Weird and Witty Tales of Mystery (5 page)

As I grew up, my parents, who saw but little likelihood of anything
practical resulting from the examination of bits of moss and drops of
water through a brass tube and a piece of glass, were anxious that I
should choose a profession. It was their desire that I should enter the
counting-house of my uncle, Ethan Blake, a prosperous merchant, who
carried on business in New York. This suggestion I decisively combated.
I had no taste for trade; I should only make a failure; in short, I
refused to become a merchant.

But it was necessary for me to select some pursuit. My parents were
staid New England people, who insisted on the necessity of labour; and
therefore, although, thanks to the bequest of my poor Aunt Agatha, I
should, on coming of age, inherit a small fortune sufficient to place
me above want, it was decided that, instead of waiting for this, I
should act the nobler part, and employ the intervening years in
rendering myself independent.

After much cogitation I complied with the wishes of my family, and
selected a profession. I determined to study medicine at the New York
Academy. This disposition of my future suited me. A removal from my
relatives would enable me to dispose of my time as I pleased without
fear of detection. As long as I paid my Academy fees, I might shirk
attending the lectures if I chose; and, as I never had the remotest
intention of standing an examination, there was no danger of my being
"plucked." Besides, a metropolis was the place for me. There I could
obtain excellent instruments, the newest publications, intimacy with
men of pursuits kindred with my own,—in short, all things necessary to
insure a profitable devotion of my life to my beloved science. I had an
abundance of money, few desires that were not bounded by my
illuminating mirror on one side and my object-glass on the other; what,
therefore, was to prevent my becoming an illustrious investigator of
the veiled worlds? It was with the most buoyant hope that I left my New
England home and established myself in New York.

My first step, of course, was to find suitable apartments. These I
obtained, after a couple of days' search, in Fourth Avenue; a very
pretty second-floor unfurnished, containing sitting-room, bedroom, and
a smaller apartment which I intended to fit up as a laboratory. I
furnished my lodgings simply, but rather elegantly, and then devoted
all my energies to the adornment of the temple of my worship. I visited
Pike, the celebrated optician, and passed in review his splendid
collection of microscopes,—Field's Compound, Hingham's, Spencer's,
Nachet's Binocular (that founded on the principles of the stereoscope),
and at length fixed upon that form known as Spencer's Trunnion
Microscope, as combining the greatest number of improvements with an
almost perfect freedom from tremor. Along with this I purchased every
possible accessory,—draw-tubes, micrometers, a
camera-lucida
,
lever-stage, acromatic condensers, white cloud illuminators, prisms,
parabolic condensers, polarizing apparatus, forceps, aquatic boxes,
fishing-tubes, with a host of other articles, all of which would have
been useful in the hands of an experienced microscopist, but, as I
afterwards discovered, were not of the slightest present value to me.
It takes years of practice to know how to use a complicated microscope.
The optician looked suspiciously at me as I made these wholesale
purchases. He evidently was uncertain whether to set me down as some
scientific celebrity or a madman. I think he inclined to the latter
belief. I suppose I was mad. Every great genius is mad upon the subject
in which he is greatest. The unsuccessful madman is disgraced and
called a lunatic.

Mad or not, I set myself to work with a zeal which few scientific
students have ever equalled. I had everything to learn relative to the
delicate study upon which I had embarked,—a study involving the most
earnest patience, the most rigid analytic powers, the steadiest hand,
the most untiring eyes, the most refined and subtile manipulation.

For a long time half my apparatus lay inactively on the shelves of my
laboratory, which was now most amply furnished with every possible
contrivance for facilitating my investigations. The fact was that I did
not know how to use some of my scientific implements,—never having
been taught microscopic,—and those whose use I understood
theoretically were of little avail, until by practice I could attain
the necessary delicacy of handling. Still, such was the fury of my
ambition, such the untiring perseverance of my experiments, that,
difficult of credit as it may be, in the course of one year I became
theoretically and practically an accomplished microscopist.

