In A Thousand Years Page 3

  Without saying a word, the servant seized a bottle with a fine label from the sideboard, extracted the cork with a twist of the wrist and filled the glasses of the second caliber.

  The marvels engendered by Madame Boquet succeeded one another at a sagely leisurely pace before the guests, who continued to officiate actively for some time. The silence was only interrupted by the witty remarks of the young man. Contrary to his habit, the doctor remained mute, mechanically directing the feast. He was obviously thinking about something other than what was happening around him.

  “Monsieur Terrier,” said Gédéon, suddenly, whose face had taken on the color of a poppy, “you’ve been sent on a scientific mission to Oceania and have observed the mores of cannibals at close range, without having practiced them—at least, I hope so. Which of the two do you think the anthropophages would appreciate more: Madame Boquet or her cuisine?”

  “They would have the same success, I think,” said the professor, gallantly.

  The old lady crossed herself rapidly.

  “It’s said, however, that some voyagers have ventured among them, and even been resident there for some time while avoiding the spit. You are moreover, personally—and, permit me to and, fortunately—proof of that.”

  “Yes, certainly. The naturalist voyager du Chaillu, among others, hunted gorillas in equatorial Africa in the company of those gentlemen, and saw them eat the remains of those of their compatriots who died of disease—a procedure of which I don’t approve, but which resolves a grave question of general hygiene. I would add that they are particularly fond of prisoners of war, which explains their perpetual conflict. I don’t believe that their international questions have ever been regulated by peace conferences—an eminently moral spectacle that our descendants will surely enjoy.”

  “You believe, then, that battlefields will one day be definitively fixed on the green baize of conference-tables?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “I hope so too. But what reasoning leads you to that humanitarian conclusion?”

  “There are several. Consider, first of all, that people have successively fought individual against individual, family against family, village against village, tribe against tribe, province against province, nation against nation, and finally, allied nations against allied nations. Nothing any longer remains, therefore, but the possibility of fighting continent against continent, which seems to me to be impracticable. Now, as that tendency to agglomeration is undeniable, when all peoples are united, it will be necessary for them to remain tranquil.”

  “Very good. I understand.”

  “Furthermore, the innumerable quantity of combatants who enter the line, the precision, rapidity and power of weaponry, the facility and speed of transportation—conditions that develop increasingly with the progress of science—will make war an ever more terrible thing. Besides which, people are beginning to understand that they have an increasing need to become acquainted, to come together and to exchange their products.”

  “I’m convinced,” said the young man. “It’s now certain for me that in a thousand years, warriors will only be seen at the Opéra-Comique.”

  “In a thousand years,” the professor added, pensively, “there are many things that will no longer be seen. On the other hand, many others will be seen of which we have no suspicion.”

  “I’m not curious,” said Gédéon, “but I’d give a good quarter of my collection to be suddenly transported into the world as it will be ten centuries hence.”

  “And I half of my laboratory,” declared the physicist.

  The doctor straightened up suddenly, pale and tremulous. “You’d like to see what will happen in a thousand years?” he exclaimed, in a vibrant voice. “Well, Messieurs, you shall see it.”

  The professor and the young man, amazed by that unexpected explosion, looked at him without making any reply. The three men sat there in silence.

  The meal was approaching its end. After having cleared the table, Madame Boquet brought in a silver-encrusted lemonwood tantalus of liqueurs. It contained four bottles filed with old liqueurs of esteemed origin. The guests took coffee with all the gratitude warranted by an operation whose importance has been remarked by the most eminent gastronomes. A few moments later, the doctor lit a cigar—an example immediately imitated by his guests. For a few minutes, blue spirals rose slowly toward the ceiling.

  The professor broke the silence. “I confess, Antius,” he said, “that your telegram surprised me greatly. I’ve had singular difficulty attributing a rational meaning to it. When your housekeeper opened the garden door to me, the good lady seemed so distressed, and testified to such alarm regarding the excess of your preoccupation, that I became seriously anxious myself.”

