My new acquaintance, St. Louis, the friend of the poor and plague-stricken, receives the homage of young theologians. Can it be, after all, that he is my patron, my guardian angel, who drove me to the hospital, so that I, purified by the fire of mental suffering, should win again that glory which leads to dishonour and contempt? Was it he who directed me to Blanchard’s bookshop and hither also? See how superstitious the atheist has become!
As I survey the memorial tablets which record successful experiments, I vow, in the case of my success, to receive no worldly honour.
The hour has struck, and I run the gauntlet of the young students who regard my undertaking with scorn and prejudice.
About fourteen days have passed, and I have discovered incontrovertible proofs that sulphur is a threefold combination of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. I thank the Director of the laboratory, who, as it appears, takes no interest in my affairs, and leave this new purgatory full of deep, unspeakable joy.
In the mornings when I do walk in the churchyard of Montparnasse, I visit the park of the Palais Luxembourg. A few days after my departure from the Sorbonne I discover, in the centre of the churchyard, a monument of classical beauty. A white marble medallion shows the noble features of an old man of science, whom the inscription on the pedestal describes as “Orfila: Chemist and Physiologist.” It was my friend and protector who, in later years, has so often guided me through the labyrinth of chemical experiments.
A week later, passing through the Rue d’Assas, I stop to admire a house which looks like a convent. A large shield on the wall informs me that it is “Hôtel Orfila.”
Again and again Orfila!
III
Paradise Regained
The summer and autumn of the year 1895 I count, on the whole, among the happiest stages of my eventful life. All my attempts succeed; unknown friends bring me food as the ravens did to Elijah. Money flows in; I can buy books and scientific instruments; among them a microscope, which reveals to me the secrets of life.
Dead to the world, as I have renounced the vain delights of Paris, I remain in my quarter, where every morning I visit the dead in the churchyard of Montparnasse, and thence descend to the Luxembourg Garden to greet my flowers. Sometimes one of my fellow-countrymen on his way through Paris visits me in order to invite me to breakfast on the other side of the river, and to go to the theatre with him. I decline, because the right bank is forbidden to me; it is the so-called “world,” the world of the living and of vanity.
Although I cannot formulate it distinctly, a kind of religion has been forming in me. It is rather a condition of the soul than a view of things based on dogmatic instruction; a chaos of sensations which condense themselves more or less into thoughts.
I have bought a Catholic prayer book, and read it with a collected mind; the Old Testament comforts and chastens me in a somewhat obscure fashion, while the New leaves me cold. This does not prevent a Buddhistic book having a stronger influence on me than all other sacred books, because it ranks positive suffering above mere abstinence. Buddha shows the courage when in full possession of vital energy and enjoyment of married happiness to renounce wife and child, while Christ avoids every contact with the permitted joys of this world.
For the rest, I do not brood much over the sensations which spring up in me; I keep myself indifferent and let them come and go, approving for myself the same freedom which I owe to others.
The great event of the Paris season was Brunetière’s war-cry, “The bankruptcy of Science.” Dedicated from my childhood to the natural sciences, and later on a disciple of Darwin, I had discovered how unsatisfactory the scientific method is, which accepts the mechanism of the universe without presupposing a Mechanician. The weakness of the system showed itself in the gradual degeneration of science; it had marked off a boundary line over which one was not to step. “We,” it said, “have solved all problems; the world has no more riddles.” This presumptuous lie had annoyed me already in 1880, and during the following fifteen years I occupied myself with a revision of the natural sciences. In 1884 I doubted the supposed composition of the atmosphere. The nitrogen of the air is not identical with the nitrogen obtained by analysis of a nitrogenous body. In 1891 I visited the Scientific Institute in Lund in order to compare the spectrum analyses of these two sorts of nitrogen whose difference I had discovered. Do I need to describe the reception which the learned scientists gave me? Now in this year, 1895, the discovery of argon has confirmed my former hypotheses, and given a fresh impulse to my investigations which had been interrupted by a foolish marriage. It is not Science which is bankrupt, only the antiquated, degenerate science, and Brunetière was right although he was wrong.
While all acknowledged the identity of matter and called themselves Monists, without being so really, I went further and drew the extreme logical inferences of the theory by obliterating the boundaries between matter and so-called spirit. Thus, in 1894, in my treatise Antibarbarus, I had dealt with the psychology of sulphur by explaining it through “ontogeny,” that is, the embryonic development of sulphur.
Anyone who is interested in the subject may be referred to the work Sylva Sylvarum, which I composed in the summer and autumn of 1895, with a feeling of pride in my perspicuity at having divined the secrets of creation, especially in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. He may further consult my Churchyard Studies, which show how in loneliness and sorrow I was brought back to a wavering apprehension of
