RAYMOND ROUSSELTranslated by Elena Rivera

from LOCUS SOLUS

Chapter V

Twilight had come while we were listening to the professor, who, pres-ently, led us up a steep footpath.

A ten-minute climb brought us to a small stone building, whosefacade, the top of which was oriented toward an immense expanse offorest, was comprised entirely of two closed leaves of a very rustylarge gate with solid gold hinge-pins. Within its walls lay a single vastroom, scantily furnished, devoid of apertures or outlets.

On an easel, an unfinished canvas depicted an obvious allegoryof dawn; behind a pale horizon a woman, her body composed oflight, drags a throng of cords with winged ends.

Canterel called our attention, with some brief remarks, to a cer-tain Lucius Egroizard in the middle of the room, who, in treatmentfor the past weeks at Locus Solus, suddenly lost his mind when hesaw his one-year-old daughter horribly trampled to death by a groupof jig-dancing assassins.

At the far end, a guard stood motionless.Lucius, who was very bald, was sitting in profile, his left side fac-

ing us, in front of the end of a marble table, upon which a sort ofhearth faced us comprising two andirons, without projections,screwed parallel, without any part exceeding its bounds, on the edgeof a plate of square sheet metal lined with live coals.

Throwing a meter-long and half-a-meter-wide piece of gray replike a bridge on the andirons, the madman, careful to avoid burninghimself, slid its two ends face to face under the metal plate until theupper surface reached perfect tension, bordered in front and behind,with regard to us, by a narrow edging falling in a gentle easy slope.

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Twelve figurines made in gold-beater's skin, a few centimeters tall,wonderfully painted and modeled, evoking a band of sinister prowl-ers on a corner of the table, were deposited by Lucius on the rep,whose square platform allowed the warm air to pass through aninfinite number of small and narrow holes. Boldly rendered, theystayed upright in midair thanks to some ballasts put inside their feetand soon were moving about according to the whim ofthe madman,whose fingers wandered over the sieve-like fabric. Deprived for aninstant of all vertical air currents, except for those that, brushingagainst their backs or abdomens, drove them thereafter far fx-om theiraxis, a particular figurine would plunge forwards or backwards then,when all obstructions ceased beneath it, would rebound back to itsformer level, deriving a brisk jig-step at the repetition of this maneu-ver. Another would pivot, after ceasing all counterparts, according tothe action of certain currents brushing tangentially against any pro-truding portion, hand or elbow.

Once lined up facing each other in two parallel lines of six, ofwhich the nearest had its back to us, the aerial dolls danced the livelyclassic jig well known under the name of "Sir Roger de Coverly." Single-handedly, Lucius operated it all, running his fingers over the rep, likea subtle keyboard that he manipulated with great virtuosity formedby patient study.

Setting off from two ends ofthe same diagonal, two dancers wouldskip toward each other, then, before touching, would regain theirplaces by walking backwards, immediately imitated precisely by theholders of the two other extreme positions. This alternating maneu-ver resumed several times, varied by a play of twirls carried out twoby two in the center at the moment of the encounter. Lucius slid hishands obliquely on the rep, while strongly bending the wrist so as notto interrupt the air currents that supported the idle dolls.

Then, little by little, the madman brought the two furthest face-to-face toward him by making them turn together on the medianline of the quadrille then turn with a dancer firom the line oppositehis own, not without each time forcing them to move a notch closerto him. Then everything began again.

In this way the dance continued. Thanks to the second figurinefollowing the first, a ceaseless rotation bestowed the privilege of thecorner positions to each of the twelve companions in turn.

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Sure of his talent, spared from clumsiness, Lucius gave intenselife to the jig without a floor, whose calm pace gradually grew rapidand then impetuous.

Suddenly the maneuvers ceased. Withdrawing his hands from therep, above which the dancers floated aimlessly, Lucius, haggard, hiseyes filled with terror, had, without seeing us near, turned himself toface forward; he was about to suffer, Canterel told us, from a strangecapillary attack of hallucinatory reflexes, due to the terrifying andevocative spectacle that he had courted in obeying, in spite of him-self, a cruel obsession.

Under the sway of fear, six hairs stood on end at the edge of eachof the two tufted regions bordering on the right and the left of themadman's baldness—then of their own accord they leaped from onepore to the other. Uprooted by some profound slackening of the tis-sues, each hair, which the expelling pore seemed to toss into the airby squeezing its upper edges, traced a miniscule trajectory while re-maining constantly vertical and falling back again into a neighboringpore that, opening up to receive it, immediately cast it out toward anew gaping refuge quick to reject it in turn.

