Scientists, like poets, tend to have a sweet tooth. One of the most illustrious members of the Académie des Sciences, when he comes out of the weekly meeting on Mondays, never fails to go into the pâtissier’s shop on the Rue Guénégaud, where he comforts himself for the fatigues of the debate by devouring more gateaux than he has destroyed arguments. As for our celebrated poets, Félix and Rollet, those two rival glories are counted among the most assiduous clients of the patisserie.29 Often, the galette-seller at the Gymnase has recognized, among the hands that extend mysteriously from the crowd toward his firm dough, the yellow glove of an Academician poet, and the opulent coupe-toujours in the Boulevard Saint-Martin salutes with a smile that is both discreet and conspiratorial the author of the most beautiful odes in modern literature.
Charles-Louis Knebel was both a poet and a scientist. I leave it to you to imagine how he faced up to a good meal, and whether he had an ineffable affection for the desserts that his wife loved to prepare with her dainty white hands with the pink fingernails.
One can cite Knebel as one of the privileged individuals for whom renown, fortune and happiness only have smiles. Born into a social position that did not impose upon him any of the rude proofs of poverty and isolation, he saw his first literary endeavors welcomed with enthusiasm by the Prince of Ehringen-Wallerstein, of whom his father was the chancellor. As soon as he had heard about young Charles brilliant debuts, the Margrave of Anspach recruited him as a privy councilor. Finally, Prince Frederick of Prussia offered him a lieutenancy in the regiment of his guards.
The épée and the epaulette are charms for a young and ardent heart. Knebel accepted military life joyfully, but soon became disgusted with the idle servitude of his new position, and surrendered without reserve to his penchant for literature. For many years, he accumulated more renown than his poetry assuredly merited, not ungraceful as it was. Influential at court, the possessor of a large fortune, a friend of Jean Paul, Griesbach, Hegel, Fichte, Schutz, Woos, Wollmann and Jacob, he was the absolute sovereign arbiter of all literary questions; no success was possible unless he deigned to confirm it. The age of fifty-six arrived for him without old age having deadened the vivacity of his imagination or afflicted his unalterable youth; thus, he inspired a violent love in Mademoiselle Louise Richdorff, a young Pomeranian of great beauty, who married him and gave him two sons.
Initiated into the ineffable pleasures of family life, he retired from the agitations of literary life, renounced the court and settled into a delightful retreat in Ilmenau. There, entirely absorbed by the joys and ecstasies of fatherhood, he devoted himself entirely to the education of his sons, composed the freshest and most delightful of his verses (Flowers of That Year), wrote a tragedy (Saul) that obtained an unparalleled success at Weimar and devoted himself passionately to the study of geology and physics. Mineralogy and the history of fossils owed important discoveries to him; he produced papers on the weight of the air and published scientific experiments on the influence of electricity on atmospheric variations.
Every year, a family fête brought Knebel’s intimate friends together at Ilmenau. The feast in question was held on the anniversary of his marriage, which was also, by a singular hazard, the anniversary of his own birth. In 1816, Weber, Hoffmann and Schuter were among the guests.
During the serious part of the meal—which is to say, during the first courses—the conversation was rarely occupied by anything other than marvels and secrets of natural history obtained from nature. Hoffmann, in particular, never wearied of hearing accounts of the amours and affinities of gases for one another; the description of fantastic animals that the antediluvian strata of the earth contained caused him to utter cries of joy. Knebel delighted in recounting marvels; his voice expressed itself with warm enthusiasm, his eyes sparkled, a generous flush animated his cheeks and colored his noble visage. He talked about his projects and his endeavors, his desires and his hopes.
“Oh,” he said, “if only I could attach my name to some great discovery in science! What a joy, what a pride would cause my heart to beat faster, if it were given to me to reveal one of the great mysteries of nature, as Franklin has done for the lightning-conductor, Montgolfier for balloons, Papin and Fulton for the power of steam and the mechanical application of that force!” And he added; “Yes, yes, I’d exchange my renown as a poet, and even my happiness as the father of a family, for the glory of such fame, such endurance!”
