But this plan was never carried out. Not that I hesitated to put it into action—I was always determined upon it, and any doubt that came to me about the existence of the danger to be avoided, arose only when all chance of realizing my projects had passed.

As long as they were still possible, on the contrary, I awaited with patience the opportunity of accomplishing them, and I will even admit that my growing terror ceaselessly urged me to have done with it all.

Everywhere danger showed itself to my hallucinated eyes, and all the more perfidiously that there was often nothing to be afraid of.

It was easy to see that it was time for me to leave Fonval and I longed with all my strength to go, but I had resolved to choose the moment when Lerne should listen to my proposal sympathetically, so that thus I might only use my threat as a last resource.

And the moment was long in coming. The discovery would not come to birth. Its failure was undermining the Professor’s health. His fainting-fits—or rather his experiments, grew more frequent, and were rapidly weakening him, and his temper suffered in consequence.

Our walks were the one thing which had not lost their power of cheering him up.

He still kept singing “Rum fil dum,” stopping every ten yards to utter some scientific truth. But the motor-car, of all things, exerted its magic over the magician, so in spite of the bad result obtained in the same conditions some months before, I had to make up my mind to speak to him during the journey in my 80 h. p., and should have done so—but for the accident.

It took place in the woods of Lourcq, three kilometers this side of Grey, as we were coming back to Fonval from a run to Vouziers.

We were climbing a slight hill at full speed. My uncle was driving. I was going over in my mind the speech which I was going to make, and was repeating to myself for the hundredth time the phrases which I had prepared some time before, while apprehension dried up my tongue. Ever since our setting-out, I had put off the attack on my tyrant from moment to moment—rehearsing the firm tone which would intimidate him. Before each turn in the road I had said to myself, “It is there I shall speak,” but we had passed through all the villages, and gone round all the turns in the road, without my being able to articulate a syllable, and now I had hardly ten minutes left!

Well, I should open fire when we got to the top of the incline.

My first phrase was ready at the gates of my memory, and was awaiting expression, when the car lurched alarmingly towards the right, then towards the left, skidding on its two side wheels.

We were going to overturn!

I seized the wheel, and put on all the brake I could, with feet and hands. The car gradually came under control, again slackened its speed, and stopped right at the top of the hill.

Then I looked at Lerne. He was leaning out of his seat, his head nodding from side to side, and his eyes staring vacantly behind his spectacles. One of his arms was hanging down.

A fainting-fit! We had had a narrow escape; so, those fainting-fits were really syncope. What had I been imagining with my silly ideas?

However, my uncle was not coming to. When I took off his mask, I saw that his clean-shaven face was as pale as a wax candle. His ungloved hands too looked as if they were of wax. I took them, and being quite ignorant of medicine, I slapped them vigorously, as one does to actresses, for hysterics.This form of applause was in the nature of a claque in the repose of the countryside—sonorous and funereal; it greeted the withdrawal of the great charlatan from the stage.

FrÉdÉric Lerne had indeed ceased to live. I perceived it from his chilled fingers—from his livid cheeks, his soulless eye, and his heart, which had stopped beating. The cardiac affectation about which I had been so skeptical, had just put an end to his life, as is the way with those diseases, without any warning.

Stupefaction, and the reaction from the narrow shave I had just had, kept me motionless. So, in a second, there remained nothing of Lerne except food for worms, and a name fit for oblivion!

Nothing! in spite of my hatred for this detestable man, and my relief at knowing that he no longer had power to harm me, I was awestruck by the swift death which had spirited away this monster’s intelligence.

Like a puppet deprived of the hand that gave it life, and prostrate on the edge of the stage, Lerne lay stretched out, limp, his arm hanging down, and his funereal Pierrot’s face made whiter by Death.

And yet, as the spirit departed from it into the Unknown, the dead body of my uncle seemed to me to grow more beautiful. The soul is so praised in comparison with the flesh, that one is astonished at seeing the latter become beautiful at the departure of the former. I followed the progress of the phenomenon on Lerne’s features. The Great Mystery shed the light of a divine serenity over his brow, as if life were a cloud whose passing reveals some strange sun; and thus whilst the countenance took on the hue of white marble, the puppet became a statue.