Soon, the twelve hairs, by dint of successive bounds, were arrangedface to face on the sparkling summit of the skull on two equal paral-lel lines at the axis of an imaginary parting, and faithful to their modeof locomotion, spontaneously danced a jig identical to the one ofthefigurines in the gold-beater's skin. The same alternations were ob-served by the four occupants ofthe extreme positions in the multiplehalf-traversed diagonals, simply at first then accompanied by differ-ent twirls at the center; the same second figure acting in concert, dur-ing which the two opposite ones passed one another in undulatingstages, from one end of the quadrille to the other.

Contorted with suffering, similar to certain high-strung personswho exhibit an uncontrollable tic, Lucius, as though to stop the hei-nous merry-go-round, raised his hands toward his skull, which a kindof terror prevented him from touching. And, despite him, the jig wenton, skipping to its heart's content, ceaseless, implacable, the twelvehairs gaining in turn the four important positions. In a low voice,Canterel pointed out the tremendous anatomical interest presentedby this reflex effect resulting from an obsession borne of mental shock.

Painfully conscious of the accursed dance which, always so pre-

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cise and impeccable, was accelerating ardently just like that of thelightweight dolls, Lucius, taken by convulsive tremors, uttered groansof anguish.

After a moment of acute paroxysm the crisis seemed to finallysubside, and, while the madman gradually calmed, the hairs, return-ing from one place and another, regained their old homes at the edgeof the tufted patches, subsiding into their normal positions. Luciusthen burst into long sobs, his face in his hands, shedding a flood oftears brought on by the release of nervous tension.

Soon after, rising with a radiant smile, he made a few steps towardthe left and sat down, facing the lateral wall, in front of a large tableupon which several stopperless crystal flasks were placed, each con-taining a paintbrush soaked in a colorless liquid and, next to them,numerous pieces of linen cut out beforehand clearly destined by theirdimensions to make up the diverse items of a layette.

He took out a white filament about a decimeter long from hispocket and planted it straight into an imperceptible hole in the tablethat, thin as a fragment of sewing thread, seemed as rigid as steel.

With one of the paintbrushes, he moistened its top end, then,without waiting, placed it vertically right above—one hand at thebottom, the other at the top—the mingled edges of two pieces oflinen pressed one against the other.

Suddenly, like a thin Pharaoh's serpent, the hard thread lay downof its own accord in rapid undulations, continually piercing the twothicknesses of the linen successively in either direction. From top tobottom a fine and perfect seam, a marvelous running stitch, was ac-complished in less than a second over the whole available length. Thisphenomenon came to an end and Lucius broke the thread, of whichthe captive portion spontaneously formed a little ball at the flush endof the woven fabric that recalled a stopper knot, at each of its twoextremities, and at once acquired then and there a complete supple-ness.

Canterel showed us the white filament, lacking only the minisculemoistened fragment, which a fiameless combustion, resulting fromcertain chemical properties of the colorless liquid, had transformedinto a fuse.

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After moistening the new summit of the filament with a paint-brush from another phial, Lucius folded back the edge of a piece ofthe work in progress and held it upright in the desired position.

The quick white fuse rising in a tight spiral carried out a hem-stitch by piercing alternate single and double thicknesses of linen twiceat each turn.

When the break was made, two knotted balls appeared and theseam softened.

The professor stressed the joyous eagerness ofthe madman, whoworked hastily at his daughter's layette; he believed her birth at timesnear at hand thanks to a derangement of his tormenting reason. Thecolorless liquids, each different, each gave rise to its own fuse, gener-ating a special sewing stitch labeled on the flask.

The next fuse, produced by the intervention of a third paintbrush,acted quick as lightning despite its relative complexity, performing aback-stitch while returning continually to pierce the double thick-nesses of fabric placed in its course just below the last hole—theninstantly climbing back up higher than before.

Similarly, the fourth fuse, through the effect of a hitherto unusedliquid, succeeded in a quilted stitch in the linen presented to it, bypassing once more through the first hole encountered in each of itsdescents, invariably followed by an ascent of twice its length.

A fifth fuse, due to a new flask, yielded a whip-stitch, while hem-ming in sideways in its rather large coils, without leaving any space,the exterior line marked by the two linen borders glued one to theother exactly.

