So this is the result of the studies which my uncle had been so ardently lauding!
The theory was disconcerting. I ought to have been astounded by it; for there was revealed a tendency towards spiritualist doctrine—very strange in the case of a materialist like Lerne—and the new doctrine appeared in the light of a phantasmagoria, which would have made many eyes open wide behind learned spectacles, erudite pince-nez, and pedantic monocles.
As for me, I did not discover all the subjects of wonder at first sight, being still, at that time, somewhat unwell, and I did not perceive that I had translated a Franco-German mene mene tekel upharsin destined for me!
My attention was concentrated upon these facts—that the organized being which had never lived, did not exist, and that, on the other hand, the Professor was doubtful of being able to suppress the “attachment.” So he was foiled. After his former triumphs I expected any miracle from him; only his inability to perform them would have astonished me.
I set off to seek my uncle, in order to give him back his note-book.
Barbe (with her corpulent figure), whom I met, told me that he was walking about in the park. I did not meet him there, but at the edge of the pond I saw Karl and Wilhelm, who were looking at something in the water. Those two black-guards inspired me with aversion, because of their interchanged brains.
Their presence was usually enough to drive me away, but that day, the sight which kept them on the water’s edge, drew me to them.
This something they were looking at kept jumping out of the water with a shower of diamond drops; it was a carp. It leaped up, shaking its fins, which beat the air like wings. One would have said that it was trying to fly away. The poor creature really was trying to do so!
I had before me that fish which Lerne had dowered with a blackbird’s soul.