RAYMOND ROUSSEL Translated by Elena Rivera

from LOCUS SOLUS

Chapter V

Twilight had come while we were listening to the professor, who, presently, led us up a steep footpath. A ten-minute climb brought us to a small stone building, whose facade, the top of which was oriented toward an immense expanse of forest, was comprised entirely of two closed leaves of a very rusty large gate with solid gold hinge-pins. Within its walls lay a single vast room, scantily furnished, devoid of apertures or outlets. On an easel, an unfinished canvas depicted an obvious allegory of dawn; behind a pale horizon a woman, her body composed of light, drags a throng of cords with winged ends. Canterel called our attention, with some brief remarks, to a certain Lucius Egroizard in the middle of the room, who, in treatment for the past weeks at Locus Solus, suddenly lost his mind when he saw his one-year-old daughter horribly trampled to death by a group of jig-dancing assassins. At the far end, a guard stood motionless. Lucius, who was very bald, was sitting in profile, his left side facing us, in front of the end of a marble table, upon which a sort of hearth faced us comprising two andirons, without projections, screwed parallel, without any part exceeding its bounds, on the edge of a plate of square sheet metal lined with live coals. Throwing a meter-long and half-a-meter-wide piece of gray rep like a bridge on the andirons, the madman, careful to avoid burning himself, slid its two ends face to face under the metal plate until the upper surface reached perfect tension, bordered in front and behind, with regard to us, by a narrow edging falling in a gentle easy slope.

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Twelve figurines made in gold-beater's skin, a few centimeters tall, wonderfully painted and modeled, evoking a band of sinister prowlers on a corner of the table, were deposited by Lucius on the rep, whose square platform allowed the warm air to pass through an infinite number of small and narrow holes. Boldly rendered, they stayed upright in midair thanks to some ballasts put inside their feet and soon were moving about according to the whim ofthe madman, whose fingers wandered over the sieve-like fabric. Deprived for an instant of all vertical air currents, except for those that, brushing against their backs or abdomens, drove them thereafter far fx-om their axis, a particular figurine would plunge forwards or backwards then, when all obstructions ceased beneath it, would rebound back to its former level, deriving a brisk jig-step at the repetition of this maneuver. Another would pivot, after ceasing all counterparts, according to the action of certain currents brushing tangentially against any protruding portion, hand or elbow. Once lined up facing each other in two parallel lines of six, of which the nearest had its back to us, the aerial dolls danced the lively classic jig well known under the name of "Sir Roger de Coverly." Singlehandedly, Lucius operated it all, running his fingers over the rep, like a subtle keyboard that he manipulated with great virtuosity formed by patient study. Setting off from two ends ofthe same diagonal, two dancers would skip toward each other, then, before touching, would regain their places by walking backwards, immediately imitated precisely by the holders of the two other extreme positions. This alternating maneuver resumed several times, varied by a play of twirls carried out two by two in the center at the moment of the encounter. Lucius slid his hands obliquely on the rep, while strongly bending the wrist so as not to interrupt the air currents that supported the idle dolls. Then, little by little, the madman brought the two furthest faceto-face toward him by making them turn together on the median line of the quadrille then turn with a dancer firom the line opposite his own, not without each time forcing them to move a notch closer to him. Then everything began again. In this way the dance continued. Thanks to the second figurine following the first, a ceaseless rotation bestowed the privilege of the corner positions to each of the twelve companions in turn.
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Sure of his talent, spared from clumsiness, Lucius gave intense life to the jig without a floor, whose calm pace gradually grew rapid and then impetuous. Suddenly the maneuvers ceased. Withdrawing his hands from the rep, above which the dancers floated aimlessly, Lucius, haggard, his eyes filled with terror, had, without seeing us near, turned himself to face forward; he was about to suffer, Canterel told us, from a strange capillary attack of hallucinatory reflexes, due to the terrifying and evocative spectacle that he had courted in obeying, in spite of himself, a cruel obsession. Under the sway of fear, six hairs stood on end at the edge of each of the two tufted regions bordering on the right and the left of the madman's baldnessthen of their own accord they leaped from one pore to the other. Uprooted by some profound slackening of the tissues, each hair, which the expelling pore seemed to toss into the air by squeezing its upper edges, traced a miniscule trajectory while remaining constantly vertical and falling back again into a neighboring pore that, opening up to receive it, immediately cast it out toward a new gaping refuge quick to reject it in turn. Soon, the twelve hairs, by dint of successive bounds, were arranged face to face on the sparkling summit of the skull on two equal parallel lines at the axis of an imaginary parting, and faithful to their mode of locomotion, spontaneously danced a jig identical to the one ofthe figurines in the gold-beater's skin. The same alternations were observed by the four occupants ofthe extreme positions in the multiple half-traversed diagonals, simply at first then accompanied by different twirls at the center; the same second figure acting in concert, during which the two opposite ones passed one another in undulating stages, from one end of the quadrille to the other. Contorted with suffering, similar to certain high-strung persons who exhibit an uncontrollable tic, Lucius, as though to stop the heinous merry-go-round, raised his hands toward his skull, which a kind of terror prevented him from touching. And, despite him, the jig went on, skipping to its heart's content, ceaseless, implacable, the twelve hairs gaining in turn the four important positions. In a low voice, Canterel pointed out the tremendous anatomical interest presented by this reflex effect resulting from an obsession borne of mental shock. Painfully conscious of the accursed dance which, always so preRAYMOND ROUSSEL I 187

