“These men are capable of appreciating me,” I said to myself, and congratulated my good fortune which had sent them thither.
Then I rose. “Gentlemen,” I said, “I cannot express to you the pleasure that I have derived from your society. Before we adjourn to the laboratory, allow me, in English fashion, to propose a toast.”
“Wait a moment,” said Guy, breaking the sullen silence he had hitherto maintained. “I ordered some Burgundy from Paris the other day, and it arrived this morning.”
He left the room, and presently returned with an uncorked bottle in his hand, which he set before me. I fancied, as he did so, that he looked rather significantly at the two strangers, but politeness forbade me to express my suspicion. I poured out the wine, and pushed the glasses to my companions.
“Drink,” I cried, “to the experiment that shall open a new era in science, and to the man that shall inaugurate a new revolution in the world.” And I drained my glass.
Whether or no the others followed my example, I cannot tell; for almost immediately I felt a subtle fire course through my veins, followed by a delicious languor that crept inwards to my heart, and seemed to arrest its pulsation by an irresistible persuasiveness to repose. Probably I swooned, for I lost all consciousness, and all recollection of time or place for many hours.
When I came to myself, I was a prisoner in this cursed asylum at Charenton.
—Guy had betrayed me,—the false friend,—the poltroon,—and I, who trusted him too much, had fallen a victim to his stratagems. Whether he had been true to me at the beginning, and then had faltered at the last, or whether he had deceived me all along with affected complaisance, I never knew. For when he came to see me one day, my just resentment excited me to such a paroxysm of fury that the people here recommended him not to return, and I have never seen him since. So here I sit, in forced idleness, waiting for the arrival of some one who shall appreciate my great idea, and release me for its accomplishment. The people by whom I am surrounded are kind enough, but ignorant; they admire me, but are unable to understand me. So they bind me in silken chains, and clasp them with honeyed words, and I remain a prisoner. It is thus that the world rewards its greatest benefactors!