“What are you muttering between your teeth?” asked the Comte, turning round.
“I’m saying that your resignation isn’t the only thing I need. I’ll also need 50,000 francs.”
“This evening, again, I’ll write to my lawyer to tell him to send me the money.” Then he whispered in his friend’s ear: “You do well not to be too demanding, for that’s almost all that remains of my fortune.”
“Gontran,” said Selena, “I don’t want….”
“It’s for your father’s sake, Mademoiselle Ossipoff,” Fricoulet replied.
The young woman blushed, and murmured: “I don’t want Monsieur de Flammermont to ruin himself, though.”
“Ah!” cried the young man, hotly. “Have I not millions to sacrifice for you?”
“In that case,” said Fricoulet, coolly. “Mikhail Ossipoff shall be saved. Tomorrow, we’ll take the train to Paris, and there we’ll make all our preparations for the prisoner’s escape.”
Gontran nodded towards Selena. “I can’t leave her alone here,” he said.
Fricoulet frowned. “Oh, women!” he groaned. Then, after a momentary pause: “Well then, stay in St. Petersburg until everything’s ready, when I’ll summon you to join me.”
“But explain—what do you intend to do? Tell us what your plan is.”
“My plan is quite simple. I said just now that the only practicable way to free Mikhail Ossipoff is by air, and that’s the truth…but as balloons aren’t dirigible, it’s a matter of constructing a high-speed apparatus capable of flying through the air at will.”
“But you mocked me just now when I pronounced the word balloon.”
“Indeed…in order for me to be master of my means of locomotion, it will have to be heavier than air.”
Gontran opened his astonished eyes wide; his more-than-insufficient scientific knowledge overwhelmed by this declaration.
“You don’t seem very convinced,” observed Fricoulet, sarcastically.
The young Comte smiled, for Selena’s benefit, and replied: “In the absence of the worthy Monsieur Ossipoff, I can admit to you that I’m a mere savage in matters of science, and that I don’t understand…”
“Bah! You don’t need to understand…do you trust me?”
“Blindly.”
“Well then, don’t ask me for explanations that, apart from possibly bringing a little enlightenment to your mind, will only delay us…” He looked at the clock and got up abruptly. “Don’t forget that I arrived here yesterday evening after 35 hours of traveling, and that I must catch the earliest possible train tomorrow morning.” He suddenly slapped his forehead and looked at Gontran and Selena alternately, with a startled expression.
“What is it?” they asked, simultaneously, gripped by the same presentiment that some impossibility had just sprung to the young engineer’s mind.
“It’s…it’s…that everything we’ve just said is all very well, but…”
“But?” repeated the others, anxiously.
Alcide Fricoulet burst out laughing, folded his arms, and said “What about my mine at Nertchinsk?”
Gontran looked at Selena, pale with desolation. “That’s true,” he murmured. “I’d forgotten that you were merely passing through St. Petersburg and that a brilliant position was waiting for you there.”
Mademoiselle Ossipoff covered her face with her hands to hide the tears running down her cheeks. In spite of the scant sympathy that the weaker sex inspired in him, the young engineer was moved by the sight of that poignant distress. He looked at Mademoiselle Ossipoff gravely and it was evident from his profound gaze and his anxiously-pursed lips that a fierce combat was raging within him.
“To the Devil with them!” he said, suddenly. “Let me mines at Nerchinsk be exploited by whomsoever might wish. Things will remain as we just left them. I leave for Paris tomorrow.”
Selena raised her head again and a radiant smile lit up her pale and tearful face.
Gontran threw himself on his friend’s hands and shook them repeatedly. “Alcide, Alcide! How shall we ever be able to thank you?”
The engineer shrugged his shoulders. “Quite simply,” he said. “Promise me that if, as I firmly hope, I succeed in contriving Monsieur Ossipoff’s escape…promise me in his name to make me part of the great celestial excursion he has in mind.”
Selena clapped her hands and cried: “Oh, I’ll gladly do that.”