During this period of my labours, in which I submitted specimens of
every substance that came under my observation to the action of my
lenses, I became a discoverer—in a small way, it is true, for I was
very young, but still a discoverer. It was I who destroyed Ehrenberg's
theory that the
Volvox globator
was an animal, and proved that his
"nomads" with stomachs and eyes were merely phases of the formation of
a vegetable cell, and were, when they reached their mature state,
incapable of the act of conjugation, or any true generative act,
without which no organism rising to any stage of life higher than
vegetable can be said to be complete. It was I who resolved the
singular problem of rotation in the cells and hairs of plants into
ciliary attraction, in spite of the assertions of Mr. Wenham and
others, that my explanation was the result of an optical illusion.

But notwithstanding these discoveries, laboriously and painfully made
as they were, I felt horribly dissatisfied. At every step I found
myself stopped by the imperfections of my instruments. Like all active
microscopists, I gave my imagination full play. Indeed, it is a common
complaint against many such, that they supply the defects of their
instruments with the creations of their brains. I imagined depths
beyond depths in nature which the limited power of my lenses prohibited
me from exploring. I lay awake at night constructing imaginary
microscopes of immeasurable power, with which I seemed to pierce
through the envelopes of matter down to its original atom. How I cursed
those imperfect mediums which necessity through ignorance compelled me
to use! How I longed to discover the secret of some perfect lens, whose
magnifying power should be limited only by the resolvability of the
object, and which at the same time should be free from spherical and
chromatic aberrations, in short from all the obstacles over which the
poor microscopist finds himself continually stumbling! I felt convinced
that the simple microscope, composed of a single lens of such vast yet
perfect power was possible of construction. To attempt to bring the
compound microscope up to such a pitch would have been commencing at
the wrong end; this latter being simply a partially successful endeavor
to remedy those very defects of the simple instrument which, if
conquered, would leave nothing to be desired.

It was in this mood of mind that I became a constructive microscopist.
After another year passed in this new pursuit, experimenting on every
imaginable substance,—glass, gems, flints, crystals, artificial
crystals formed of the alloy of various vitreous materials,—in short,
having constructed as many varieties of lenses as Argus had eyes, I
found myself precisely where I started, with nothing gained save an
extensive knowledge of glass-making. I was almost dead with despair. My
parents were surprised at my apparent want of progress in my medical
studies (I had not attended one lecture since my arrival in the city),
and the expenses of my mad pursuit had been so great as to embarrass me
very seriously.

I was in this frame of mind one day, experimenting in my laboratory on
a small diamond,—that stone, from its great refracting power, having
always occupied my attention more than any other,—when a young
Frenchman, who lived on the floor above me, and who was in the habit of
occasionally visiting me, entered the room.

I think that Jules Simon was a Jew. He had many traits of the Hebrew
character: a love of jewelry, of dress, and of good living. There was
something mysterious about him. He always had something to sell, and
yet went into excellent society. When I say sell, I should perhaps have
said peddle; for his operations were generally confined to the disposal
of single articles,—a picture, for instance, or a rare carving in
ivory, or a pair of duelling-pistols, or the dress of a Mexican
caballero
. When I was first furnishing my rooms, he paid me a visit,
which ended in my purchasing an antique silver lamp, which he assured
me was a Cellini,—it was handsome enough even for that, and some other
knickknacks for my sitting-room. Why Simon should pursue this petty
trade I never could imagine. He apparently had plenty of money, and had
the
entrée
of the best houses in the city,—taking care, however, I
suppose, to drive no bargains within the enchanted circle of the Upper
Ten. I came at length to the conclusion that this peddling was but a
mask to cover some greater object, and even went so far as to believe
my young acquaintance to be implicated in the slave-trade. That,
however, was none of my affair.

On the present occasion, Simon entered my room in a state of
considerable excitement.

