Читать книгу The Bacchantes - Leon Daudet - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

A CRUEL ACCIDENT

In the laboratory of his residence in Avenillon, known as the Villa Dyonisos, in the heart of the Blésois Beauce, half way between Blois and Châteaudun, the great physicist Romain Ségétan, the French Edison—and more—was bringing to completion, by means of calculations and experiments, his supreme discovery: the waves of time.

A little over fifty, widowed ten months earlier, he had abundant smooth hair, half gray and half chestnut, a clean-shaven Romanesque face with chiseled features, dark blue eyes, both meditative and ardent, and a neatly-arched mouth with thin lips. A member of the Academy of Sciences, a Grand Officier de la Légion d’honneur, with a host of foreign decorations, a doctor of medicine and science, he was independent, very rich and generous. He was devoid of arrogance but thought very little of humans in general and the poor dignities they afforded him. His love of knowledge did not entirely mask his sensual love of women, which enveloped him with an atmosphere of desire.

A paunch, due to a strong appetite and a sedentary existence, had not yet rendered him heavy. He loved good food, books, the body of Venus and the stars. He understood faith without feeling it, and matter without submitting to it. A rare energy, interrupted by abrupt weaknesses, formed the aggregation of his multiple and confused heredity, half-peasant and half-bourgeois. He only kept company with superior people. All women interested him, especially if they were unhappy, oppressed and beautiful. The distant amity of his peers helped, he was sure, to make his life worthwhile. His family was extinct, save for distant, stupid relatives of whom he was glad to have lost sight.

The laboratory occupied a wing of the Villa Dyonisos. It contained a special apparatus designed for the production, emission and reception of rays of all categories, electromagnetic and photographic apparatus, sky-maps, tables of measures and large-scale diagrams. The majority of the instruments had either been devised or improved by the Master, who invented as one breathes, with an extraordinary facility. It happened in the following manner: at night, before going to sleep, at about ten o’clock, for half an hour and without thinking about anything else, he evoked the equally-admirable face and body of his dead wife, his Lili. Then he allowed darkness and dreams to come. The next day, when he awoke, a bold and naked hypothesis or the idea of some fertile experiment had germinated in his mind, springing up like mushroom. The critical and scientific domains communicated in him without intermediaries. He did not know whether that interdependence was rare or frequent; he had been subject to it for several months with a particular intensity.

He had met Lili—Félicité Duvoir—at the age of thirty-five, on a ship that traveled regularly between Buenos Aires and Bordeaux. She was then twenty-one. She was blonde, youthful and as full of life as a Rubens. Forcibly recruited in Paris by pimps, professionals in the white slave trade, she had been their prisoner but had been saved by agents of the Sûreté Générale, who had discreetly thrown the pimps overboard by night during the journey—with no witnesses, of course.

Immediately, Ségétan fell madly in love with the pretty girl, breathlessly infatuated, and the narrow pleasures of the cabin, even though it was first-class and luxurious, only sharpened his desire. It was then that he conceived the notion of the waves of time and meditated the means of capturing them.

Lili had a nature no less strange than his own. She, who had already known so many men, adored him exclusively; she did not leave his side by night or by day, following him with her gaze while he worked, educating herself assiduously—in the beginning, she barely knew how to read and write, but had made extraordinary progresss at the end of a year. He hired teachers of orthography and syntax for her, one of history and geography, one of music and one of drawing. She was thus his mistress, his pupil and his child at the same time.

To avoid slanderous gossip, as soon as they were duly married, they retired to the country and lived, in Avenillon, an existence of work and affection. That had only come to an end with Lili’s death, which occurred in the wake of a double pneumonia. Ségétan’s grief was immense but brief, for he had had the refuge of the astonishing discovery that was about to turn the world upside-down, and of which every magical quality echoed the beauty and charm of the departed. Absent, she was no less influential on the reconstructive imagination of her constantly-haunted widower.

The latter was aided in his endeavor by two other scientists of vast scope: his neighbors, who had been attracted by his genius. One of them, Félix Dévonet, occupied himself simultaneously with physics, dermatology and entomology, and was trying to establish communication between humans and insects—a supposedly insoluble problem. The other, his former fellow student Doctor Bénalep, known as “M’sieu Bienallé,”3 was seeking new remedies by associating the roots of different plants in the ground, which he then submitted to the action of rays.

