"Instructions for working my discovery, abridged from the manuscript sent to my nephew."
"Instructions for working my discovery, abridged from the manuscript sent to my nephew."
And next forty or fifty very closely-written lines, in a hand too small to allow me to decipher them.
Besides, I had not the time. Bérangère merely glanced at the paper. Having found the object of her search and obtained possession of an additional document which my uncle had provided in case the manuscript should be lost, she folded it up, slipped it into her bodice, replaced the cardboard and hung the engraving where she had found it.
Was she going away? If so, she was bound to return as she had come, that is to say, evidently, through Noël Dorgeroux's dressing-room, on the other side of the bedroom, of which she had left the communicating-door ajar. I was about to prevent her and had already taken hold of the door-handle, when suddenly she moved a few steps towards my uncle's bed and fell on her knees, stretching out her hands in despair.
Her sobs rose in the silence. She stammered words which I was able to catch:
"God-father! . . . My poor god-father!"
And she passionately kissed the coverlet of the bed beside which she must often have sat up watching my uncle when he was ill.
Her fit of crying lasted a long time and did not cease until just as I entered. Then she turned her head, saw me and stood up slowly, without taking her eyes from my face:
"You!" she murmured. "It's you!"
Seeing her make for the door, I said:
"Don't go, Bérangère."
She stopped, looking paler than ever, with drawn features.
"Give me that sheet of paper," I said, in a voice of command.
She handed it to me, with a quick movement. After a brief pause, I continued:
"Why did you come to fetch it? My uncle told you of its existence, didn't he? And you . . . you were taking it to my uncle's murderers, so that they might have nothing more to fear and be the only persons to know the secret? . . . Speak, Bérangère, will you?"
I had raised my voice and was advancing towards her. She took another step back.
"You shan't move, do you hear? Stay where you are. Listen to me and answer me!"
She made no further attempt to move. Hereyes were filled with such distress that I adopted a calmer demeanour:
"Answer me," I said, very gently. "You know that, whatever you may have done, I am your friend, your indulgent friend, and that I mean to help you . . . and advise you. There are feelings which are proof against everything. Mine for you is of that sort. It is more than affection: you know it is, don't you, Bérangère? You know that I love you?"
Her lips quivered, she tried to speak, but could not. I repeated again and again:
"I love you! . . . I love you!"
And, each time, she shuddered, as though these words, which I spoke with infinite emotion, which I had never spoken so seriously or so sincerely, as if these words wounded her in the very depths of her soul. What a strange creature she was!
I tried to put my hand on her shoulder. She avoided my friendly touch.
"What can you see to fear in me," I asked, "when I love you? Why not confess everything? You are not a free agent, are you? You are being forced to act as you do and you hate it all?"
Once more, anger was overmastering me. I was exasperated by her silence. I saw no wayof compelling her to reply, of overcoming that incomprehensible obstinacy except by clasping her in my arms and yielding to the instinct of violence which urged me towards some brutal action.
I went boldly forward. But I had not taken a step before she spun round on her heel, so swiftly that I thought that she would drop to the floor in the doorway. I followed her into the other room. She uttered a terrible scream. At the same moment I was knocked down by a sudden blow. The man Massignac, who had been hiding in the dressing-room and watching us, had leapt at me and was attacking me furiously, while Bérangère fled to the staircase.
"Your daughter," I spluttered, defending myself, "your daughter! . . . Stop her! . . ."
The words were senseless, seeing that Massignac, beyond a doubt, was Bérangère's accomplice, or rather an inspiring force behind her, as indeed he proved by his determination to put me out of action, in order to protect his daughter against my pursuit.
We had rolled over the carpet and each of us was trying to master his adversary. The man Massignac was no longer laughing. He was striking harder blows than ever, but without using any weapon and without any murderous intent. I hit back as lustily and soon discovered that I was getting the better of him.
This gave me additional strength. I succeeded in flattening him beneath me. He stiffened every muscle to no purpose. We lay clutching each other, face to face, eye to eye. I took him by the throat and snarled:
"Ah, I shall get it out of you now, you wretch, and learn at last . . ."
And suddenly I ceased. My words broke off in a cry of horror and I clapped my hand to his face in such a way as to hide the lower part of it, leaving only the eyes visible. Oh, those eyes riveted on mine! Why, I knew them! Not with their customary expression of smug and hypocritical cheerfulness, but with the other expression which I was slowly beginning to remember. Yes, I remember them now, those two fierce, implacable eyes, filled with hatred and cruelty, those eyes which I had seen on the wall of the chapel, those eyes which had looked at me on that same day, when I lay gasping in the murderer's grip in the woods near the Yard.