Tears dimmed my eyes. I took off my hat. If my uncle had perished fifteen years before, in the fullness of happiness and wisdom, that Lerne of long ago could not have been more beautiful to see.

But I could not go on dreaming in this way, keeping up a conversation with a corpse on a frequented road. So I raised him in my arms calmly, deliberately, and placed him on my left; a strap from the grid fixed him firmly in the seat. With his gloves on his hands again, his cap pulled down over his eyes, his spectacles on his nose, he seemed as if asleep.

We set off side by side.

Nobody at Grey noted the stiffness of my neighbor, and I was able to take him back to Fonval, with veneration in my heart for the dead man, and full of pity for this old lover who had suffered so much. I forgot the offenses in the presence of the offender’s death. He filled me with a profound respect, I must also say, with an invincible repugnance, which kept me from him in the depths of my seat.

Since our meeting in the middle of the labyrinth on the morning of my arrival, I had not addressed a word to the Germans. I went to seek them in the laboratory, leaving the car and its sepulchral chauffeur in front of the hall door in charge of the servant.

The assistants understood at once, by my gesticulations, that something extraordinary had happened, and followed me. They had that anxious look of criminals who foresee disaster in every trifle. When they were certain what had befallen them, the three accomplices could not hide their dismay and anxiety. They talked together excitedly. Johann was domineering: the two others became obsequious. I awaited their pleasure.

At last they helped me to carry the Professor’s body up to his room, and on to the bed.

Emma saw us, gave a cry and fled, while the Germans made off without more ado.

Barbe came, and I left her with my uncle. The stout serving-woman wept a few tears, paying a tribute to Death as a thing in itself, and not to the shade of her master.

She looked at him from the top of her bulky person. Lerne was changing. The nose became pinched—the nails became blue.

“You will have to lay out the body,” I said suddenly.

“Leave that to me,” replied Barbe. “It is not a cheerful business, but I know all about it.”

I turned my back on her and her preparations. Barbe possessed the knowledge of the peasant women, who are all, more or less, midwives and undertakers.

She soon came and announced to me, “It is all done, properly now. Nothing is wanting except Holy Water and the decorations, which I can’t find.”

Lerne was so white on his white bed, that they mingled together, and resembled an alabaster sarcophagus, with its effigy on it, and both hewn from the same block of marble. My uncle, with his hair carefully parted, had been clothed in a frilled shirt, and a white tie. His pale hands were clasped together, and held a rosary. A crucifix showed like a star on his breast. His knees and feet stood out under the sheets like sharp snowy hills, very far away.

On the night-table, behind the bowl, in which there was no Holy Water, and in which lay useless a sprinkler of withered boxwood, two candles were burning.

Barbe had turned this piece of furniture into a sort of altar, and I scolded her sharply for this piece of absurdity. She replied that that was the “custom,” and then shut the shutters.

Shadow’s sank into the face of the dead man, thus anticipating the sequel, and creating a premature livor.

“Open the window wide,” I said, “let the daylight in, and the songs of the birds, and the scents of the garden.”

The servant obeyed me, although it was against the “custom”; then, when she had received her instructions from me for the necessary ceremonies, she left me at my wish.

From the park there came the powerful aroma of dead leaves. It is infinitely sad! One breathes it in, in the way one listens to a funeral hymn. Crows passed cawing, as they caw when they fly in great numbers from a steeple. The approach of evening darkened the day.

I examined the room; for I felt I must look anywhere but at the dead.

Over the writing-desk was a drawing in chalk, which represented my Aunt Lidivine, smiling. It is wrong to make portraits smile! They are destined to see too many sad things, just as Lidivine, in colors, having smiled to see her husband carrying on his illicit amours, smiled again, in the tragic presence of his remains.

The picture was twenty years old, but the chalk powder, which resembles the dust of age, made it look more time-worn. Every day made it darker. It seemed to remove, far away into the past my aunt and her own youth. It displeased me.

I endeavored to interest myself in other things—in the falling dusk—in the early bats—in the knickknacks of the room—in the candles which threw a feeble light with their dancing flames.