cise and impeccable, was accelerating ardently just like that of the lightweight dolls, Lucius, taken by convulsive tremors, uttered groans of anguish. After a moment of acute paroxysm the crisis seemed to finally subside, and, while the madman gradually calmed, the hairs, returning from one place and another, regained their old homes at the edge of the tufted patches, subsiding into their normal positions. Lucius then burst into long sobs, his face in his hands, shedding a flood of tears brought on by the release of nervous tension.

Soon after, rising with a radiant smile, he made a few steps toward the left and sat down, facing the lateral wall, in front of a large table upon which several stopperless crystal flasks were placed, each containing a paintbrush soaked in a colorless liquid and, next to them, numerous pieces of linen cut out beforehand clearly destined by their dimensions to make up the diverse items of a layette. He took out a white filament about a decimeter long from his pocket and planted it straight into an imperceptible hole in the table that, thin as a fragment of sewing thread, seemed as rigid as steel. With one of the paintbrushes, he moistened its top end, then, without waiting, placed it vertically right aboveone hand at the bottom, the other at the topthe mingled edges of two pieces of linen pressed one against the other. Suddenly, like a thin Pharaoh's serpent, the hard thread lay down of its own accord in rapid undulations, continually piercing the two thicknesses of the linen successively in either direction. From top to bottom a fine and perfect seam, a marvelous running stitch, was accomplished in less than a second over the whole available length. This phenomenon came to an end and Lucius broke the thread, of which the captive portion spontaneously formed a little ball at the flush end of the woven fabric that recalled a stopper knot, at each of its two extremities, and at once acquired then and there a complete suppleness. Canterel showed us the white filament, lacking only the miniscule moistened fragment, which a fiameless combustion, resulting from certain chemical properties of the colorless liquid, had transformed into a fuse.
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After moistening the new summit of the filament with a paintbrush from another phial, Lucius folded back the edge of a piece of the work in progress and held it upright in the desired position. The quick white fuse rising in a tight spiral carried out a hemstitch by piercing alternate single and double thicknesses of linen twice at each turn. When the break was made, two knotted balls appeared and the seam softened. The professor stressed the joyous eagerness ofthe madman, who worked hastily at his daughter's layette; he believed her birth at times near at hand thanks to a derangement of his tormenting reason. The colorless liquids, each different, each gave rise to its own fuse, generating a special sewing stitch labeled on the flask. The next fuse, produced by the intervention of a third paintbrush, acted quick as lightning despite its relative complexity, performing a back-stitch while returning continually to pierce the double thicknesses of fabric placed in its course just below the last holethen instantly climbing back up higher than before. Similarly, the fourth fuse, through the effect of a hitherto unused liquid, succeeded in a quilted stitch in the linen presented to it, by passing once more through the first hole encountered in each of its descents, invariably followed by an ascent of twice its length. A fifth fuse, due to a new flask, yielded a whip-stitch, while hemming in sideways in its rather large coils, without leaving any space, the exterior line marked by the two linen borders glued one to the other exactly. The formation of the two stopper balls and the softening phenomena never failed to occur. With an unerring eye, Lucius, each time observing the subtle differences, meticulously moistened only a miniscule fraction of the top ofthe filament, taking as his basis the perforated length that more or less devolved directly to the fuse, according to a calculation of proportions. A fuse taken from a sixth phial produced in the linen a herringbone stitch, which recalled those insane pyrotechnic lucubrations by its prodigious zigzags, chaotic and broadly oscillating ascents performed in the air, amid detonations. All of the fuses, moreover, resembled, on an extremely reduced scale, certain complicated set pieces.
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generating multiple curves, spirals, or broken lines. The instantaneousness of each seam demonstrated the overwhelming excellence of this method, which would have enabled a seamstress to increase a hundredfold the daily amount of work obtained with the best sewing machine.

