“And kill you!” cried Guy.
“I should die,” I answered composedly, “as men have died after inoculating themselves with the plague; only my death would be more glorious, because incurred for pure science, and in face of a certainty. It is precisely on this account that the act will insure to our names the honor and reverence of all future generations.”
“Nonsense. You will be pitied as a suicide and madman, and I shall be hung at the next assizes.”
“Coward! traitor!” I burst forth in ungovernable passion. “This is the extent of your devotion, then! These your narrow calculations and sordid reckonings! You, the one soul in whom I trusted, the one friend I had in the world capable of appreciating me! Oh, shame on such ingratitude! Oh, miserable me, doomed to such disappointment!”
He was deeply hurt. I saw that I had made some impression upon the hard skepticism with which the world had incased a naturally generous nature, and pressed my advantage. I poured out a torrent of eloquence, reasoning, prayers, entreaty. I wrestled with him as for the salvation of a soul; the night waned on our hot conversation, and finally, toward three o’clock, when the gray dawn began to point weirdly in the East, I gained the victory. Guy promised to fulfil my wish, at whatever risks to himself, and with the certainty of sacrificing my life in the experiment. On the spot, I drew up a paper testifying that the operation should have been performed at my express command, and stated the reasons in full. To this document, I trusted to obtain in the country the signature of two witnesses sufficiently incurious to sign without reading.
For it was decided that, for the sake of greater secrecy and convenience, we should withdraw to the country, and I selected a locality about four hours’ distance from Paris, where we were both unknown. These details settled, we separated for sleep.
But I think neither of us closed our eyes that night; and Guy was so pale and haggard the next morning that I hardly knew him. During the week that we remained at Paris, making preparations for our departure, he hardly ate, or slept, or spoke, but seemed to waste and droop like a man in the clutch of a fiend. I became anxious. I was afraid he would fall ill, and thus be incapacitated for the performance of his duty.
However, we managed to leave the city without accident, and installed ourselves in the lonely dwelling I had rented. We hired an old woman from the village to take charge of our housekeeping, and then devoted ourselves to our work. We engaged in a preliminary series of experiments, through which, as through a suite of lesser apartments leading to the throne-room, we were to approach the act that should crown them all.
For the first time since he had been my pupil, I found Guy nervous, maladroit. He turned pale at the sight of blood. The struggling of a pigeon, or the yelp of a dog, seemed to make him sick, and a hundred times he laid down his scalpel as if unable to proceed. He was like a neophyte, and a prey to the sentimental horrors of which, up to this time, his absorbed intellect had been quite unconscious. I trembled. If his nerve should fail him when it became my turn, and the whole costly experiment be thrown away through some awkwardness on his part! I was furious at the very idea, and told him so.
“I will haunt you forever if you fail,” I said, savagely.