Stierna was able to invent ingenious pretexts to be leaning on her windowsill when one of these sweet moments of the day, so keenly anticipated, drew near. From some way off she watched Bertel approaching, only walking slowly in order to allow is eyes to linger on the young woman for longer. When he arrived before her, they exchanged a long, tender gaze; then, hearts beating, one of them continued his route while the other, smiling and excited, pretended to work fervently at some dressmaking project, while actually following the sound of footsteps drawing away with her ears.
For six months, the life of the lovers was entirely encapsulated in these two daily rendezvous and in the visits that Bertel made about once a fortnight. They liked their rapid but free encounters at the window much better than the solemn visits, during which it was necessary carefully to lock their love away in the depths of their hearts, in order that the secret of their souls did not fall into the power of a bourgeois and meddlesome curiosity. Sierna therefore counted down with the charming anguish of expectation to the moment when Bertel would bring her happiness all day long. Bertel forgot the fatigue and annoyances of his laborious profession beneath the consoling and tender gaze that he received in passing beneath the balcony.
Monsieur Magnussen’s widow had died in the autumn. At the end of summer, Stierna felt herself becoming vaguely anxious and sad, for several times, Bertel, in going to the university, had arrived several minutes late, and had passed under his fiancée’s window almost at a run, in order not to arrive after the beginning of classes that was being signaled by the last strokes of the bell. Another day, she felt her eyes fill with tears on remarking the preoccupation of the young man, who only remembered to look up at her window after leaving it five or six paces behind him.
These evidences of distraction and lack of enthusiasm were repeated several times. The guilty party seemed only to be carrying out a duty or following a habit in coming to receive the tender greeting of his fiancée. Stierna struggled for a long time against her own conviction before accepting that painful thought, but in the end, she could not mistake the fatal reality, for Bertel passed by without raising his head on two consecutive days.
While she sought despairingly to explain the cause of this deadly change, a few friends of the aged relative came to dinner in the old lady’s home at Christmas. The majority of the guests were at the University.
In the evening, when they had left the table to surround the fireplace, the conversation turned to an Extraordinary Professor’s chair that had become vacant. They talked about the competitors who had applied for it, but no one mentioned Bertel’s name. Now, if he had acquired that position, the young man’s honoraria would have been doubled, and nothing would any longer have opposed their marriage.
“I thought that Dr. Bertel Granh had more right than any other to apply for that chair?” objected the blushing Stierna, who could not master her emotions, and could not bear the crushing weight of doubt any longer.
“You’re quite right, my pretty maid,” replied one of the old professors, “but since Dr. Granh has come into a considerable inheritance, he is not longer concerned to occupy a chair that would necessitate new and laborious studies. He is even disposed to enjoy his fortune more freely, for he came to ask for an unlimited leave of absence yesterday, while I was with the rector. It’s my nephew Christian who will take over Dr. Granh’s chair in medicine in the interim.”
“Doctor Granh has only received news of this inheritance in the last few days, then?” asked Stierna, who could not yet believe in such ingratitude and treason.
“All of Copenhagen has been talking about it for four months. It’s not at all astonishing that you don’t know anything about the news. You live in such a profound and reclusive solitude.”
Pale, beside herself and bewildered, the young woman hurtled out of the apartment and ran, mad with despair, to the house where she had once spent so many happy moments, and where Bertel now lived alone.
She knocked, but no one opened the door. She called out, but no one replied.
In the end, a neighbor put her head out of a widow and shouted: “There’s no longer anyone in the house. Dr. Bertel Granh left a little while ago by mail coach, for a long journey.”
Sierna collapsed in a faint.
The old man interrupted himself, but did not notice that he had stopped speaking. His gaze wandered vaguely through empty space, and seemed to be pursuing memories full of bitterness and despair. Sweat was streaming down his forehead, laden with profound wrinkles; his green-tinted pupils burned with the sinister flame that the accursed angel emanates. Several minutes went by. Suddenly, he woke with a start from that sleepless dream, and looked around in astonishment, as if he were surprised to find himself in Spa, beside a stranger. He needed some further time to get his ideas in order and reconnect the present with the past that had earlier come to live before him. A smile, full of sarcasm for the weakness of the human organism and for himself, creased his lips, while an impulse of shame and anger made him shrug his shoulders.