“Bah!” exclaimed Louise. “Don’t say such blasphemous things, Charles! What would become of you, poor scientist, if you were not able, every morning, to kiss the fresh cheeks of your two sons? If your wife were not there to surround you with tender concern and relieve you of all the cares of material life? Who, without me, would attend to your slightest whims? Here, ingrate, serve yourself this jam from France; I ordered it especially from Paris, from the Fidèle-Berger, because you expressed a desire for that treat the other day. Taste it, and then, if you still dare, say that you’d exchange your happiness for a little scientific renown—you, one of the greatest poets in Germany!”
The sight of the jar of jam and Louise’s affectionate words had an immediate effect on Knebel’s conversation. He fell back from the heights of ambition into the sweetness of reality, and no longer paid any heed to anything except taking the top off the jar of jam and savoring its delightful treasures. He examined the red color of the brilliant paste, which he compared, as a geologist, to rubies, and as a physicist to the luminous traces left in the sky by the aurora. When he had consumed it in the manner of a chemist, in small doses, and had analyzed the taste—an unparalleled mixture of redcurrant juice, the perfumes of quince, the savor of sugar and the aromas of vanilla—he verified the Parisian origin of the porcelain jar while interrogating the color and analyzing the texture, smooth and firm at the same time, not without a dissertation on the different nature of French and German flints. After which, he passed on to the printed label of the Fidèle-Berger, a certificate that attested the superiority of the jam, as the name of Michelangelo at the base of a statue attests the superiority of a work of art.
Suddenly, Knebel’s friends saw him go red and pale at the same time. He was turning the enveloped of parchment that had covered the jar over and over in his fingers, moistening the label and scratching it with precaution in order to lift it off without tearing it, succeeding in discovering the characters inscribed on the piece of vellum. When he had reached the end his attention was redoubled; he had stopped listening to the questions that were addressed to him, and no longer replied to anyone. An imperious and absolute preoccupation had taken possession of him. Sweat was streaming on his brow; a convulsive movement agitated his hands; his lips were stammering inconsequential words; both ecstasy and despair were legible in his facial expression.
“Horses!” he cried, finally. “Horses! I need to leave for Weimar right away—for it’s in Weimar that you bought this jam, isn’t it, Louise?”
“I asked Schermaker the confectioner to order them from Paris.”
“Go find me horses,” he repeated to his manservant. “Hurry up. A moment’s delay might cost me eternal regret.” He looked at the precious parchment again. “Dear God! You wouldn’t put me so close to the accomplishment of my most ardent desire, only to cause me a disappointment that would destroy my happiness forever?”
“What’s the matter with you, Charles? Your agitation is frightening me, my love. What motive is so imperious as to make you desert your friends, who have come to celebrate your birthday, in this manner? And your family, for whom you want to change the celebration into a day of isolation and widowhood?”
“What’s the matter with me?” he replied, excitedly. “What’s the matter! I can’t say, for I wouldn’t confide this secret now to my own mother, if she were still alive. What’s the matter! If you knew, perhaps you’d become traitors to me, you whose friendship is so tender, so faithful, so well-proven. Here’s the horses—let’s go! Adieu! See you soon!”
Without kissing his wife and children, without shaking his friends’ hands, he launched himself into the post-chaise that had been harnessed in haste, and shouted to the postillion: “A triple tip! A gold piece if you hurry!”
The carriage departed with lightning rapidity, leaving Louise and her guests stupefied.
Rapidly as the caleche flew along the road, and in spite of the postillion’s ardor in urging the horses on, Knebel was restless, as if to hasten, by his own movements, the agility of the wheels. He got up, he sat down, he pestered the driver, he despaired of the slowness of his progress. Several times, Frantz, the old manservant who had followed his mater without being ordered to do so, wondered whether the worthy scientist’s reason had not been disturbed.
Finally, they arrived at Weimar. As soon as the walls of the city appeared on the horizon, Knebel shouted to the postillion: “Go straight to the confectioner Schermaker’s shop and don’t stop until you’re at the door.”
