To better understand my mad presumption, which only my passion for mechanics and my love of the marvellous can excuse, I must add that I never even saw the componium performing; hence, all was an unknown country for me. Add to this, that the greater portion of the works were covered with rust and verdigris.
Seated in the midst of this musical chaos, with my head resting in my hands, I asked myself a hundred times this simple question, “Where shall I begin?” and then my imagination was quite paralysed. One morning, however, finding myself well disposed, and feeling the influence of the Hippocratic axiom, “Mens sana in corpore sano,” I felt disgusted at my long sloth, and rushed headforemost at my immense task.
If my readers were only mechanicians, how willingly would I describe to them all my trials, attempts, and studies! With what pleasure I would explain the skillful and ingenious combinations that arose successively from this chaos! But as I fancy I can see my readers turning over my pages to seek the end of a chapter that is growing too serious, I will check my inclination, and content myself with stating that, for a whole year, I proceeded from the known to the unknown, in solving this inextricable problem, and one day I had the happiness of seeing my labors crowned with complete success. The componium—a new phœnix—had risen from its ashes.
This unexpected success gained me the greatest praise, and D—— bade me name my own price; but I would not accept anything beyond my actual outlay, feeling amply repaid by such a glorious result. And yet, however high my reward might have been, it would not have repaid me what this task, which overtasked my strength, eventually cost me.
CHAPTER X.
An Inventor’s Calculations—One Hundred Thousand Francs a Year by an Inkstand: Deception—My new Automata—The First Magician in France: Decadence—I meet Antonio—Bosco—The Trick with the Cups—An Execution—Resurrection of the Criminals—Mistake in a Head—The Canary rewarded.
MY sleepless nights, my incessant toil, and, above all, the feverish agitations resulting from all the emotions of such an arduous undertaking, had undermined my health. A brain-fever attacked me, and though I recovered from it, it was only to pass five long years in listlessness and vacuity. My mind seemed quite gone: I felt no passion, no love, no interest, even in the arts I had so delighted in: conjuring and mechanism only existed for me in the shape of recollections.
But this illness, which had mastered the faculty of Paris, could not resist the refreshing air of the country, where I retired for six months, and when I returned to Paris, I was a new man. With what joy I saw again my beloved tools! With what ardor I reassumed my work! for I had to regain not only the lost time, but also the enormous expenses incurred by my long illness.
My modest fortune was for the moment sensibly diminished, but on this point I was case-hardened; for would not my future performances fill up all these losses, and insure me a handsome fortune? Thus I discounted an uncertain future; but, after all, do not all inventors like to convert their schemes into ingots?
Perhaps, too, I unconsciously yielded to the influence of one of my friends, an extraordinary projector, whom mistakes and deceptions never hindered forming fresh schemes. Our manner of calculating the future had considerable affinity. But I must do him this justice: however high my estimate might be, he was far superior to me in that respect. Here is an instance to judge by.