“In that case,” Fricoulet relied, “far from owing me anything, Mademoiselle, it’s me who’ll be in your debt…for pleasure trips to the Moon aren’t organized every day, and I shan’t be displeased to go and see with my own eyes the extent to which the Selenites have made progress in technology.”
Two months after this conversation, Serena said to Monsieur de Flammermont; “What do you think has become of Monsieur Fricoulet, my dear friend?”
“Well,” said the young Comte, rather embarrassed by the question, “I really don’t know what to think, I confess…my letters go unanswered, and the telegram I sent him a week ago has met the same fate as my letters.”
“Well, do you want to know what I think?” the young woman continued, in a strange tone. “Your friend Fricoulet, who, in the grip of I don’t know what sentiment, made us so many fine promises here, has simply had second thoughts and has gone to Nerchinsk.”
Monsieur de Flammermont started. “What are you saying, Mademoiselle?” he exclaimed.
“What must be the truth,” she said, bitterly. “Monsieur Fricoulet has probably realized that it was stupid to sacrifice his interests for an old man he does not even know…and that’s all there is to it!”
“But that’s impossible! A fortnight after Alcide’s departure, I received word from my lawyer that he had given him the 50,000 francs in person.”
Selena shook her head. “Perhaps,” she said, pensively, “he employed that money in unsuccessful attempts and, not daring to tell you, for the sake of self-respect or some other reason…he’s playing dead.”
“I know Fricoulet,” cried the young Comte. “He’s a stout fellow, and honest…I’d swear to that…let’s wait a little longer.”
Mademoiselle Ossipoff remained silent for a moment, then, in a slightly bitter voice, said: “Wait…always wait…and in the meantime, out there in those hellish mines, in company with bandits, my poor father is eking out his miserable life, accusing me—his daughter—of doing nothing to save him.”
“But what could you do?” asked Gontran.
“Attempt to join him—and, if I can’t help him to escape, at least share his fate.”
“But you’re not thinking of doing that!”
“I’m thinking of it so seriously, Monsieur de Flammermont, that everything is ready for my departure.”
The young man could not believe his ears.
“You’re going!” he said. “You’re leaving! But you know perfectly well that it’s forbidden for the families of deportees to go to Siberia.”
“I know that—but I’ve taken my precautions to deflect suspicion and avoid police surveillance.”
As he looked at her in astonishment, she went to a cupboard, opened it, and took out the complete costume of a Lithuanian peasant, which she laid out on a chair.
“You see,” she said. “With these clothes, I’ll be able to travel, and no one will know that it’s Mademoiselle Ossipoff, that daughter of one of the members of the St. Petersburg Institute, thus clad, going to join her father in Siberia.”
“But you won’t be able to get across the frontier.”
She picked up a map, which she opened. “Look,” she said. “See how exact my plan is. From here, I take the railway as far as Urenburg. There I abandon my Russian peasant’s costume and buy gypsy clothing in a bazaar, by courtesy of which I slip through with one of the nomadic bands who go into Siberia every spring in order to earn a living there by going to village to village giving theatrical performances.”
“But that’s crazy!” cried Gontran. “You can’t do that!”
“Crazy or not, Monsieur de Flammermont,” the young woman said, in a firm voice, “I’ve decided to put the plan I’ve just briefly described to you into action, point by point.”
The young Comte was speechless. He sensed, given Mademoiselle Ossipoff’s resolute tone, than any contradiction would be futile. “And when are you leaving?” he asked, in a tremulous voice.
“Tomorrow.”
“So soon!” he cried, taking her by the hands.
“I’ve already delayed too long. Think about the man who’s suffering all alone…out there.”
“Permit me to accompany you as far as Urenburg,” he begged.
“I don’t even want you to come to St. Petersburg Station; the least imprudence might attract the attention of the police.”
Gontran made a despairing gesture. “So my dream is ended!” he stammered.
“No,” she said, forcefully. “Don’t despair, any more than I despair. We shall see one another again, I swear…there is something that tells me so.”