“Do you know Stockholm?” he asked the Frenchman, abruptly, with the evident intention of extracting himself, by means of a violent effort, from the dolorous thoughts that were assailing him.
“No,” replied the man to whom the question was addressed.
If I were a poet, like you, I could make a brilliant description of the Capital of Sweden. I’m not a poet, and I shall only tell you that there is, on a hill in Stockholm, a quarter inhabited by the city’s poorest inhabitants, named Mosebacke. Steep, muddy, narrow, plunging paths, sometimes mere wooden stairways—such are the roads of Mosebacke. I leave you to imagine the houses. In particular, there was one there more wretched and hideous than the rest, but in exchange, it had the advantage of standing in the most isolated spot, and the only inhabitants it sheltered were workmen who go out at daybreak and return after nightfall. At the summit of the hovel, like black eyes, were two round windows. They served to provide air and light—my God! what air and what light!—to two miserable lofts. No one in the quarter knew who lived there, and no one wanted to know.
An old woman, a kind of cretin, half-sorceress and half-idiot, was the only living creature who had any relations with the tenants of the mansards. Every morning, she deposited food at the thresholds of their doors and received a coin in exchange.
One evening, a terrible explosion burst forth in one of the lofts, and a huge flame escaped through the window, in a manner that threw the entire Mosebacke quarter into alarm. People came running, broke down the door, and found a young man lying motionless in the midst of strangely formed instruments, some of which had been smashed by the explosion.
The occupant of the next room had not been disturbed by the frightful shock that had nearly caused the old house to collapse. Partly out of anxiety for him, and partly to seek help for the dying man, the rescuers knocked on his door; he did not open it and they called out without obtaining any response. Common people do not usually exhibit great patience, so they had begun to break the door down with an axe when it finally turned on its hinges and revealed a face in which nothing human remained. Terrible scars streaked it in every direction, scarcely leaving anything intact but the eyes and mouth.
This being—for no one dared give him the name of man—went into the room where his neighbor as lying, and at the sight of him uttered a cry that resembled the sinister call of a hyena. He went to the dying man, revived him, bathed his face with fresh water and leaned over him to make certain of his awakening.
When the other, having emerged from unconsciousness, got to his feet and suddenly found himself face to face with the individual who had brought him back to life, he turned his head away, put his hands together and cried: “My God, have pity on me! Do not bring your just anger down on me! Do not deliver me to the eternity of Hell!”
“You’re still alive, Bertel Granh,” said the hideous unknown. “It’s not face to face with Satan that you find yourself, but face to face with Ole Matthiesen. Pull yourse
lf together! In exchange for a frivolous amour, you have given me genius—and soon, I hope, a glory without rival. I forgive you everything, including the hideous scars inflicted by the pistol-shot that I fired at my head to keep the promise I had sworn to you. Someone lifted me up, dying, as I lifted you up just now, and saved my life as I am saving yours, and since then, a sublime obsession has preoccupied me and cause me to renounce, joyfully, all the ridiculous passions of human beings. I shall be the benefactor of the entire universe. Statues of me will be erected; the face of the world will be renewed, and it is Ole Matthiesen who will work the miracle. The work is complete! The light will not be long delayed in shining.”
All this was said rapidly in Latin. Ole then turned toward the people the explosion had attracted.
“We thank you, Masters,” he said to them in Swedish. Your care is not longer necessary. I have rediscovered one of my old friends in the man you have come to rescue, and if he needs help, he will obtain the most active and prompt assistance from me. As you see, though, he is standing up, recovered from the shock caused by the explosion that alarmed you.”
Everyone withdrew. Ole and Bertel remained alone. Ole silently paraded his gaze over the broken objects that lay in the loft. They were apparatus used in chemistry and instruments used in physics. The explosion had been caused by a flask of hydrogen gas that had suddenly ignited.
