Read The Eternal Adam and other stories Online
Authors: Jules Vernes
In which the
Commissary Passauf enters as noisily as unexpectedly
When the interesting conversation which has
been narrated began, it was a quarter before three in the afternoon. It was at
a quarter before four that Van Tricasse lighted his enormous pipe, which could
hold a quart of tobacco, and it was at thirty-five minutes past five that he
finished smoking it.
All this time the two comrades did not
exchange a single word.
About six o’clock the counsellor, who had a
habit of speaking in a very summary manner, resumed in these words, —
‘So we decide -’
‘To decide nothing.’ replied the
burgomaster.
‘I think, on the whole, that you are right, Van Tricasse.’
‘I think so too, Niklausse. We will take
steps with reference to the civil commissary when we have more light on the
subject – later on. There is no need for a month yet.’
‘Nor even for a year,’ replied Niklausse.
unfolding his pocket-handkerchief and calmly applying it to his nose.
There was another silence of nearly a
quarter of an hour. Nothing disturbed this repeated pause in the conversation;
not even the appearance of the house-dog Lento, who. not less phlegmatic than
his master, came to pay his respects in the parlour. Noble dog! – a model for
his race. Had he been made of pasteboard, with wheels on his paws, he would not
have made less noise during his stay.
Towards eight o’clock, after Lotchè had
brought the antique lamp of polished glass, the burgomaster said to the
counsellor, —
‘We have no other urgent matter to
consider?’
‘No, Van Tricasse; none that I know of.’
‘Have I not been told, though,’ asked the burgomaster,‘that the tower
of the Oudenarde gate islikely to tumble down?’
‘Ah!’ replied the counsellor; ‘really, I
should not be astonished if it fell on some passer-by any day.’
‘Oh! before such a misfortune happens I
hope we shall have come to a decision on the subject of this tower.’
‘I hope so, Van Tricasse.’
‘There are more pressing matters to
decide.’
‘No doubt; the question of the
leather-market, for instance.’
‘What, is it still burning?’
‘Still burning, and has been for the last
three weeks.’
‘Have we not decided in council to let it
burn?’
‘Yes, Van Tricasse – on your motion.’
‘Was not that the surest and simplest way
to deal with it?’
‘Without doubt.’
‘Well, let us wait. Is that all?’
‘All,’ replied the counsellor, scratching
his head, as if to assure himself that he had not forgotten anything important.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed the burgomaster, ‘haven’t
you also heard something of an escape of water which threatens to inundate the
low quarter of Saint Jacques?’
‘I have. It is indeed unfortunate that this
escape of water did not happen above the leather-market! It would naturally
have checked the fire, and would thus have saved us a good deal of discussion.’
‘What can you expect, Niklausse? There is
nothing so illogical as accidents. They are bound by no rules, and we cannot
profit by one, as we might wish, to remedy another.’
It took Van Tricasse’s companion some time
to digest this fine observation.
‘Well, but,’ resumed the Counsellor
Niklausse, after the lapse of some moments, ‘we have not spoken of our great
affair!’
‘What great affair? Have we, then, a great
affair?’ asked the burgomaster.
‘No doubt. About lighting the town.’
‘O yes. If my memory serves me, you are
referring to the lighting plan of Doctor Ox.’
‘Precisely.’
‘It is going on, Niklausse,’ replied the
burgomaster.
‘They are already laying the pipes, and the
works are entirely completed.’
‘Perhaps we have hurried a little in this
matter,’ said the counsellor, shaking his head.
‘Perhaps. But our excuse is, that Doctor Ox
bears the whole expense of his experiment. It will not cost us a sou.’
‘That, true enough, is our excuse.
Moreover, we must advance with the age. If the experiment succeeds, Quiquendone
will be the first town in Flanders to be lighted with the oxy – What is the gas
called?’
‘Oxyhydric gas.’
‘Well, oxyhydric gas, then.’
At this moment the door opened, and Lotchè
came in to tell the burgomaster that his supper was ready.