In fact, a few minutes later, the confectioner saw a post-chaise arrive impetuously outside his shop. The horses were covered in foam, and it was necessary to throw water over the wheels to prevent them from catching fire. With a single bound, Knebel launched himself into the shop with the sprightliness of a young man.
“Where are the jars of jam that you ordered from France?” he demanded, without any other preamble, and in a voice so troubled that the confectioner was disturbed, and wondered privately whether it might not be a matter of some misfortune.
“I sent for six, in addition to the three Madame ordered.”
“Where are the jars?”
“Here are four of them. The other two have been sold.”
Knebel looked at the four jars, tore off the parchment that covered them, and threw everything out into the street with an energetic surge of anger.
“Where are the other two?”
“I’ve already had the honor of informing the councilor that I’ve sold them.”
“To whom?”
“To Herr Goethe.”
“To Goethe?” cried Knebel, despairingly. “To my rival? To the man who disputes the throne of poetry and science with me? May God curse you and the Devil strangle you!”
He leapt into his carriage and ordered the postillion to drive to Goethe’s house
Goethe and Knebel had fallen out a long time ago. You can imagine the surprise of the former when he saw the poet come into his house in extreme distress, and say to him, as soon as he saw him: “In the name of Heaven, my dear Goethe, you haven’t opened the two jars of jam that you bought from Schermaker’s, have you? If they’re still intact, please let me have them, and you’ll find in me a devoted friend and enthusiastic admirer.”
“All the jam-jars in my pantry at are your disposal,” Goethe replied, who did not know whether he was dealing with a sane man or a lunatic. “I’ll summon my housekeeper; if it would be agreeable to you, she’ll not only give you the jam she bought, but the jam she made herself.”
Without thanking Goethe, and without even replying, Knebel ran to the pantry, searched for the two jars from the Fidèle-Berger in the midst of the old woman’s provisions, found them, and tore off the envelopes as he had done at the confectioner’s.
“Nothing,” he murmured. “Nothing! To come so nearly within sight of the goal and not to reach it! Oh, that’s frightful!”
He wiped away a tear that as running down his cheek, shook Goethe’s hand and stood there, immobile, somber and pensive.
Suddenly, it was as if he woke up with a start.
“Two jars! My wife still has another two jars! Just as long as she hasn’t served them to my guests! As long as she hasn’t thrown away the envelopes! Quickly, fresh horses for the carriage, and let’s get back to Ilmenau!”
At daybreak the following morning, Louise saw her husband arrive, pale and covered in mud. His carriage had broken down on the road.
“Are you hurt, my love?” the young woman asked, anxiously.
Where are the other two jars of jam you bought in Weimar?”
“Here, in this cupboard.”
“Intact?”
“Intact.”
“Intact—thank God!”
He ran to the cupboard, opened it and snatched up the jars; they no longer had any covers.
“What have you done with the parchment that as wrapped around these jars? Louise, I need that parchment! I need it right now, at any price!”
“I gave it to the children yesterday. They asked me for it in order to make puppets.”
“Where are the children?” Knebel stammered, who had not given them a thought thus far. “I want to see them! They have to give me the puppets they’ve made. They have to bring me the slightest clippings. If the little wretches have lost even the smallest fragment, I’ll wring their necks.”
The children were woken up. Their father did not kiss them; he was unconcerned anything but finding the scraps of parchment, and finding them intact.
When they were brought to him, and he had looked at them one by one, he threw them away disdainfully, and collapsed into an armchair.
With his head in his hands, he meditated for a long time, despairing, overwhelmed by grief.
Louise came to kneel bedside him, gently uncovered the face that he was keeping hidden, and put her lips to her husband’s cheeks. She found them bathed in tears.
“What’s wrong, Charles? What anxiety, what chagrin, is causing you to suffer so? Are our fortune, our honor and the future of our children under threat? If you only knew how it affects me to see you in this state of agitation! This is the first mystery you’ve presented me with, my love, the first secret you’ve kept to yourself! I wouldn’t complain if I weren’t seeing you unhappy, but your suffering belongs to me, and I want my share of it.”