After carrying on with his work for a moment, having recourse to the same six flasks, Lucius, taken by lassitude, stopped in front of the white filament now very much shortened. Turning round by chance, he seemed to notice us for the first time and approached, speaking only one word through the grating: "Sing." The master immediately entreated the singer Malvina, a member of our group, to execute a lyric phrase to satisfy the madman's whim. Malvina, creator of the role of one of the confidantes in the recent biblical opera, Abimelech, began almost at the top of the high register: "Oi^ebecca...." Interrupting brusquely, Lucius had her endlessly repeat the same fragment, listening particularly to the very pure vibrations of the last note. He then went and sat to the right, facing us, in front of a pedestal table that bore these divers objects: 1. A lamp, not presently lit. 2. A narrow awl with an incredibly fine gold needle. 3. A small ruler several centimeters long made of bacon, displaying on one of its sides six principal divisions that, marked by thick numbered strokes each comprising twelve subdivisions, were scored in shorter and finer lines. The bright red color ofthe lines and numbers contrasted sharply against the whitish gray of the bacon fat. The implement, delicately made, was a miniature reproduction of the ancient toise, divided into six feet and seventy-two inches. 4. A thin square green tablet made from some kind of hardened wax. 5. A very simple acoustic apparatus composed of a short
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gold needle adjusted to a round membrane equipped with a cornet. 6. A small rectangular sheet of white cardboard with a tightly fitted central opening, whose imperceptible split edges neatly framed a flat, faceted garnet, which was cut in the form of a lozenge, giving the whole the appear ance of an ace of diamonds. Lucius pushed the little toise down on the middle of the green tablet, placed flat in front of him, taking it by both of its ends between the thumb and the index finger of his left handcompressing the divisions and subdivisions directly cast before his eyes lengthwise, so that by gathering them he shortened them. Choosing various points on the same line with great care, examining the red strokes, he held the awl vertically in his right hand, making seven superficial marks in the wax, by leaning the needle against the bacon. These reference marks established, Lucius slightly relaxed the clenching of his two fingers, allowing the elastic toise to give, lengthening itself out of its own accord, giving the measurements a bit more width. Then he interposed some new marks in the green surface amid the first, following exactly the same procedure. For a long stretch, the madman pursued his task, each time squeezing the toise in varying degrees, often making it much smaller while consulting its red subdivisions to feebly attack the virgin portions of the wax with the awl in the same rectilinear zone, not without subtle variations in his methods of touching it. Finally, the green tablet showed a short thin straight line made of miniscule punctures resembling those of a gramophone cylinder impressed upon by a voice. In response to a desire evinced by Lucius, who promptly put away the toise and awl, the guard lit a match while drawing near the lamp.

While the flame assailed the wick, Canterel slipped his arm between the two bars, took a sheath of faded silk from against the left side of the partition-wall, and pulled it toward him. Long and flat, it bore on one side the Latin word "Mens" in old embroidery, surrounded by
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religious emblems and flowers. From it he extracted a very ancient plank and showed us how the complete text of the mass was finely engraved in Coptic characters, covering the two sides of the wood. Soon, back in its sheath and passed back through the grating, the plank was once again leaning against the wall.