The formation of the two stopper balls and the softening phe-nomena never failed to occur.

With an unerring eye, Lucius, each time observing the subtle dif-ferences, meticulously moistened only a miniscule fraction of the topofthe filament, taking as his basis the perforated length that more orless devolved directly to the fuse, according to a calculation of pro-portions.

A fuse taken from a sixth phial produced in the linen a herring-bone stitch, which recalled those insane pyrotechnic lucubrations byits prodigious zigzags, chaotic and broadly oscillating ascents per-formed in the air, amid detonations. All of the fuses, moreover, re-sembled, on an extremely reduced scale, certain complicated set pieces.

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generating multiple curves, spirals, or broken lines.The instantaneousness of each seam demonstrated the over-

whelming excellence of this method, which would have enabled aseamstress to increase a hundredfold the daily amount of work ob-tained with the best sewing machine.

After carrying on with his work for a moment, having recourse to thesame six flasks, Lucius, taken by lassitude, stopped in front of thewhite filament now very much shortened.

Turning round by chance, he seemed to notice us for the firsttime and approached, speaking only one word through the grating:

"Sing."The master immediately entreated the singer Malvina, a member

of our group, to execute a lyric phrase to satisfy the madman's whim.Malvina, creator of the role of one of the confidantes in the recentbiblical opera, Abimelech, began almost at the top of the high regis-ter: "Oi^ebecca...."

Interrupting brusquely, Lucius had her endlessly repeat the samefragment, listening particularly to the very pure vibrations of the lastnote.

He then went and sat to the right, facing us, in front of a pedestaltable that bore these divers objects:

1. A lamp, not presently lit.2. A narrow awl with an incredibly fine gold needle.3. A small ruler several centimeters long made of bacon,

displaying on one of its sides six principal divisions that,marked by thick numbered strokes each comprisingtwelve subdivisions, were scored in shorter and finer lines.The bright red color ofthe lines and numbers contrastedsharply against the whitish gray of the bacon fat. Theimplement, delicately made, was a miniature reproduc-tion of the ancient toise, divided into six feet and sev-enty-two inches.

4. A thin square green tablet made from some kind of hard-ened wax.

5. A very simple acoustic apparatus composed of a short

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gold needle adjusted to a round membrane equippedwith a cornet.

6. A small rectangular sheet of white cardboard with atightly fitted central opening, whose imperceptible splitedges neatly framed a flat, faceted garnet, which was cutin the form of a lozenge, giving the whole the appearance of an ace of diamonds.

Lucius pushed the little toise down on the middle of the greentablet, placed flat in front of him, taking it by both of its ends be-tween the thumb and the index finger of his left hand—compressingthe divisions and subdivisions directly cast before his eyes length-wise, so that by gathering them he shortened them.

Choosing various points on the same line with great care, exam-ining the red strokes, he held the awl vertically in his right hand,making seven superficial marks in the wax, by leaning the needleagainst the bacon.

These reference marks established, Lucius slightly relaxed theclenching of his two fingers, allowing the elastic toise to give, length-ening itself out of its own accord, giving the measurements a bit morewidth. Then he interposed some new marks in the green surface amidthe first, following exactly the same procedure.

For a long stretch, the madman pursued his task, each timesqueezing the toise in varying degrees, often making it much smallerwhile consulting its red subdivisions to feebly attack the virgin por-tions of the wax with the awl in the same rectilinear zone, not with-out subtle variations in his methods of touching it.

Finally, the green tablet showed a short thin straight line made ofminiscule punctures resembling those of a gramophone cylinderimpressed upon by a voice.

In response to a desire evinced by Lucius, who promptly put awaythe toise and awl, the guard lit a match while drawing near the lamp.

While the flame assailed the wick, Canterel slipped his arm betweenthe two bars, took a sheath of faded silk from against the left side ofthe partition-wall, and pulled it toward him. Long and flat, it bore onone side the Latin word "Mens" in old embroidery, surrounded by

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religious emblems and flowers. From it he extracted a very ancientplank and showed us how the complete text of the mass was finelyengraved in Coptic characters, covering the two sides of the wood.

Soon, back in its sheath and passed back through the grating, theplank was once again leaning against the wall.

By simply releasing the catch, the guard set in motion certain mechan-isms inside the illuminated lamp, which from then on gave off briefviolent flashes, regularly separated by three seconds of near extinc-tion.