  “As for me,” Gédéon remarked, “I’m convinced, in view of my incompetence, that this scientific secret will be almost as interesting to me as a problem in complex algebra—which is not saying much.”

  “Your suppositions are equally erroneous,” said the doctor, in an inspired manner, “for my discovery is of interest to all humanity, and its consequences are incalculable.”

  “Well, Antius,” added the professor, “the moment is very favorable to unveil the mystery for us. You’ve never had a more devout and attentive audience.”

  “First, I must rectify an error,” the doctor declared. “When, just now, I said, my discovery, that was not entirely accurate. The initial elements, furnished by hazard, had been studied previously and had already yielded results worthy of attention. It is, moreover, for that reason that they were submitted to me. But I can affirm that, in a matter of days, from what was only a singular fact, I have extracted a prodigy. I ought to add that, throughout my research, my mind has been relentlessly subject to the intense concentration that caused the principle of universal gravitation to spring from the brain of Newton. I shall now begin at the beginning.”

  After collecting himself momentarily, the doctor looked hard at his guests and, in contrast to his habitual volubility, began to speak slowly and solemnly.

  V. An Academic Incident

  “On the fourth of June,” he said, “there was an extraordinary meeting of the Académie. As I came into the hall, the president was just opening the session. Unusually, only half the members were there, for it was going to be a hot day. It was a matter of appointing an incumbent and two correspondent members. It was said that there was a cabal. During the reading of the minutes, a large party of latecomers came in, and when the opening of the correspondence began there were only a few empty seats.

  “Things were going very smoothly when Rozier, one of the secretaries, took a little packed wrapped in cloth and carefully tied with string from the desk, which had escaped the attention of the audience until then. After having read what was written on it he opened his mouth very wide—a sign by which he habitually manifests his astonishment.

  “Parading a significant gaze around the assembly, to demand attention, he handed the object to Barrière, who was in the chair. The latter, having read it himself, uttered the unsteady sequence of clucks that replaces laughter among hypochondriacs.

  “That unusual occurrence produced its effect. All eyes were aimed at the desk, for the double manifestation presaged something extraordinary. In the midst of the most profound silence, the president spoke.

  “‘Messieurs,’ he said, lifting up the package in his left hand, ‘the object that I have the honor of presenting to you, the nature of which is unknown to me, has arrived from Indo-China. It has been sent by Père André, of the foreign Missions, to whom science owes very remarkable documents on the ethnography of the peoples who live on the shores of Cambodia.

  “‘The fact would not be astonishing in itself, if the card that is attached to the envelope did not mention a request contrary to all academic regulations. This is what it says, in its entirety: Sent by Père André, missionary in Ban Coksay, kingdom of Luang-Prabang, Siam. To Monsieur the Président de l’Académie de Médecine, to be confided
to the examination of Dr. Antius, if he is still alive.’

  “A general burst of laughter welcomed the prudent corrective that accompanied the respectable missionary’s desire, and all gazes converged on me. I stood up. ‘Père André,’ I said, ‘is an old friend, of whom I have not had news for ten years. I must confess that I had the same anxieties on his account that he has testified on mine. I observe gladly that we each have the right to be reassured.’

  “A murmur of assent, which I believe to be sincere, welcomed my words.

  “The president had an usher bring me the mysterious packet, and the assembly’s attention was directed to the ballot that was about to held. For myself, I was agitated by a keen sentiment of curiosity. I did not suppose, in fact, that the missionary had sent me a mere stuffed lizard, or some analogous object, from four thousand leagues away.

  “The appearance of the object was not at all extraordinary. It was cylindrical, no more than forty centimeters in length and about fifteen in diameter, but its actual dimensions had to be considerably less, for, on touching it, one sensed that it had been wrapped in several rather resistant envelopes. It was not very heavy. My mind embraced all the seemingly probable conjectures in turn, but in vain; each one ran into serious objections.