The three men had in common the investigative spirit that, sometimes by the mathematical and quantitative route and sometimes by the biological and qualitative route, knocks on the door of the Unknown, opens it by a crack, and then, after a few moments, finds it slammed in its face. Married to a young and ravishing woman, as dark as her name of Mélanie, Dévonet was almost as sensitive as Ségétan to the corporeal beauty of the exquisite sex. As for Bénalep, like many Semites, he had periods of desire, which he satisfied rather poorly, and periods of chastity, which he devoted to botanical research and works of erudition.

For twenty leagues around, from Salbris to Tours, from Sully-sur-Loire to Châteaudun and from Vendôme and Blois to Chartres, there was little talk of anything but the “three sorcerers” of Avenillon, who attracted to the region visitors from England, America, Sweden, journalists, photographers and illustrious colleagues, sometimes received at the Villa Dyonisos, without being admitted to the laboratory, sometimes politely sent away by the old and sharp-tongued housekeeper Marianne or the chauffeur Abrice, an intelligent and resourceful Jack-of-all-trades.

The waves of time! Ségétan envisaged them as combinations of long and short, sonorous and visual “vibrations” composing etheric figures or “entities,” which gravitated in accordance with unknown laws, returning like comets on fixed dates, determinable in advance. “Everything is full of souls and demons,” said the ancient philosopher. There were souls and demons of duration as well as space, and their detection and capture was merely an affair of ingenuity: an annex to, or, rather, a prolongation of, the discoveries of Branly and Marconi, adapted from the spatial to the temporal.

After much effort, exploration and experimentation, the indefatigable researcher had succeeded in collecting, in the vast plains of the Blaisois, with the aid of infinitely delicate apparatus, ensembles or groups of a singular nature, which surely did not belong to the present moment. To what were they related? Distinguishable therein, with regard to the sonorous, were clamors, appeals, gunshots and collapses, and with regard to the visual, the redness of conflagration. Their periodicity was biannual, it seemed, during thirty days of October and twenty of February. Imminent applications of complex calculation were glimpsed therein, for which the physicist requested the collaboration and assistance of Bénalep, who was more quantitatively advanced than him and who could represent diabetes as an equation.

The waves of time! The idea was so much in the air, it has to be said, that in Avenillon, as in Brancheville, a village two kilometers away, the farmers and the peasants were following current fashion in talking about it. It was thus that an old man from Brancheville, invited to listen to the mysterious sounds of battle between the two villages on one Autumn evening exclaimed, nodding his head: “That’ll be the affair in Châteaudun in October 1870, coming back like that to remind us of it.”

That was, for Ségétan, a flash of light. Châteaudun was twenty kilometers away from there, but he had long admitted a spatial deviation of temporal waves, due to the intersection and interference of the vibratory “entities” of whose existence he now conceived. Besides which, his apparatus gave him the same results, clearly auditory and vaguely visual, all the way to the gates of Châteaudun, as far as the small square that had been witness to the famous combat of Lipowski’s Franc-Tireurs.4 The zone of the phenomenon was approximately twenty kilometers long by one kilometer broad, during the fifteen times twenty-four hours when it was detectable in autumn and winter.

The waves of time! That was only the start. Immense perspectives opened up before the three friends, when they considered the subtle instrument—the Dyonisos—as big as a medium-sized pendulum-clock, thanks to which one could summon, on the invisible wings of time, some past event or other. One day, history would live again by virtue of the temporal waves, with its enchantments, its wars, its invasions, its revolutionary movements, its unexpected aspects, and the divine element that it contains, as earthquakes and eclipses do. The population of phantasmal deaths, such as the murder of Julius Caesar and the crucifixion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, would fall, visible, impalpable and noisy, among the living. What a haunting!

That morning, which was in June, bright and gilded, the scientist had the impression of advancing in great strides. He drank in light. He looked around him at the various stages of his discovery, fixed in infinitely delicate adjustments, in multiple depictions of the appearances, schematic and premature, of “entities” thus evoked.

Suddenly, there was a loud noise outside: a hard and abrupt impact, accompanied by heart-rending screams and cries for help. The chauffeur Abrice came in like a gust of wind. “Monsieur! It’s Père Calvat’s automobile, with has just crashed into a tree. He must have been killed immediately, but Madame Tullie is only bruised.”

Père Calvat—the farmer of Les Arges, the rich neighbor who kindly lent his fields and meadows to any experiment! Ségétan ran outside.

From a clutter of metal and body-work, which fortunately had not caught fire, peasants were taking out a corpse—that of the old man, whose chest had been staved in by the steering-wheel—and a terrified survivor, the beautiful Tullie. The scientist ordered that she should be taken, with all possible precaution, to his own bedroom at the Villa Dyonisos, where Marianne would undress her and help her into bed. At the same time, it was necessary to alert Bénalep, who was still a practicing physician.