“Louise,” he replied, “I have to leave for France.”
“Leave for France!”
“I have to, I tell you. It’s the price of glory and fortune for me.”
“What need do you have or fortune and glory? Hasn’t God given you as much as any man could desire down here?”
“All that’s nothing, Louise. It’s the shadow compared with the light, the cloud over the face of the sun. If I attain the secret I’m pursuing, the secret that I’ve touched with my finger without being able to grip, I’ll change the face of the world, take my place with Newton and Cuvier, those two great geniuses. What am I saying? I’ll rise above them, for they only divined and understood one of the Creator’s thoughts, while I’ll almost become a creator myself. Yes, Louise, nature will obey my voice, like that of its divine master...
“Adieu—I’m leaving for France.”
He took some gold and a few clothes, kissed his wife and children in haste, climbed into a carriage and set off for Paris, without offering any further explanation of the reasons for his journey, and, without paying any heed to the rigors of winter or the fatigue of the journey, and with no other traveling companion than his old domestic.
When he arrived in Paris, without even booking into a hotel, and even though he was dying of cold and hunger, he went directly to the Rue des Lombards, to the Fidèle-Berger.
Knebel spent about ten minutes in the shop of the famous confectioner. When he came out again to resume his place in the carriage, the old domestic Frantz did not observe, on his master’s visage, the discouragement and despair that he habitually read there. He even seemed to be calmer.
“Rue de Cinq-Diamants!” he said to the postillion.
At the name of that street it was he domestic who displayed emotion. Now, emotion, on that aged face, which resembled a mask of polished bronze, was a phenomenon sufficiently extraordinary for his master, the naturalist, to notice it. He did not, however, pay the slightest heed to such a great marvel. As usual, one sole thought, one sole sensation preoccupied him: to arrive at the unknown goal that he was pursuing.
The Rue de Cinq-Diamants forms a long, narrow, airless corridor inhabited by poor manual workers, into which carriages cannot penetrate. Knebel leapt out of his post-chaise and ran to one of the house at the far end of the street. Frantz leaned out to follow him with his gaze, and seemed to be watching out or his return with a kind of troubled curiosity.
Alas, the calm and confidence that seemed to have dissipated Knebel’s bleak misery a little while before when he came out of the Fidèle-Berger had disappeared, darkening his pale clean-shaven features more than ever.
“Go and find fresh horses while I get some food,” he said to the postillion. “I have to leave for Berlin in two hours.”
“For Berlin!” Frantz exclaimed, putting his hands together in surprise and raising his eyes to the heavens.
To hear Frantz speak was equivalent to the miracle of Balaam’s ass, which worthy animal gave advice to prophets.
In spite of his chagrins and disappointments, Knebel took note of it. “If you’re afraid of the fatigues of another journey—to which, I’m very much afraid, others might succeed—you’re at liberty to stay in Paris, Frantz,” he said, rudely.
“Oh, sir! Can you have such an idea of an old and faithful servant? Surprise extracted the words that you heard from me, not the fear of fatigue. If you’ll permit me to tell you how and why...”
“I have no need of advice,” Knebel interjected, who, reproaching himself bitterly for his obstinacy, imagined that Frantz was about to address observations to him in that regard. “You go into that restaurant; order dinner for me and for you, and leave me to my thoughts.”
Twelve days later, the post-chaise arrived in Berlin, without Frantz having pronounced another syllable. However, when he heard his master indicate to the postillion a poor and solitary road in an outlying district, an involuntary “Mein Gott!” escaped his lips.
“What’s the matter with you, Frantz?” Knebel demanded. “Are you ill? You’re very pale and agitated.”
“My dear master, it’s necessary that I tell you the reason for this emotion. Surprise is the cause of it. For the two months we’ve been traveling, I’ve thought that I was dreaming. Yes, certainly, no dream ever had circumstances as strange. When you came out of the confectioner’s in Paris you went to the Rue des Cinq-Diamants, where I lived for several years. Now, you’ve stopped the carriage in Berlin opposite the very house where I loved for a long time with my poor master, Dr. Cornelius.”
