The Three Eyes Part 10

"Will they come? What! You, who know, ask me that question! Why, they will pay gold for the worst seat, they'll give a king's ransom to get in! I'm so sure of it that I shall put all I have left, the last remnant of my savings, into the business. And within a year I shall have ama.s.sed incalculable wealth."

"The place is quite small, uncle, and you will have only a limited number of seats."

"A thousand, a thousand seats, comfortably! At two hundred francs a seat to begin with, at a thousand francs! . . ."

"I say, uncle! Seats in the open air, exposed to the rain, to the cold, to all sorts of weather!"

"I've foreseen that objection. The Yard will be closed on rainy days.

I want bright daylight, sunshine, the action of the light and other conditions besides, which will still further decrease the number of demonstrations. But that doesn't matter: each seat will cost two thousand francs, five thousand francs, if necessary! I tell you, there's no limit! No one will be content to die without having been to Noel Dorgeroux's Yard! Why, Victorien, you know it as well as I do!

When all is said, the reality is more extraordinary than anything that you can imagine, even after what you have seen with your own eyes."

I could not help asking him:

"Then there are fresh manifestations?"

He replied by nodding his head:

"It's not so much that they're new," he said, "as that, above all, they have enabled me, with the factors which I already possess, to probe the truth to the bottom."

"Uncle! Uncle!" I cried. "You mean to say that you know the truth?"

"I know the whole truth, my boy," he declared. "I know how much is my work and how much has nothing to do with me. What was once darkness is now dazzling light."

And he added, in a very serious tone:

"It is beyond all imagination, my boy. It is beyond the most extravagant dreams; and yet it remains within the province of facts and certainties. Once humanity knows of it, the earth will pa.s.s through a thrill of religious awe; and the people who come here as pilgrims will fall upon their knees--as I did--fall upon their knees like children who pray and fold their hands and weep!"

His words, which were obviously exaggerated, seemed to come from an ill-balanced mind. Yet I felt the force of their exciting and feverish influence:

"Explain yourself, uncle, I beg you."

"Later on, my boy, when all the points have been cleared up."

"What are you afraid of?"

"Nothing from you."

"From whom then?"

"n.o.body. But I have my misgivings . . . quite wrongly, perhaps. Still, certain facts lead me to think that I am being spied upon and that some one is trying to discover my secret. It's just a few clues . . .

things that have been moved from their place . . . and, above all, a vague intuition."

"This is all very indefinite, uncle."

"Very, I admit," he said, drawing himself up. "And so forgive me if my precautions are excessive . . . and let's talk of something else: of yourself, Victorien, of your plans . . ."

"I have no plans, uncle."

"Yes, you have. There's one at least that you're keeping from me."

"How so?"

He stopped in his walk and said:

"You're in love with Berangere."

I did not think of protesting, knowing that Noel Dorgeroux had been in the Yard the day before, in front of the screen:

"I am, uncle, I'm in love with Berangere, but she doesn't care for me."

"Yes, she does, Victorien."

I displayed some slight impatience:

"Uncle, I must ask you not to insist. Berangere is a mere child; she does not know what she wants; she is incapable of any serious feeling; and I do not intend to think about her any more. On my part, it was just a fancy of which I shall soon be cured."

Noel Dorgeroux shrugged his shoulders:

"Lovers' quarrels! Now this is what I have to say to you, Victorien.

The work at the Yard will take up all the winter. The amphitheatre will be open to the public on the fourteenth of May, to the day. The Easter holidays will fall a month earlier; and you shall marry my G.o.d-daughter during the holidays. Not a word; leave it to me. And leave both your settlements and your prospects to me as well. You can understand, my boy, that, when money is pouring in like water--as it will without a doubt--Victorien Beaugrand will throw up a profession which does not give him sufficient leisure for his private studies and that he will live with me, he and his wife. Yes, I said his wife; and I stick to it. Good-bye, my dear chap, not another word."

I walked on. He called me back:

"Say good-bye to me, Victorien."

He put his arms round me with greater fervour than usual; and I heard him murmur:

"Who can tell if we shall ever meet again? At my age! And threatened as I am, too!"

I protested. He embraced me yet again:

"You're right. I am really talking nonsense. You think of your marriage. Berangere is a dear, sweet girl. And she loves you. Good-bye and bless you! I'll write to you. Good-bye."

I confess that Noel Dorgeroux's ambitions, at least in so far as they related to the turning of his discovery to practical account, did not strike me as absurd; and what I have said of the things seen at the Yard will exempt me, I imagine, from stating the reasons for my confidence. For the moment, therefore, I will leave the question aside and say no more of those three haunting eyes or the phantasmal scenes upon the magic screen. But how could I indulge the dreams of the future which Noel Dorgeroux suggested? How could I forget Berangere's hostile att.i.tude, her ambiguous conduct?

True, during the months that followed, I often sought to cling to the delightful memory of the vision which I had surprised and the charming picture of Berangere bending over me with that soft look in her eyes.

But I very soon pulled myself up and cried:

"I saw the thing all wrong! What I took for affection and, G.o.d forgive me, for love was only the expression of a woman triumphing over a man's abas.e.m.e.nt! Berangere does not care for me. The movement that threw her against my shoulder was due to a sort of nervous crisis; and she felt so much ashamed of it that she at once pushed me away and ran indoors. Besides, she had an appointment with that man the very next day and, in order to keep it, let me go without saying good-bye to me."

My months of exile therefore were painful months. I wrote to Berangere in vain. I received no reply.

My uncle in his letters spoke of nothing but the Yard. The works were making quick progress. The amphitheatre was growing taller and taller.

The wall was quite transformed. The last news, about the middle of March, told me that nothing remained to be done but to fix the thousand seats, which had long been on order, and to hang the iron curtain which was to protect the screen.

It was at this period that Noel Dorgeroux's misgivings revived, or at least it was then that he mentioned them when writing to me. Two books which he bought in Paris and which he used to read in private, lest his choice of a subject should enable anyone to learn the secret of his discovery, had been removed, taken away and then restored to their place. A sheet of paper, covered with notes and chemical formulae, disappeared. There were footprints in the garden. The writing-desk had been broken open, in the room where he worked at the Lodge since the demolition of the sheds.