The Eternal Adam and other stories (9 page)

‘He rose at midnight, accompanied by
Andreoli and Grossetti. The balloon mounted slowly, for it had been perforated
by the rain, and the gas was leaking out. The three intrepid aeronauts could
only observe the state of the barometer by aid of a dark lantern. Zambecarri
had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours. Grossetti was also fasting.

"My friends," said Zambecarri,
"I am overcome by cold, and exhausted. I am dying."

He fell inanimate in the gallery. It was
the same with Grossetti. Andreoli alone remained conscious. After long efforts,
he succeeded in reviving Zambecarri.

"What news? Whither are we going? How
is the wind? What time is it?"

"It is two o’clock."

"Where is the compass?"

"Upset!"

"Great God! The lantern has gone
out!"

"It cannot burn in this rarefied
air," said Zambecarri.

The moon had not risen, and the atmosphere
was plunged in murky darkness.

"I am cold, Andreoli. What shall I
do?"

They slowly descended through a layer of
whitish clouds.

"Sh!" said Andreoli. "Do you
hear?"

"What?" asked Zambecarri.

" A strange noise."

"You are mistaken."

"No."

Consider these travellers, in the middle of
the night, listening to that unaccountable noise! Are they going to knock
against a tower? Are they about to be precipitated on the roofs?

"Do you hear? One would say it was the
noise of the sea."

"Impossible!"

"It is the groaning of the
waves!"

"It is true."

"Light! light!"

After five fruitless attempts, Andreoli
succeeded in obtaining light. It was three o’clock.

‘The voice of violent waves was heard. They
were almost touching the surface of the sea!

"We are lost!" cried Zambecarri,
seizing a large bag of sand.

"Help!" cried Andreoli.

The car touched the water, and the waves
came up to their breasts.

 "Throw out the instruments, clothes,
money!"

‘The aeronauts completely stripped
themselves. The balloon, relieved, rose with frightful rapidity. Zambecarri was
taken with vomiting. Grossetti bled profusely. The unfortunate men could not
speak, so short was their breathing. They were taken with cold, and they were
soon crusted over with ice. The moon looked as red as blood.

‘After traversing the high regions for a
half-hour, the balloon again fell into the sea. It was four in the morning.
They were half submerged in the water, and the balloon dragged them along, as
if under sail, for several hours.

‘At daybreak they found themselves opposite
Pesaro, four miles from the coast. They were about to reach it, when a gale
blew them back into the open sea. They were lost! The frightened boats fled at
their approach. Happily, a more intelligent boatman accosted them, hoisted them
on board, and they landed at Ferrada.

‘A frightful journey, was it not? But
Zambecarri was a brave and energetic man. Scarcely recovered from his
sufferings, he resumed his ascensions. During one of them he struck against a
tree; his spirit-lamp was broken on his clothes; he was enveloped in fire, his
balloon began to catch the flames, and he came down half consumed.

‘At last, on the 21st of September, 1812,
he made another ascension at Boulogne. The balloon clung to a tree, and his
lamp again set it on fire. Zambecarri fell, and was killed! And in presence of
these facts, we would still hesitate! No. The higher we go, the more glorious
will be our death!’

The balloon being now entirely relieved of
ballast and of all it contained, we were carried to an enormous height. It
vibrated in the atmosphere. The least noise resounded in the vaults of heaven.
Our globe, the only object which caught my view in immensity, seemed ready to
be annihilated, and above us the depths of the starry skies were lost in thick
darkness.

I saw my companion rise up before me.

‘The hour is come!’ he said. ‘We must die.
We are rejected of men. They despise us. Let us crush them!’

‘Mercy!’ I cried.

‘Let us cut these cords! Let this car be
abandoned in space. The attractive force will change its direction, and we
shall approach the sun!’

Despair galvanised me. I threw myself upon
the madman, we struggled together, and a terrible conflict took place. But I
was thrown down, and while he held me under his knee, the madman was cutting
the cords of the car.

‘One!’ he cried.

‘My God!’

‘Two! Three!’

I made a superhuman effort, rose up, and
violently repulsed the madman.

‘Four!’

The car fell, but I instinctively clung to
the cords and hoisted myself into the meshes of the netting.

The madman disappeared in space!

The balloon was raised to an immeasurable
height. A horrible cracking was heard. The gas, too much dilated, had burst the
balloon. I shut my eyes —

Some instants after, a damp warmth revived
me. I was in the midst of clouds on fire. The balloon turned over with dizzy
velocity. Taken by the wind, it made a hundred leagues an hour in a horizontal
course, the lightning flashing around it.

Meanwhile my fall was not a very rapid one.
When I opened my eyes, I saw the country. I was two miles from the sea, and the
tempest was driving me violently towards it, when an abrupt shock forced me to
loosen my hold. My hands opened, a cord slipped swiftly between my fingers, and
I found myself on the solid earth!

It was the cord of the anchor, which,
sweeping along the surface of the ground, was caught in a crevice; and my
balloon, unballasted for the last time, careered off to lose itself beyond the
sea.

When I came to myself, I was in bed in a
peasant’s cottage, at Harderwick, a village of La Gueldre, fifteen leagues from
Amsterdam, on the shores of the Zuyder-Zee.

A miracle had saved my life, but my voyage
had been a series of imprudences, committed by a lunatic, and I had not been
able to prevent them.

May this terrible narrative, though
instructing those who read it, not discourage the explorers of the air.