The latter immediately showed his square, meditative face with the thick eyebrows, dominated by a dome-like forehead, his shirt with the flared collar, and his thickset body. Without wasting time in exclamations, he said: “Let’s get to it.”

They both went into the cool room, where the curtains were half-pulled and the shutters almost closed.

Tullie, who had just drunk a vulnerary potion, was lying down, semiconscious, her adorable and delicate face, pale and symmetrical, framed by her black hair on the white pillow. Bénalep observed her briefly and then pulled down the coverlet and lifted up the rustic chemise that Marianne had provided.

A body worthy of Courbet appeared, dazzling and charged with glory, from the points of the fine breasts to the slender arched feet. To her compact velvety flesh, reminiscent of silk and fresh fruit, the light added a rosy reflection. Blue veins ran over the tapering thighs and calves, Gallo-Roman in proportion, shaped for a little domestic labor and a great deal of love. The addition of breasts that were devoid of heaviness, cup-shaped and divergent, was in accord with the smooth roundness of her shoulders, and from the long spine to the fleshy buttocks there was a sprinkling of seeds of beauty. By way of injuries there was only one dark blue patch on her left arm and a more serious contusion on the hip on the same side.

“It would have been a pity…!” Bénalep murmured.

He made sure that no interior organ or limb had been seriously affected. He moved the arms and legs slowly, which drew a few moans from the goddess. He helped her to turn over.

Only then did she ask: “My husband…Guillaume?”

“He’s very seriously injured,” Bénalep replied.

“I want so much to see him.”

“Impossible, Madame. You must wait a while. We’ll do what has to be done.”

She uttered a profound sigh; the two men did not know whether she had understood—but her delicate and profound nature appeared in her bright aquamarine eyes and in the breath, at first contained and then liberated, of her anguish and pain.

Ségétan, thrown by such a spectacle into a veritable ecstasy, noticed that she had the most harmonious neck, swollen and bowed, slender and oblique ears, and a fleshy mouth, drawn back on one side over her delightful teeth. It is said that a slight physical fault is sometimes attractive to a veritable amateur, but the total absence of any physical fault is even more attractive.

For the first time since her death, the image of Lili had disappeared.

Such a sudden form of love is always shared equally. While the physicist calculated the delights of possessing that pure marvel one day, Tullie, for her part, was thinking: “Widow or not, I shall belong to that man.” That voluptuous thought, like a euphoric poison, inspired a kind of shame at such a moment.

“She needs at least a week in bed and complete rest,” said the worthy doctor, who then affected a certain cynicism. “Try to use the time profitably, my dear Romain.”

At that moment they were in the antechamber, and alone. “Dear Roman” did not think for a moment of denying it.

“I’ve exhausted the memory of Lili and my scientific lamp is growing dimmer. She’ll brighten it at a stroke. But where have you had the farmer’s body taken?”

“To his home at Les Arges. His son and his servants will make the funeral arrangements after the legal formalities. I warn you that Jean Calvat, the son from a previous marriage, is infatuated with his stepmother. He’s a village Don Juan, and also a brute, capable of anything. You’d do well to watch out for him.”

“Amorous…or lover?”

“That I don’t know—but I’m assured that he prowls around at night under the beauty’s window, and has been seen in the hayloft weeping and clenching his fist over her portrait. It’s a bad sign.”

Late in the afternoon, in fact, Jean Calvat, a handsome fellow of athletic proportions, lanky, robust and muscular, with the head of a young wolf, steel-hard and malign eyes, and bushy hair as shiny as fractured coal, came to demand news of his stepmother. His father’s death seemed to weigh less upon his heart than her bruises. He asked Marianne whether he could see her and speak to her.

“Oh, there’s no question of it. The doctor has given instructions not to let anyone into her room.”

“Not even your employer?”

“Not even him…at least for the moment.”

“That’s all right—I’ll come back.”

“When he said that,” Marianne said to Abrice, “he had a frightful expression.”

“Bah!” said the chauffeur. “He can be tamed.” He was a good-humored colossus with a hearty appetite, very intelligent and solely responsible for maintaining the laboratory equipment. The scientist paid him and his wife, the cook Caroline, princely wages. They were very devoted to him.