By simply releasing the catch, the guard set in motion certain mechanisms inside the illuminated lamp, which from then on gave off brief violent flashes, regularly separated by three seconds of near extinction. Holding the green tablet in his left hand, at a distance, and the bottom part ofthe ace of diamonds between the fingers ofthe other, slightly closer, Lucius, his back to the lamp, lifted his arms, while turning himself a little toward the right. His ruined profile facing us, he raised the two objects, the one behind the other, in a parallel direction, the ace creating a screen between the flame and the tablet. At the first flash, in the dimming daylight, the garnet cast widely spaced microscopic points of red light toward the back of the room which, due to the facets and enhanced by the shadow surrounding the cardboard, presented some notable differences of intensity, thanks to the relative purities of the diverse regions of the jewel. Moving the strange card, Lucius quickly chose one of these points and aimed it at the highest mark on the tablet, and kept it there during the next three flashes. Between the flashes the points vanished without a trace. In this way, Lucius illuminated in turn all of the marks coming from the awl, choosing for each a more or less powerful luminous spot, varying the number of flashes used from one to fifteen. Sometimes two to several points served the same mark in succession. Canterel gave a commentary on the madman's task. Entrusted with a scrupulously exact piece of modeling favored by the correct mixture of red and green, each blazing point, with its slight warmth, imperceptibly softened the wax ofthe mark aimed at, completing in this manner the first work while perfecting the future quality of the germinating sounds. Turning back toward us to put his ace back in its place, Lucius,
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laying the green tablet flat on the pedestal table, grabbed the acoustic apparatus and ran his hand softly over the almost vertical gold needle along the line formed by the marks. The point of the needle, shifting on the rugged path, transmitted many vibrations to the membrane, and a woman's voice, similar to that of Malvina's, emerged from the cornet and sang distinctly on the desired notes: "O Rebecca...." The madman, it seemed, artificially created all sorts of human voices by the method submitted to our view. In an effort to recover the utterances of his daughter's first rough oratory shapes, he multiplied the tests hoping to discover by chance some timbre that, approaching his ideal, might direct him toward success. This is why, pronouncing the word "Sing," he had hastened to reproduce the model furnished by Malvina. Guiding the gold needle along the line once more, Lucius had to listen to the phrase "O Rebecca... "several times, the last note of which plunged him into an anguished agitation. Limiting himself to the end of the track, he obsessively replayed the second half of the final sound over and over again, then, profoundly moved, chased us away with a gesture.

Canterel lead us out of Lucius's sight since he undoubtedly desired to carefully pursue his obsessive investigations in solitude, skiUfully using the vibrations scrutinized the moment before as a new base. The professor wanted to stay within earshot ofthe guard's voice in case of an emergency, rendered likely by the present excitement of the madman. He wandered about with us behind the barred room, relating certain painful events.

One day a young visitor, Florine Egroizard, had tearfully recited a moving narrative entreating Canterel to use his illustrious science to save her husband, who had been driven insane as a result of a sudden calamity, and who for two years had exhausted the greatest specialists.
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A fanatic member of an Italian society devoted exclusively to the worship of Leonardo da Vinci, the patient, Lucius Egroizard, had at one time simultaneously engaged in art and science in order to follow, be it from a distance, history's unrivaled example, provided by his idol. He, a painter and sculptor of talent, had as a scholar, made some valuable discoveries. The happiness of the devoted couple, Florine and Lucius, was complete when after ten long years their daughter Gillette was born, gratifying their most ardent wishes. Neglecting his work, the father would spend hours watching the happy smiles and the first murmurs of the child he had so long desired. A year later, Lucius took Florine and Gillette to London, called by an interesting commission of portraits and busts. Two times a week he repaired to a sumptuous residence in the county of Kent in order to paint the young lady of the manor. Lady Rashleigh. One day, due to a wish that the latter had graciously expressed, he had Florine accompany him carrying Gillette, whom she was breastfeeding. After a warm welcome, Florine, guided by Lord Rashleigh, admired the park and the castle in detail, while Lucius worked with his model in front of him. Detained at dinner, the visitors, which some fifteen or so kilometers separated from the nearest village railway station, climbed into their hosts' coup^ toward ten o'clock. Midway, whUe they were passing through a thick wood, they heard a chorus of many drunken voices. At the appearance of the car, a gang of more or less intoxicated prowlers began chanting the rallying song ofthe Red-Gang.* Impulsive and nervous, Lucius alighted from the coupe and began railing against the assailants, who reduced him to helplessness and who made Florine get down, fearfully clasping Gillette, who was asleep. At that moment, afrer shooting and wounding the ringleader of the gang twice with a revolver, the coachman disappeared into the night, vainly endeavoring to hold back his horses, which had bolted

' A notorious company of bandits who infest the county of Kent.