The city of Geneva lies at the west end of
the lake of the same name. The Rhone, which passes through the town at the
outlet of the lake, divides it into two sections, and is itself divided in the
centre of the city by an island placed in mid-stream. A topographical feature
like this is often found in the great depots of commerce and industry. No doubt
the first inhabitants were influenced by the easy means of transport which the
swift currents of the rivers offered them – those ‘roads which walk along of
their own accord,’ as Pascal puts it. In the case of the Rhone, it would be the
road that ran along.

Before new and regular buildings were
constructed on this island, which was enclosed like a Dutch galley in the
middle of the river, the curious mass of houses, piled one on the other,
presented a delightfully confused
coup-d’œil
. The small area of the
island had compelled some of the buildings to be perched, as it were, on the
piles, which were entangled in the rough currents of the river. The huge beams,
blackened by time, and worn by the water, seemed like the claws of an enormous
crab, and presented a fantastic appearance. The little yellow streams, which
were like cobwebs stretched amid this ancient foundation, quivered in the
darkness, as if they had been the leaves of some old oak forest, while the
river engulfed in this forest of piles, foamed and roared most mournfully.

One of the houses of the island was
striking for its curiously aged appearance. It was the dwelling of the old
clockmaker, Master Zacharius, whose household consisted of his daughter
Gerande, Aubert Thun, his apprentice, and his old servant Scholastique.

There was no man in Geneva to compare in
interest with this Zacharius. His age was past finding out. Not the oldest
inhabitant of the town could tell for how long his thin, pointed head had
shaken above his shoulders, nor the day when, for the first time, he had walked
through the streets, with his long white locks floating in the wind. The man
did not live; he vibrated like the pendulum of his clocks. His spare and
cadaverous figure was always clothed in dark colours. Like the pictures of
Leonardo da Vinci, he was sketched in black.

Gerande had the pleasantest room in the
whole house, whence, through a narrow window, she had the inspiriting view of
the snowy peaks of Jura; but the bedroom and workshop of the old man were a
kind of cavern close on to the water, the floor of which rested on the piles.

From time immemorial Master Zacharius had
never come out except at meal times, and when he went to regulate the different
clocks of the town. He passed the rest of his time at his bench, which was
covered with numerous clockwork instruments, most of which he had invented
himself. For he was a clever man; his works were valued in all France and
Germany. The best workers in Geneva readily recognised his superiority, and
showed that he was an honour to the town, by saying, ‘To him belongs the glory
of having invented the escapement.’ In fact, the birth of true clockwork dates
from the invention which the talents of Zacharius had discovered not many years
before.

After he had worked hard for a long time,
Zacharius would slowly put his tools away, cover up the delicate pieces that he
had been adjusting with glasses, and stop the active wheel of his lathe; then
he would raise a trap-door constructed in the floor of his workshop, and,
stooping down, used to inhale for hours together the thick vapours of the
Rhone, as it dashed along under his eyes.

One winter’s night the old servant
Scholastique served the supper, which, according to old custom, she and the
young mechanic shared with their master. Master Zacharius did not eat, though
the food carefully prepared for him was offered him in a handsome blue and
white dish. He scarcely answered the sweet words of Gerande, who evidently
noticed her father’s silence, and even the clatter of Scholastique herself no
more struck his ear than the roar of the river, to which he paid no attention.

After the silent meal, the old clockmaker
left the table without embracing his daughter, or saying his usual ‘Good-night’
to all. He left by the narrow door leading to his den. and the staircase
groaned under his heavy footsteps as he went down.

Gerande, Aubert, and Scholastique sat for
some minutes without speaking. On this evening the weather was dull; the clouds
dragged heavily on the Alps, and threatened rain; the severe climate of
Switzerland made one feel sad, while the south wind swept round the house, and
whistled ominously.

‘My dear young lady,’ said Scholastique, at
last, ‘do you know that our master has been out of sorts for several days? Holy
Virgin! I know he has had no appetite, because his words stick in his inside,
and it would take a very clever devil to drag even one out of him.’

‘My father has some secret cause of
trouble, that I cannot even guess,’ replied Gerande, as a sad anxiety spread
over her face.

‘Mademoiselle, don’t let such sadness fill
your heart. You know the strange habits of Master Zacharius. Who can read his
secret thoughts in his face? No doubt some fatigue has overcome him, but
tomorrow he will have forgotten it, and be very sorry to have given his
daughter pain.’

It was Aubert who spoke thus, looking into
Gerande’s lovely eyes. Aubert was the first apprentice whom Master Zacharius
had ever admitted to the intimacy of his labours, for he appreciated his
intelligence, discretion, and goodness of heart; and this young man had
attached himself to Gerande with the earnest devotion natural to a noble
nature.

Gerande was eighteen years of age. Her oval
face recalled that of the artless Madonnas whom veneration still displays at
the street corners of the antique towns of Brittany. Her eyes betrayed an
infinite simplicity. One would love her as the sweetest realisation of a poet’s
dream. Her apparel was of modest colours, and the white linen which was folded
about her shoulders had the tint and perfume peculiar to the linen of the church.
She led a mystical existence in Geneva, which had not as yet been delivered
over to the dryness of Calvinism.

While, night and morning, she read her
Latin prayers in her iron-clasped missal, Gerande had also discovered a hidden
sentiment in Aubert Thun’s heart, and comprehended what a profound devotion the
young workman had for her. Indeed, the whole world in his eyes was condensed
into this old clockmaker’s house, and he passed all his time near the young
girl, when he left her father’s workshop, after his work was over.

Old Scholastique saw all this, but said
nothing. Her loquacity exhausted itself in preference on the evils of the
times, and the little worries of the household. Nobody tried to stop its
course. It was with her as with the musical snuff-boxes which they made at
Geneva; once wound up, you must break them before you will prevent their
playing all their airs through.