Counsellor Niklausse rose to take leave of
Van Tricasse, whose appetite had been stimulated by so many affairs discussed
and decisions taken; and it was agreed that the council of notables should be
convened after a reasonably long delay, to determine whether a decision should
be provisionally arrived at with reference to the really urgent matter of the
Oudenarde gate.
The two worthy administrators then directed
their steps towards the street-door, the one conducting the other. The
counsellor, having reached the last step, lighted a little lantern to guide him
through the obscure streets of Quiquendone, which Doctor Ox had not yet
lighted. It was a dark October night, and a light fog overshadowed the town.
Niklausse’s preparations for departure
consumed at least a quarter of an hour; for, after having lighted his lantern,
he had to put on his big cow-skin socks and his sheep-skin gloves; then he put
up the furred collar of his overcoat, turned the brim of his felt hat down over
his eyes, grasped his heavy crow-beaked umbrella, and got ready to start.
When Lotchè, however, who was lighting her
master, was about to draw the bars of the door, an unexpected noise arose
outside.
Yes! Strange as the thing seems, a noise – a
real noise, such as the town had certainly not heard since the taking of the
donjon by the Spaniards in 1513 – a terrible noise, awoke the long-dormant
echoes of the venerable Van Tricasse mansion.
Someone knocked heavily upon this door,
hitherto virgin to brutal touch! Redoubled knocks were given with some blunt
implement, probably a knotty stick, wielded by a vigorous arm. With the strokes
were mingled cries and calls. These words were distinctly heard:—
‘Monsieur Van Tricasse! Monsieur the
burgomaster!
Open, open quickly!’
The burgomaster and the counsellor,
absolutely astounded, looked at each other speechless.
This passed their comprehension. If the old
culverin of the chateâu, which had not been used since 1385, had been let off
inthe parlour, the dwellers in the Van Tricasse mansion would not have been
more dumbfounded.
Meanwhile, the blows and cries were
redoubled. Lotchè, recovering her coolness, had plucked up courage to speak.
‘Who is there?’
‘It is I! I! I!’
‘Who are you?’
‘The Commissary Passauf!’
The Commissary Passauf! The very man whose
office it had been contemplated to suppress for ten years. What had happened,
then? Could the Burgundians have invaded Quiquendone, as they did in the
fourteenth century? No event of less importance could have so moved Commissary
Passauf, who in no degree yielded the palm to the burgomaster himself for calmness
and phlegm.
On a sign from Van Tricasse – for the
worthy man could not have articulated a syllable – the bar was pushed back and
the door opened.
Commissary Passauf flung himself into the
antechamber. One would have thought there was a hurricane.
‘What’s the matter, Monsieur the
commissary?’ asked Lotchè, a brave woman, who did not lose her head under the
most trying circumstances.
‘What’s the matter!’ replied Passauf, whose
big round eyes expressed a genuine agitation. ‘The matter is that I have just
come from Doctor Ox’s, who has been holding a reception, and that there -
‘There?’
‘There I have witnessed such an altercation
as – Monsieur the burgomaster, they have been talking politics!’
‘Politics!’ repeated Van Tricasse, running
his fingers through his wig.
‘Politics!’ resumed Commissary Passauf,
‘which has not been done for perhaps a hundred years at Quiquendone. Then the
discussion got warm, and the advocate, André Schut, and the doctor, Dominique
Custos, became so violent that it may be they will call each other out.’
‘Call each other out!’ cried the
counsellor. ‘A duel! A duel at Quiquendone! And what did Advocate Schut and
Doctor Custos say?’
‘Just this: "Monsieur advocate,"
said the doctor to his adversary, "you go too far, it seems to me, and you
do not take sufficient care to control your words!’"
The Burgomaster Van Tricasse clasped his
hands – the counsellor turned pale and let his lantern fall – the commissary
shook his head. That a phrase so evidently irritating should be pronounced by two
of the principal men in the country!
‘This Doctor Custos,’ muttered Van
Tricasse, ‘is decidedly a dangerous man – a hare-brained fellow! Come,
gentlemen!’
