Positioned once more beside the facets, we saw the lightweight scarlet nutmeg drop into the water, then slowly sink — to be suddenly swallowed, on the way down, by the animal with the naked, pink skin, which Canterel told us really was a cat, named Khóng-dek-lèn, that had been entirely plucked. Due to its special oxygenation, the aqua-micans — for so the professor termed the glittering water before our eyes — had various unusual properties, notably that of enabling purely terrestrial creatures to breathe quite freely in its depths. This is why the woman with the musical hair — none other, we learnt from Canterel’s lips, than the dancer Faustine — was able to suffer prolonged immersion with impunity, as also could the cat.

With a gesture, the professor then directed our eyes to the right, indicating the human face made up entirely of muscles, nerves and cerebral tissue — this, he told us, was all that remained of Danton’s head, which, as a consequence of remote events had become his property. The sheaths deposited by the aqua-micans and clothing the full length of the fibers, gave the whole a powerful electric charge; moreover, the melodious vibrations which were, that very instant, providing an accompaniment to Canterel’s words were caused by the similar sheathing visible in Faustine’s hair.

The professor, making a sign to Khóng-dek-lèn, fell silent. The cat let itself sink to the bottom and stuck its face firmly, up to its ears, into the metal horn, the point of which was pressing against the wall of the container. Equipped with this glittering accessory, through which it could see out in every direction by means of holes, the cat swam toward Danton’s head.

Canterel told us that the red pellet, swallowed just now before our eyes, had, by means of its special chemical composition, temporarily changed the cat’s entire body into an extremely powerful electric battery, whose force, concentrated in the horn, was all set to be released whenever its tip should make the slightest contact with a conductor. Through skillful training, Khóng-dek-lèn knew how to touch Danton’s brain gently with the tapering point of his strange mask; thereupon, the muscles and nerves, already electrified by their aqueous lining, underwent a powerful discharge, causing them to behave as though under the influence of old routines.

Reaching its goal, the cat placed the tip of the metal cone lightly against the encephalon displayed before it and suddenly the fibers performed an impressive gymnastic. It seemed as though life once more inhabited this recently immobile remnant of face. Certain muscles appeared to make the absent eyes turn in all directions, while others periodically went into action as if to raise, lower, screw up or relax the area of the eyebrows and forehead, but those of the lips in particular moved with wild agility, undoubtedly due to the amazing gift of oratory that Danton once possessed. Khóng-dek-lèn, seen in profile, was treading water to keep himself constantly alongside the head, without blocking our view of it in any way; sometimes he involuntarily broke the horn’s contact with the dura mater, only to reestablish it almost immediately. During such intervals the facial agitations ceased, only to recommence once the current was flowing again. So gentle and cautious was the animal in touching it, that in its moments of freedom the head scarcely swayed at all at the end of its wire, which was provided with a plain rubber suction cup at its very top, attached to the enormous gem’s transparent ceiling.

Earlier, in the course of similar experiments, Canterel had accustomed his eyes to interpret the movements of the buccal muscles, and now as the words appeared, passing over the remains of the great orator’s lips, he revealed them to us. They were disjointed fragments of speech, full of vibrant patriotism. Stirring periods, once publicly uttered, surged pell-mell from the pigeonholes of memory to be reproduced automatically on the lower part of the ruined mask. The intense twitching of the other facial muscles, likewise originating in the manifold recollections sent up from the depths of the past by certain climactic hours full of parliamentary activity, showed how expressive Danton’s hideous snout must have been on the platform.

At a shouted command from Canterel the cat drew back from the head, which became suddenly inert, then used its forelegs to free itself from the horn, which soon slid lazily to the bottom.

Telling us to remain where we were, Canterel went round the monstrous diamond, clambered up a slender double ladder of costly nickelled metal, which was standing against the side opposite our own, and ended up overlooking the circular opening.

Using the net, he lifted the sea horses one by one from the jar and plunged them into the aqua-micans, where an unexpected scene took place. On each breast, to right and left, the lips of the two artificial openings parted from time to time under the influence of internal pressure, allowed an air bubble to pass, then closed once more upon the seton. This phenomenon was slow and periodic to begin with, then soon became extremely frequent. The professor assured us that the hippocampi would have been incapable of living inside the great diamond without their double outlet, for through it escaped the excess oxygen which the dazzling tide, well-suited to the breathing of terrestrial creatures, inevitably liberated in aquatic animals.

The left side of each of the seven lophobranches was covered by a smooth layer of wax the same color as themselves.

Canterel uncorked the bottle of Sauternes and began to pour a thin trickle of its contents into the strange tank. Now, once in contact with the aqua-micans, the wine — without showing the slightest tendency to mix — solidified and, suddenly clothed in a magical brilliance borrowed from its environment, sank grandly in yellow lumps like pieces of the sun. Noticing this phenomenon, the sea horses gathered of their own accord in a tight circle conveniently situated to receive these dazzling avalanches in their midst, and kneaded them with the flattened sides of their bodies into a single conglomeration. The professor continued to tip the bottle, constantly dispatching fresh material to the attentive throng who seized it as it fell, letting none escape. At last, judging the quantity to be sufficient, the strict butler briskly recorked the bottle and put it away beside the jar.

The hippocampi now possessed a glittering yellow ball scarcely three centimeters in radius, fashioned by their continual kneading. Skillfully besieging it, they turned it about in all directions on the spot and by careful modeling, likewise performed entirely with their wax-coated sides, they did their utmost to give it a flawless rotundity.

Before long they possessed an absolutely perfect and homogeneous sphere, whose surface and interior were quite unblemished by any trace of joins. Then they abruptly left it with one accord and placed themselves side by side in a single rank, in the correct order which their setons required to form a rainbow.

The sphere behind them, being free, descended. When it drew level with the double ends of all the setons, it attracted the metal of the seven short connecting sheaths like a magnet. The traces tautened horizontally once the team began to move, due to the magnetic globe’s inertia as it was dragged forward by the sudden general impetus.

A cry of surprise was wrested from our lips — for the whole display suggested the chariot of Apollo. Because of its blazing participation in the aqua-micans’s brilliance, the transparent yellow ball was indeed encompassed by blinding rays, which transformed it into a luminary of the day.

Soon the steeds made a circuit of the immobile submerged column, while numerous air bubbles, expelled from their breasts, burst con­tinually on the surface of the water. The tension in the setons allowed only the backs of the metal sheaths to remain touching the solar sphere, whose inert mass described an impeccable curve. As the equipage bowled along to the left it masked successively Danton and Faustine, doubled round the realm of Cartesian divers, then passed in front of us proceeding to the right.

Canterel declared there was to be a race and invited us to select our favorites. He then announced that the hippocampi — handicapped by their positions at varying distances from an imaginary cord — would, for the sake of simplicity, be given their ordinal numbers in Latin by way of names, beginning with the violet seton held by Primus, who had the most advantageous position.