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at the sound of gunfire. Provoked at the sight of his own blood, the ringleader, only slightly wounded, attacked Lucius, brutally assaulting him. He then tore Gillette from Florine's arms and had her searched by his men. The child, roused by the contact with a stranger, started to cry. When Lucius saw the bandit silence her with blows of his fists, he freed himself from all restraint with a leap of such violence that a dagger slipped from the fingers of one of his captors. He pounced on the weapon and furiously struck the tormentor with it, aiming for the face rather than his chest, since that was shielded by Gillette. The blade cut his cheek from bottom to top, and penetrated deeply into his lefr eye. Watching as Lucius was rapidly seized again, the ringleader, bleeding and blinded in one eye, screamed like a wild beast. Frantic with pain, he dropped Gillette, who was now howling on the ground, and guessed, from a thousand indications, that in order to really torture the couple he had to attack the child. In a choking voice, pointing to Gillette, he gave the command: "Sir Roger de Coverly." All the bandits, save the three who were holding Lucius and Florine, formed two lines facing each other and began an infernal jig whose center was marked by the child. Starting from two opposing corners, the ringleader and an accomplice skipped diagonally to meet each other, savagely striking Gillette with their heels before regaining their posts again by a backward movement. The occupants ofthe two farthest positions performed an identical maneuver, using for the first time the opposite diagonal. The same two couples alternated several times, carrying out various twirls or bows in the center, of which the example of the first was slavishly copied by the second, and with each turn the monsters bruised the victimor angrily trampled her, crushing her under the entire weight of their bodies. The ringleader, to add to this cruelty, aimed fiercely at her head or stomach. Afrer which, the two facing each other, one taken from each of the preceding couples, passed in stages from one end ofthe quadrille to the other by means of a series of pivots alternately performed inwardly to one another, and then separately with each dancer of the two files. At certain moments this second figure provided a new opportunity to trample the martyr underfoot.
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Consequently, everything resumed as in the beginning, and for a long time the frightful jig pursued its course, under the haggard eyes of the parents. As a result of the rotation established by the periodic return of the second figure, all the dancers took up the active positions in succession and vied with one another in torturing Gillette beneath their incessant skipping. This was indeed the classic jig of Sir Roger de Coverly, transformed into the famous torture that the Red-Gang inflicted on its traitors. The frenzied men accelerated their nightmarish ballet to fever pitch, and congratulated themselves when the blood spurted from some new gash due to the nails in their shoes. Suddenly, at the sight ofthe coachman furiously lashing his whip as he brought the coup^ back loaded with men armed with revolvers, the whole gang ran off. Florine rushed to her daughter but gathered up, alas, nothing but a dreadful disfigured corpse, covered in ecchymoses and wounds. On touching the child and staring at her, Lucius was struck down with madness, bursting into laughter and imitating the odious behavior of the dancers while he raved. Horrorstricken, Florine dragged him into the coupe, which took the road back to the castle, while the newcomers pursued the bandits' trail. The Rashieighs, devoted and compassionate, sat up all night with Florine beside Gillette's corpse and coped with the poor lunatic's terrible outbursts. After the child's funeral, Florine signed a deposition against the assassins, who had been ably captured, then parted from her hosts with tender effrisions and took Lucius back to Paris, where many treatments were attempted. Believing himself to be Leonardo da Vinci, the unfortunate linked his universal speculations on art and science with his daughter, the thought of whom obsessed him. For two years Lucius was treated in turn without results at five reputable asylums where, despite his repeated requests, he had been refused all materials for work, even though assiduous research could have inspired him. Extracting from this narrative a certainty of curability, Canterel, an enemy in such cases of the slightest opposition, resolved, on the contrary, to comply slavishly with the most extravagant desires ofthe