And again, as on that occasion, suddenly my strength forsook me. Those savage eyes, those atrocious eyes, the man Massignac's real eyes, alarmed me.
He released himself with a laugh of triumphand, speaking in calm and deliberate accents, said:
"You're no match for me, young fellow! Don't you come meddling in my affairs again!"
Then, pushing me away, he ran off in the same direction as Bérangère.
A few minutes later, I perceived that the sheet of paper which the daughter had found behind the old engraving had been taken from me by the father; and then, but not till then, I understood the exact meaning of the attack.
The amphitheatre was duly inaugurated on the afternoon of that same day. Seated in the box-office was the manager of the establishment, the possessor of the great secret, Théodore Massignac, Noël Dorgeroux's murderer.
Théodore Massignac was installed at the box-office! Théodore Massignac, when a dispute of any kind occurred, left his desk and hastened to settle it! Théodore Massignac walked up and down, examining the tickets, showing people to their places, speaking a pleasant word here, giving a masterful order there and doing all these things with his everlasting smile and his obsequious graciousness.
Of embarrassment not the slightest sign. Everybody knew that Théodore Massignac was the fellow with the broad face and the wide-cleft mouth who was attracting the general attention. And everybody was fully aware that Théodore Massignac was the man of straw who had carried out the whole business and made away with Noël Dorgeroux. But nothing interfered with Théodore Massignac's jovial mood: not the sneers, nor the apparent hostility of the public, nor the more or less discreet supervision of the detectives attached to his person.
He had even had the effrontery to paste on boardings, to the right and left of the entrance, a pair of great posters representing Noël Dorgeroux's handsome face, with its grave and candid features!
These posters gave rise to a brief altercation between us. It was pretty lively, though it passed unnoticed by others. Scandalized by the sight of them, I went up to him, a little while before the time fixed for the opening; and, in a voice trembling with anger, said:
"Remove those at once. I will not have them displayed. The rest I don't care about. But this is too much of a good thing: it's a disgrace and an outrage."
He feigned an air of amazement:
"An outrage? You call it an outrage to honour your uncle's memory and to display the portrait of the talented inventor whose discovery is on the point of revolutionizing the world? I thought I was doing homage to him."
I was beside myself with rage:
"You shan't do it," I spluttered. "I will not consent, I will not consent to be an accomplice in your infamy."
"Oh, yes, you will!" he said, with a laugh. "You'll consent to this as you do to all the rest. It's all part of the game, young fellow. You'vegot to swallow it. You've got to swallow it because Uncle Dorgeroux's fame must be made to soar above all these paltry trifles. Of course, I know, a word from you and I'm jugged. And then? What will become of the great invention? In the soup, that's where it'll be, my lad, because I am the sole possessor of all the secrets and all the formulae. The sole possessor, do you understand? Friend Velmot, the man with the glasses, is only a super, a tool. So is Bérangère. Therefore, with Théodore Massignac put away, there's an end of the astounding pictures signed 'Dorgeroux.' No more glory, no more immortality. Is that what you want, young man?"
Without waiting for any reply, he added:
"And then there's something else; a word or two which I overheard last night. Ha, ha, my dear sir, so we're in love with Bérangère! We're prepared to defend her against all dangers! Well, in that case—do be logical—what have I to fear? If you betray me, you betray your sweetheart. Come, am I right or wrong? Daddy and his little girl . . . hand and glove, you might say. If you cut off one, what becomes of the other? . . . Ah, you're beginning to understand! You'll be good now, won't you? There, that's much better! We shall see a happy ending yet, you'll have heaps of children crowding round your knee and who will thank me then for getting him a nice little settlement? Why, Victorien!"
He stopped and watched me, with a jeering air. Clenching my fists, I shouted, furiously:
"You villain! . . . Oh, what a villain you make yourself appear!"
But some people were coming up and he turned his back on me, after whispering:
"Hush, Victorien! Don't insult your father-in-law elect."
I restrained myself. The horrible brute was right. I was condemned to silence by motives so powerful that Théodore Massignac would soon be able to fulfil his task without having to fear the least revolt of conscience on my part. Noël Dorgeroux and Bérangère were watching over him.
Meanwhile, the amphitheatre was filling; and the motorcars continued to arrive in swift succession, pouring forth the torrent of privileged people who, because of their wealth or their position, had paid from ten to twenty louis for a seat. Financiers, millionaires, famous actresses, newspaper-proprietors, artistic and literary celebrities, Anglo-Saxon commercial magnates, secretaries of great labour unions, allflocked with a sort of fever towards that unknown spectacle, of which no detailed programme was obtainable and which they were not even certain of beholding, since it was impossible to say whether Noël Dorgeroux's processes had really been recovered and employed in the right way. Indeed, no one, among those who believed the story, was in a position to declare that Théodore Massignac had not taken advantage of the whole business in order to arrange the most elaborate hoax. The very tickets and posters contained the anything but reassuring words:
"In the event of unfavourable weather, the tickets will be available for the following day.Should the exhibition be prevented by any other cause, the money paid for the seats will not be refunded; and no claims to that effect can be entertained."