She had pronounced these words with such a profound conviction that Gontran felt a flicker of hope reignite in his heart—and when he took his leave of Mademoiselle Ossipoff he too was persuaded that the old man might escape his guards.
The next day, however, despite Selena’s prohibition, he could not resist the desire to see her one last time; he borrowed Vassily’s clothes and went to the railway station some time before the departure of the train. Hidden in a corner, concealed behind a pillar, he saw Mademoiselle Ossipoff arrive, more charming than ever in her peasant’s costume. As if her heart had warned her that he was there, the young woman paraded an indifferent gaze all around her, and finally perceived the man who was devouring her with his eyes. She signaled to him that she had seen him, and then, presenting her ticket, mingled with the other travelers who were crowding the platform.
He followed her, saw her climb into a third class carriage, at the door of which she stayed, leaning out in order that he could see her until the last moment. Finally, the engine released a strident whistle-blast, and the train moved off. Selena put her fingers to her lips then, and blew a kiss in the direction in which de Flammermont was standing, motionless. Then, moved by the desolation in which she had left him, she took her seat and wept silently.
Nothing any longer retained Gontran in St. Petersburg, his resignation having been accepted. Scarcely eight hours after Selena had left the city, he had buckled up his suitcase and was about to set off for Paris, when, on the very even of his departure, he received a telegram which read: Everything ready. Come. Fricoulet.
Flammermont uttered a cry of surprise. “Good lad!” he said. “I knew as soon as he promised that he would do the impossible to keep his word.” But his radiant face suddenly darkened and his joy turned to depression as he thought of Selena, who had not had the patience to wait and would now leave Urenburg to launch herself into the Siberian wilderness, exposed to 1000 dangers. “Provided that she gets as far as Ekaterinburg,” he murmured, “Fricoulet will be able to rescue two instead of one.”
Two and a half day later, he disembarked in Paris and had himself taken to the Boulevard Montparnasse, where Alcide had lodgings beneath the very roof of a tall house.
The young scientist’s apartments were nothing less than sumptuous. They consisted, in total, of two vast mansard rooms, from the windows of which one could see the whole of north Paris extended in a vast panorama.
One of the two rooms was a library that also served as a study, an observatory, a smoking-room and, if necessary, a drawing-room. The other served as a laboratory and bedroom, as was indicated by a little iron cot with a mattress as thin as a pancake and a blanket as thin as an onion-skin, extending from a recess in the wall. On a tiled hearth with a movable glass chimney-hood stood earthenware stoves, vessels in sandstone and glass, and a huge alembic with a cooling coil. Sets of shelves garnishing the wall were overloaded with bottles of chemical compounds, test tubes, flat-bottomed flasks and long-necked flasks. The large table in front of the window supported a chemical balance, an assay-balance in a glass case, a powerful microscope with freshly-made slides and test-tubes for the study of the “infinitely small.”
In the other room—the library—there were immense glass-fronted cases instead of stoves; some contained numerous dissimilar volumes whose worn spines testified to continual use, others enclosed physics apparatus: electric machines of every sort, pneumatic pumps, voltaic batteries, photographic apparatus, lenses, telescopes, etc. The only furniture in this room was a threadbare settee, a few chairs and a side-table—no mirrors, let alone paintings, and no curtains on the windows. Master Fricoulet, without being a cenobite, was absolutely disdainful of all these useless objects; his books and apparatus were sufficient to all his needs, along with a collection of pipes, more-or-less cleaned out, suspended from the wall.
“You!” he cried, leaping toward his friend.
“Aren’t you expecting me?” asked Gontran, a trifle astonished.
“Certainly, but…not for a few days.” And he added, with an ironic smile: “I didn’t suppose you’d be able to tear yourself away so quickly.”
The young Comte’s face suddenly changed expression. “Alas,” he said, “Selena left last week.” In a few heart-rending sentences, he brought Fricoulet up to date.
“Oh, women!” cried the young engineer. “They’re all the same! The best of them, you know, isn’t worth that.” And he clicked his thumbnail disdainfully against his teeth. Then, abruptly he added: “You’re not too tired to come with me?”
