Once the air pocket was empty, the figure would descend under its own weight, and after a short while the oxygen, quickly formed again within it, would give rise to another flight.
Some of the automatic manifestations to be obtained required particularly delicate arrangements. For example, to make the luminous mark appear on Pilate’s forehead, a small electric lamp would have to be lit inside. The word “Dubito,” containing the whole essence of the story about Voltaire, was to be expelled from the great thinker’s parted lips in the shape of numerous air bubbles skillfully clustered into a calligraphic array, being simply the air bubble itself, very much divided. Each time the mechanism fitted to the dwarf Pizzighini operated, it would imitate a sweat of blood by expelling a minute amount of special red powder from a mass of outlets. Taken from a plentiful supply inside, this would color the water for a moment and disappear at once when it was completely dissolved. In the cup of the Leipzig charlatan imitation iron filings would furrow into the desired shape when the percussive finger tapped three times.
∗ ∗ ∗
Once these various points had been elucidated, it occurred to Canterel that he had not yet tasted his water. Accordingly, he manufactured a small special supply of it, to be swallowed with attention.
When poured out, the aqua-micans looked like liquid diamond and seemed made to gladden a parched throat; from his first draughts, the professor discovered that it was remarkably light, with a very delicate flavour. Thirstily, he swallowed three glassfuls of the sparkling potion, whose excessive oxygenation made him strangely inebriated.
Then Canterel determined to find out what sensations he would experience if he were to combine vinous intoxication with his present tipsiness. He had a very heady Sauternes brought in and began to fill the glass he had just been using from it, but a little of the water was left at the bottom, and the professor stopped short when he saw the first gush of white wine change instantly into a compact block. The strange water extended its amazing luster to this new submerged solid, which, in view of its color, flashed like the sun. The composition of the aqua-micans was such as to prevent any mixing of the two liquids, while sudden oxygenation caused the Bordeaux to harden. When Canterel handled the block with his fingers, he found it very malleable.
Forgetting his recently conceived experiment on double intoxication, he formed a project based on the manageable softness of the solid wine and its solar radiance.
He had lately devoted himself to numerous experiments in acclimation, and in particular had done his utmost to accustom certain sea fish to live in fresh water. His only procedure was to remove the salt very slowly and progressively from their native liquid — which required a great deal of patience and judgement to succeed — and if he noticed the slightest organic disturbance in his subjects, he suspended the process temporarily.
Canterel’s first success had been with a group of hippocampi, whose adaptation was already complete. Three out of ten had succumbed in the perilous process of habituation, but after that the seven unprotesting survivors permanently resided, without discomfort, in a jar of fresh water.
The professor proposed to immerse them in the great diamond in order to make them pull a sphere of solidified Sauternes which, due to its luster borrowed from the aqua-micans, would exactly resemble a miniature sun. The whole would thus evoke a kind of aquatic Apollo’s chariot.
To begin with, as a test, he plunged only the hippocampi into the faceted chamber to see whether any peculiarity of the novel water was harmful to their constitution.
Now after a moment the graceful creatures tried to escape from the aqua-micans in all directions and displayed signs of intense discomfort.
Suddenly, reproaching himself for not having foreseen the incident, Canterel understood the very simple cause of their distress: as the specular fluid was adapted to the breathing of purely terrestrial beings, its oxygen content was naturally too great for aquatic creatures, and the hippocampi were in just as much danger there as in free air. The professor hastily returned them to their jar with a dipping net.
Then, seeking a remedy for the great setback which threatened all his plans, he determined to pass a kind of seton through the breast of each; this would permit the excess oxygen formed in the sea horses’ bodies to escape, by keeping two apertures permanently open.
Tried first on a single hippocampus provided with a temporary seton, the experiment met with the most complete success; light bubbles began to force their way through the two new orifices as soon as the treated animals were plunged in the aqua-micans, where they moved peacefully about among the glittering reflections, feeling no discomfort. In ordinary water, when the edges of the double outlet were no longer being pushed outward by the superfluous air within, they adhered fully to the seton and became hermetically closed on each side.
Seeking for some method of harnessing the contemplated mythological emblem, Canterel decided to put each seton to a double use by making it long enough to be attached to the sphere of wine.