"In the event of unfavourable weather, the tickets will be available for the following day.Should the exhibition be prevented by any other cause, the money paid for the seats will not be refunded; and no claims to that effect can be entertained."
Yet nothing had restrained the tremendous outburst of curiosity. Whether confident or suspicious, people insisted on being there. Besides, the weather was fine. The sun shone out of a cloudless sky. Why not indulge in the somewhat anxious gaiety that filled the hearts of the crowd?
Everything was ready. Thanks to his wonderful activity and his remarkable powers of organization, Théodore Massignac, assisted by architects and contractors and acting on the plans worked out, had completed and revised Noël Dorgeroux's work. He had recruited a numerous staff, especially a large and stalwart body of men, who, as I heard, were lavishly paid and who were charged with the duty of keeping order.
As for the amphitheatre, built of reinforced concrete, it was completely filled up, well laid out and very comfortable. Twelve rows of elbowed seats, supplied with movable cushions, surrounded a floor which rose in a gentle slope, divided into twelve tiers arranged in a wide semicircle. Behind these was a series of spacious private boxes, and, at the back of all, a lounge, the floor of which, nevertheless, was not more than ten or twelve feet above the level of the ground.
Opposite was the wall.
It stood well away from the seats, being built on a foundation of masonry and separated from the spectators by an empty orchestra. Furthermore, a grating, six feet high, prevented access to the wall, at least as regards its central portion; and, when I say a grating, I mean a businesslike grating, with spiked rails and cross-bars forming too close a mesh to allow of the passage of a man's arm.
The central part was the screen, which was raised to about the level of the fourth or fifth tier of seats. Two pilasters, standing at eight or ten yards' distance from each other, marked its boundaries and supported an overhanging canopy. For the moment, all this space was masked by an iron curtain, roughly daubed with gaudy landscapes and ill-drawn views.
At half-past three there was not a vacant seat nor an unoccupied corner. The police had ordered the doors to be closed. The crowd was beginning to grow impatient and to give signs of a certain irritability, which betrayed itself in the hum of a thousand voices, in nervous laughter and in jests which were becoming more and more caustic.
"If the thing goes wrong," said a man by my side, "we shall see a shindy."
I had taken up my stand, with some journalists of my acquaintance, in the lounge, amid a noisy multitude which was all the more peevish inasmuch as it was not comfortably seated like the audience in the stalls.
Another journalist, who was invariably well-informed and of whom I had seen a good deal lately, replied:
"Yes, there will be a shindy; but that is not the worthy Massignac's principal danger. He is risking something besides."
"What?" I asked.
"Arrest."
"Do you mean that?"
"I do. If the universal curiosity, which has helped him to preserve his liberty so far, is satisfied, he's all right. If not, if he fails, he'll be locked up. The warrant is out."
I shuddered. Massignac's arrest implied the gravest possible peril to Bérangère.
"And you may be sure," my acquaintance continued, "that he is fully alive to what is hanging over his head and that he is feeling anything but chirpy at heart."
"At heart, perhaps," replied one of the others. "But he doesn't allow it to appear on the surface. There, look at him: did you ever see such swank?"
A louder din had come from the crowd. Below us, Théodore Massignac was walking along the pit and crossing the empty space of the orchestra. He was accompanied by a dozen of those sturdy fellows who composed the male staff of the amphitheatre. He made them sit down on two benches which were evidently reserved for them and, with the most natural air, gave themhis instructions. And his gestures so clearly denoted the sense of the orders imparted and expressed so clearly what they would have to do if any one attempted to approach the wall that a loud clamour of protest arose.
Massignac turned towards the audience, without appearing in the least put out, and, with a smiling face, gave a careless shrug of the shoulders, as though to say:
"What's the trouble? I'm taking precautions. Surely I'm entitled to do that!"
And, retaining his bantering geniality, he took a key from his waist-coat pocket, opened a little gate in the railing and entered the last enclosure before the wall.
This manner of playing the lion-tamer who takes refuge behind the bars of his cage made so comic an impression that the hisses became mingled with bursts of laughter.
"The worthy Massignac is right," said my friend the journalist, in a tone of approval. "In this way he avoids either of two things: if he fails, the malcontents won't be able to break his head; and, if he succeeds, the enthusiasts can't make a rush for the wall and learn the secret of the hoax. He's a knowing one. He has prepared for everything."
