And now, here I am, in this house in the Avenue Victor Hugo, which I had taken for Emma, and I am alone with my strange memories, since she preferred to sacrifice her intoxicating and lucrative beauty to M. Alcide. Let us say no more about it!

February is beginning. The fire is flaming behind me with the flapping sound of a waving flag.

Since I came back to Paris, having nothing to do, and reading nothing, I write every evening and every morning, at this round table, the story of my singular adventures.

Are they over yet?

The Klotz-automobile is there in the coach-house, in a box which I have specially constructed for it.

In spite of my orders, the Nanthel mechanic put in some petrol, and my new chauffeur and I had the greatest trouble in bringing the human car here, for it was impossible to turn the waste-cocks for emptying the tank.

It began by destroying its successor—a 20 h. p. machine of the latest model. What could I do with this accursed Klotz-car? Sell it? Expose my fellow creatures to its malignity? That would have been a crime. Destroy it and so kill the Professor in his final transformation? That would be murder. So I locked it up.

The box has high oak partitions, and the door is heavily bolted.

But the new beast passed its nights in roaring its threats and chromatic cries of pain, and the neighbors complained.

Then in my presence I had the delinquent hooter taken to pieces. We had extraordinary difficulty in taking out the screws and the bolts, and we found that the apparatus was, so to speak, soldered to the car. We had to tear it off, and as it came away the whole machine quivered.

A yellowish liquid, smelling like petrol, spurted from the wound, and flowed drop by drop from the amputated pieces. I concluded from this that the metal had become organic through the action of the infused life, hence my vain efforts to fix the new spring in the wheel, this operation being a sort of animal grafting, as impracticable as the transplanting of a wooden finger on to a living hand.

Though deprived of power of speech, my prisoner none the less persisted in his nightly outbursts for a week, dashing the battering-ram of its mass against the door. Then suddenly it became silent.

It was a month ago, I think, that the petrol and oil tanks were empty; but, I have forbidden Louis, my mechanic, to go and make sure, and enter the cage of that savage beast.

We have peace now, but Klotz is still there.

Louis has put an end to the philosophical remarks which were ready to flow from my pen. He came in suddenly, and he said to me with his eyes starting from his head, “Monsieur, monsieur, come and see the 80 h. p. car.”

I did not wait to be told more, but rushed out.

On the staircase the servant confessed to me that he had ventured to open the door of the coach-house, because for some time a bad smell had been coming out of it. Indeed the stench of the courtyard itself was sickening.

Louis exclaimed in a tone almost of admiration:

“That’s it. A nice stink, isn’t it, sir?” and we entered the box.

So strange did the car look, that at first I could hardly recognize it.

Sunk on its deflated tires, it had lost its shape, as if it had been a car of half-molten wax. The levers were bent over like bars of india rubber. The head lamps were battered and out of shape, and their lenses, bluish and sticky, were like the bleared eyes of the dead.

I saw suspicious stains, which were eating into the aluminium, and holes which were rusting the iron. The steel had become porous, and was crumbling, and the copper had grown spongy like a mushroom.

Lastly, the whole machinery was mottled as with a red or greenish leprosy which was neither rust nor verdigris.

On the ground there was a syrupy disgusting pool all round this repulsive heap of refuse, oozing from it and all streaked with colors suggesting unimaginable horrors.

Strange chemical reactions occurred from time to time which made this putrefying metallic flesh boil with great bursting bubbles, and, in its depths, the mechanism rumbled and gurgled intermittently.

Suddenly in a squashy fall, the steering-wheel collapsed, one end going through the floor, and the other through the hood.

A nameless mess was stirring in there, and the horrible stench of organic decomposition flung me backwards.

I had had time to see worms wriggling about in the dark depths.

“What a filthy machine,” said the mechanic.

I tried to make him swallow the idea that vibration sometimes disintegrates metal, and may give rise to molecular modifications like this. He did not seem to believe me, and I, who knew that the truth was stranger still, was forced, in order that he might grasp and accept it, to enlarge on the subject and give him, confidentially, a careful explanation of the whole matter.

Klotz is dead! The car is dead! And so goes to limbo, along with its author, the beautiful theory of an animalized mechanism made immortal by the replacing of parts, and infinitely perfectible!