* * * *

The tragic death of Père Calvat caused great emotion in the region. He was a country squire who did not mistreat his employees, treated everyone fairly and managed his estate, one of the finest in the region, with wisdom and skill. His marriage to Tullie Moneuse, who was known as “the Italian woman” because of her Neapolitan origin, had generated gossip, but not too much. “One more cuckold,” had been the smiling judgment of the Loir-et-Cher, the Indre-et-Loire and the Eure-et-Loir. The new farmer’s wife was amiable and cheerful. She won forgiveness with her gentility and sparkling beauty. She was called “a royal piece.” As she was at least thirty-five years younger than her husband, it was added that, when the day came, mourning would suit her “jolly well.”

The funeral procession set out from the farm at Arges at midday, beneath a sky heavy with storm-clouds. Behind the coffin, at the head, Jean Calvat marched alone, his detached, almost arrogant attitude contrasting with the soft expressions of the uncles, aunts and cousins, and the sincerely-afflicted expressions of the servants. All the inhabitants of the villages of Brancheville and Avenillon were there, and people had even come from Blois and Vendôme. The file of black-clad individuals going through the fields recalled Courbet’s famous canvas,5 for in the Blésois, as in Normandy, Artois or Auvergne, all funeral or nuptial processions resemble one another, the ceremonies of life and death being packaged in the same fashion, so much have our kings unified France.

In the church at Avenillon, where the ceremony was to take place, people thought, they would doubtless see “the three sorcerers.” Bénalep had forbidden Marianne to let Tullie get up, even for the mass. She was reading her prayers in her bed.

The curé, Abbé Parroy, was a saintly man of about seventy, universally respected, as thin and gaunt as the Curé d’Ars,6 and who, like him, lived in the supernatural in the midst of an unbelieving population. The devotion to science of his neighbors, Dévonet, Bénalep and Ségétan and their natural impiety did not astonish or frighten him. He called them “the big brains” and willingly argued with them: “You look at the tapestry; I look at what’s behind it.” He was interested in Ségétan’s discoveries and the work of the other two, as a providential florescence whose source was unknown to those who benefited from it. He felt pity for sensuality and scorn for concupiscence, as two traps set by the Evil One. His speech was slow, difficult and measured, nourished by Holy Writ and rudimentary theology, for he was of rural stock, with a face both knotty and hollowed out: “the tree of faith,” Ségétan said.

The church, ancient and spacious, with a projecting roof at the door, was packed. In the second row were the pews of the châtelains of Brancheville, the Duc d’Ignacio, Spanish by descent although born in Paris, and his wife, the blonde and rosy-featured Ariana, a former “star” of the screen, with a child-like face, burnt eyes and harmonious gestures. The Duc looked like a portrait by Zurbarán.7 In his elongated, equine, clean-shaven face shone two eyes charged with passion, green or black according to the angle of the light. Then came the Maire, Monsieur Taupin, a vague bourgeois, liberal and timid; Madame la Mairesse, who was said to look like a deck-chair attendant; Roman Ségétan, whose sharply-defined head seemed a projection of profane stained glass; and Dévonet, no less singular by virtue of his high forehead, the ridge of his nose and strong jaws, with his Mélanie.

The last-named was, quite naturally, the most charming and reserved of the village madonnas, and her kneeling was gentleness personified. A fiery soul dwelt within her, however, of a kind less extravagant but more calculated and redoubtable than Ariana’s. She had recently perceived that she desired Ségétan, that she would like to be enclosed, if only once, but fundamentally, in his vigorous genius, to sweat with pleasure between his arms, to pour over him the bold foam of her mouth. She had hoped that she might succeed Lili in the creative images to which the father of the waves of time had recourse, but now an accident had put the beautiful Tullie into his bed. Patience, though: all hours chime, especially for those who keep their eyes fixed on the hand of destiny!

As those violent sentiments gripped Mélanie Dévonet, to the strains of the Dies Irae, a sudden tempestuous desire for Jean Calvat, standing with his arms folded, in mourning-dress, took possession of the supple Ariana. By night, between the sheets, her husband whipped up his blood with vivid extracts from her past, which she related to him in a repentant tone, or laughing in the dark like a crazed child. “Oh, that was good, you know…he took it like this, and this.…” And she did not spare the rude words, pretending to mistake his Christian name, putting Ignacio outside himself by means of some of those shrill remarks with which women are able profoundly to dissimulate their faculty for enjoyment.

By virtue of a well-known sensual repercussion, the ex-star had awakened in herself the demon of irresistible desire. The latter had just settled on the supple and proud peasant, like a young Bacchus, who had succeeded his father, along with his stepmother, in the direction of the farm of Les Arges. She could see the film, designed solely for a few rich amateurs: herself, nude, pursued by him, nude, in the remotest room in the château; the refusal, to improve the surrender; the fondling, like a dance whose steps she would regulate; and, finally, the embrace and the double, simultaneous, synchronic ecstasy, knotting the flesh for the eternity of a second and making, of two lives combined in a gasp, the most exquisite mortal frisson.