There was a stool in the fortified enclosure.Théodore Massignac sat down on it half facing the spectators, some four paces in front of the wall, and, holding his watch towards us, tapped it with his other hand to explain that the decisive hour was about to strike.
The extension of time which he thus obtained lasted for some minutes. But then the uproar began anew and became deafening. People suddenly lost all confidence. The idea of a hoax took possession of every mind, all the more as people were unable to grasp why the spectacle should begin at any particular time rather than another, since it all depended solely on Théodore Massignac.
"Curtain! Curtain!" they cried.
After a moment, not so much in obedience to this order as because the hands of his watch seemed to command it, he rose, went to the wall, slipped back a wooden slab which covered two electric pushes and pressed one of them with his finger.
The iron curtain descended slowly and sank into the ground.
The screen appeared in its entirety, in broad daylight and of larger proportions than the ordinary.
I shuddered before this flat surface, over which the mysterious coating was spread in adark-grey layer. And the same tremor ran through the crowd, which was also seized with the recollection of my depositions. Was it possible that we were about to behold one of those extraordinary spectacles the story of which had given rise to so much controversial discussion? How ardently I longed for it! At this solemn minute, I forget all the phases of the drama, all the loathing that I felt for Massignac, all that had to do with Bérangère, the madness of her actions, the anguish of my love, and thought only of the great game that was being played around my uncle's discovery. Would what I had seen vanish in the darkness of the past which I myself, the sole witness of the miracles, was beginning to doubt? Or would the incredible vision arise once again and yet again, to teach the future the name of Noël Dorgeroux? Had I been right in sacrificing to the victim's glory the vengeance called for by his death? Or had I made myself the accomplice of the murderer in not denouncing his abominable crime?
Yes, I was becoming his accomplice and even, deep down in my consciousness, his collaborator and his ally. Had I imagined that Massignac had need of me, I would have hastened to hisside. I would have encouraged him with all my confidence and assisted him to the full extent of my ability. First and foremost I wished him to emerge victoriously from the struggle which he had undertaken. I wanted my uncle's secret to come to life again. I wanted light to spring from the shadow. I did not wish twenty years of study and the supreme idea of that most noble genius to be flung back into the abyss.
Now not a sound broke the profound silence. The people's faces were set. Their eyes pierced the wall like so many gimlets. They experienced in their turn the anxiety of my own waiting for that which was yet invisible and which was preparing in the depths of the mysterious substance. And the implacable will of a thousand spectators united with that of Massignac, who stood there below, with his back bent and his head thrust forward; wildly questioning the impassive horizon of the wall.
He was the first to see the first premonitory gleam. A cry escaped his lips, while his two hands frantically beat the air. And, almost at the same second, like sparks crackling on every side, other cries were scattered in the silence, which was instantly restored, heavier and denser than before.
The Three Eyes were there.
The Three Eyes marked their three curved triangles on the wall.
The onlookers had not, in the presence of this inconceivable phenomenon, to submit to the sort of initiation through which I had passed. To them, from the outset, three geometrical figures, dismal and lifeless though they were, represented three eyes; to them also they were living eyes even before they became animated. And the excitement was intense when those lidless eyes, consisting of hard, symmetrical lines, suddenly became filled with an expression which made them as intelligible to us as the eyes of a human person.
It was a harsh, proud expression, containing flashes of malignant joy. And I knew—and we all knew—that this was not just a random expression, with which the Three Eyes had been arbitrarily endowed, but that of a being who looked upon real life with that same look and who was about to appear to us in real life.
Then, as always, the three figures began to revolve dizzily. The disk turned upon itself. And everything was interrupted. . . .
The crowd could not recover from its stupefaction. It sat and waited. It had heard through me of the Three Eyes, of their significance as a message, a preliminary illustration, something like the title or picture-poster of the coming spectacle. It remembered Edith Cavell's eyes, Philippe Dorgeroux's eyes, Bérangère's eyes, all those eyes which I had seen againafterwards; and it sat as though cramped in obstinate silence, as though it feared lest a word or a movement should scare away the invisible god who lay hidden within the wall. It was now filled with absolute certainty. This first proof of my sincerity and perspicacity was enough; there was not a single unbeliever left. The spectators stepped straight into regions which I had reached only by painful stages. Not a shadow of protest impaired their sensibility. Not a doubt interfered with their faith. Really, I saw around me nothing but serious attention, restrained enthusiasm, suppressed exaltation.
And all this suddenly found vent in an immense shout that rose to the skies. Before us, on the screen which had but now been empty and bare as a stretch of sand, there had come into being, spontaneously, in a flash, hundreds and thousands of men, swarming in unspeakable confusion.
