It was with a great effort that I overcame a strong desire to laugh, for it seemed exactly as if there had been a mystic primordial relation between his words and the disaster. A. E. glanced across the table with perfect gravity, and gently nodded his head without a vestige of irony; nay, rather, with an expression of sympathy, as much as to say: we poor mortals know all about it. The stranger shot not only one but a whole battery of venomous glances over to our side, and sullenly set to work to produce a fit successor to the incurable roll.
A. E. continued quietly: “Then too I don’t like that business about that thing, or rather the two things, that Kant called the pure form of à priori perception.”
“Space and time?”
“That’s it. What is space but an impertinent arrangement by means of which I am forced to remove A before putting B here” (he illustrated it with cups, dishes, and bottles, which were rather closely set upon the table), “and to make room for A put C somewhere else, and so on ad infinitum——? And time? That is what you never have for anything. For, ye gods and little fishes! is that what we live for to have need of ten motions for things that are not worthy of one!”
“WE SAW HIM EMERGE WITH AN OBJECT IN HIS HAND.”
The stranger now shook his head with more violence, laughing petulantly, and a vague unrest seemed to take possession of his legs.
A. E. rambled on. “At other times,” he continued, “the reverse action takes place. Things go together that don’t belong together. Do you know one of the most pestiferous forms of going along? When a precious sheet belonging to manuscript A manages to become attached to manuscript B, and slips into the wrong drawer, and declines to be found for days and weeks and years, while you are searching for it in rage and despair and impotent frenzy. Compared to that such a thing as the well-known slipping under your chair of a lady’s dress is but a little playful pleasantry on the part of the devil-ridden object, albeit it is interesting as a fact sufficient to defeat our nonsensical science of physics, for who could ever explain such a thing mechanically?”
Here the stranger jumped up with the exclamation, “This is too much!” came upon us with heavy strides, planted himself firmly before A. E., and cried in a voice of thunder, “Sir, I would have you to know that I am a Professor of Physics! And, moreover, you have, so to speak, knocked my roll out of my hand!”
A. E. gave the man a long, contemplative look and was silent. Who could tell how this was coming out? Suddenly a crimson flush came into his face, his eyes sparkled, he jumped up, and I, not knowing my man very well as yet, was beginning to fear for the peace, when he with enormous strides, ay, with leaps like a panther, rushed straight across the room towards the corner which held the article before delicately referred to, and now followed a fit of coughing and sneezing intermingled with strange, wild, gurgling sounds, a perfect storm of rasping, rumbling, rattling, snarling, groaning, and barking tones; it was like a chorus of infernal spirits. It took considerable time for this terrific natural phenomenon to pass over; then the sufferer feebly raised his head, seized his hat, bag, and cane, and said to me in a pitiful, broken treble, “Will you have the goodness to appease the gentleman? Good morning to you both.”