第56章

I was very sure that the old Master was hard at work about something,--he is always very busy with something,--but I mean something particular.

Whether it was a question of history or of cosmogony, or whether he was handling a test-tube or a blow-pipe; what he was about I did not feel sure; but I took it for granted that it was some crucial question or other he was at work on, some point bearing on the thought of the time.For the Master, I have observed, is pretty sagacious in striking for the points where his work will be like to tell.We all know that class of scientific laborers to whom all facts are alike nourishing mental food, and who seem to exercise no choice whatever, provided only they can get hold of these same indiscriminate facts in quantity sufficient.They browse on them, as the animal to which they would not like to be compared browses on his thistles.But the Master knows the movement of the age he belongs to; and if he seems to be busy with what looks like a small piece of trivial experimenting, one may feel pretty sure that he knows what he is about, and that his minute operations are looking to a result that will help him towards attaining his great end in life,--an insight, so far as his faculties and opportunities will allow, into that order of things which he believes he can study with some prospect of taking in its significance.

I became so anxious to know what particular matter he was busy with, that I had to call upon him to satisfy my curiosity.It was with a little trepidation that I knocked at his door.I felt a good deal as one might have felt on disturbing an alchemist at his work, at the very moment, it might be, when he was about to make projection.

--Come in! --said the Master in his grave, massive tones.

I passed through the library with him into a little room evidently devoted to his experiments.

--You have come just at the right moment,--he said.--Your eyes are better than mine.I have been looking at this flask, and I should like to have you look at it.

It was a small matrass, as one of the elder chemists would have called it, containing a fluid, and hermetically sealed.He held it up at the window; perhaps you remember the physician holding a flask to the light in Gerard Douw's "Femme hydropique"; I thought of that fine figure as I looked at him.Look! --said he,--is it clear or cloudy?

--You need not ask me that,--I answered.It is very plainly turbid.

I should think that some sediment had been shaken up in it.What is it, Elixir Vitae or Aurum potabile?

--Something that means more than alchemy ever did! Boiled just three hours, and as clear as a bell until within the last few days; since then has been clouding up.

--I began to form a pretty shrewd guess at the meaning of all this, and to think I knew very nearly what was coming next.I was right in my conjecture.The Master broke off the sealed end of his little flask, took out a small portion of the fluid on a glass rod, and placed it on a slip of glass in the usual way for a microscopic examination.

--One thousand diameters,--he said, as he placed it on the stage of the microscope.---We shall find signs of life, of course.--He bent over the instrument and looked but an instant.

--There they are!--he exclaimed,--look in.

I looked in and saw some objects:

The straight linear bodies were darting backward and forward in every direction.The wavy ones were wriggling about like eels or water-snakes.The round ones were spinning on their axes and rolling in every direction.All of them were in a state of incessant activity, as if perpetually seeking something and never finding it.

They are tough, the germs of these little bodies, said the Master.---Three hours' boiling has n't killed 'em.Now, then, let us see what has been the effect of six hours' boiling.

He took up another flask just like the first, containing fluid and hermetically sealed in the same way.

--Boiled just three hours longer than the other, he said,--six hours in all.This is the experimentum crucis.Do you see any cloudiness in it?

--Not a sign of it; it is as clear as crystal, except that there may be a little sediment at the bottom.

--That is nothing.The liquid is clear.We shall find no signs of life.---He put a minute drop of the liquid under the microscope as before.Nothing stirred.Nothing to be seen but a clear circle of light.We looked at it again and again, but with the same result.

--Six hours kill 'em all, according to this experiment,--said the Master.---Good as far as it goes.One more negative result.Do you know what would have happened if that liquid had been clouded, and we had found life in the sealed flask? Sir, if that liquid had held life in it the Vatican would have trembled to hear it, and there would have been anxious questionings and ominous whisperings in the halls of Lambeth palace! The accepted cosmogonies on trial, sir!

Traditions, sanctities, creeds, ecclesiastical establishments, all shaking to know whether my little sixpenny flask of fluid looks muddy or not! I don't know whether to laugh or shudder.The thought of an oecumenical council having its leading feature dislocated by my trifling experiment! The thought, again, of the mighty revolution in human beliefs and affairs that might grow out of the same insignificant little phenomenon.A wine-glassful of clear liquid growing muddy.If we had found a wriggle, or a zigzag, or a shoot from one side to the other, in this last flask, what a scare there would have been, to be sure, in the schools of the prophets! Talk about your megatherium and your megalosaurus,--what are these to the bacterium and the vibrio? These are the dreadful monsters of today.

If they show themselves where they have no business, the little rascals frighten honest folks worse than ever people were frightened by the Dragon of Rhodes!