Suddenly, just before the surface, a great air bubble escaped from the top of the wall to which the golden thread was attached. Its passage must have released a delicate catch in some interior machinery, from which several movements resulted: as the knot sharply tightened around the sleeper’s neck, the bird, carried forward by its beating wings, fell into the clutches of the athlete, whose hands drew together to seize it. The bird’s flight was the effect rather than the cause of a push of the thread, which tightened on its own account and slightly lengthened its supporting section.

When the air bubble had been expelled the descent began, while the athlete’s hands drew apart and the knot, as it slackened, brought the bird back to its original position. Once settled on the bottom of the container the object remained stationary for a while — then made a fresh ascent which ended, at the same height, in a repetition of the movements we had observed already, together with a forceful expulsion of air.

“Pilate feels the burning of the terrible brand whose fiery lines are printed on his forehead,” said Canterel, pointing to another Cartesian diver which was vertically approaching the surface.

Pilate was standing with his hands raised to a face contorted with pain and his eyes half-closed in an expression of anguish and terror. At the climax of the ascent an air bubble escaped from some occipital opening, while on the figure’s forehead a dazzling, luminous sign appeared, undoubtedly due to an electric light situated in its head. It was a drawing of Christ in agony, composed entirely of fiery lines. Canterel pointed out that the Virgin on one side and Mary Magdalene on the other were kneeling at the foot of the Holy Cross, and that the hems of their two robes each traced an incandescent silhouette on one of Pilate’s eyelids.

As the trinket slowly descended the sign went out, ready to light up again at the pinnacle of its next ascent.

Pointing his forefinger at another figurine, Canterel made the following brief announcement:

“Gilbert waves over the ruins of Baalbek the famous uneven sistrum of the great poet Missir.”

Gilbert, with an expression of delirious joy graven on his face, was standing on a heap of stones that apparently belonged to some very ancient ruins. His right hand was proudly raised holding a sistrum with five rods, while his mouth was open as though declaiming some strophe of verse.

This time, at the zenith of its upward course, a medium-sized air bub­ble departing from the right shoulder caused a movement of the raised arm, which waved the sistrum gaily as though to make it vibrate.

“With the aid of a knife concealed in his bed, the dwarf Pizzighini craftily makes a series of cuts on his body so that the annual sweat of blood, watched for by three observers, should seem more abundant.”

This commentary of Canterel’s referred to a group which, at that moment, lay motionless at the bottom of the enormous tank. An extremely conspicuous stunted creature was reclining, with the covers pulled up to his chin, in a kind of cradle adapted to his childish stature. His eyes, animated by an expression of cunning, were fixed on three attentive guardians watching for some phenomenon to be produced upon his person. Soon the whole group, moving gently upward, left for the high altitudes, and the top corner of the pillow gave brutal exeat, at the proper moment, to a powerful balloon of air. This had a startling consequence, on releasing the catch. A very slight sweat of blood beaded on the freak’s horrible countenance, while the sheets, by contrast, were stained with immense red blotches, apparently the result of some frightful hemorrhage. The vermilion, whether deep or faint in hue, in each case had its origin in a light powder that suddenly issued from a mass of microscopic holes. As the four individuals returned to the depths from which they had started, the rosy dust dissolved completely, leaving the water free from any trace of dye.

“Atlas delivers a furious kick at the celestial sphere, of which he has temporarily unburdened his shoulders, and strikes the constellation of Capricorn.”

Another Cartesian diver in full upward flight underwent our scrutiny, itemized by these words of Canterel’s. Bending his knee so as to display the sole of his right foot just about to kick, Atlas, seen from the rear, was in the act of turning his head to dart a furious glance at a scintillating globe that had fallen behind him. The latter consisted entirely of a multitude of little stars, each made of a diamond, connected by an invisible network of rigid silver wires which held them in their proper cosmographical configuration. Arriving in the upper regions, where several cubic centimeters of air emerged all at once from the top of his head, Atlas, aiming his heel sharply at Capricorn, corrected the one slight uranographical error by shifting the stars. On the way down the percussive limb resumed its original position and the fault reappeared.

Turning his attention to a trio that was closely following Atlas as he fell, Canterel continued succinctly:

“Voltaire doubts his atheistic doctrines for an instant, when he sees a young girl rapt in prayer.”

His hand clenched on the arm of a walking companion, Voltaire, seen in profile, was gazing in anguish at an adolescent girl who knelt a few paces from him, praying fervently with her face lifted to Heaven. After a period of repose on the solid support encountered at the end of its descent, the lightweight toy gently took flight. Right at the top, its strange assumption was checked by the Latin word Dubito, which emerged from Voltaire’s lips composed of a number of air bubbles arranged to form six perfectly calligraphic letters.

“At five months old, Richard Wagner, asleep in his mother’s arms, prompts a charlatan to make a characteristic prediction,” declared the professor, turning to the last of the submarine works of art.

In it, a woman holding a sleeping baby with her left arm, was pointing the forefinger of her free hand at an old man with the appearance of a mountebank. Across a small table, on which stood an escritoire with an open inkwell, he was offering her a flat-bottomed cup which contained an even layer of gray powder resembling ordinary iron filings. This time, near the surface of the water, the defection of an undivided mass of air disgorged by the inkwell on the writing desk made the woman’s wrist oscillate so that her forefinger struck three sharp blows on the rim of the cup. The iron filings were thereupon creased with furrows, which every blow made more distinct, until finally in odd, but fairly legible letters, they formed the words: “will be pilfered” — so admirably appropriate to the future author of Parsifal. As the group returned to greater depths, we saw the iron filings become smooth; for they were, in fact, imitation filings and quite solid, which produced the desired effect by an optical illusion depending on a series of winding cracks that were opened up in three stages by a mechanical device.

The seven delicate nautical objects journeyed up and down quite independently of one another and were at very different heights at any given moment.

When the revue of Cartesian divers was over, Canterel made us draw back a little and pointed to the top of the receptacle. Its inward, horizontal sides, designed to make the whole thing exactly resemble an outsize precious stone, framed a circular opening in the center. A bottle of white wine, bearing the word “Sauternes” on its label, stood nearby, alongside a large jar in which seven sea horses were swimming to and fro. The exact middle of a long thread, passing through the most protuberant part of each hippocampus’s breast, had its two loose ends gathered into a tiny metal sheath. Each of the seven frail setons thus formed was colored differently to evoke one of the hues of the rainbow.

Beside the jar lay a dipping net.

The professor had just taken from his pocket, and carefully opened, a comfit box containing a number of large, bright red pills. Selecting one of these, he advanced a few paces and threw it most adroitly into the great diamond’s opening.