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patient. In order to arrange a deep calming silence for Lucius, he had a simple scantily furnished room swifrly constructed in an elevated position of his park; it had no other exit but a large gate, whose two leaves formed a fa9ade, facing a vast stretch of forest, a unique and restful vista, magnificently green as far as the eye could see. The interested party was transferred there where, carefully covered up during the nocturnal hours, he might constantly absorb the bracing gusts ofthe open air. The next day he was eagerly given a large number of disparate items, the list of which he had laboriously drawn up. Not without traces of his former talent, he began on a painting whose subject, marked by madness, consisted of several outspread wings dragging with cords a personification of dawn. As Canterel learned in the course of a series of curative conversations he had initiated, the patient evoked in this way Gillette carried off in the morning of her life. Next he constructed some small light figurines, with his sculpting tools, from various thin fragments of gold-beater's skin that, worked on against the grain like chased metal, retained its patiently obtained delicate form as a result of precautionary efforts and thanks to its elasticity. He gummed the edges in order to join them, without neglecting to ballast each foot with fine sand; last of all, before rapidly closing it in turn, he blew into a deliberately contrived opening at the very top, which could easily be reopened in an instant for a periodic reinflationthen abandoned himself to the marvelous work of coloring the whole, taking great pains with the intensity of their expressions and in the details of their costume. He soon had twelve nearly weightless subjects, all suggesting evil prowlers. Then, setting up a mass of warm vertical air currents on a marble tablewith the help of a plate of sheet metal lined with red coals, two andirons without any rough surfaces, and a piece of gray rep judiciously pierced on the spot with numerous pin-holeshe made his dolls execute, by skillfully manipulating his fingers, an aerial Sir i?o^er that became progressively more animated, illuminating the matter for Canterel: Beset by this double notion of his grief and of its universality, the pseudo-Leonardo, as a sculptor and painter, had created symbolic figurines capable of reproducing the fatal jigwhile
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as a scientist he had conceived a style of dance physically based on the lightness of the warm air. By requiring for his experiment a piece of rep that was on his list, not without ingeniously stipulating the gray tint, which would remain unaffected by stains from fluttering cinders, Lucius gave proof of surprising good sense. This was deemed by the professor as a step toward recoveryfor he had chosen a fabric which, because of its resistance, was capable of withstanding the nearby heat of the embers, while having the advantage over any metallic sieve in that its pliability enabled the wandering fingers to impress such a current, by the gentle pressure ofthe flesh on a point in the vicinity ofthe vent, a slight and tricky obliquity, favorable to the motion of the figurines. Suddenly, releasing the rep, Lucius underwent a terrible crisis during which, as a consequence of reflex effects engendered by vivid powerful hallucinations due to the preceding evocative scene, twelve of his hairs stood on end vertically, and danced on his bare skull an unbridled jig that little by little became more feverish, a jig similar in all respects to that of the assassins. From then on, at sunset, under the influence of a reverie caused by the unsettling hour, Lucius, whose virtuosity was increasing, required some glowing embers for a new jig in midair, which was unerringly followed by the same capillary attack.

