XXV
While I waited, seated in my chair, looking on at everything intently, the Count François and the Vicomte Antoine silently applied themselves to a series of mysterious activities. First they took up each piece of furniture and moved it away from the center of the hall, standing the chairs in line against the wall, and leaving the whole floor clear as if in preparation for a ball. Next, and still without exchanging a syllable, evidently repeating an operation learned from long experience, they brought out the horse, or easel, of which I have spoken, and set it up, being careful to adjust it with precision to the longitudinal axis of the hall, at a point about a third way down the length thereof. Next they opened the antique chest, and drew from it a curious object which they handled with great care, carrying it, with visible effort, to the foot of the horse on which they finally erected it in a vertical position. I noted that this object was about as large as an ordinary cart wheel, that it was flat and circular. A sort of lens, I judged it to be, much like the glass reflector of a powerful searchlight. Its substance was not crystal, however, but a material which I could not identify, something translucent rather than transparent, colorless when viewed with even light, but otherwise showing brilliant metallic glints, shading from ruby red to emerald green with a profusion of all the tints of gold. This lustre, moreover, stood out against the colorless background, as if it came from matter distinct from the disk itself, though incorporated in the latter’s substance. You are doubtless acquainted with Danzig brandy, a liquor which seems filled with particles of floating gold; or with samples of Leyden ware showing bits of crumpled tinsel sprinkled through the glass. Such was the dish, or lens, in question.
Finally the two old men stepped cautiously up to their respective father and grandfather, still rigorously motionless in his strange dormeuse; and avoiding the slightest noise, they slowly, gently, wheeled him towards a point on the floor which I noticed was marked off, with geometrical exactitude, by four plaques of glass—one apparently for each of the four legs of the chair. Indeed, when they had pushed the old man to the square, the count and the vicomte kneeled on the floor to make sure that each castor was in the right position. From all their movements I could see that the operation they were about to perform was one requiring meticulous accuracy. This chair in place, they turned to the second dormeuse, which, though empty, was advanced just as carefully and noiselessly, and its position verified with just as thorough an examination.
Whereupon, the two old men returned to the seats they had previously occupied, now, however, sitting with their backs against the wall and their faces turned toward me. During all this time, I, for my part, had not stirred; nor had I been once disturbed or caused to change my position in the slightest.
I sat there, observing intently. Things were now arranged as follows in the room: the two dormeuses and the horse stood at three points on a straight line running lengthwise of the hall. The two seats faced each other, with the horse between them but nearer to one than to the other. Assuming the lens to be a refractor, I concluded from a rough computation of the angles, that the image passing through it from one chair would fall exactly into the other.
However, the Marquis Gaspard, his body still relaxed and his eyes closed, continued to give not a sign of life.
A long silence ensued.