“Where to?”
“A place near Nogent-sur-Marne.”
“To do what?”
“To see the body of my apparatus.”
“Let’s go.”
An hour later, the two friends got down from a tram in front of the Fort de Vincennes and set off into the shady by-ways of the woods. Having gone through Fontenay, Fricoulet took a little-used side-street and stopped in front of a door furnished with a sturdy lock, into which he introduced a key he had taken from his pocket. The door opened and the two men went into in a vast uncultivated field nearly 800 square meters, at the back of which was a hangar.
“I don’t see your famous apparatus!” said Gontran. “Where is it?”
“In that hangar over there. It’s not assembled, because the engine isn’t finished, and besides, there’s not enough room…to carry four people, I needed to make my bird quite large.”
“Your bird!” exclaimed the young Comte.
Fricoulet smiled. “When you’ve seen it, you’ll understand why I call it that.” So saying, he opened the hangar door, and Gontran then saw a dozen bizarrely-constructed and carefully-polished metallic sections laid out on the ground. There were also rolled-up pieces of silk and fabrics of every sort. Along the walls, on special mountings, were all kinds of tools and equipment used by carpenters and mechanics.
Gontran seemed disappointed. “That’s all that there is to your…bird?” he murmured.
“What! All that there is! Do you think I’ve been wasting my time?”
Gontran pointed to the pieces of silk. “Are you making a balloon?”
“Not at all…it’s an aeroplane.” Reading an entirely natural question in his friend’s eyes, he added: “You know what a kite is, and you understand why it rises into the air: because it’s held against the wind by means of a string attached to the ground; the stability of the apparatus comes from that traction and wind-resistance. Well, suppose one thing: I get rid of the string and replace it by a propeller that draws the apparatus forward, with exactly the same speed as the person who holds the end of the string contrives. Doesn’t it seem to you that the result will be the same?”28
“Which is to say that the kite will remain immobile if the resistance doesn’t change…but if it varies, it will fall or move forward….”
Fricoulet nodded approvingly.
“Oh, if only Monsieur Ossipoff, who believes that he will only have an astrono
mer for a son-in-law, were here to hear me talking like this!” cried Gontran, comically. “What joy he would experience in observing that my knowledge also extends to mechanics!” The, in a more serious tone, he immediately added: “But you don’t intend to carry me in a kite?”
“Why not?” countered the engineer, with the utmost calm.
Flammermont looked at his friend; then, placing his forefinger on his forehead and shaking his head, he said: “Are you…?”
“You think I’m mad!” cried Fricoulet. “Well, look, listen and try to understand.”
He picked up a piece of charcoal that was lying on the ground and set about sketching a machine on the white wall of the hangar, in broad strokes, which made Gontran open his eyes wide.
“What’s that?” the latter asked.
“This,” the young engineer exclaimed, “is my kite! Here, first of all, is a large surface of glossy silk—you can see the rolls of silk to your right—which will be about 400 square meters, in order to constitute, in case of damage to the machine, an immense and effective parachute. You understand the design, don’t you?”
“Thus far, it’s as clear as a rock-pool. But what I understand better is what a parachute is for…brrr…you’re sending shivers down my spine…”
“Here—at what I call the head, the front of the kite—I install two helices made of silk bordered by steel wire, three meters in diameter…”
“Which are probably these machines here,” Gontran put in, pointing with the end of his walking-stick at the bizarre twisted plates that had immediately attracted his attention.
“Yes,” replied the engineer, smiling at the expression, “they’re those machines there. Now, these machines—as you call them—are moved at 300 cycles per minute by a steam-engine of my own design…would you like me to explain my design?”
“No, no!” cried the Comte, with veritable alarm. “My head’s already reeling somewhat with what you’ve told me—not to mention that you’d be wasting your time. Where do you put this motor, though? Not on the silk, surely?”
“Why not?” Making a cross in the very center of the kite, Fricolet said: “Here’s my motor.”
The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (Vol. 1) Page 11