“Dr. Cornelius?”
“Yes, a knowledgeable physicist.”
“What are you telling me, Frantz? My God, can you be the person who sold a parchment manuscript to the Fidèle-Berger?”
“Yes, Monsieur.”
“Into my arms, Frantz! Into my arms! It’s you that I’ve been searching for since my departure from Ilmenau!”
“Me, who was by your side? Me, who has never left you?”
“Yes, you Frantz. Do you know what became of that precious manuscript?”
“As I’ve just told you, I sold part of it...”
“And the rest?”
“The rest, sir, wasn’t written on parchment, because my poor master, reduced to poverty, was obliged to finish it on paper.”
“And what have you done with that paper? Speak—you’re holding my life and death in your hands.”
“I used it one evening to light the fire.”
“Wretch!” cried Knebel, beside himself. “Get out of my presence and never let me see you again! Go on! Get away! The sight of you is odious to me, unbearable! For having burned the library of Alexandria, Omar doesn’t merit half the execration that you deserve!”
“If you knew the circumstances in which I burned the papers, sir, far from treating me so harshly, you’d forgive me—approve of me, even—I’m sure of it. It was a matter, alas, of warming up my poor master’s death-bed. My master…or, rather, my friend, sir, because, for twenty years, I shared the poverty and the endeavors of the savant Cornelius...”
“You shared his endeavors! Do you know his secrets?” cried Knebel, throwing his arms around Frantz once again. “My good, my faithful servant, forgive me for the harsh words I spoke to you. I was wrong. Anger carried me away. Come, Frantz, we’re going to the best hotel in Berlin; you’re going to rest for a few hours. You mustn’t expose your precious health to further fatigue so soon. And tell me, Frantz, do you know what the book written on both vellum and paper contained? You see, chance procured me a fragment of it, and it’s to recover the rest that I’ve left my house, my wife, my children, everything that I love, everything that gives me joy and happiness.”
“I can’t tell you what the manuscript contained, because it was the only secret that my master kept from me; in order to prevent my knowing it, he even wrote in Greek. However, perhaps I can give you, with regard to what you want to know, some incomplete documentation.”
“Speak,” said Knebel, “speak, and if you enable me to recover Cornelius’ secret, I’ll reward you with the gift of a brilliant fortune, beyond all your hopes.”
In the meantime, the post-chaise had arrived at the Black Eagle Hotel. The two travelers installed themselves by the fireplace and Frantz began to tell his story, like a man long condemned to silence who suddenly finds a listener eager to listen to him. He gave himself the innocent joy of talking to himself, and push munificence in his own regard so far as to place at the head of his narration a kind of exordium, or prolegomenon, as they say in German universities.
“Destiny has its strange caprices,” he commenced. “My grandfather was a brave captain in the service of the Austrian government. Unfortunately, he was killed in battle and left his widow and son without resources. The latter had no other resource, to escape poverty, than the profession of artisan. Later, he married a seamstress, and had a dozen children, and left nothing by way of an inheritance to the youngest—me—but the compassion of an old scientist who was our neighbor. That was Dr. Cornelius.
“Dr. Cornelius was in great need of a faithful and intelligent servant to look after him incessantly. Always plunged in the abstractions of science, he had no time or thought to spare for material life. Although young, I understood the duties of my position and I introduced economy and order into my benefactor’s household, into which they had never entered. Cornelius possessed a fortune that, if well-regulated, could have procured us an easy and comfortable life, but he ruined himself in the fabrication of strange and bizarrely-formed machines. He was always in pursuit of an obsession whose objective he hid with great mystery. He lived in a laboratory infected by the most deleterious gazes, composed and decomposed substances, experimented on chemical agents and took no rest by day or by night. I can still see him, with his tall stature, his thin face, his huge bald brow and his eyes, flamboyant with a supernatural gleam. One morning, after leaning over a retort, reminiscent of a magician, Cornelius came out of his laboratory and embraced me with transports of joy, like those you showed me a little while ago.