When they emerged from the church, the pretty woman, as lively as an eel, went up to the young peasant, who was going to his mercy-seat in the sacristy, and brushed against his entire body—leg, hip, side, shoulder—while looking into his eyes. He had never given her a thought, although he had met her several times in the fields, in Branchevlle and in Avenillon, while his fiery imagination was flowing around his stepmother. Even so, from that contact and gaze he received a kind of electric shock, which was not disagreeable, and extracted a silly smile from him.

Can he be a virgin? thought Ariana, who had once debauched an adolescent of sixteen in Los Angeles. There’s something of the unripe fruit about him. Turning round, she perceived the chauffeur Abrice a few paces away, watching her with mocking eyes. As a legitimate Sultana in the days of Solomon, she would have had his head cut off.

When, then would she have another opportunity to approach the magnificent twenty-year-old athlete with the stormy pupils?

* * * *

As soon as he was back at the Villa Dyonisos, Ségétan went into Tullie’s room to give her an account of the ceremony. She was sitting up gracefully in bed, clad in a short blue silk tunic, open over her lace chemise, which swelled over her white bosom. He asked after her health, negligently taking a soft and slender hand, which he held in his own, and told her what had happened. He named a few individuals, emphasizing the fine bearing of Jean Calvat, whom everyone had admired.

She avoided the subject.

He ended up by asking her: “He’s said to be infatuated with you, and extremely jealous. Is that true?”

“It’s true. He scares me, and now that his father’s dead, I’m wondering how to escape his persistence.”

“You don’t like him, then?”

“Not at all. He’s much too savage and violent. He’s only touched me four times in two years, but every time I thought he was going to strangle or stifle me.”

“You let him do it?”

“I had to. What a scandal if I had cried out and called for help—and what a shock for my old husband!”

An old song came to the scientist’s lips, which he hummed while caressing the young woman’s forearm:

I shall try to be a good wife,

Old Robin is such a good husband.8

She smiled prettily. “That was my entire program.”

“And what are your plans now?”

“To take care of the farm.”

“With your stepson?”

“How can it be otherwise. He’s inherited Les Arges, along with me.”

“Will you let me help you? I have some experience of the land and the region.”

She looked at him, astonished and emotional. “You, such a great man, concern yourself with an insignificant woman like me! You can’t be thinking of it, Maître Ségétan! Why such a sacrifice?”

He drew closer to her, his face inflamed with desire, and his hand moved along that arm, so gentle and so pure, outside the blue silk, trembling.

“Because I want you, do you hear?”

She replied simply, offering him her lips and closing her eyes: “Me too.…” But she added, in a whisper: “Oh no, not this time. My hip hurts too much…and not here.… Abrice…Marianne.…”

The reasons were good. He obeyed. At the same instant, his repressed desire brought him a reflection concerning the waves of time, which he had never previously made. He fixed it in his rapid memory, while delightedly aspiring Tullie’s little mouth, like the calyx of a flower, moist, warm and profound.

At that moment, someone knocked on the door.

“Come in,” he said, getting up.

Marianne showed her rustic head. “It’s Madame’s stepson, asking, like this, whether Madame can see him.…” She made a gesture signifying: no way of avoiding it.

Ségétan slipped into the neighboring dressing-room and left the door ajar. He was thus able to see without being seen. His heart was beating as it once had in the first days of his cohabitation with Lili, when he was afraid that she might rejoin the pimps.

The young man went to the bed, hesitantly, his limbs stiff.

“Bonjour, Tullie. How are you today? It seems a long time since I saw you, since my father’s death. It was a beautiful funeral, you know.”

“Bonjour, Jean. Yes, so I’ve been told. Sit down.”

He brought up a chair, which Ségétan heard scraping the parquet. Then there was a silence, and a sight that came from the boy. In a strained voice, he articulated: “So now we’re the two owners of Les Arges, you and me. When are you coming back? I’m all alone. I’m missing you.…”

“The doctor is still forbidding me to get up.”

“Oh yes, Bienallé—the other one’s friend. They both intend to keep you here. They want to subject you to their devilries, their waves. They’ve already killed six of our animals. If it goes on, all the livestock and people in Brancheville will disappear.”

“Shut up, you great fool—you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

At that moment, Ségétan inferred that the boy got up and went to her, then leaned over her violently.