Since his idea was that the equipage should make a graceful circuit of the diamond’s interior, he proposed to add excitement to the show by instituting the first ever sea horse race. A certain amount of elasticity in the setons would allow the more agile competitors to move triumphantly ahead, though never more than a very little way, in view of the paltry means of locomotion which the hippocampi had at their disposal.
The professor ingeniously gave each of the seven long setons in question one of the seven prismatic shades so that punters might easily recognize their candidate, thus finding a substitute for the visual guide provided by jockeys’ colors on the turf. Having made a study of the seven coursers’ speeds beforehand, he staggered them at intervals from worst to best, giving their setons the colors of the rainbow from violet to red, in their correct order.
Considering how best to attach these eccentric traces to the yellow sphere, Canterel asked himself whether the electricity communicated by the aqua-micans to everything it enveloped might not suffice to create a degree of magnetic attraction between the solid wine and some conductor fixed to their ends. After several more or less affirmative trials, he gathered the two ends of each seton into a fine, shining sheath, made of a metal selected out of the complete range for the results it gave. When rather close to it in the aqua-micans, it invariably attached itself to the miniature Phoebus.
Anxious to mark out the route clearly, Canterel submerged, not far from Danton’s head, a small, plain column shaft, which, in view of its carefully calculated density, was forced to remain motionless at a shallow depth, without the slightest tendency to move up or down. To make one lap the team were to circumnavigate on the one hand the immobile shaft and on the other the group of Cartesian divers functioning on the opposite side; while the center of the course would be always to the left. Because of their number and the inevitable lack of coordination as they rose and fell, there would always be at least one bottle-imp marking a point in the upper region where the race was to be run.
The professor considered that the sight of the Sauternes abruptly solidifying in contact with the aqua-micans was worthy of attention, so he decided to pour out the intrusive ration at the last moment — and train the hippocampi to shape the solar globe themselves, all kneading the crude block made available to them together with their left sides, which he leveled with a layer of wax the same color as themselves.
Once this education had succeeded as he wished, likewise the attachment of the blocks, which left no mark, he accustomed his pupils suddenly to leave their sphere and range themselves immediately in a single line, so that the setons’ metal sheaths might form a correct and even harness, sticking to the tiny luminary side by side and halting it in the middle of its slow descent.
Finally he taught them, at a signal, to go round the required course straining every nerve to overtake each other. The winning post was to be the column, which could be watched with one eye at a distance, through a narrow circle traced in black on one of the great diamond’s facets.
Canterel had trained the bearers of tinted setons, as they adjusted their curious harnesses, to line up aesthetically abreast, according to the proper order of the seven prismatic colors. Race horses must have names; so the professor, to avoid taxing anyone’s memory, gave the seven champions a simple numerical baptism in Latin, based on the variegated pattern of the rainbow from violet to red. Primus, holding the violet seton, was the least speedy of all and marked the left-hand end of the line, having thus the advantage of a constant lead — while the most lively, Septimus, wore the red seton on the far right and had, on the contrary, the longest of the seven tracks for himself. And the perfect correspondence between the total advantage attaching to each of the five intermediate positions and the abilities of those who held them succeeded in making this subtle handicap absolutely fair — based, as it was, on the unaccustomed obligation under which the competitors found themselves, of remaining constantly in the same place in the row, since they were harnessed to a single load.
∗ ∗ ∗
While the professor was speaking, Khóng-d
k-lèn had been persistently teasing the solar ball, as the sea horses dragged it slowly along.
When he had finished, Canterel walked round the gem rolling up his right sleeve fully, then, making a sign to Faustine, who at once set Khóng-dk-lèn upon her shoulder, he again mounted the ladder.
As the dwarf sun went by, he gripped it with his fingers, breaking the adherence of the metal sheaths; soon it lay beside the bottle of Sauternes. One by one the hippocampi were taken in the net and restored to their jar, where the production of air bubbles from their breasts entirely ceased.
Canterel held his hand beneath the back of Faustine’s head, while she faced him, thrusting her head back and catching hold of the rim of the circular opening, as Khóng-dk-lèn rubbed himself against her cheek. Lifted by the nape, she recovered herself quickly and was thus able to kneel on the glass ceiling, then descend the nickel-plated ladder behind the professor. The latter, after drying his arm and hand with his handkerchief, briskly rolled down his sleeve.
The cat jumped to the ground and slipped away in the direction of the villa, while our group resumed its quiet stroll, augmented by Faustine.
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