第100章 CHAPTER XX INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY(5)

Things happened as he wished. The next day, in the minister's company, I was ushered into a little drawing room at the Tuileries by chamberlains in knee breeches and silver-buckled shoes. They were queer people to look at. Their uniforms and their stiff gait gave them the appearance, in my eyes, of beetles who, by way of wing cases, wore a great, gold-laced dress coat, with a key in the small of the back. There were already a score of persons from all parts waiting in the room. These included geographical explorers, botanists, geologists, antiquaries, archeologists, collectors of prehistoric flints, in short, the usual representatives of provincial scientific life.

The emperor entered, very simply dressed, with no parade about him beyond a wide, red, watered silk ribbon across his chest. No sign of majesty, an ordinary man, round and plump, with a large moustache and a pair of half-closed, drowsy eyelids. He moved from one to the other, talking to each of us for a moment as the minister mentioned our names and the nature of our occupations. He showed a fair amount of information as he changed his subject from the ice floes of Spitzbergen to the dunes of Gascony, from a Carlovingian charter to the flora of the Sahara, from the progress in beetroot growing to Caesar's trenches before Alesia. When my turn came, he questioned me upon the hypermetamorphosis of the Meloidae [a beetle family including the oil beetle and the Spanish fly], my last essay in entomology. I answered as best I could, floundering a little in the proper mode of address, mixing up the everyday monsieur with sire, a word whose use was so entirely new to me. I passed through the dread straits and others succeeded me.

My five minutes' conversation with an imperial majesty was, they tell me, a most distinguished honor. I am quite ready to believe them, but I never had a desire to repeat it.

The reception came to an end, bows were exchanged and we were dismissed. A luncheon awaited us at the minister's house. I sat on his right, not a little embarrassed by the privilege; on his left was a physiologist of great renown. Like the others, I spoke of all manner of things, including even Avignon Bridge. Duruy's son, sitting opposite me, chaffed me pleasantly about the famous bridge on which everybody dances; he smiled at my impatience to get back to the thyme-scented hills and the gray olive yards rich in Grasshoppers.

'What!' said his father. 'Won't you visit our museums, our collections? There are some very interesting things there.'

'I know, monsieur le ministre, but I shall find better things, things more to my taste, in the incomparable museum of the fields.'

'Then what do you propose to do? '

'I propose to go back tomorrow.

I did go back, I had had enough of Paris: never had I felt such tortures of loneliness as in that immense whirl of humanity. To get away, to get away was my one idea.

Once home among my family, I felt a mighty load off my mind and a great joy in my heart, where rang a peal of bells proclaiming the delights of my approaching emancipation. Little by little, the factory that was to set me free rose skywards, full of promises.

Yes, I should possess the modest income which would crown my ambition by allowing me to descant on animals and plants in a university chair.

'Well, no,' said Fate, 'you shall not acquire the freedman's peculium; you shall remain a slave, dragging your chain behind you;your peal of bells rings false!'

Hardly was the factory in full swing when a piece of news was bruited, at first a vague rumor, an echo of probabilities rather than certainties, and then a positive statement leaving no room for doubt. Chemistry had obtained the madder dye by artificial means;thanks to a laboratory concoction, it was utterly overthrowing the agriculture and industries of my district. This result, while destroying my work and my hopes, did not surprise me unduly. Imyself had toyed with the problem of artificial alizarin and I knew enough about it to foresee that, in no very distant future, the work of the chemist's retort would take the place of the work of the fields.

It was finished; my hopes were dashed to the ground. What to do next? Let us change our lever and begin to roll Sisyphus' stone once more. Let us try to draw from the ink pot what the madder vat declines to yield. Laboremus!