The bed-frame creaked and a “No, no, oh no, not that—get off, not that here!” emerged, in a breathless supplication, from the lips of the beautiful victim.

Then there was a hoarse: “Yes, yes, I want to, I want you again, and right away.…”

“Oh, you’re hurting me. Enough, oh, leave me alone!”

“No—I’ll take you whether you like it or not, you hear me—in spite of him!”

“Oh, you’re mad! Let me go, you’re scaring me. Oh…oh! Help me! Help me! He’s going to kill me!”

Ségétan emerged from hiding and threw himself upon the black manikin who was struggling over the white skin. On hearing and seeing him, Jean Calvat released his beautiful prey, who tried in vain to shove him away, for he was already between her fleshy, taut legs. His face, pale beneath his bristling brown hair, had something faun-like and murdererous about it. With two bounds, he extracted himself from the grip of the scientist, who was off balance, then reached the door and disappeared.

Tullie was weeping, her arms adrift on the tangled sheets, and the scientist consoled her, kissing her awkwardly, savoring the salt of her shiny tears. With a sigh, she said: “Close the door.” And then, in an even lower tone: “Lock it.”

All of that had happened rapidly, and the two lovers never knew whether the servants had heard the noise or seen Jean Calvat running away. That evening, however, a repentant letter arrived from the latter, in which he declared, in a baroque style, that he had acted in a moment of delirium and distress caused by the sudden death of his father, humbly begged his stepmother’s pardon, and begged her to apologize to the master of the house for him. If Tullie demanded it, he would go away for a time, leaving the administration of the farm to her. In that case, he would ask the notary, before the testamentary dispositions made by the deceased were effected, for an advance on his inheritance of a few thousand francs.

* * * *

The prolonged sojourn of Tullie Moneuse at the Villa Dyonisos caused a great deal of talk, but the mixture of admiration and dead inspired by the “big brains” confined the rustic suggestions to the ironic and jesting form handed down from folktales to our own day. Besides which, the Paris newspapers and local rags were full of a frontier incident that might set France and Germany at odds again, and the apprehension of such a catastrophe deflected minds from everything else. On the same day that Tullie was due to return to the farm at Les Arges, Ségétan was summoned to Paris by the Minister of War.

Immediately received by the minister, the latter made him party to the political anxieties that were sending an alarm to the technical services and the general staff, and asked him where he was with his work on the disruption of the engines of aircraft in flight by means of waves. The scientist replied that he had, indeed, studied the subject at one time, and carried out a few experiments, with results that were worse than uncertain. At that moment his attention had been distracted by the problem of waves of duration, which now absorbed him completely.

“I know,” said the minister. “I’ve read several articles on that subject in the papers. It’s doubtless of more interesting, but it’s a less immediate interest. Would it not be possible for you, my dear Master, in view of the circumstances, to return to your previous love—the disruption of engines at a distance? You’d be doing your country a great service. Of course, we’d put all the necessary means and personnel at your disposal, with the most absolute secrecy guaranteed.”

“I’d like to, Monsieur le Ministre, but the disruption of determined research in favor of other research is one of the most difficult mental exercises there is. The spirit of investigation, when it’s involved in the genesis of some X—or, more precisely, an ensemble of Xs—adopts by the same token a certain method, a certain atmosphere, a certain color. To abandon them for another method, another atmosphere and another aspect is almost impossible.”

The minister, who was not stupid, sighed. “I suspected as much. What can I say? Do your best, my dear Master. I hope that, once again, we’ll avoid war—but the more often the pitcher goes to the well.…”

As he climbed back into his automobile, the scientist only saw, with regard to the first problem—that of the aircraft—a closed horizon, but with regard to the second, the waves of time, an open horizon.

When he was about thirty, he had believed, as Ramon Lull9 once had, in discovery determined by means of a skillful and balanced play of the mathematical and the qualitative; now he saw that as a chimera, analogous to that of the possession of free will. Linked to his wife by secret bonds, discovery was even more fugitive than womankind.

When he got back to Avenillon, his house, deprived of Tullie, seemed to him to be dreadfully empty. It was still light. He decided to go and ask Dévonet whether he could have supper at his house, a comfortable dwelling at the entrance to the village, not far from Bénalep’s.

When he went in, the brunette Mélanie was alone, reading Baudelaire. She was wearing a quilted jacket in green silk, as depicted in a painting by Vermeer, a white skirt, and she was making silver slippers dance at the end of her slender feet. Although her figure was charming, and even utterly desirable, he had not thus far experienced the slightest excitement on contact with her, even though everything about him attracted the young woman.