  “Finally, no longer being able to remain in place, I meekly copied my neighbor’s ballot paper, handed him my votes—or, rather, his in duplicate—asking him to throw them in the urn when it passed in front of our seats. I got up, gripping the Indo-Chinese packet, and retired to the most distant and quietest room in the building. I brought an armchair up to a little table by the window and, having sat down, set to work.

  “A strong piece of oil-cloth, tightly sealed by very strong and skillfully-wound string, constituted the primary envelope of the mysterious object. The ends of the string were covered with red sealing-wax. With the aid of the blade of my pen-knife, I gradually disposed of the seal and found a very complicated knot. It seemed to me to be difficult to untie. As patience is not my dominant virtue, I proceeded like Alexander in confrontation with the Gordian knot; I cut through it. Beneath the initial cloth envelope I found another, in remarkably fine woven straw. The edges were joined by a suture, which I was obliged to slice along its entire length. I then encountered a thick bundle of rice-straw, doubtless intended to absorb shocks, and beneath that a sheath of sturdy cloth, which I was obliged to split from top to bottom. Finally, a tin-plate cylinder appeared, whose lid was firmly soldered.

  “My curiosity was increasingly overexcited by all these precautions, but I was now forced to suspend the operation, for the only instrument I had at my disposal would not permit me to break through that final obstacle.

  “I went to the laboratory, into which no one was supposed to come that day. I lit the oxy-hydrogen burner and brought the extremity of the poker to white heat. I passed the incandescent surface over the ring of solder; the lead gradually melted. When the entire circumference was reduced, I lifted the lid, which gave way easily.

  “A gray paper bag, strung in a rectangular fashion, occupied almost all of the cavity of the container, only separated from the metallic envelope by a quadruple sheaf of white paper lining the interior of the cylinder.

  “I lifted out the central bag and the paper, which I opened excitedly. It was a letter.

  “The first three sheets were devoted to ethnographic notes and observations of general physics, destined for a forthcoming article, which will obtain a legitimate success. The last related an extraordinary fact.

  “Having been struck down by an intense fever, accompanied by delirium, the missionary owed his instantaneous cure to an infinitesimal infusion of a plant that he was sending me. It had been brought to him by two of his neophytes, the fisherman Pha-Keo and his son Chang, who, confident in the virtue of the panacea in question, had gone to pick it from the sides of a frightful gulf.

  “Under the action of the substance, Père André had experienced marvelous effects of lucidity and analytical power. Furthermore, his thoughts and senses crossing a distance of four thousand leagues, he had witnessed, in Paris, in the chapel of the Foreign Missions, the ordination of a young priest destined to support him in his apostolic labors.

  “Five months later, on the threshold of his cabin, he gave the accolade to the young missionary, whom he recognized immediately.”

  VI. The First Experiment

  “I must declare,” the doctor continued, “that these confidences had made a deep impression on my mind, by virtue of their clarity and precision. The certainty of the phenomena, in spite of their excessive character, was guaranteed not only by the absolute honorability of my colleague but also by his real competence in the natural sciences.

  “To begin with, I devoted myself to patient research on the rich and dazzling catalogue of tropical flora, in order to determine the particular characteristics of the precious plant. My efforts were in vain. Not only was it impossible for me to classify it rigorously, but I could not find enough analogous characteristics in any species to assign it a place in the botanical taxonomy.

  “Abandoning that aspect of the question, which was only of secondary importance, I was no longer thinking of anything but experimenting with the properties of the marvelous herb. Considering that the substances that vegetal therapeutics furnish act specifically via their alkaloids, whose power is in direct proportion to their concentration, whether they affect the organs directly or their action takes effect on the nerve centers—and sometimes, in that case, on the thinking faculties—I resolved to obtain extracts.