It was obviously the suddenness and complexity of the sight which so profoundly stirred the crowd. The sudden emergence of life innumerable out of nothingness convulsed it like an electric shock. In front of it, where there had been nothing, there now swarmed another crowd, dense as itself, a crowd whose excitement mingled with its own and whose uproar, which it was able to divine, was added to its own! For a few seconds I had the impression that it was losing its mental balance and swaying to and fro in an access of delirium.
However, the crowd once more regained its self-control. The need, not of understanding—it seemed not to care about that at first—but of seeing and grasping the entire manifestation of the phenomena mastered the force let loose in its midst. It became silent again. It gazed. And itlistened.
Yonder—I dare not say on the screen, for, in truth, so abnormal were its dimensions that thepicture overflowed the frame and was propelled into the space outside—yonder, that which had impressed us as being disorder and chaos became organized in accordance with a certain rhythm which at length grew perceptible to us. The movement to and fro was that of artisans performing a well-regulated task; and the task was accomplished about an immense fabric in the course of erection.
How all these artisans were clad in a fashion absolutely different from our own; and, on the other hand, the tools which they employed, the appearance of their ladders, the shape of their scaffoldings, their manner of carrying loads and of hoisting the necessary materials in wicker baskets to the upper floors, all these things, together with a multitude of further details, brought us into the heart of a period which must have been the thirteenth or fourteenth century.
There were numbers of monks supervising the works, calling out orders from one end of the vast site to the other, setting out measurements and not disdaining themselves to mix the mortar, to push a wheel-barrow or to saw a stone. Women of the people, uttering their cries at the top of their voices, walked about bearing jars of wine with which they filled cups that were at once emptied by the thirsty labourers. A beggarwent by. Two tattered singers began to roar a ditty, accompanying themselves on a sort of guitar. And a troop of acrobats, all lacking an arm, or a leg, or both legs, were preparing to give their show, when the scene changed without any transition, like a stage setting which is altered by the mere pressure of a button.
What we now saw was the same picture of a building in process of construction. But this time we clearly distinguished the plan of the edifice, the whole base of a Gothic cathedral displaying its huge proportions. And on these courses of masonry, which had reached the lower level of the towers, and along the fronts and before the niches and on the steps of the porch, everywhere, in fact, swarmed stone-hewers, masons, sculptors, carpenters, apprentices and monks.
And the costumes were no longer the same. A century or two had passed.
Next came a series of pictures which succeeded one another without our being able to separate the one from the other or to ascribe a beginning or an end to any one of them. By a method no doubt similar to that which, on the cinematograph, shows us the growth of a plant, we saw the cathedral rising imperceptibly, blossoming like a flower whose exquisitely-moulded petalsopen one by one and, lastly, being completed before our eyes, all of itself, without any human intervention. Thus came a moment when it stood out against the sky in all its glory and harmonious strength. It was Rheims Cathedral, with its three recessed doorways, its host of statues, its magnificent rose-windows, its wonderful towers flanked by airy turrets, its flying buttresses and the lacework of its carvings and balconies, Rheims Cathedral such as the centuries had beheld it, before its mutilation by the Huns.
A long shudder passed through the crowd. It understood what those who were not present cannot easily be made to understand now, by means of insignificant words: it understood that in front of it there stood something other than the photographic presentment of a building; and, as it possessed the profound and accurate intuition that it was not the victim of an unthinkable hoax, it became imbued and overwhelmed by an utterly disturbing sense of witnessing a most prodigious spectacle: theactualerection of a church in the Middle Ages, theactualwork of a thirteenth-century building-yard, theactuallife of the monks and artists who built Rheims Cathedral. Enlightened by its subtle instinct, not for a second did it doubt theevidence of its eyes. What I had denied, or at least what I had admitted only as an illusion, with reservations and flashes of incredulity, the crowd accepted with a certainty against which it would have been madness to rebel. It had faith. It believed with religious fervour. What it saw was not an artificial evocation of the past but that past itself, revived in all its living reality.
Equally real was the gradual transformation which continued to take place, no longer in the actual lines of the building, but as one might say in its substance and which was revealed by progressive changes that could not be attributed to any other cause than that of time. The great white mass grew darker. The grain of the stones became worn and weathered and they assumed that appearance of rugged bark which the patient gnawing of the years is apt to give them. It is true, the cathedral did not grow old, yet lived, for age is the beauty and the youth of the stones by means of which man gives shape to his dreams.
It lived and breathed through the centuries, seeming all the fresher as it faded and the more ornate as its legions of saints and angels became mutilated. It chanted its solemn hymn into the open sky over the houses which had graduallyconcealed its doorways and aisles, over the town above whose crowded roofs it towered, over the plains and hills which formed the dim horizon.