He told her about his trip to Paris, his meeting with the minister, and the latter’s proposal. She put on a semblance of listening, but was asking herself, all the time: Why that Tullie, and not me?

That caused her to interrupt him with a question. “She’s gone back to Arges, then?”

“Undoubtedly,” her astonished interlocutor replied. “You know, she’s a extraordinary person, a farmer’s wife with hands as white as one ever sees. I suspect that she’s the natural daughter of a Neapolitan aristocrat.”

“How the devil did Père Calvat unearth her?”

“Pure hazard, she tells me. She had to settle some business at a bank in Blois. So had he. They met there and struck up a conversation. She was alone, with no money, melancholy, doubtless disillusioned with regard to love, friendship and everything else. She was beautiful. He desired her. It was a rather banal adventure, save for the disproportion of age and education.”

“Today it’s the stepson who’s conquered her, if popular rumor can be trusted.”

“It’s possible, but she’s worth more than that. She has an absolutely original nature. She never says anything banal, and although I believe she’s as capable of lying as you are, she’s often brutally frank. She also sings like a bird, and carries you away to the land of dreams that way.”

The contained distress of the jealous Mélanie had reached its peak when her husband came back, carrying a basket full of wild strawberries.

When he learned that their guest would be dining with them, Dévonet’s consular face expressed a frank pleasure. “Phone Bénalep and ask him to come, darling. We’ll have chicken à la crême—and as I passed by, I saw a magnificent gâteau in the patissier’s window.”

Soon, the three sorcerers were united around a good and genuine country soup with herbs and a base of potato purée, the recipe for which Caroline, the cook at the Villa Dyonisos, had passed on to the Dévonets’ housemaid. Two chilled bottles of Saint-Martin-le-Beau, from a good year, seemed to have come up from the cellar of their own accord, followed by two bottles of Bourgeuil, for the guests were thirsty.

Ségétan was famished. The prospect of meeting up the next day—in the proper sense of meeting up—with Tullie, alone at the farm of Les Arges, was putting him in a excellent humor, when Bénalep, tucking the corner of his embroidered napkin into his collar, said: “Some singular phenomena have been occurring here in the village, and also in Brancheville and five kilometers away in Quatrebois, for some time. Two young women and one older one, and then a farmer, recently showed me dermatitis of an unknown variety on their wrists and legs. I sent them to see Dévonet—didn’t I, old man?—who was amazed. At Les Arges, livestock have died suddenly of an illness that the veterinarian declares to be inexplicable. No other outbreak in the region. But that’s not all. The children in the schools in Avenillon and Brancheville have given evidence this year of a precocity that amazes their headmaster, to such a point that he’s been obliged to triple the prizes and citations. In that regard he’s counting on you, as usual, to buy the books.”

“The dermatitis,” Dévonet added, “was analogous to that provoked by solar radiation, but of a more exfoliated variety. I took a small sample from one of them, and I’m in the process of examining it. There’s something else: the number of births, between here and Châteaudun, has doubled, and according to the gendarmerie’s statistics, the number of homicides and brawls has doubled too. Some of the peasants are convinced that it’s connected with your experiments and waves, but others make fun of then. Among the former, Père Calvat’s son has been mentioned.”

“That was bound to happen,” said Ségétan, laughing. “But you, Félix, who are trying to understand insects, and you, Bénalep, who are marrying plants in the soil, pass, as I do, for spell-casters.”

“To a certain extent,” Bénalep remarked, “we’re interfering with what are claimed to be the laws of nature—or the idea that people have of them—and the supposition of a disturbance due to that intervention isn’t totally absurd. I’ve been told about lawsuits prompted by rockets converting hail into rain, which victims of disaster accuse of having diverting storms over their fields.”

While he was speaking the chicken à la crème circulated, embellished with soft mushrooms, and the Bourgueil poured out its crimson flood. The conversation turned to the difficulty of discerning, calculating and detecting in the waves of time the epoch to which it was necessary to attribute them.

Ségétan, in a firm voice, said: “We’re still at the astrological stage. The hour of astronomy will sound, and new forms of calculation, like quanta—or hyperquanta, if you prefer—will permit us to draw up tables, according to the frequency of their vibrations, of the ages of the waves and their periodicities. All of that won’t come about without new distresses, excitations and unexpected intoxications leaking out for that vast guinea-pig, the human species. The railway has had its accidents, aviation too. The waves of duration will have theirs. Everything down here has a price; Abbé Parroy tells us so.”