One morning the madman demanded, in addition to a piece of linen and some scissors, an intricate selection of chemical substances and laboratory instruments. After engaging in numerous manipulations, he produced, on the one hand, several colorless mixtures, on the other, a stiff, white Pharaoh's serpent, as slender as a thread and, afrer being moistened in certain specific ways, capable of producing tremendously quick seams, enabling him to accomplish many an enchanting piece of linen work. SkiUfully inquisitive, the professor found the answer to the riddle. Because of distress rooted in his obsession, Lucius at times believed in the imminent birth of his daughter and was making a layette un198
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der the impression that haste was indispensable; acting on the scientific side of his alleged personality, he had engendered a remarkable invention. The continual chemical manufacture ofthe initial, quickly frayed, rigid threads, despite all care and lubrication, produced a phenomena of intense oxidation that had rusted the gate, including the hingepins, which had been paralyzed ever since. Various metals were tried out as new hinge-pins, but they all ended up deteriorating, except solid gold, which Canterel adopted, seeing it functioned perfectly. Lucius was given a pair of well-sharpened gold scissors to cut out his linen.

Without visiting the patient, who was in strict isolation, Florine used to come for news. One day, at the professor's behest, she brought some strange implements that Lucius had insisted upon the day before; these had ofren been seen in his hands before the fatal departure for England, and had as an aim the artificial creation of speech or of song. On receiving the bundle, the madman, not satisfied, insistently uttered the word "toise." When Florine was informed of this detail, she remembered that in the days when Lucius was assiduously engaged in handling the supplies in question he had been planning to make a measure of length, in an elastic material the choice of which embarrassed him, that for certain subtle phono-arithmetic reasons could have had, in a greatly reduced scale, the same divisions into sections as the ancient toise. The next day, with the sharp edge of his scissors, the madman cut out a small ruler from a well-dried piece of bacon fat, brought at his request, and transformed it into a doll-like toise by painting red divisions on one side of it. With this toise and the last items received, he threw himself into some laborious and delicate practices that, based on frightful calcuRAYMOND ROUSSEL

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lations of distance and heat, were designed to impress upon a certain green wax marks capable of producing declamatory or musical speech. The bacon as the object of a judicious preference, furnished a fresh indication of progress toward sanity; in view of its slightly resistant elasticity, it possessed, more than any other material, the qualities presently desirable. The unfortunate man's sole aim, as his incoherent soliloquies testified, were of reproducing his daughter's voice as it had been revealed to his attentive ear in her early efforts to speak during the last days of her life. Using an infinite variety of timbres and intonations, he created all kinds of voices from fragments of speech or tunes, hoping that, among so many elements, he might chance upon some sonorous indication capable of setting him on the right path. Here again, united with his obsession, the scientific genius of the person that he believed himself to be intervened. Meanwhile, as he was working on his layette, the metal ofthe two different needles, adorning respectively a slender wooden handle and a vibrating membrane, had rusted, and had to be replaced by immutable gold.

One evening, Lucius described and requested a certain heavy ancient trinket, associated in his mind with the baptism of his child. Long ago in Egypt, the Coptic priests, in order to conduct the service, had the text of the mass engraved in their language on both sides of a sycamore plank, which served as a memory-aide, and was set up on the side of the altar, easy to turn to at any given moment. Afrer being used, the plank, piously treated as if it were the Spirit ofthe Blessed Sacramentsince potentially it contained the Word was carefully slipped into a silken sheath adorned with the word "Mens" becomingly embroidered among various small embellishments. In remembrance of Gillette's baptism, Lucius had given Florine a plank of this type, later discovered, with its sheath intact, in an antiquarian's display. Plank and sheath were thus handed over to the patient, who often handled them, smiling at these costly objects that evoked a feast day dedicated to his daughter.
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Canterel's methods were applauded as the madman experienced more frequent phases of unceasing perfectly good judgment, promising a certain and complete recovery.

At that moment a cry from Lucius drew us toward the room, and we were soon all lined up once more in front of the rusted gate with the gold hinge-pins. On the green tablet one saw a new line of marks, their appearance and cast evidently due to the awl and the little toise aided by the lamp and the ace of diamonds. Quite agitated, Lucius shd the point of the reproducing needle over the new line, and from the very bottom of the cornet on the vowel "a" emerged a long jolly syllable, which while recalling the smilingfirstefforts of very young children eager to talk, resembled strongly the model provided by the end of the "O Rebecca..." motif. The madman uttered a second cry, identical to the one that undoubtedly was provoked a short while ago at the first hearing of the joyful tone. Bewildered at the thought of having achieved his aim, he murmured: "Her voice... It's her voice... my daughter's voice!..." Then, breathless, he addressed her as though she were present with these tender words: "It's you, my Gillette... They haven't killed you... You're here... near me... Speak, my darling...." And, between these broken phrases, the outline ofthe word, which he constantly reproduced, returned again and again, like a response. Speaking in hushed tones, Canterel led us quietly away so as to allow this salutary crisis to run its course in peace. He congratulated Malvina in having precipitated with her song a fortunate event liable to hasten the patient's recovery; then he had us complete, by a new footpath, a rather long descent.

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