At different times people came and leant against the balustrade of some lofty balcony or appeared in the frame of the tall windows; and the costume of these people enabled us to note their successive periods. Thus we saw pre-Revolutionary citizens, followed by soldiers of the Empire, who in turn were followed by other nineteenth-century civilians and by labourers building scaffoldings and by yet more labourers engaged in the work of restoration.
Then a final vision appeared before our eyes: a group of French officers in service uniform. They hurriedly reached the top of the tower, looked through their field-glasses and went down again. Here and there, over the town and the country, hovered those small, woolly clouds which mark the bursting of a shell.
The silence of the crowd became anguished. Their eyes stared apprehensively. We all felt what was coming and we were all judging as a whole a spectacle which had shown us the gradual birth and marvellous growth of the cathedral only by way of leading up to the dramatic climax. We expected this climax. It followed from the dominant idea which gave the film its unity anditsraison d'être. It was as logical as the last act of a Greek tragedy. But how could we forsee all the savage grandeur and all the horror contained in that climax? How could we forsee that the bombardment of Rheims Cathedral itself formed part of the climax only as a preparation and that, beyond the violent and sensational scene which was about to rack our nerves and shock our minds, there would follow yet another scene of the most terrible nature, a scene which was strictly accurate in every detail?
The first shell fell on the north-east part of the cathedral at a spot which we could not see, because the building, though we were looking down upon it from a slight elevation, presented only its west front to our eyes. But a flame shot up, like a flash of lightning, and a pillar of smoke whirled into the cloudless sky.
And, almost simultaneously, three more shells followed, three more explosives, mingling their puffs of smoke. A fifth fell a little more forward, in the middle of the roof. A mighty flame arose. Rheims Cathedral was on fire.
Then followed phenomena which are really inexplicable in the present state of our cinematographic resources. I say cinematographic, although the term is not perhaps strictly accurate; but I do not know how else to describe themiraculous visions of the Yard. Nor do I know of any comparison to employ when speaking of the visible parabola of the sixth shell, which we followed with our eyes through space and which even stopped for a moment, to resume its leisurely course and to stop again at a few inches from the statue which it was about to strike. This was a charming and ingenuous statue of a saint lifting her arms to God, with the sweetest, happiest and most trusting expression on her face; a masterpiece of grace and beauty; a divine creature who had stood for centuries, cloistered in her shelter, among the nests of the swallows, living her humble life of prayer and adoration, and who now smiled at the death that threatened her. A flash, a puff of smoke . . . and, in the place of the little saint and her daintily-carved niche, a yawning gap!
It was at this moment that I felt that anger and hatred were awakening all around me. The murder of the little saint had roused the indignation of the crowd; and it so happened that this indignation found an occasion to express itself. Before us, the cathedral grew smaller, while at the same time it approached us. It seemed to be leaving its frame, while the distant landscape came nearer and nearer. A hill, bristling with barbed wire, dug with trenches and strewn withcorpses, rose and fell away; and we saw its top, which was fortified with bastions and cupolas of reinforced concrete.
Enormous guns displayed their long barrels. A multitude of German soldiers were moving swiftly to and fro. It was the battery which was shelling Rheims Cathedral.
In the centre stood a group of general officers, field-glasses in hand, with sword-belts unbuckled. At each shot, they watched the effect through their glasses and then nodded their heads with an air of satisfaction.
But a great commotion now took place among them. They drew up in single rank, assuming a stiff and automatic attitude, while the soldiers continued to serve the guns. And suddenly, from behind the fortress, a motor-car appeared, accompanied by an escort of cavalry. It stopped on the emplacement and from it there alighted a man wearing a helmet and a long fur-cloak, which was lifted at the side by the scabbard of a sword of which he held the hilt. He stepped briskly to the foreground. We recognised the Kaiser.
He shook hands with one of the generals. The others saluted more stiffly than ever and then, at a sign from their master, extended and formeda semicircle around him and the general whose hand he had shaken.
A conversation ensued. The general, after an explanation accompanied by gestures that pointed towards the town, called for a telescope and had it correctly pointed. The Kaiser put his eye to it.
One of the guns was ready. The order to fire was given.
Two pictures followed each other on the screen in quick succession: that of a carved stone balustrade smashed to pieces by the shell and that of the emperor drawing himself up immediately afterwards. He had seen! He had seen; and his face, which appeared to us suddenly enlarged and alone upon the screen, beamed with intense delight!