The wind rose, and took off my attention for the moment. It streamed moaning through the leafage, and as one heard it groaning in the chimney, one fancied one could hear the passage of Time. With a sudden stronger gust, it put out a candle. The other flickered, and I shut the window quickly.

Suddenly, I was sincere with myself, and no longer sought to be my own dupe. I required to look at the dead man, to keep an eye on his seeming powerlessness; then I lit the lamp and placed Lerne in a flood of light.

Really, he was handsome—very handsome! Nothing remained of the grim physiognomy which I had encountered, after fifteen years of absence—nothing! except, perhaps, a certain irony on the mouth—the shade of a grin.

Had my late uncle still some arriÈre pensÉe? Dead, he seemed still to be defying Nature. Dead! he who in his lifetime had set his finger to creation!And his work appeared to me in all the sublime audacity and criminal boldness, which made him worthy of the pillory, as well as of the pedestal, of the rod of the slave and of the palm of the victor.

Of yore, I knew he was worthy of honor, and I would have taken my oath that he would never have deserved dishonor; but what astounding chance, some five years ago, had befallen, which had made of him the wicked lord of a castle who murdered his guests?

I kept asking myself this, and meanwhile the shades of Klotz and Macbeth seemed to be crying out their torture in the recesses of the moaning chimney.

The gust, turning to a gale, whistled at the loosely fitting doors. The flames of the candles became restless. The curtains rose and fell again, with melancholy motions. The hair of Lerne was blown about, white and feathery. The storm disordered those hairs, and brushed them this way and that, and whilst the spirit hand of the gale sported amongst the long hair, I, transfixed with amazement, bent over the bed, looking at something that appeared and disappeared under the silvery locks—a purple scar, which encircled Lerne’s head from temple to temple, the dreadful semi-crown which indicated the Circeean operation! My uncle had been operated on by whom? Otto Klotz, of course!

Light had penetrated the mystery. Its last veil, a winding-sheet, had been torn. All was explained now—all! The sudden metamorphosis of the Professor, coinciding with the disappearance of the principal assistant, with Macbeth’s journey, and the eclipse of Lerne; all! The brutal letters, the changed handwriting—my failure to recognize him; the German accent, his failures of memory, and also the violent temper of Klotz—his rashness, and passion for Emma, and then his wicked activities and the crimes committed on Macbeth and on me!

All! All!! All!!!

Calling to mind Emma’s account, I was able to reconstitute the history of an unimaginable crime.

Four years before my return to Fonval, Lerne and Otto Klotz returned from Nanthel, where they had passed the day. Lerne was probably in a happy mood. He was going once more to take up his noble studies in grafting, whose only aim was to relieve humanity. But Klotz, being in love with Emma, was hoping to divert those efforts to another object—one of profit—one of lucre—the exchange of brains: doubtless this very idea (which he was not able to carry out at Manheim for want of money), he had already proposed to my uncle, and without any result.But the assistant had his own Macchiavelian idea. With the help of his three compatriots, warned beforehand, and hidden in the thicket, he struck down the Professor, gagged him, and shut him up in the laboratory—this man, whose wealth and independence—in other words, whose personality—he invaded.

The next day, before dawn, he went back to the laboratory, where Lerne, who was being watched, awaited him.

His three accomplices administered anesthetics to both, and placed the brain of Klotz in my uncle’s skull.

As for the brain of Lerne, they no doubt contented themselves with placing it as best they might in the skull of Klotz, who was now only a dead body, and they buried it all in haste with the other dÉbris.

So there is Otto Klotz behind the mask, clothed in the appearance he desired, dressed like Lerne, master of Fonval, of Emma and the laboratory—a sort of monk of St. Bernard sheltered in the shell of the being whom he killed.

Emma saw him come out of the laboratory. He entered the chÂteau, pale and trembling, upset the usual habits and customs, made the criss-cross roads of the labyrinth, and then, sure of impunity, began his terrible experiments.Fortunately the body-snatcher had died too soon, without reaping the reward of a robbery of which he was now the victim, since the heart-disease which had just carried off the spirit of Klotz, belonged really to the body of Lerne.

In this manner is the burglar in a house punished when the roof falls in upon him.

I now understand why that mask had resumed the real expression of my uncle. The soul of the German no longer inhabited it, to give it Klotz’s expression.

