His face darkened; he screamed, said I was lying, and finally burst out with an open show of jealousy. Everything was an invention, a complete lie, he shouted, running with his arms raised. Extraterritorialism! Maximilian! Mexico! Ha, ha!! Cotton plantations! Enough of that, this is the end, he is not going to lend me his stamp album anymore. End of partnership. Cancellation of contract. He pulled his hair in agitation. He was completely out of control, ready for anything.

Very frightened, I began to plead with him. I admitted that my story seemed improbable on first hearing, even unbelievable. I myself, I agreed, was quite amazed. No wonder that it was difficult for him, unprepared as he was, to accept it at once. I appealed to his heart and honor. Would his conscience allow him to refuse me his help just when matters were about to reach a decisive stage? Would he now spoil everything by withdrawing his participation? At last I undertook to prove, on the basis of the stamp album, that everything was, word for word, the truth.

Somewhat mollified, Rudolph opened the album. Never before had I spoken with such force and enthusiasm. I outdid myself. Supporting my reasoning with the evidence of stamps, not only did I refute all his accusations and dispel his doubts, but what is more, I reached such revealing conclusions that I myself was amazed by the perspectives that opened up. Rudolph remained silent and defeated, and no more was said about dissolving the partnership.

XXXI

Can one consider it a coincidence that at about the same time a great theater of illusion, a magnificent wax figure exhibition, came to town and pitched its tent in Holy Trinity Square? I had been anticipating it for a long time and told Rudolph the news with great excitement.

The evening was windy; rain hung in the air. On the yellow and dull horizon the day was getting ready to depart, hastily putting weatherproof gray covers over the train of its carts, about to proceed in rows toward the cool beyond. Under a half-drawn, darker curtain the last streaks of sunset appeared for a moment, then sank into a flat, endless plain, a lakeland of watery reflections. A frightened, yellow, foredoomed glare shone from these streaks across half the sky; the curtain was falling quickly. The pale roofs of houses shone with a moist reflection; it was getting dark and the gutter pipes were beginning to sing in monotone.

The wax figure exhibition was already open. Crowds of people sheltering under umbrellas were outlined in the dim light of the sinking day in the forecourt of the tent, where they ceremoniously gave money for their tickets to a décolletaged lady, glittering with jewels and gold teeth: a live, laced-up, and painted torso, her lower extremities lost in the shadow of velvet curtains.

Through a half-open flap we entered a brightly lighted space. It was full of people. Groups of them in wet overcoats with upturned collars ambled in silence from place to place, stopping in attentive semicircles. Without difficulty I recognized among them those who belonged to this world only in appearance, who in reality led a separate, dignified, and embalmed life on pedestals, a life on show, festively empty. They stood in grim silence, clad in somber made-to-measure frock coats and morning suits of good-quality cloth, very pale, and on their cheeks the feverish flush of the illnesses from which they had died. They had not had a single thought in their heads for quite a time, only the habit of showing themselves from every angle, of exhibiting the emptiness of their existence. They should have been in their beds a long time before, tucked under their cold sheets, their dose of medicine administered. It was a presumption to keep them up so late on their narrow pedestals and in chairs on which they sat so stiffly, in tight patent-leather footwear, miles from their previous existence, with glazed eyes entirely deprived of memory.

All of them had hanging from their lips, dead like the tongue of a strangled man, a last cry, uttered when they left the lunatic asylum where, taken for maniacs, they had spent some time in purgatory before entering this ultimate abode. No, they were not authentic Dreyfuses, Edisons, or Lucchenis; they were only pretenders. They may have been real madmen, caught red-handed at the precise moment a brilliant idée fixe had entered their heads; the moment of truth was skillfully distilled and became the crux of their new existence, pure as an element and unalterable.