He began to talk volubly. His sensual lips, his upturned moustache, his wrinkled and fleshy cheeks were all moving at the same time. But, when another gun was obviously on the point of firing, he held his peace and looked in the direction of the town. Just then he raised his hand to a level just below his eyes, so that we saw them by themselves, between the hand and the peak of the helmet. They were hard, evil, proud, implacable. They wore the expression of themiraculous Three Eyes that had throbbed before us on the screen.
They lit up, glittering with an evil smile. They saw what we saw at the same time, a whole block of capitals and cornices falling to the ground and more flames rising in angry pillars of fire. Then the emperor burst out laughing. One picture showed him doubled up in two and holding his sides amid the group of generals all seized with the same uncontrollable laughter. He was laughing! He was laughing! It was so amusing! Rheims Cathedral was ablaze! The venerable fabric to which the kings of France used to come for their coronation was falling into ruins! The might of Germany was striking the enemy in his very heart! The German heavy guns were things that were noble and beautiful! And it was he who had ordained it, he, the emperor, the King of Prussia, master of the world, William of Hohenzollern! . . . . Oh, the joy of laughing his fill, laughing to his heart's content, laughing the frank, honest laughter of a jolly German!
A storm of hoots and hisses broke loose in the amphitheatre. The crowd had risen in a body, shaking their fists and bellowing forth insults. The attendants had to struggle with atroop of angry men who had invaded the orchestra.
Théodore Massignac, behind the bars of his cage, stooped and pressed the button.
The iron curtain rose.
On the morning of the day following this memorable spectacle, I woke late, after a feverish night during which I twice seemed to hear the sound of a shot.
"Nightmare!" I thought, when I got up. "I was haunted by the pictures of the bombardment; and what I heard was the bursting of the shells."
The explanation was plausible enough: the powerful emotions of the amphitheatre, coming after my meeting with Bérangère in the course of that other night and my struggle with Théodore Massignac, had thrown me into a state of nervous excitement. But, when I entered the room in which my coffee was served, Théodore Massignac came running in, carrying a heap of newspapers which he threw on the table; and I saw under his hat a bandage which hid his forehead. Had he been wounded? And was I to believe that there had really been shots fired in the Yard?
"Pay no attention," he said; "a mere scratch. I've bruised myself." And, pointing to thenewspapers: "Read that, rather. It's all about the master's triumph."
I made no protest against the loathsome brute's intrusion. The Master's triumph, as he said, and Bérangère's safety compelled me to observe a silence by which he was to benefit until the completion of his plans. He had made himself at home in Noël Dorgeroux's house; and his attitude showed that he was alive to his own rights and to my helplessness. Nevertheless, despite his arrogance, he seemed to me to be anxious and absorbed. He no longer laughed; and, without his cheery laugh, Théodore Massignac disconcerted me more than ever.
"Yes," he continued, drawing himself up, "it's a victory, a victory accepted by everybody. Not one of all these articles strikes a false note. Bewilderment and enthusiasm, stupefaction and high-flown praises, all running riot together. They're everyone of them alike; and, on the other hand, there is no attempt at a plausible explanation. Those fellows are all astounded. They're like blind men walking without a stick. Well, well, it's a thick-headed world!"
He came and stood in front of me and, bluntly:
"What then?" he said. "Can't you guess? It's really too funny! Now that I understand the affair, I'm petrified by the idea that peopledon't see through it. An unprecedented discovery, I agree, and yet so simple! And, even then, you can hardly call it a discovery. For, when all is said and done . . . Look here, the whole story is so completely within the capacity of the first-comer that it won't take long to clear it up. To-morrow or the next day, some one will say, 'The trick of the Yard?' I've got it! And that's that. You don't want to be a man of learning for that, believe me. On the contrary!"
He shrugged his shoulders:
"And besides, I don't care. Let them find out what they like: they'll still need the formula; and that's hidden in my cellar and nowhere else. Nobody knows it, not even our friend Velmot. Noël Dorgeroux's steel plate? Melted down. The instructions which he left at the back of D'Alembert's portrait? Burnt to ashes. So there's no danger of any competition. And, as the seats in the amphitheatre are selling like hot cakes, I shall have pocketed a million in less than a fortnight, two millions in less than three weeks. And then good-bye, gentlemen all, I'm off. By Jove! It won't do to tempt Providence or the gendarmes."