Klotz the murderer of Lerne, and not Lerne the assassin of Klotz! I could not get over it.

That is a confidence which the double person had forgotten to make to me, and vexed at having been his dupe so long, I said to myself, that, had I been living alone with him, I should probably have discovered his imposture, but that the society of people as easily deceived as Emma was, or accomplices like the assistants, whether duped themselves or trying to dupe me, had dragged me into this delusion.

Ah! Aunt Lidivine, thought I, you were right to smile with your lips of chalk. Your FrÉdÉric fell into a villainous trap five years ago, and the mind which has just quitted that form, is not his. Nothing alien any longer remains in it, except a deserted brain—a carnal globe as uninteresting as the liver. So it is your husband whom we are watching; it is the other who has just died, and paid his debt.

At this idea I sobbed heart-broken, in the presence of the strange corpse, but the sardonic grin, left at the time of its flight by the evil soul like a stamp, still checked my emotions.

I effaced it with the tip of my finger, forming the mouth, which was now stiff, and hardly malleable into the shape I wanted.

At the moment, when I was stepping back, the better to judge of the effect, there was a gentle scratching at the door.

“It’s I, Nicolas, I, Emma!”

Poor simple girl! Should I tell her the truth? How would she take such a strange turn of destiny? I knew her; having been many times fooled, she would have reproached me with trying to mystify her, so I held my peace.

“Take a rest,” said she, in a low tone. “Barbe will take your place.”

“No, no,” said I, “let me be.”

I felt I must keep this vigil by the side of my dead uncle to the end. I had accused him of too many crimes, and I felt the need of asking forgiveness of his memory, and of that of my aunt; and that is why, despite the wild fury of the storm, we conversed all night long—the dead man, the chalk drawing and myself.After Barbe had come at dawn, I went out into the cool of the morning, which soothes the skin and allays the fever of a long night of watching.

The park in autumn exhaled an odor of decay as of a cemetery. The great wind in the night had piled up all the leaves and my steps rustled in the thick bed. Only one or two could be seen here and there on the skeleton trees, and I could scarce tell whether they were leaves or sparrows.

In a few hours the park had prepared itself for winter. What was going to become of the marvelous hothouse, at the coming of frost? Perhaps I should be able to get into it by reason of that death which had flung the Germans off their guard.

I made my way obliquely in its direction, but what I saw from a distance made me quicken my steps.

The door of the hothouse was open, and smoke escaped from it—acrid and foul—and also made its way through the openings in the glass.

I went in.

The Rotunda, the Aquarium and the third hall, were a picture of confusion. They had pillaged, broken and burned everything. Heaps of filth were accumulated in the middle of the three halls. I there found jumbled together, broken plants, shattered pots, bits of glass and sea anemones, flowers defiled, close to dead beasts.In short,—three disgusting rubbish heaps, wherein the triple palace beheld the end of its pleasant, moving, or repulsive marvels. Some rags were still burning in a corner. In another, a heap of branches—the most compromising ones—were just hissing embers.

No doubt the assistants had worked feverishly at this task of destruction, in order that no vestige of their labors should remain, and the storm alone had prevented me from hearing them, but it was not likely they had stopped short there in their congenial task.

To make sure of that, I examined the shambles near the cliff. In that gaping ditch there was nothing but bones and carcasses of unimportant animals, some without a skull, others without a head. Klotz was no longer there. Nell was not there.

The sack of the laboratory gave me the impression of a masterpiece. It proved the innate capacity of men in general, and certain nations in particular, for this sort of diversion.

I ransacked the house at will; all the doors banging and clashing as the wind caught them.

In the courtyard there only remained living animals which had not yet undergone any treatment. I did not discover the others till later on, so here there was nothing destroyed. The operating rooms, on the other hand, disclosed an indescribable chaos of broken bottles, the mingled contents of which flooded the tiles with a pool of chemicals. A jumble of books, notes and notebooks, was spread over the holocaust of twisted implements.

Lastly, most of the surgical instruments had been stolen. The villains had fled with the secret of the Circeean operation, and the implements needed for performing it. The building where they had lived, indeed, with its chests and cupboards emptied, its furniture upside-down, proved the flight of the three associates.