As for me, I had no desire to laugh. My ideas began to follow one another in a giddy whirl, and my Reason refused to sanction my reasoning.
This metallic car, from which wood, india rubber and leather had been banished—of which no fragment belong to matter at one time alive, was it not an organized body which had never lived? This automatic mechanism—was it not a body capable of reflexes, but a body devoid of intelligence? Was it not in fact—according to the note-book—a possible receptacle of a soul in its totality,—that receptacle which the Professor in his haste had declared to be non-existent?
At the moment of his apparent death, Klotz-Lerne had doubtless indulged in an experiment on the car, recalling that of the poplar tree, but having been absent-minded for some weeks, perhaps he had not foreseen (fatal want of logic), that his soul would slip entirely into that empty receptacle, and that the “attachment” being broken, his human form would be no more than a corpse, into which the laws of his own discovery forbade him to return. Or else, perhaps, weary with pursuing the fortune he could not seize, Klotz-Lerne had acted of his own free will, and committed a sort of suicide, by exchanging the substance of my uncle for that of a machine.
But why should he not have wished, simply and solely, to become the new beast, foretold by him in a moment of eccentricity—the animal of the future—the ruler of creation, which the re-fitting of its organs was to make immortal and infinitely perfectible, according to his lunatical prophecy?
Once more, however sensible this inner discussion with myself was, I would not accept its conclusions. A resemblance in manner between the car and the Professor, a probable hallucination of my sense of hearing, and possibly the way of gripping the lever, should not suffice to prove this absurdity. My distress wanted a more decisive proof. It came without delay.
We were coming to the edge of the forest, to that limit where the dead maniac invariably paused in his walks. I understood that I was going to have the question settled, and at all hazards, I gave Emma warning.
“Hold tight; keep your body back!”
In spite of our precaution, a sudden stop of the car threw us forward.
“What’s the matter?” said Emma.
“Nothing, do not worry.”