“I must see the mystery of Lucifer!” I exclaimed, while tearing myself away from Adalga’s arms and making a rush for the door, which I entered, while the princess remained outside, wringing her hands and filling the kingdom of the gnomes with her lamentations and cries.
The room into which I entered appeared at first perfectly empty and dark; but after a little while I was able to see two luminous spots of a reddish yellow light at a distance, and some dark and voluminous object loomed up. Vague and undefinable nebulous shapes seemed to be flitting before my eyes and moving about. I confess that at first I experienced a feeling of something like fear and repugnancy; but nerving my courage, I went forward, and soon stood before a gigantic figure representing a green frog squatting upon a stone, and from the eyes of the frog shone the phosphorescent lights which I had observed when I entered, looking like two fiery balls. The jaws of the frog were wide open, as if it were ready to devour anything whatever coming within its reach. Gradually my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and I could read an inscription upon the pedestal saying—
Nulla Ratio Sine Phosphore.
Many years after that event I presented this inscription to the Academy, and respectfully asked for an explanation of its meaning. There were a few who claimed that it said it was necessary for the brain to contain phosphorus, so that the principle of mind could become active therein, and make a man capable of reasoning; but the great majority of the Academicians claimed that reason itself was a product of phosphorus, and a mode of motion of its molecules in the brain.
I was no longer afraid. I climbed upon the pedestal and examined the head of the frog, when I found that in the place of a brain there was a large lump of phosphorus enclosed in a film of coloured glass. It was the light of the phosphorus shining through the coloured glass that caused the lurid glow which came from the goggle eyes of the frog.
This discovery made me laugh. “This, then,” I said to myself, “is the celebrated Lucifer of whom the gnomes are afraid. Evidently the scientists of that extinct race attempted to create a living and thinking being in an artificial manner by making a compound of phosphorus to serve for a brain; but for all that they produced nothing but the dead image of a bull-frog.” I felt tempted to smash the frog or to take the phosphorus, but for some cause, which is not quite clear to myself, I made up my mind to let it alone.
I now became also able to see more clearly the nebulous forms that wandered about in space, and to my horror I found among them not only the shades of some prominent people well known in history, but also the apparitions of some persons with whom I was well acquainted. Among them was one who had spent all his life in trying to invent a perpetuum mobile, and who to my knowledge is still living. As I approached him, I found him engaged in his usual occupation. He seemed to be aware of my presence, for he said—
“There is only one little hinge which prevents the instrument from going. When this is overcome it will work all right, and my name will be inscribed in the register of the Academy.”
“And of what benefit,” I asked, “will it be to you to have your name thus inscribed, when you yourself are only a ghost?”
It is said that ghosts, like the gnomes, cannot speak otherwise than as they think, because they have not sense enough to prevaricate. He looked at me in surprise, and merely answered—