He wanted to learn how to drive the engine. It was an easy business. In three lessons I made him a past master. He always drove now, and I did not complain, as ever since the two severings and two re-joinings of the optic nerves, any long strain tired my eyes.
My left ear had not yet recovered all the sensibility one could have wished, but I did not dare to talk about it to Lerne for fear of adding one more to the many remorseful thoughts that seemed to haunt him.
It was at the end of one of those pleasure trips that I happened, in cleaning my car—a thing I had to do myself—to find between the back and the cushion of Lerne’s seat, a little note-book which had slipped from his pocket. I put it away in mine, with the intention of restoring it to him.
My curiosity got the better of me. On regaining my room, and without rejoining the Professor, I examined my find. It was a diary crammed full of rapid notes and figures sketched in pencil. It resembled the daily record of some research—a laboratory journal.
The figures conveyed no meaning to my eyes. The text was composed mainly of German terms (more especially) and French ones, too. The terms seemed to be chosen in either language, as inspiration directed. The ensemble did not have any meaning for me. However, I discovered a piece of less chaotic literature dated the day before, in which I thought I could recognize a résumé of the preceding pages; and the fact of my understanding some French words, and the sense which they assumed (once they were put together) awoke in me both an inveterate detective and a new-born linguist.
Among such words were the following substantives, connected by German words: “transmission of thought,” “electricity,” “brains,” “batteries.”
With the help of a dictionary which I stole from my uncle’s room, I deciphered this sort of cryptogram, in which, fortunately, the same expressions frequently recurred. Here is a translation of it—I give it for what it is worth, unfitted as I am for this task, and driven to haste as I was by the necessity of restoring the note-book as soon as possible:
“Conclusions dated the 30th: Aim pursued: Exchange of personalities without exchange of brains.... Basis of research: Ancient experiments have proved that everybody possesses a soul; for the soul and the life are inseparable, and all organisms, between their birth and death, enjoy a more or less developed soul according as they are higher or lower in the scale of existence. Thus, from man to moss, passing through the polypi, each living being has its own soul. Do not plants sleep, breathe and digest? Why should they not think?
“This proves that there is a soul where there is no brain.