Holding the green tablet in his left hand, at a distance, and thebottom part ofthe ace of diamonds between the fingers ofthe other,slightly closer, Lucius, his back to the lamp, lifted his arms, while turn-ing himself a little toward the right.

His ruined profile facing us, he raised the two objects, the onebehind the other, in a parallel direction, the ace creating a screen be-tween the flame and the tablet.

At the first flash, in the dimming daylight, the garnet cast widelyspaced microscopic points of red light toward the back of the roomwhich, due to the facets and enhanced by the shadow surroundingthe cardboard, presented some notable differences of intensity, thanksto the relative purities of the diverse regions of the jewel.

Moving the strange card, Lucius quickly chose one of these pointsand aimed it at the highest mark on the tablet, and kept it there dur-ing the next three flashes.

Between the flashes the points vanished without a trace.In this way, Lucius illuminated in turn all of the marks coming

from the awl, choosing for each a more or less powerful luminousspot, varying the number of flashes used from one to fifteen. Some-times two to several points served the same mark in succession.

Canterel gave a commentary on the madman's task.Entrusted with a scrupulously exact piece of modeling favored

by the correct mixture of red and green, each blazing point, with itsslight warmth, imperceptibly softened the wax ofthe mark aimed at,completing in this manner the first work while perfecting the futurequality of the germinating sounds.

Turning back toward us to put his ace back in its place, Lucius,

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laying the green tablet flat on the pedestal table, grabbed the acousticapparatus and ran his hand softly over the almost vertical gold needlealong the line formed by the marks. The point of the needle, shiftingon the rugged path, transmitted many vibrations to the membrane,and a woman's voice, similar to that of Malvina's, emerged from thecornet and sang distinctly on the desired notes: "O Rebecca...."

The madman, it seemed, artificially created all sorts of humanvoices by the method submitted to our view. In an effort to recoverthe utterances of his daughter's first rough oratory shapes, he multi-plied the tests hoping to discover by chance some timbre that, ap-proaching his ideal, might direct him toward success. This is why,pronouncing the word "Sing," he had hastened to reproduce the modelfurnished by Malvina.

Guiding the gold needle along the line once more, Lucius had tolisten to the phrase "O Rebecca... "several times, the last note of whichplunged him into an anguished agitation. Limiting himself to theend of the track, he obsessively replayed the second half of the finalsound over and over again, then, profoundly moved, chased us awaywith a gesture.

Canterel lead us out of Lucius's sight since he undoubtedly desired tocarefully pursue his obsessive investigations in solitude, skiUfully us-ing the vibrations scrutinized the moment before as a new base.

The professor wanted to stay within earshot ofthe guard's voicein case of an emergency, rendered likely by the present excitement ofthe madman. He wandered about with us behind the barred room,relating certain painful events.

One day a young visitor, Florine Egroizard, had tearfully recited amoving narrative entreating Canterel to use his illustrious science tosave her husband, who had been driven insane as a result of a suddencalamity, and who for two years had exhausted the greatest special-ists.

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A fanatic member of an Italian society devoted exclusively to theworship of Leonardo da Vinci, the patient, Lucius Egroizard, had atone time simultaneously engaged in art and science in order to fol-low, be it from a distance, history's unrivaled example, provided byhis idol. He, a painter and sculptor of talent, had as a scholar, madesome valuable discoveries.

The happiness of the devoted couple, Florine and Lucius, wascomplete when after ten long years their daughter Gillette was born,gratifying their most ardent wishes. Neglecting his work, the fatherwould spend hours watching the happy smiles and the first murmursof the child he had so long desired.

A year later, Lucius took Florine and Gillette to London, calledby an interesting commission of portraits and busts.

Two times a week he repaired to a sumptuous residence in thecounty of Kent in order to paint the young lady of the manor. LadyRashleigh. One day, due to a wish that the latter had graciously ex-pressed, he had Florine accompany him carrying Gillette, whom shewas breastfeeding.

After a warm welcome, Florine, guided by Lord Rashleigh, ad-mired the park and the castle in detail, while Lucius worked with hismodel in front of him.

Detained at dinner, the visitors, which some fifteen or so kilome-ters separated from the nearest village railway station, climbed intotheir hosts' coup^ toward ten o'clock.