“‘Frantz!’ he cried, ‘I’ve completed my work! I hold the secret that I wanted o steal from nature. The name of Cornelius will take its place among the most glorious names; it will endure as long as the world, and will be blessed by generations to come.’
“‘And what is this secret, my worthy master?’ I asked.
“He leaned close to my ear, after looking around to make sure that no one could hear. ‘Swear to me,’ he said, ‘on your salvation, not to reveal a single word of this mystery before I permit you to. Swear that oath, and you shall know everything.’
“I swore the oath that he was demanding of me.
“‘Well,’ he said to me, ‘I’ve found the means of making myself the master of the weather...’”
“That was the secret of which a part was written on the fragment of parchment!” Knebel interjected. “Speak, oh, speak!”
The best way to hear me would be not to interrupt me, Frantz thought—but he resumed his story nevertheless.
“‘I’m the master of the weather,’ Cornelius continued. ‘At my command, the rain will fall. When I wish, it will fold up its black wings and go throw itself into the sea that gave birth to it. I’ll be able to dissipate the clouds that veil the sun and prevent the crops from ripening. No more floods, no more famine, no more of those frightful disasters that bring desolation and destruction in their wake. I’m the master of the weather!’
“‘My good master!’ I exclaimed, “Such power only belongs to God. In the name of Heaven, don’t mistake for reality utopias that are perhaps realizable in theory, but which practice can’t help but destroy.’
“He looked at me, smiling, and said: ‘You doubt the power that my science has conquered. Well, I’ll give you proof of it. Do you see that cloud advancing toward us rapidly? Plant those rods that you can see in the ground in the form of a circle. Attach to the top of each of those supports these straw ropes that I wove yesterday. Now, stand close to me, inside the circle formed by the apparatus. Look! Here’s the cloud, which is breaking up, and the hail beginning to fall around us. Not one of those hailstones is falling in the circle. A mysterious force is drawing them outside the limits that I’ve traced for the storm.’
“Indeed, Monsieur, the hail was obedient, following the direction that my master had imposed on it.”
“I’m familiar with that magnetic phenomenon,” Knebel said. “I’ve experimented several times myself, and there isn’t a peasant in Germany today who doesn’t put it into practice—but I didn’t know that Cornelius was its inventor.”
“After such a proof, I could no longer put my master’s power in doubt. I gave him ardent assistance in the construction of his machines, but it was necessary, in order to meet those expenses, to sell some of the property he possessed.
“‘What does it matter?’ he said to me, when he saw my reluctance to let him take that resolution. ‘What does it matter? Should one hesitate to complete the seed that, when sowed, will fructify a hundredfold?’
“After four years of sacrifices and hard work, Cornelius found himself reduced to absolute poverty, but nature had surrendered to him the entirety of the secret for which he had been searching for so long.
“For a month thereafter, the village to which we’d retired in order to live more cheaply, and more especially so that nothing would disturb the scientist’s meditations, only experienced atmospheric variations at the command of the master of the weather. A few minutes were sufficient for Dr. Cornelius to cover the purest sky with somber clouds. In even less time, he could restore all its serenity to the celestial vault.
“Storms rumbled with their thunder and lightning, the wind whistled and the snow fell in large white flakes—and then, all of a sudden, ardent sunlight succeeded rigorous cold. All the crops in the village were destroyed and all the peasants without exception, could only obtain from their fields the bare minimum to support their most imperious needs.
“When I mentioned these misfortunes to my master, he smiled and replied: ‘I’ll be rich, and compensate them so generously for these losses that they’ll bless me instead of complaining, as they’re doing today.’
“‘But why are you delaying revealing your secret? Master, our situation is scarcely more reassuring than that of the peasants who surround us.’
“‘Listen to me,’ he said. “Napoléon will arrive in Schoenbrun in a few days’ time. It’s to Napoléon alone that I’ll reveal my secret; as the master of the world he alone merits such a communication, and he alone can reward it worthily. But Napoléon didn’t understand Fulton, because the latter explained steam navigation with written theories, not with proofs. While he’s reviewing his troops, I’ll make the atmosphere pass through all the changes that I can impose upon it at will. Convinced by such proofs, nothing will impede the admiration of the great genius. His imperial mouth will proclaim me to be a superior man, before the entire world; we’ll deal with one another as equals.’