"
Ah! mon ami!
" he cried, before I could even offer him the ordinary
salutation, "it has occurred to me to be the witness of the most
astonishing things in the world. I promenade myself to the house of
Madame —. How does the little animal—
le renard
—name himself in
the Latin?"

"Vulvas," I answered.

"Ah! yes,—Vulvas. I promenade myself to the house of Madame Vulvas."

"The spirit medium?"

"Yes, the great medium. Great heavens! what a woman! I write on a slip
of paper many of questions concerning affairs the most secret,—affairs
that conceal themselves in the abysses of my heart the most profound;
and behold! by example! what occurs? This devil of a woman makes me
replies the most truthful to all of them. She talks to me of things
that I do not love to talk of to myself. What am I to think? I am fixed
to the earth!"

"Am I to understand you, M. Simon, that this Mrs. Vulvas replied to
questions secretly written by you, which questions related to events
known only to yourself?"

"Ah! more than that, more than that," he answered, with an air of some
alarm. "She related to me things—But," he added, after a pause, and
suddenly changing his manner, "why occupy ourselves with these follies?
It was all the biology, without doubt. It goes without saying that it
has not my credence.—But why are we here,
mon ami
? It has occurred
to me to discover the most beautiful thing as you can imagine,—a vase
with green lizards on it, composed by the great Bernard Palissy. It is
in my apartment; let us mount. I go to show it to you."

I followed Simon mechanically; but my thoughts were far from Palissy
and his enamelled ware, although I, like him, was seeking in the dark a
great discovery. This casual mention of the spiritualist, Madame
Vulpes, set me on a new track. What if this spiritualism should be
really a great fact? What if, through communication with more subtile
organisms than my own, I could reach at a single bound the goal, which
perhaps a life of agonizing mental toil would never enable me to
attain?

While purchasing the Palissy vase from my friend Simon, I was mentally
arranging a visit to Madame Vulpes.

Two evenings after this, thanks to an arrangement by letter and the
promise of an ample fee, I found Madame Vulpes awaiting me at her
residence alone. She was a coarse-featured woman, with keen and rather
cruel dark eyes, and an exceedingly sensual expression about her mouth
and under jaw. She received me in perfect silence, in an apartment on
the ground floor, very sparely furnished. In the centre of the room,
close to where Mrs. Vulpes sat, there was a common round mahogany
table. If I had come for the purpose of sweeping her chimney, the woman
could not have looked more indifferent to my appearance. There was no
attempt to inspire the visitor with awe. Everything bore a simple and
practical aspect. This intercourse with the spiritual world was
evidently as familiar an occupation with Mrs. Vulpes as eating her
dinner or riding in an omnibus.

"You come for a communication, Mr. Linley?" said the medium, in a dry,
business-like tone of voice.

"By appointment,—yes."

"What sort of communication do you want—a written one?"

"Yes—I wish for a written one."

"From any particular spirit?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever known this spirit on this earth?"

"Never. He died long before I was born. I wish merely to obtain from
him some information which he ought to be able to give better than any
other."

"Will you seat yourself at the table, Mr. Linley," said the medium,
"and place your hands upon it?"

I obeyed,—Mrs. Vulpes being seated opposite to me, with her hands also
on the table. We remained thus for about a minute and a half, when a
violent succession of raps came on the table, on the back of my chair,
on the floor immediately under my feet, and even on the window-panes.
Mrs. Vulpes smiled composedly.

"They are very strong to-night," she remarked. "You are fortunate." She
then continued, "Will the spirits communicate with this gentleman?"

Vigorous affirmative.

"Will the particular spirit he desires to speak with communicate?"

A very confused rapping followed this question.

"I know what they mean," said Mrs. Vulpes, addressing herself to me;
"they wish you to write down the name of the particular spirit that you
desire to converse with. Is that so?" she added, speaking to her
invisible guests.