During dessert, as was his custom, Bénalep made a speech. He was a philosophical improviser comparable to a Chopin or a Paganini, who extracted ingenious and powerful themes from the circumstances and ambiance. Mélanie’s presence visibly inspired him.

“The mind,” he said, “actually has two forms, which intermingle or separate in the most mysterious fashion: words and numbers; or, more precisely, verbal roots and numbers. The former is applied to movement and action, the second to mechanism, whether theoretical, technical or terrestrial. The former is qualitative the latter quantitative. Hence there are two forms of civilization. Ancient Egypt and present-day America are quantitative civilizations, with a predominance of numbers and machines. Perhaps that’s a trifle schematic, but it’s food for thought.”

The coffee and cigars were brought in.

“Tomorrow evening, if the weather’s as fine and calm as today,” Ségétan concluded, getting up from the table. “I invite you to a wave experiment behind the farm at Les Arges. I think there’s what I call a ‘station of yesteryear’ there—or, if you prefer, an echo of temporal waves—which it will be interesting to capture, and, if possible, situate. Besides which, we’ll have a full moon, and the spectacle will be charming. I’ll invite the Duc d’Ignacio.”

“And the beautiful Ariana?” asked Mélanie, sarcastically.

“Certainly.”

“And the no-less-beautiful Tullie?”

“Of course. The temperature is exceptionally warm. I shall ask all of you to come in evening dress.”

* * * *

Having returned home, Romain Ségétan found a letter on his desk in long, free-flowing handwriting, like a Breton shower. It was a hymn from Tullie Moneuse, uncertain in its spelling, with a hint of meridional exaltation that warmed his heart, transmuting desire into tenderness. However impetuous his blood might be, he was not unaware of the delicate sentimental network by which the sacred fluid circles and thus irrigates the immense domain of the heart. Just as there are names and numbers in the mind, according to Bénalep, there are a thousand shades of emotion in the heart, and in the mental frisson that results therefrom.

My lover, my master,

The sum of the days that I spent in your home, after the horrible accident that made me a widow and your mistress, extends before me like a bed of scented flowers. I only live to breathe its perfume. I would like to live alone here with these recent, immense memories—alone and waiting for you.

Whether it will be possible for me to go back to work, to continue the deceased or his shade, in the measure of my strength, I don’t know. At least I’m close to you, and from my window, overlooking the fields, I can see the bell-tower and the nearest house of Avenillon. Everything important to me is there.

Jean stayed here in the end. He hasn’t said anything to me. He’s extremely useful to me. He issues orders like a true leader—but his gaze is still worrying. Bah! I’m not scared any more, when I think of you, my conqueror and the conqueror of nature, who can recall the deeds of the dead at your whim!

I’m press myself against you, my Romain. I’m counting the minutes before I see you again—but that’s not enough to have you, and in order for you to have your

Tullie

The scientist read and reread the letter. With that woman, he felt strongly that a new element had entered into his life, amplifying the force of conception but also creating disturbances, as if charged with latent drama. The carnal exchange had been so magnificent that absence and separation were also fecund, but accompanied by a suffering whose extent he could not measure.

Tullie had taken him into an enchanted realm, the unknown aspects of which he was considering with astonishment.

3. Approximately, “Mr. Well-Intentioned.”

4. The battle of Châteaudun in October 1870 was an unfortunate episode in the Franco-Prussian War. After taking the town without any significant resistance the Prussians left it under the guard of a small contingent of troops. A colonel of Franc-Tireurs [riflemen], Emanuel de Lipowski, backed up by National Guardsmen, took it back, apparently for no better reason than that he could (it had no strategic significance). When the irritated Germans came back, Lipowski refused to leave, and the subsequent bombardment, followed by a massacre, virtually obliterated the town and decimated its population. French military history records it as a typical instance of German atrocity rather than a not-altogether-atypical instance of lunatic French bravado.

5. A Burial at Ornans, 1849-50.

6. The Curé d’Ars—a small village near Lyon—was Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney (1786-1859), a famous ascetic who was canonized in 1925.

7. The Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664) was best-known for his religious paintings, including numerous saints and martyrs.

8. The quotation is from Le Roman de Lamartine (1909) by Léon Séché.

9. The thirteenth-century philosopher Ramon Lull (or Llull) set out a supposedly logical theory of philosophical and religious philosophy in his Ars generalis ultima (1305; also known as Ars magna) based on the rational organization of ideas stemming from a limited number of axioms. His method influenced Gottfried Leibniz and is sometimes claimed as the ultimate origin of information science.