It is not only to-day, when I am relating that tragic scene, that it appears to me in the light of a subsidiary episode to my story. I already had that impression at the time when it was being enacted. My reason for laying no greater stress on my alarm and on the horror of certain facts is that all this was to me only an interlude. Massignac's sufferings and his disappearance and Velmot's inexplicable behaviour, in abandoning for some minutes the conduct of a matter to which he had until then applied himself with such diabolical eagerness, were just so many details which became blotted out by the tremendous events represented by Benjamin Prévotelle's discovery.
And to such an extent was this event the central point of all my preoccupations that the idea had occurred to me, as I rushed to Massignac's assistance, of snatching from the chair the newspaper in which I had read the first half of the essay! To be free meant above all things—even above saving Massignac and, through him, the formula—the opportunity of reading the rest of the essay and of learning what the whole world must already have learnt!
I made the circuit of the island in my boat and, shaping my course by certain lights, ran her ashore on the main bank. A tram went by. Some of the shops were open. I was between Bougival and Port-Marly.
At ten o'clock in the evening I was sitting in a bedroom in a Paris hotel and unfolding a newspaper. But I had not had the patience to wait so long. On the way, by the feeble lights of the tram-car, I glanced at a few lines of the article. One word told me everything. I too was acquainted with Benjamin Prévotelle's marvellous theory. I knew and, knowing, I believed.
The reader will recall the place which I had reached in my uncomfortable perusal of the report. Benjamin Prévotelle's studies and experiments had led him to conclude, first, that the Meudon pictures were real cinematographic projections and, next, that these projections, since they came from no part of the amphitheatre, must come from some point more remote. Now the last picture, that representing the revolutionary doings of the 21st January, was hampered by some obstacle. What obstacle? His mental condition being what it was, what could Benjamin Prévotelle do other than raise his eyes to the sky?
The sky was clear. Was it also clear beyond the part that could be observed from the lower benches of the amphitheatre? Benjamin Prévotelle climbed to the top and looked at the horizon.
Yonder, towards the west, clouds were floating.
And Benjamin Prévotelle continued, repeating his phrase:
"Clouds were floating! And, because of the fact that clouds were floating on the horizon, the pictures on the screen grew less distinct or even vanished altogether. It may be said that this was a coincidence. On three separate occasions, when the film lost its brilliancy, I turned towards the horizon: on each occasion clouds were passing. Could three coincidences of this kind be due to chance? Can any scientific mind fail to see herein a relation of cause and effect or to admit that, in this instance, as in that of many visions previously observed, which were disturbed by an unknown cause, the interposition of the clouds acted as a veil by intercepting the projection on its way? I was not able to make a fourth test. But that did not matter. I had now advanced so far that I was able to work and reflect without being stopped by any obstacle. There is no such thing as being checked mid-way in our pursuit of certain truths. Once we catch a glimpse of them, they become revealed in their entirety.
"At first, to be sure, scientific logic, instead of referring the explanation which I was so eagerly seeking to the data of human science, flung me, almost despite myself, into an ever more mysterious region. And, when, after this second display, I returned home—this was three hours ago at most—I asked myself whether it would not be better to confess my ignorance than to go rushing after theories which suddenly seemed to me to lie beyond the confines of science. But how could I have done so? Despite myself I continued to work at the problem, to imagine. Induction fitted into deduction. Proofs were accumulating. Even as I was hesitating to enter upon a path whose direction confounded me, I reached the goal and found myself sitting down to a table, pen in hand, to write a report which was dictated by my reason as much as by my imagination.