was blurred, as if, after the animal’s passage, a heavy sack had been drawn across it.

  “Might that be the trace of the tail?” asked Gambertin. “It isn’t very deep. Iguanodons don’t walk in the manner of kangaroos, then, obtaining a point of support from their caudal appendage. What a headache!”

  Chance came to our aid. Felled by the wind, a poplar was lying at an angle, interrupted in its fall by an oak, thus forming an oblique doorway. The animal had passed under it; and there, twice only, the traces of flat hands, imprinted amid the others, revealed a very long and slender thumb. As it bent down, the beast had momentarily walked on all fours.

  We were then left in no doubt. It was not a bird, any more than it was crickets; the nocturnal visitor was well and truly an iguanodon.

  Not a word was pronounced, but that certainty, anticipated as it was, put an abrupt stop to our pursuit. Frightened by the adventure, I let myself slump into a sitting position in the mud.

  “None of that, Dupont,” said Gambertin. “It’s a matter of following these tracks to the saurian’s lair.”

  Anger reanimated me. “What are you saying? You want to confront this alligator with sabers for thumbs? It’s obvious that these prints are heading toward the mountain—straight toward the cavern, even! It’s come out of the cavern, understand? Now let’s go back, and swiftly! I don’t care for a meeting…to make one tremble.”

  Gambertin, amazed by my anger, let himself be led away with no further resistance.

  Horrific as it all was, I felt somewhat reassured by having the mystery clarified. When we were smoking in the library, Gambertin exclaimed: “Thank you, Dupont—you’ve prevented me from committing an imprudence. But this is the greatest day of my life! How many doubts it will dissipate!” Changing the subject, he went on: “One thing surprises me, though. The other night, we saw a bird, with its wings beating at intervals…”

  “Remember that the form was adjacent to the shadow of the woods,” I said. “We must have taken the head of the iguanodon, moving its ears, for a bird…”

  “Ears on a dinosaur! That’s a good one! They must have been shaking leaves, for it’s definitely the head that we made out. You’re right. As for the intact bouquets…I confess that I don’t understand that.”

  An idea occurred to me. “Tell me, Gambertin—this beast isn’t large, for its species?”

  “No. According to the tracks, it must be about the same height as the skeleton in the orangery.”

  “Our neighbor, therefore,” I went on, “must be young?”

  “Yes, indeed…of course…”

  “That justifies the tufts, it seems to me. Its growth would have permitted it to graze higher and higher. When it didn’t eat everything, it was because it was still too small for its beak to reach the tops of the trees…”

  “It’s a solution—but it squarely contradicts one hypothesis I’d formed.”

  “What?”

  “I thought about the toads that are said to be found alive inside stones. The saurians being close relatives of batrachians, and those reptiles enjoying an exceptional longevity, I concluded that our iguanodon could have bee
n enclosed in a rock, which the earthquake might have split. Except that it would have emerged therefrom as a mature adult, and therefore enormous—unless the narrowness of its prison had inhibited its development, or the lack of nutriment and the rarefaction on the air had atrophied it…” He reflected briefly, then continued. “No, it’s not that,” he said. “What’s possible over years can’t be possible over centuries, even more so for durations of hundreds of thousands of years. Life has recognized limits, considerable as they are in certain cases. As soon as they’re born, living creatures begin to die…”

  “So?”

  “So, I’m at a loss. These animals were, after all, so different from those of the present day!”

  “Didn’t you tell me,” I said, suddenly, “that antediluvian animals and plants had more-or-less accentuated affinities between them, in proportion to the time that separated them from their common origin?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the Secondary epoch, these affinities…”

  “Would have been even more appreciable.”

  “Well, wait here for me a second. I have a vague notion that I’m on to something. I don’t know what, exactly, but I’m on to something…”

  I went out in a hurry. In less time than it takes to recount it, I came back, waving the sample copy of La Poularde like a flag of victory. “Read that!” I cried, pointing to the article on the “Egyptian Incubator.”

  Gambertin read it carefully. “Tee hee!” he said, when he had finished. “I can, indeed, see the light—but let’s reason it out. And calmly!” He adjusted his pince-nez. “Basing himself, on the one hand, on the story of grains of Egyptian wheat that have germinated, it is claimed, after a long inertia,10 and on the other hand, on the distant similitude of vegetal seeds and animal eggs, some gentleman has constructed an incubator which allows a chicken’s eggs to remain therein for three months without commencing germination.

  “Let’s examine the means employed. The grains of wheat found in the pyramid had remained for 4000 years, or very nearly, firstly, without light; secondly, in perpetual contact with a large mass of air; thirdly, subject to a constant temperature inferior to the external temperature; fourthly, in dry air protected by thick walls from the dampness of the annual Nile floods. The incubator has only to follow the example of the pyramid. In effect: firstly, it is dark; secondly, the air must be renewed, for an egg that does not breathe for 15 hours becomes defunct; thirdly, thermometers and heaters are set up therein to maintain a temperature of 30 degrees, inferior to that of incubation—which is to say, neither low enough nor high enough to kill the germ-cell, but nevertheless not high enough to allow it to develop; fourthly, basins filled with caustic potash are supplied in order to absorb atmospheric humidity.