Giving life means also giving death, and to organize inorganic bodies, means to sooner or later disorganize them.

But, to my surprise, it was not for want of petrol that the fantastic creature died. No, the tank was half full. It was the soul, therefore, which killed it—the human soul, that corrupt soul, which so rapidly wore out the constitutions of animals, more healthy than ours, and soon ruined this pure metallic body.

I ordered the filthy bundle of refuse to be flung away. The drains were to be the tomb of Klotz.

He’s dead! He’s dead! I’m rid of him. He is dead, and he can never come to life again. In fact, he is dead! His spirit is with the deceased. He can never hurt me again. Ah, ha! DEAD! The filthy brute!I ought to be happy, but I am not very. Oh, it is not because of Emma. No doubt the “baggage” causes me pain, but that will soon be cured, and to admit that grief is consolable, is already to be consoled from it. My great trouble comes from my recollections. What I have seen and felt harasses me.

The madman Nell! The operation! The Minotaur! I—Jupiter! And so many other horrors.

I dread eyeballs that stare at me, and I lower my eyes in the presence of keyholes. Those are the sources of my trouble, but I also dread the horrible future.

Suppose it were not all finished?

Suppose Klotz’s death did not wind up my story?

I do not care about him, as he no longer exists; even if he should come and haunt me in the features of Lerne or a car, I should know that he was only an hallucination of my weak eyes.

He is dead, and I do not care a jot about him, I repeat. It is the three assistants who trouble me. Where are they? What are they doing? That is the question. They possess the Circeean formula, and must be using it for their own profit, in order to indulge in the traffic in personalities.

In spite of his rebuffs, Klotz-Lerne had induced several people to submit to his malevolent surgery, and to exchange their souls for somebody else’s. The three Germans are daily adding to the number of those poor creatures who are craving for money, youth or health. There are in the world, unsuspected men and women who are not themselves.

I am no longer certain of anything. Faces seem to be masks. Perhaps I might have known this sooner. There are certain people whose physiognomy reflects a soul the very opposite of their own; people virtuous and honest, who, for a moment, give glimpses of unexpected vices and monstrous passions, which strike terror like a miracle. They have to-day their soul of yesterday.

Sometimes in the eyes of the man who speaks to me there passes a strange flash—an idea which does not belong to him. He will contradict it immediately after expressing it, and he will be the first to be astonished that he could have thought of it.

I know people whose opinions vary day by day, and that is very illogical.

Lastly, there is often an imperious something, which eludes me—a brutal overmastering power thrusting me back into myself, so to speak, and commanding my nerves and muscles—evil actions or words I regret, a cuff or a curse.

I know, I know! Everybody feels those unreflecting movements, and always has felt them, but the reason has become obscure and mysterious to me.

It is called fever, anger, want of thought—just as customs or decorum are called calculation, hypocrisy or diplomacy. This is the way people account for these sudden revelations, which I have noted so often in my fellow-creatures, and which the world says, can only be failures to comply with those great powers, or revolts against them.

Might not the science of a wizard be the real prime cause?

Clearly the mental stage in which I am is exhausting me, and requires treatment. Now, it is kept alive by the obsession of the fateful time I spent at Fonval. That is why, since my return, realizing that I must rid myself of the remembrance of it, I have resolved to test myself by telling the story—not, Good Heavens! with any ambition to write a book, but in the hope that if one put it down on paper, it would get out of my head, and that to put it down would be to drive it away.

That is not the case, far from it. I have just lived it again, and with more reality as I told the story, and some mysterious power or other has sometimes forced me to put in a word or phrase against my own intentions.I have failed in my aim. I must try to forget this nightmare, and suppress even trifles that might make me think of it.

I must sell Fonval and all the furniture. I must live, live in my own personality—however ridiculous, foolish or extravagant the original may be—independent, and without suggestions, and free—free from memories.

Those abominations, I swear, are now crossing my brain for the last time. I write this down to heighten the solemnity of my oath.

And you, you criminal manuscript, you, who would perpetuate beings and facts when I should refuse to admit that they have existed—into the fire with you, “Dr. Lerne”!—

Into the fire...!

THE END