“When the day of the review arrived, the doctor gave me the responsibility of supervising the most important items of apparatus, disposed seven or eight hundred meters from Schoenbrun. Full of hope for a triumph, he went to position himself in the crowd, in such a way as to be able, nevertheless, to direct the experiment with certainty, to the success of which he’d sacrificed his fortune and twenty years of his life.
“Heart palpitating with anticipation ad emotion, sitting at the foot of a great machine that rose some four or five meters above the ground, I soon heard the acclamations of the army saluting Napoléon. At the same moment, the sky, which my master had maintained somber and melancholy until then, opened majestically and unleashed floods of sunlight.
“On tenterhooks, I expected further atmospheric changes, but not ensued.
“I began to far that my master’s science might have deceived and disappointed his power when soldiers fell upon me, dragged me away and threw me into a cell.
“I spent three months there, interrogated about my complicity in a crime about which I knew nothing and bombarded with questions that I didn’t understand. I was confronted with a young man that I’d never seen before, who declared that he had never met me. Finally, I was introduced into my master’s presence. Alas, he was a prisoner like me, and his reason had not been able to bear the destruction of his hopes; he had succumbed to dolor and was no longer able to make Napoléon understand the supernatural power that his science had conquered. He saw me without recognizing me, stammered inconsequential words, and only responded to my caresses by raising his emaciated hands to the heavens.
“In the end, our innocence was recognized, and we were set free. It was only then that I discovered the crime of which we had been accused. The machines disposed by my master for his magnificent atmospheric experiments had been mistaken for telegraphic signals and means of correspondence between the accomplices of the assassin Friedrich Staps.30
“Poverty awaited us on our emergence from prison. My master had no resources left, and fate had left him without any mans of combating the most frightful deprivation. My efforts could not restore him to rationality. Crouched night and day in a corner of the hovel into which we had been welcomed out of pity, he kept his eyes fixed on the ground and repeated incessantly, in a quavering voice: ‘To Paris, the master of the weather! To Paris, the master of the weather!’
“A physician in the neighborhood, who treated my master gratuitously, declared that if any hope remained of returning the invalid to sanity, that hope had to be placed in a journey to Paris. The accomplishment of an imperious desire, the movement of the journey, and the change of location and air, might bring about the prodigy. Without counting on the success of the prescribed means, I resolved to try them out. Anyway, poverty in Germany or poverty in France was all the same to me.
“One morning, therefore, I went to the master and said: ‘We’re leaving for Paris, Master.’
“At those words, the idiot who had not understood anything I had said to him for a long time got up resolutely and leaned on my arm, and we set forth.
“The journey was long, for we had to make it on foot, begging from door to door for bread and the straw on which we were sometimes permitted to obtain a little repose. My master didn’t seem to be suffering from, or even to perceive, the fatigue and misery. He walked with the force and resolution of youth. Silent and plunged in meditation, if he saw me succumb to discouragement, he pointed at the sky, took me by the hand, and repeated enthusiastically the only words of which his mind retained the memory: ‘To Paris, the master of the weather!’
“Finally, we arrived at the goal of our journey. We took up residence in a miserable attic in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants, and a manufacturer of playing-cards took me into his service. I toiled from morning till dusk in his workshop, and then took thirty sous back to our dwelling. Thank God, it was enough to prevent us from dying of starvation, and we weren’t required to resort to the humiliating resource of alms.
“My master’s reason, without recovering all of its original energy, seemed nevertheless to be less weak and confused. I surprised him one day tracing geometrical figures and mechanical diagrams on the wall of the room with a pencil. He erased it all as soon as he saw me come in, as if he were afraid that I might rob him some important discovery.