He took me by the lapels of my jacket and, standing straight in front of me, with his eyes on mine, said, in a more serious voice:
"There's only one thing that would ruffle me, which is to think that all these beautiful pictures can no longer appear upon the screen when I am gone. It seems impossible, what? No more miraculous sights? No more fairy-tales to make people talk till Doomsday? That would never do, would it? Noël Dorgeroux's secret must not be lost. So I thought of you. Hang it, you're his nephew! Besides, you love my dear Bérangère. Some day or other you'll be married to her. And then, as I'm working for her, it doesn't matter whether the money comes to her through you or through me, does it? Listen to me, Victorien Beaugrand, and remember every word I say. Listen to me. You've observed that the base of the wall below the screen stands out a good way. Noël Dorgeroux contrived a sort of recess there, containing several carboys, filled with different substances, and a copper vat. In this vat we mix certain quantities of those ingredients in fixed proportions, adding a fluid from a little phial prepared on the morning of the performances, according to your uncle's formula. Then, an hour or two before sunset, we dip a big brush in the wash thus obtained and daub the surface of the screen very evenly with it. You do that for each performance, if you want the pictures to be clear, and of course onlyon days when there are no clouds between the sun and the screen. As for the formula, it is not very long: fifteen letters and twelve figures in all, like this . . ."
Massignac repeated slowly, in a less decided tone:
"Fifteen letters and twelve figures. Once you know them by heart, you can be easy. And I too. Yes, what do I risk in speaking to you? You swear that you won't tell, eh? And then I hold you through Bérangère. Well, those fifteen letters. . . ."
He was obviously hesitating. His words seemed to cost him an increasing effort; and suddenly he pushed me back, struck the table angrily with his fist and cried:
"Well, no, then, no, no, no! I shall not speak. It would be too silly! No, I shall keep this thing in my own hands, yes! Is it likely that I should let the business go for two millions? Not for ten millions! Not for twenty! I shall mount guard for months, if necessary, as I did last night, with my gun on my shoulder . . . and if any one enters the Yard I'll shoot him as I would a dog. The wall belongs to me, Théodore Massignac. Hands off! Let no one dare to touch it! Let no one try to rob me of the least scrap of it! It's my secret! It's my formula! I bought thegoods and risked my neck in doing it. I'll defend them to my last breath; and, if I kick the bucket, it can't be helped; I'll carry them with me to the grave!"
He shook his fist at invisible enemies. Then suddenly, he caught hold of me again: "That's what things have come to. My arrest, the gendarmes . . . I don't care a hang. They'll never dare. But the thief lurking in the darkness, the murderer who fires at me, as he did last night, while I was mounting guard. . . . For you must have heard, Victorien Beaugrand? Oh, a mere scratch! And I missed him too. But, next time, the swine will give himself time to take aim at me. Oh, the filthy swine!"
He began to shake me violently to and fro.
"But you too, Victorien, he's your enemy too! Don't you understand? The man with the eye-glass? That scoundrel Velmot? He wants to steal my secret, but he also wants to rob you of the girl you love. Sooner or later, you'll have your hands full with him, just as I have. Won't you defend yourself, you damned milksop, and attack him when you get the chance? Suppose I told you that Bérangère's in love with him? Aha, that makes you jump! You're not blind surely? Can't you see for yourself that it wasfor him she was working all the winter and that, if I hadn't put a stop to it, I should have been diddled? She's in love with him, Victorien. She is the handsome Velmot's obedient slave. Why don't you smash his swanking mug for him? He's here. He's prowling about in the village. I saw him last night. Blast it, if I could only put a bullet through the beast's skin!"
Massignac spat out a few more oaths, mingled with offensive epithets which were aimed at myself as much as at Velmot. He described his daughter as a jade and a dangerous madwoman, threatened to kill me if I committed the least indiscretion and at length, with his mouth full of insults and his fists clenched, walked out backwards, like a man who fears a final desperate assault from his adversary.
He had nothing to be afraid of. I remained impassive under the storm of abuse. The only things that had roused me were his accusation against Bérangère and his blunt declaration of her love for the man Velmot. But I had long since resolved not to take my feelings for her into account, to ignore them entirely, not even to defend her or condemn her or judge her and to refuse to accept my suffering until events had afforded me undeniable proofs. I knew her tobe guilty of acts which I did not know of. Was I therefore to believe her guilty of those of which she was accused?
At heart, the feeling that seemed to persist was a profound pity. The horrible tragedy in which Bérangère was submerged was increasing in violence. Théodore Massignac and his accomplice were now antagonists. Once again Noël Dorgeroux's secret was about to cause an outburst of passion; and everything seemed to foretell that Bérangère would be swept away in the storm.
What I read in the newspapers confirmed what Massignac had told me. The articles lie before me as I write. They all express the same, more or less pugnacious, enthusiasm; and none of them gives a forecast of the truth which nevertheless was on the point of being discovered. While the ignorant and superficial journalists go wildly to work, heaping up the most preposterous suppositions, the really cultivated writers maintain a great reserve and appear to be mainly concerned in resisting any idea of a miracle to which a section of the public might be inclined to give ear: