Lerne went on quietly, “It is possible, also, that another reason for this death escapes us. They found the dog at 8 o’clock this morning still warm. The death had taken place an hour before, and,” added he, “Macbeth succumbed at 7 o’clock—just at the same instant.”
“From what did he die?”
“He died of rabies also.”
CHAPTER XIII
EXPERIMENTS! HALLUCINATIONS!
Emma, Lerne and I were in the little drawing room after lunch, when the Professor had a sort of fainting-fit.
It was not the first. I had already observed similar signs of breaking health in my uncle, but this one was very clear evidence. I could observe all the details of it, and it was accompanied by curious circumstances; that is why I shall speak about it more particularly.
Any one who saw them and did not know all the facts would have attributed those incidents to intellectual overwork. To tell the truth, my uncle did have spells of overwork. The laboratory, hothouse and château were no longer sufficient for him. He had annexed the park, also, and now Fonval bristled with complicated poles, abnormal masts, and unusual semaphores, and as some trees interfered with the experiments, a gang of woodcutters was sent for, in order to cut them down.
The joy of seeing the possibility of free passage to and fro restored in the grounds consoled me for this sacrilegious destruction. All about the immense workshop of the valley basin one saw the Professor feverishly moving about from one building to another, from a dynamo to a switch, ferociously determined to suppress the fatal “attachment.”