“One evening, to my great surprise, I didn’t find him there when I got home. You can imagine my anxiety. I wanted up half the night; he didn’t reappear until midnight, covered with mud, worn out with fatigue and hiding something in his bosom that he carefully concealed from my gaze. When I thought I was asleep he took out his mysterious object that he had furtively procured. It was a leaf of parchment. He wrote all night; when dawn broke, he put out the lamp, after carefully hiding his work.
“The next day, I perceived that my master, in order to obtain the parchment, had spent part of the money that we still had. I succeeded in taking possession of the mysterious manuscript surreptitiously while Cornelius was asleep, but only saw unknown characters that seemed to have been traced at random. My poverty was too great to satisfy the desires of futile scribbling, so I took all my money with me, and, after leaving some paper on the table I double-locked the door.
“An accident that happened that very day, justified that rigorous economy measure only too fully, alas. I was seriously injured in the leg, and it was necessary to renounce all work for several weeks.
“To tell you what frightful suffering then came to overwhelm our poverty would be beyond human words. Kept prisoner in my paltry bed, with no linen to bandage my wound, without any bread to prevent the poor old man from dying of starvation, I dragged myself desperately as far as the landing to call for help. Either no one heard me or no one wanted to come to our aid, and we remained alone in the face of hunger and abandonment.
“My master spent his days and night writing. He erased, recommenced and added, and only seemed to feel the need for nourishment at rare intervals. When hunger pressed him, he turned his pale face, withered by privation and suffering, toward me, and looked at me with a dolorous astonishment, putting his hands to his stomach. When the crisis passed, he returned placidly to work.
“One morning—it was the eighth day—I found the old man lying at my feet. He was holding his manuscript in his hand, and showed it to me with a solemn gesture. Then he tried to say something to me, but his lips were hardly able to stammer the only words that madness had left in his memory: ‘The master of the weather to Paris!’
“Then he fell back, stiff and cold.
“Desperation gave me strength. I overcame the pain and reached the door. I let myself slide down the stairs and succeeded, by leaning on the walls, in getting as far as the Fidèle-Berger. There, out of pity, they bought the sheet of parchment you found for a few sous. I exchanged those alms for a little bread and wine, and carried those treasures back to the lodgings.
“It took several hours to do all that, and I fainted twice before being able to get up the staircase. Finally, I got back to Cornelius. He was still there, stiff and cold on the floor. I rubbed his lips with the wine, and tried to make him drink a few drops. Nothing reanimated him. Then I threw the rest of the manuscript into the fireplace, and set fire to it—and, with the aid of the fugitive flame the paper gave me, I made one last effort to warm the poor fellow up. Alas, my efforts were superfluous, for nothing can return warmth to a cadaver.
“There’s no need to tell you the rest of the story, sir. My master was thrown into the communal grave in a cemetery, and I went back to Germany, where I had the good fortune to enter your service.”
Knebel left Berlin the next day to return to Ilmenau, which he never left thereafter. Always shut up in his study, he scarcely seemed to remember that he had a wife and children. He spent his days and nights meditating over the piece of parchment written by Cornelius, striving to recover the doctor’s secret. Only Frantz was allowed into the room, and was not allowed to leave it, for he had to be ready to reply at any moment to the questions that the scientist addressed to him about the form and function of the machines constructed by the master of the weather.
One morning, Knebel came down from his laboratory, his face radiant with joy. He threw himself into his wife’s arms; he hugged his sons to his bosom and he covered all three with kisses.
Frantz shared in his master’s joy.
“Fortune and glory for us! Happiness for us!” said Knebel. “I’ve finally received the recompense of my courage and perseverance. I’ve rediscovered Cornelius’ sublime secret.” He added: “I have to go to Weimar to reveal my discovery to the prince and to carry out an experiment in front of him. Tomorrow, my dear Louise, tomorrow, my children, I’ll come back, and never again have to think about anything but your happiness and affection.”
Alas, he returned sooner than he expected. An hour later, his corpse was brought back.
The post-chaise, overloaded with instruments and apparatus, had overturned, crushing Knebel and his faithful Frantz.
That is why the secret of the mastery of weather was lost for a second time, and perhaps forever.