Matthiessen remained plunged in a mute and bleak reverie for some time. Finally, he broke the silence.
“Listen to me, Bertel!” he said. “Because of you I attempted suicide. If you’re still alive, it is me to whom you owe your life!”
“Yes, Ole—and I ask your forgiveness on my knees. I would like to be able to prove my gratitude, even at the price of my own existence.”
“Well, you can.”
“How?”
“By making once again the pact that we made before in Copenhagen.”
“Stierna is free, Ole,” Bertel interjected, with a sight. “You can marry her.”
“Stierna!” said Mathiessen, violently. “Stierna! Is it really a matter of a woman? Tell me why, Bertel Granh, you have trampled underfoot that insensate passion that drove you to stake your life against that of a friend? You say nothing? I know why! It’s for love of science and thirst for glory.”
“Yes, I admit it.”
“An idea—a great idea—is preoccupying you.”
“Yes! Like the one you mentioned to me just now, it will regenerate the universe and make the name of the man who realizes it eternal.”
“Do you know, Bertel, the thought that has occurred to me in the presence of all this debris of scientific instruments? It’s that we’re pursuing the same idea. A secret and accursed voice is murmuring in my ear that, once having been rivals in love, we are now rivals in glory. If that’s the case, Bertel, one of us has to die!”
“You’re right,” Bertel replied, unhesitatingly. “Listen to me. Haven’t you groaned sometimes, on thinking about the long nights that desolate Denmark? Haven’t you thought that the man who could create a second sun with take a place second only to God in the admiration and gratitude of men?”
“That’s your idea?” jeered Matthiesen, shrugging his shoulders. “I feel reassured—it’s ridiculous and impossible, that’s all.”
“Impossible!” cried Bertel, picking up two jars that the explosion had spared. “One of these two vessels, each of which terminates in a narrow tube, contains oxygen, the other hydrogen. The two flames, combining in combustion, only give a bluish light, but let me bring in a refractory body—this piece of chalk, for instance—and watch!”
Immediately, a resplendent light sprang forth, at which the eye could not look directly, even furtively. Dazzled, Ole turned his head away. Bertel was exultant.
“You see, my second sun already appears to you to be more than a hollow dream! But this is only a rough and imperfect work. The light does not reproduce itself; the gases are exhausted ; the refractory body loses its properties. It requires a man versed in science to watch over the apparatus incessantly, to prevent an explosion. I shall create a sun that will be, in approximate proportion, as bright and as durable as God’s sun. Listen closely, Ole.
“The solar fluid behaves like the electrical fluid. It produces the phenomena of light and heat when it strikes objects and finds any obstacle whatsoever in its rapid movement. Thus, the sun is an opaque body which surrounds an atmosphere of luminous electricity.
“Starting from this principle, I have discovered that bodies become phosphorescent by virtue of the effect of heat and electrical discharges. I recognized, too, that bodies non-conductive of electrical fluid retain that phosphorescence longer than others.
“Given that—mark me well, Ole! This time, follow my operation with all the attention of which you are capable, for a prodigy will become manifest. I place a morsel of carbon, a refractory body, in the middle of this glass globe. I attach to that carbon two platinum wires, which are connected to the poles of a dry Voltaic pile.
“Take note: these metal wires are secured to the mysterious columns of the pile—columns enclosed in a cylinder of sulphur and made up of alternate leaves of zinc, silver and paper.
“I obtain a vacuum in the globe with the aid of a pneumatic pump. On your knees, Ole—here is a sun!”10
Ole could not suppress a cry of admiration. It was a sun, a true sun.
“You see,” Bertel continued, “that I am approaching the completion of my work. It’s no more than a matter of applying my sublime discovery on a vast scale. This is the means of ensuring that execution.
“I shall construct, in sheets of copper, a balloon 500feet in diameter. The balloon will be filled with hydrogen gas, purified with extreme care, and purged, as far as possible, of all foreign bodies.