On this, Counsellor Niklausse and the
commissary accompanied the burgomaster into the parlour.
Who, then, was this personage, known by the
singular name of Doctor Ox?
An original character for certain, but at
the same time a bold
savant,
a physiologist, whose works were known and
highly estimated throughout learned Europe, a happy rival of the Davys, the
Daltons, the Bostocks, the Menzies. the Godwins, the Vierordts – of all those
noble minds who have placed physiology among the highest of modern sciences.
Doctor Ox was a man of medium size and
height, aged – :but we cannot state his age, any more than his nationality.
Besides, it matters little; let it suffice that he was a strange personage,
impetuous and hot-blooded, a regular oddity out of one of Hoffmann’s volumes,
and one who contrasted amusingly enough with the good people of Quiquendone. He
had an imperturbable confidence both in himself and in his doctrines. Always
smiling, walking with head erect and shoulders thrown back in a free and
unconstrained manner, with a steady gaze, large open nostrils, a vast mouth
which inhaled the air in liberal draughts, his appearance was far from
unpleasing. He was full of animation, well proportioned in all parts of his
bodily mechanism, with quicksilver in his veins, and a most elastic step. He
could never stop still in one place, and relieved himself with impetuous words
and a superabundance of gesticulations.
Was Doctor Ox rich, then, that he should
undertake to light a whole town at his expense? Probably, as he permitted
himself to indulge in such extravagance, – and this is the only answer we can
give to this indiscreet question.
Doctor Ox had arrived at Quiquendone five
months before, accompanied by his assistant, who answered to the name of Gédéon
Ygène; a tall, dried-up, thin man, haughty, but not less vivacious than his
master.
And next, why had Doctor Ox made the
proposition to light the town at his own expense? Why had he, of all the
Flemings, selected the peaceable Quiquendonians, to endow their town with the
benefits of an unheard-of system of lighting? Did he not, under this pretext,
design to make some great physiological experiment by operating
in animâ
vili?
In short, what was this original personage about to attempt? We know
not, as Doctor Ox had no confidant except his assistant Ygène, who, moreover,
obeyed him blindly.
In appearance, at least, Doctor Ox had
agreed to light the town, which had much need of it, ‘especially at night’, as
Commissary Passauf wittily said. Works for producing a lighting gas had
accordingly been established; the gasometers were ready for use, and the main
pipes, running beneath the street pavements, would soon appear in the form of
burners in the public edifices and the private houses of certain friends of
progress. Van Tricasse and Niklausse, in their official capacity, and some
other worthies, thought they ought to allow this modern light to be introduced
into their dwellings.
If the reader has not forgotten, it was
said, during the long conversation of the counsellor and the burgomaster, that
the lighting of the town was to be achieved, not by the combustion of common
carburetted hydrogen, produced by distilling coal, but by the use of a more
modern and twenty-fold more brilliant gas, oxyhydric gas, produced by mixing
hydrogen and oxygen.
The doctor, who was an able chemist as well
as an ingenious physiologist, knew how to obtain this gas in great quantity and
of good quality, not by using manganate of soda, according to the method of M.
Tessié du Motay, but by the direct decomposition of slightly acidulated water,
by means of a battery made of new elements, invented by himself. Thus there
were no costly materials, no platinum, no retorts, no combustibles, no delicate
machinery to produce the two gases separately. An electric current was sent
through large basins full of water, and the liquid was decomposed into its two
constituent parts, oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen passed off at one end: the
hydrogen, of double the volume of its late associate, at the other. As a
necessary precaution, they were collected in separate reservoirs, for their
mixture would have produced a frightful explosion if it had become ignited.
Thence the pipes were to convey them separately to the various burners, which
would be so placed as to prevent all chance of explosion. Thus a remarkably
brilliant flame would be obtained, whose light would rival the electric light,
which, as everybody knows, is, according to Cassellmann’s experiments, equal to
that of 1,171 wax candles, – not one more, nor one less.