Midway, whUe they were passing through a thick wood, they hearda chorus of many drunken voices. At the appearance of the car, agang of more or less intoxicated prowlers began chanting the rallyingsong ofthe Red-Gang.*

Impulsive and nervous, Lucius alighted from the coupe and be-gan railing against the assailants, who reduced him to helplessnessand who made Florine get down, fearfully clasping Gillette, who wasasleep.

At that moment, afrer shooting and wounding the ringleader ofthe gang twice with a revolver, the coachman disappeared into thenight, vainly endeavoring to hold back his horses, which had bolted

' A notorious company of bandits who infest the county of Kent.

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at the sound of gunfire.Provoked at the sight of his own blood, the ringleader, only slightly

wounded, attacked Lucius, brutally assaulting him. He then toreGillette from Florine's arms and had her searched by his men.

The child, roused by the contact with a stranger, started to cry.When Lucius saw the bandit silence her with blows of his fists, hefreed himself from all restraint with a leap of such violence that adagger slipped from the fingers of one of his captors. He pounced onthe weapon and furiously struck the tormentor with it, aiming forthe face rather than his chest, since that was shielded by Gillette. Theblade cut his cheek from bottom to top, and penetrated deeply intohis lefr eye.

Watching as Lucius was rapidly seized again, the ringleader, bleed-ing and blinded in one eye, screamed like a wild beast. Frantic withpain, he dropped Gillette, who was now howling on the ground, andguessed, from a thousand indications, that in order to really torturethe couple he had to attack the child.

In a choking voice, pointing to Gillette, he gave the command:"Sir Roger de Coverly."All the bandits, save the three who were holding Lucius and

Florine, formed two lines facing each other and began an infernal jigwhose center was marked by the child. Starting from two opposingcorners, the ringleader and an accomplice skipped diagonally to meeteach other, savagely striking Gillette with their heels before regainingtheir posts again by a backward movement. The occupants ofthe twofarthest positions performed an identical maneuver, using for the firsttime the opposite diagonal. The same two couples alternated severaltimes, carrying out various twirls or bows in the center, of which theexample of the first was slavishly copied by the second, and with eachturn the monsters bruised the victim—or angrily trampled her, crush-ing her under the entire weight of their bodies. The ringleader, to addto this cruelty, aimed fiercely at her head or stomach.

Afrer which, the two facing each other, one taken from each ofthe preceding couples, passed in stages from one end ofthe quadrilleto the other by means of a series of pivots alternately performed in-wardly to one another, and then separately with each dancer of thetwo files. At certain moments this second figure provided a new op-portunity to trample the martyr underfoot.

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Consequently, everything resumed as in the beginning, and for along time the frightful jig pursued its course, under the haggard eyesof the parents. As a result of the rotation established by the periodicreturn of the second figure, all the dancers took up the active posi-tions in succession and vied with one another in torturing Gillettebeneath their incessant skipping.

This was indeed the classic jig of Sir Roger de Coverly, trans-formed into the famous torture that the Red-Gang inflicted on itstraitors.

The frenzied men accelerated their nightmarish ballet to feverpitch, and congratulated themselves when the blood spurted fromsome new gash due to the nails in their shoes.

Suddenly, at the sight ofthe coachman furiously lashing his whipas he brought the coup^ back loaded with men armed with revolvers,the whole gang ran off. Florine rushed to her daughter but gatheredup, alas, nothing but a dreadful disfigured corpse, covered in ecchy-moses and wounds. On touching the child and staring at her, Luciuswas struck down with madness, bursting into laughter and imitatingthe odious behavior of the dancers while he raved. Horrorstricken,Florine dragged him into the coupe, which took the road back to thecastle, while the newcomers pursued the bandits' trail.

The Rashieighs, devoted and compassionate, sat up all night withFlorine beside Gillette's corpse and coped with the poor lunatic's ter-rible outbursts.

After the child's funeral, Florine signed a deposition against theassassins, who had been ably captured, then parted from her hostswith tender effrisions and took Lucius back to Paris, where many treat-ments were attempted.

Believing himself to be Leonardo da Vinci, the unfortunate linkedhis universal speculations on art and science with his daughter, thethought of whom obsessed him.

For two years Lucius was treated in turn without results at fivereputable asylums where, despite his repeated requests, he had beenrefused all materials for work, even though assiduous research couldhave inspired him.

