We remained a long time listening to the tapping of the keys which was every now and then broken by the ringing of the bell at the end of the line and the rasping of the carriage. Every five minutes a sheet was handed to us. We decided to retire to the drawing-room and to read them aloud as Gilbert, getting them from Cardaillac, handed them to us.
Page 79 was deciphered in the morning light and the machine stopped.
But what it had typed seemed to us exciting enough to make us beg Cardaillac to be good enough to give us the sequel.
He did so. And when he had passed many nights seated at the little table with his typing keyboard, we had the complete story of M. Vermont’s adventures.
The reader shall now be told them.
They are strange and scandalous; their future scribe is bound not to think of printing them. He will burn them as soon as they are finished; so that, had it not been for the complaisance of the little table, no one would ever have turned the leaves. That is why I, convinced of their authenticity, consider it piquant to publish them beforehand.
For I hold them to be “veridical,”—as the elect call it—although they have some of the characteristics of wild caricature, and rather resemble an art-student’s funny sketch penciled by way of commentary on the margin of an engraving representing Science herself.
Are they possibly apocryphal? Well, fables are reputed to be more seductive than History, and Cardaillac’s will not seem inferior to many another one.
My hope, however, is that “Dr. Lerne” is the truthful account of real happenings, for in that case, since the little table uttered a prophecy, the tribulations of the hero have not yet begun, and they will be running their course at the very time that this book is divulging them—a very interesting circumstance indeed.
At any rate I shall certainly know in two years’ time if M. Nicolas Vermont lives in the little house in the Avenue Victor Hugo. Something assures me of it in advance—for how can one accept the idea of Cardaillac—a serious-minded and intelligent fellow—squandering so many hours in composing such a fable? That is my principal argument in favor of its truthfulness.