  “I set to work that same evening. Having detached a bundle of fibers charged with desiccated flowers, I treated it by alcoholic maceration. The operation was conducted with the greatest care.

  “Success crowned my efforts. I obtained an initial solution, which I gradually brought to a syrupy consistency. I did not stop there. Mentally drawing a certain analogy between the principle of the Indian plant and opium, which one can still absorb in half-gram does, but which contains and alkaloid of far superior potency, morphine, which becomes poisonous at a dose of a few centigrams, the following day I divided the mass obtained into two equal portions, one of which was set aside and carefully isolated from any contact with the air. With the second half I resolved to take the concentration to the maximum, convinced that the essential principle would gain in intensity in proportion to the diminution of its volume.

  “My mind was in a state of extreme excitement throughout the duration of these operations, for I sensed that the solution to a strange problem was in my hands.

  “For a week, I put the most patient and delicate procedures to work. Finally, I was able to collect a small amorphous, opaque brown mass weighing fourteen centigrams. It was perfectly odorless.

  “I enclosed it carefully in a little bottle of thick crystal, whose emery-papered stopper was covered with a wax seal as a extra precaution. That was the ninth day. I had spent the whole night working; I was exhausted. In spite of everything, I resolved to begin the experiment that same evening.

  “Two hours after dinner—or, rather, after a simulacrum of a meal, for my appetite had disappeared completely—I went back to my laboratory. I was prey to a secret emotion, the intensity of which I can’t explain. I locked the door with the key, having sent Madeleine to bed.

  “You can imagine the prudence that seemed compulsory, in the presence of that unknown substance whose effects were manifest with such extraordinary power. Reason advised me to experiment first with a very weak dose of the first extract obtained, the concentration of which had not been taken to the ultimate limit.

  “With the aid of a precision balance, I weighted out half a milligram of the substance. I then measured five grams of distilled water in a graduated glass cylinder. Then I tipped the alkaloid into the water, and stirred the mixture for a minute with a glass rod.

  “Without losing its transparency, the liquid had taken on a slightly iridescent tint and presented the uniformity of appearance that is on
e of the distinctive characteristics of perfect dilution. I sat down in my armchair, the beverage in my hand.

  “Although, by temperament as much as by profession, I am not very accessible to ordinary emotions, I was prey to a keen anxiety. I experienced the sensation of indefinable anguish that takes possession of us in the presence of the unknown. Finally, I stiffened myself with a supreme effort, closed my eyes, and swallowed the mysterious liquor in a single gulp.

  “For a few minutes, I did not experience anything extraordinary. Meanwhile, perhaps because the principle acts first on certain organs of vision, I felt my eyes gradually closing, in spite of the sum of the resistance that I had at my disposal at that moment. However, thanks to the energy I brought to bear, I was able to keep my eyelids partly raised for some time, and continued to see the objects in front of me.

  “Then I experience all the fantastic aberrations that nightmares produce. Sometimes my lamp drew nearer to my eyes, rapidly taking on the dimensions of a barrel, sometimes it drew far away, diminishing in volume but without completely losing its brightness. The pendulum of the clock progressively took on formidable proportions, and then became gradually microscopic.

  “Soon, all the objects in my laboratory seemed prey to a monstrous dilatation. While everything withdrew to the ultimate limits of the horizon, the walls, contrary to the laws of perspective, rose up all the way to the clouds.

  “Then my eyes closed entirely. I did not take long to experience the singular sensation of annihilation that all eaters of hashish know well. That state of mind is particularly agreeable, and I now understand why many Orientals risk their heads by defying the law that, in some countries, punishes devotees of narcotics with death.

  “That blissfulness, which has the primary characteristics of inertia and passivity, gave way to a sensation a hundred times more delightful. I was unable to compare it to any of the effects that the organism can experience. However, if the vaguest things can almost be translated by an image, I would willingly say that my entire being was gradually melting.