Extracting from this narrative a certainty of curability, Canterel,an enemy in such cases of the slightest opposition, resolved, on thecontrary, to comply slavishly with the most extravagant desires ofthe

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patient.In order to arrange a deep calming silence for Lucius, he had a

simple scantily furnished room swifrly constructed in an elevatedposition of his park; it had no other exit but a large gate, whose twoleaves formed a fa9ade, facing a vast stretch of forest, a unique andrestful vista, magnificently green as far as the eye could see.

The interested party was transferred there where, carefully cov-ered up during the nocturnal hours, he might constantly absorb thebracing gusts ofthe open air.

The next day he was eagerly given a large number of disparateitems, the list of which he had laboriously drawn up.

Not without traces of his former talent, he began on a paintingwhose subject, marked by madness, consisted of several outspreadwings dragging with cords a personification of dawn. As Canterellearned in the course of a series of curative conversations he had ini-tiated, the patient evoked in this way Gillette carried off in the morn-ing of her life.

Next he constructed some small light figurines, with his sculpt-ing tools, from various thin fragments of gold-beater's skin that,worked on against the grain like chased metal, retained its patientlyobtained delicate form as a result of precautionary efforts and thanksto its elasticity. He gummed the edges in order to join them, withoutneglecting to ballast each foot with fine sand; last of all, before rap-idly closing it in turn, he blew into a deliberately contrived openingat the very top, which could easily be reopened in an instant for aperiodic reinflation—then abandoned himself to the marvelous workof coloring the whole, taking great pains with the intensity of theirexpressions and in the details of their costume. He soon had twelvenearly weightless subjects, all suggesting evil prowlers.

Then, setting up a mass of warm vertical air currents on a marbletable—with the help of a plate of sheet metal lined with red coals,two andirons without any rough surfaces, and a piece of gray repjudiciously pierced on the spot with numerous pin-holes—he madehis dolls execute, by skillfully manipulating his fingers, an aerial Siri?o^er that became progressively more animated, illuminating the mat-ter for Canterel: Beset by this double notion of his grief and of itsuniversality, the pseudo-Leonardo, as a sculptor and painter, had cre-ated symbolic figurines capable of reproducing the fatal jig—while

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as a scientist he had conceived a style of dance physically based onthe lightness of the warm air.

By requiring for his experiment a piece of rep that was on his list,not without ingeniously stipulating the gray tint, which would re-main unaffected by stains from fluttering cinders, Lucius gave proofof surprising good sense. This was deemed by the professor as a steptoward recovery—for he had chosen a fabric which, because of itsresistance, was capable of withstanding the nearby heat of the em-bers, while having the advantage over any metallic sieve in that itspliability enabled the wandering fingers to impress such a current, bythe gentle pressure ofthe flesh on a point in the vicinity ofthe vent, aslight and tricky obliquity, favorable to the motion of the figurines.

Suddenly, releasing the rep, Lucius underwent a terrible crisisduring which, as a consequence of reflex effects engendered by vividpowerful hallucinations due to the preceding evocative scene, twelveof his hairs stood on end vertically, and danced on his bare skull anunbridled jig that little by little became more feverish, a jig similar inall respects to that of the assassins.

From then on, at sunset, under the influence of a reverie causedby the unsettling hour, Lucius, whose virtuosity was increasing, re-quired some glowing embers for a new jig in midair, which was un-erringly followed by the same capillary attack.

One morning the madman demanded, in addition to a piece of linenand some scissors, an intricate selection of chemical substances andlaboratory instruments. After engaging in numerous manipulations,he produced, on the one hand, several colorless mixtures, on the other,a stiff, white Pharaoh's serpent, as slender as a thread and, afrer beingmoistened in certain specific ways, capable of producing tremendouslyquick seams, enabling him to accomplish many an enchanting pieceof linen work.

SkiUfully inquisitive, the professor found the answer to the riddle.Because of distress rooted in his obsession, Lucius at times believedin the imminent birth of his daughter and was making a layette un-

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der the impression that haste was indispensable; acting on the scientificside of his alleged personality, he had engendered a remarkable in-vention.

The continual chemical manufacture ofthe initial, quickly frayed,rigid threads, despite all care and lubrication, produced a phenom-ena of intense oxidation that had rusted the gate, including the hinge-pins, which had been paralyzed ever since.

Various metals were tried out as new hinge-pins, but they all endedup deteriorating, except solid gold, which Canterel adopted, seeing itfunctioned perfectly.

