The inner house

WALTER BESANT
AUTHOR OF THE WORLD WENT VERY WELL THEN FOR FAITH AND FREEDOM ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN HERR PAULUS ETC.
NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1888
Professor! cried the Director, rushing to meet their guest and lecturer as the door was thrown open, and the great man appeared, calm and composed, as if there was nothing more in the wind than an ordinary Scientific Discourse. You are always welcome, my friend, always welcome —the two enthusiasts for science wrung hands— and never more welcome than to-night. Then the great mystery is to be solved at last. The Theatre is crammed with people. What does it mean? You must tell me before you go in.
The Physicist smiled.
I came to a conviction that I was on the true line five years ago, he said. It is only within the last six months that I have demonstrated the thing to a certainty. I will tell you, my friend, he whispered, before we go in.
Then he advanced and shook hands with the President.
Whatever the importance of your Discovery, Professor, said the President, we are fully sensible of the honor you have done us in bringing it before an English audience first of all, and especially before an audience of the Royal Institution.
Ja, Ja, Herr President. But I give my Discovery to all the world at this same hour. As for myself, I announce it to my very good friends of the Royal Institution. Why not to my other very good friends of the Royal Society? Because it is a thing which belongs to the whole world, and not to scientific men only.
It was in the Library of the Royal Institution. The President and Council of the Institution were gathered together to receive their illustrious lecturer, and every face was touched with interrogation and anxiety. What was this Great Discovery?
For six months there had appeared, from time to time, mysterious telegrams in the papers, all connected with this industrious Professor's laboratory. Nothing definite, nothing certain: it was whispered that a new discovery, soon about to be announced, would entirely change the relations of man to man; of nation to nation. Those who professed to be in the secret suggested that it might alter all governments and abolish all laws. Why they said that I know not, because certainly nobody was admitted to the laboratory, and the Professor had no confidant. This big-headed man, with the enormous bald forehead and the big glasses on his fat nose—it was long and broad as well as fat—kept his own counsel. Yet, in some way, people were perfectly certain that something wonderful was coming. So, when Roger Bacon made his gunpowder, the monks might have whispered to each other, only from the smell which came through the key-hole, that now the Devil would at last be met upon his own ground. The telegrams were continued with exasperating pertinacity, until over the whole civilized world the eyes of all who loved science were turned upon that modest laboratory in the little University of Ganzweltweisst am Rhein. What was coming from it? One does not go so far as to say that all interest in contemporary business, politics, art, and letters ceased; but it is quite certain that every morning and every evening, when everybody opened his paper, his first thought was to look for news from Ganzweltweisst am Rhein.