“Beneath the balloon I shall attach an apparatus similar—in with gigantic proportions—to the one you see, in which a small sun with shine. A veritable sun, moreover, like the Sun in the sky, since it is similarly composed of an opaque body and an envelope of luminous electricity.
“The Voltaic piles will be alimented easily; the Earth is nothing but a vast reservoir of electricity. Do not two eternal magnetic currents pass from one pole to the other? And has not our great Oersted demonstrated that magnetism is nothing other than electricity in one of its transformations?11
“My balloon has nothing to fear from external agents, since it is constructed of solid metal, rendered unalterable and indestructible by a chemical preparation that is easy to compose. I shall coat it with this preparation, which will protect it against the slightest oxidation.
“The hydrogen will not be able to escape from the interior, because the envelope that keeps it prisoner remains impenetrable from the inside as from the outside, even for the most subtle gas.
“Finally, a metal cable, which will also serve as a conductor to the galvanic piles, will suffice to hold my apparatus anchored in the atmosphere.
“You see, Ole, these theories are certain. I have created a sun! Soon, there will be no more nights for Denmark. Liberated henceforth from obscurity, Denmark will have almost nothing to fear from the rigors of winter. What do you say, Ole?”
“I say that your invention seems beautiful, great and useful to me, and that it will astonish Europe—but that it’s nothing compared with mine.”
“What’s yours, then?” Bertel demanded, feeling jealousy bite into his heart as he saw the serenity with which Ole had listened to him.
“It will distress you, for my discovery will render yours almost useless.”
“Speak.”
“I’ve found a means of living without eating.”
“Without eating?”
“Yes, I’ve discovered that nourishment is a prejudice.”
“And with what are you going to replace alimentation?”
“With nothing. For a long time I’ve been meditating on this problem. Finally, I tried not to eat, that’s all—and I succeeded. As the Greek philosopher did to prove mo
vement, I walk. For 12 days already nothing has approached my lips. I feel a little corporeal weakness, it’s true, but in compensation, my intelligence has never been more brilliant and richer! Freed from physical shackles, the soul acts in all its powerful liberty.”
“But your idea is extravagant, Ole! You’ll die of starvation.”
“I haven’t eaten for 12 days, and I’m doing admirably.”
“It’s an insane idea.”
“No more insane than your sun.”
“But my sun exists, and I’ve given you proof of it.”
“And have I give you none? I, who am speaking, thinking, reasoning and acting, liberated from the inconvenience of nourishment for 12 days? Farewell, Bertel.”
“No,” cried the latter. “No, I won’t let you complete an insane suicide, Ole. I won’t leave you until I’ve made sure that you’re taking some nourishment.”
Ole took out a dagger. “Do you recognize this weapon?” he asked, with a sinister smile. I held it in my hand the night when you came to find me in my room on Madame Magnusson’s house. You want to destroy my glory now, as you wanted to destroy my life then. If you take a step, I’ll strike you. I’ll kill you.”
As he said this, the unfortunate madman left Bertel, went back into his loft, locked himself in and barricaded his door from the inside, with the aid of some enormous wooden beams.
For two days Bertel heard the noise of Ole’s voice and footsteps through the wall that separated them. When that time had elapsed, he heard nothing more. Full of alarm, he had warned a magistrate of his anxieties. The door was broken down and Ole Matthiesen was found dead on his paltry bed. A manuscript was lying at his feet, entitled: On the Prejudice of Nourishment.
When Bertel went back to his cell, he fell on to the pallet that served him as a bed, devoid of strength. A frightful doubt had gripped his heart, his thought, his entire being.
In the presence of Ole’s insane conviction, and the obstinate perseverance with which the unfortunate had believed in his absurd theory until his final death-throes, Bertel wondered whether he too might not be pursuing a lie, a demented Utopia. That doubt—and what torture is more rightful than doubt, Monsieur?—squeezed him in its execrable claws, choked him and ended up disturbing his reason.
The World Above The World Page 6
