ONE MORNING, SEIL-KOR’S DEVOTION to the emperor nearly proved fatal. At around ten o’clock, the young man was carried to Trophy Square, covered in blood, and put in the care of Dr. Leflaive.
His injury had been caused by a sudden and unexpected event.
Just minutes earlier, the traitor Gaiz-duh had managed to escape. Seil-kor, witnessing this bold move, had run after the fugitive, whom he’d soon caught and seized by the left arm.
Gaiz-duh, whose right hand clasped a knife, had twisted around in fury and struck Seil-kor in the head; the slight delay caused by this brief struggle had given the guards time to secure the prisoner and bring back the wounded man.
Dr. Leflaive bandaged the wound and promised to save the patient’s life.
By the next day, he was out of mortal danger, but soon began showing signs of mental disturbance owing to a serious lesion in the brain. Indeed, Seil-kor had lost his memory and could not recognize anyone’s face.
Darriand, visiting the patient, saw a marvelous opportunity to effect a miracle using his hypnotic plants. Possessing several rolls of blank celluloid, he asked Bedu to paint on one of those long, supple, transparent strips a certain number of scenes taken from the period of Seil-kor’s life he recalled most vividly.
The idyll with Nina was the clear choice. Transported back to his time with his soulmate, whom he’d believe truly present before his eyes, the young Negro might experience a salutary emotion liable to restore his faculties in a single stroke.
Among the relics preserved by the poor lunatic, they found a large photograph of Nina in frontal view, which provided Bedu with precious details.
Having finished the preparation of his lozenges, Fuxier, yielding to our entreaties, gladly agreed to complete his series of experiments by ripening a cluster of grapes, each of which would contain a different subject.
We cast about for new inspirations. Free to set the size of the bunch as he wished, Fuxier fixed the number of grapes at ten and chose the following themes:
1. A glimpse of Celtic Gaul.
2. The famous vision of Count Valtguire, who in a dream saw a demon sawing at the body of his mortal enemy, Eudes, son of Robert the Strong. Encouraged by this sign, which seemed to promise him the support of Heaven by dooming his adversary to death and damnation, Valtguire, throwing caution to the winds, redoubled the intensity of the bloody battle he was waging against Eudes and his partisans. This rashness proved fatal and led to his capture followed by immediate beheading.
3. An evocation of ancient Rome in the time of its greatest splendor, symbolized by the games of the Circus.
4. Napoleon, victorious in Spain, but cursed by a populace seething with revolt.
5. A gospel of Saint Luke relating three miracles performed by Jesus on the children of the Guedaliels, whose humble hut, illuminated by the presence of the divine Master, was suddenly filled with joyous echoes after having witnessed the bitterest grief. Two days before the celestial visit, the oldest child, a boy of fifteen, pale and weak, had suddenly succumbed while plying his trade as a basket weaver. Stretched out on his pallet, he still held in his fingers the long wicker strand he’d been braiding at the fatal instant. Of the two sisters the deceased had cherished, the first had fallen mute from her distress at the sight of the corpse, while the youngest, a poor invalid, ugly and hunchbacked, was no consolation to her parents for their dual misfortune. Upon entering, Jesus stretched his hand toward the comely aphonic, who, the moment she was cured, sang a long, full-throated trill that seemed to announce the return of joy and hope. A second gesture of the all-powerful hand, this time directed toward the deathbed, restored life to the dead boy, who, taking up his interrupted task, bent and knotted in his practiced fingers the supple and docile wicker strand. At the same moment, a new miracle was revealed to the dazzled parents’ eyes: Jesus had just brushed his finger over the gentle invalid, now left beautiful and standing erect.
6. The Ballad of Hans the Robust, a legendary woodsman from the Black Forest, who despite his advanced age could carry more tree trunks and bundles on his shoulders than his six sons put together.
7. A passage from Emile, in which Jean-Jacques Rousseau lengthily describes the first stirrings of desire felt by his hero upon seeing a young stranger in a poppy-colored dress seated in her doorway.
8. A reproduction of Raphael’s painting St. Michael Vanquishing Satan.
Armed with these materials, Fuxier set to work, offering us the captivating sight of his weird and patient method.
Sitting before his vine-stock, he burrowed into the buds of the future cluster with the help of extremely fine steel instruments—the very same ones he’d used to fashion the interior of his lozenges.
Sometimes he pulled from a minuscule box various coloring agents that would infuse the figures as they developed.
For hours he pursued his miraculous labors, focusing exclusively on the precise spot from which the grapes would emerge, deprived in advance of their seeds by this terrible trituration.