Lucius was given a pair of well-sharpened gold scissors to cut outhis linen.

Without visiting the patient, who was in strict isolation, Florine usedto come for news. One day, at the professor's behest, she brought somestrange implements that Lucius had insisted upon the day before;these had ofren been seen in his hands before the fatal departure forEngland, and had as an aim the artificial creation of speech or ofsong.

On receiving the bundle, the madman, not satisfied, insistentlyuttered the word "toise."

When Florine was informed of this detail, she remembered thatin the days when Lucius was assiduously engaged in handling thesupplies in question he had been planning to make a measure oflength, in an elastic material the choice of which embarrassed him,that for certain subtle phono-arithmetic reasons could have had, in agreatly reduced scale, the same divisions into sections as the ancienttoise.

The next day, with the sharp edge of his scissors, the madmancut out a small ruler from a well-dried piece of bacon fat, brought athis request, and transformed it into a doll-like toise by painting reddivisions on one side of it.

With this toise and the last items received, he threw himself intosome laborious and delicate practices that, based on frightful calcu-

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lations of distance and heat, were designed to impress upon a certaingreen wax marks capable of producing declamatory or musical speech.

The bacon as the object of a judicious preference, furnished afresh indication of progress toward sanity; in view of its slightly re-sistant elasticity, it possessed, more than any other material, the quali-ties presently desirable.

The unfortunate man's sole aim, as his incoherent soliloquiestestified, were of reproducing his daughter's voice as it had been re-vealed to his attentive ear in her early efforts to speak during the lastdays of her life. Using an infinite variety of timbres and intonations,he created all kinds of voices from fragments of speech or tunes, hop-ing that, among so many elements, he might chance upon some so-norous indication capable of setting him on the right path.

Here again, united with his obsession, the scientific genius of theperson that he believed himself to be intervened.

Meanwhile, as he was working on his layette, the metal ofthe twodifferent needles, adorning respectively a slender wooden handle anda vibrating membrane, had rusted, and had to be replaced by immu-table gold.

One evening, Lucius described and requested a certain heavy ancienttrinket, associated in his mind with the baptism of his child.

Long ago in Egypt, the Coptic priests, in order to conduct theservice, had the text of the mass engraved in their language on bothsides of a sycamore plank, which served as a memory-aide, and wasset up on the side of the altar, easy to turn to at any given moment.

Afrer being used, the plank, piously treated as if it were the Spiritofthe Blessed Sacrament—since potentially it contained the Word—was carefully slipped into a silken sheath adorned with the word"Mens" becomingly embroidered among various small embellish-ments.

In remembrance of Gillette's baptism, Lucius had given Florine aplank of this type, later discovered, with its sheath intact, in anantiquarian's display.

Plank and sheath were thus handed over to the patient, who of-ten handled them, smiling at these costly objects that evoked a feastday dedicated to his daughter.

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Canterel's methods were applauded as the madman experiencedmore frequent phases of unceasing perfectly good judgment, prom-ising a certain and complete recovery.

At that moment a cry from Lucius drew us toward the room, and wewere soon all lined up once more in front of the rusted gate with thegold hinge-pins.

On the green tablet one saw a new line of marks, their appear-ance and cast evidently due to the awl and the little toise aided by thelamp and the ace of diamonds.

Quite agitated, Lucius shd the point of the reproducing needleover the new line, and from the very bottom of the cornet on thevowel "a" emerged a long jolly syllable, which while recalling the smil-ing first efforts of very young children eager to talk, resembled stronglythe model provided by the end of the "O Rebecca..." motif.

The madman uttered a second cry, identical to the one that un-doubtedly was provoked a short while ago at the first hearing of thejoyful tone. Bewildered at the thought of having achieved his aim, hemurmured:

"Her voice... It's her voice... my daughter's voice!..."Then, breathless, he addressed her as though she were present

with these tender words:"It's you, my Gillette... They haven't killed you... You're here...

near me... Speak, my darling...."And, between these broken phrases, the outline ofthe word, which

he constantly reproduced, returned again and again, like a response.Speaking in hushed tones, Canterel led us quietly away so as to

allow this salutary crisis to run its course in peace. He congratulatedMalvina in having precipitated with her song a fortunate event liableto hasten the patient's recovery; then he had us complete, by a newfootpath, a rather long descent.

RAYMOND ROUSSEL 201

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