“Oh, England! England!” sighed the doctor; “would to Heaven I had never left thy happy shores! Alas! alas! what a crowd of horrible events have occupied the last few months!”
“Why did you leave your country, since you so bitterly regret it?” demanded the alcaide.
“Because we could not be contented,” replied Edric. “Devoted from my earliest youth to the pursuits of science, I craved ardently for knowledge denied to mortals; I aspired to penetrate into the profoundest secrets of Nature, and burnt to accomplish wishes destined never to be realized. The desire of seeing foreign countries also filled my soul: I longed to travel, to acquire new ideas and meet with strange and wonderful adventures; I sickened of the quiet and tranquillity of home. ‘Give me change,’ cried I in my madness, ‘give me variety, and I ask no more; for even wretchedness itself were better to bear than this tiresome unvarying uniformity.’ The unreasonableness of my wishes deserved punishment, and I have been cursed with the very fulfilment of my wishes.”
“Is this gentleman also a votary of science?” asked the alcaide, who had appeared musing whilst Edric spoke.
“What a question!” exclaimed the doctor, in a transport of indignation. “What! has my whole life been devoted to scientific pursuits! have I deprived myself of rest and almost of food! and wasted the midnight lamp in bringing to perfection some of the most sublime discoveries ever vouchsafed to man, to be insulted with such a doubt as that? Know, sir, that you see before you Doctor Entwerfen, the fortunate inventor of the immortalizing snuff, one single pinch of which cures all diseases by the smell; the discoverer of the capability of caoutchouc being applied to aerial purposes; and the maker of the most compendious and powerful galvanic battery ever yet beheld by mortal!”
“Then you are the very man I want,” said the alcaide; “go to prison contentedly, and rest satisfied that your confinement will be of very short duration. In a day or two I will see you, and explain the project I have conceived for your deliverance.”
So saying, he summoned his guards, and, ordering them to convey the travellers to prison, the doctor and Edric were dragged away, and, being immured in separate dungeons, were left there to ruminate upon the varied and busy scenes in which they had been so lately engaged. Sadly and heavily passed the time; yet days and weeks rolled on ere they again saw the alcaide. At length, when they had begun almost to despair, they were reconducted to his presence.
“Do you understand the management of an electrical machine?” asked he abruptly.
“Certainly!” cried the doctor, transported with joy at the question, before Edric, who was half blinded by the sudden change from his gloomy prison to the broad light of day, had sufficiently recovered himself to reply.
“Then it is in your own power to set yourselves free,” continued the alcaide. “The principal general of the army stationed here is ill; a powerful party exists against him who wish his death, at the head of whom stands the leader who was the cause of your being taken into custody. The general himself is a mere nonentity; but the opposite party, to which I belong, wish to save his life, as his name affords a sanction under which they can act. He is now ill of a palsy, and has been recommended to try the effects of an electrical shock. A machine has been with difficulty procured in this remote district; but the philosopher of the army being lately dead, and another not having been yet appointed, no one here knows how to apply it. Now, if you—”
“Say no more!” cried the doctor, interrupting him, in a transport of delight; “say no more—I see, I comprehend the whole! I shall restore him, and receive my liberty as the reward. Nay more, I shall obtain immortality amongst the Spaniards by the deed; their poets will sing my fame, and their historians will pause upon the fact!”
“You will undertake it then?” said the alcaide, and, reading an indignant affirmative in the doctor’s looks, he led the way to a camp, at a short distance from the village, where the paralytic general was sitting in a kind of throne, placed without his tent, and surrounded by the principal officers of his staff; the electrical machine, a large, clumsy, heavy-looking thing, standing before him. The doctor looked with dismay at this unwieldy apparatus, so different from his own neat, powerful compendium of science, as he was wont to call it; and saw with infinite horror that even its construction was totally different from those he had been accustomed to. His natural vanity and presumption, however, revolted from making this mortifying acknowledgment, particularly after the boasts he had been indulging in to the alcaide; and, relying upon his general knowledge of the principles of science, he walked boldly up to the machine, with as much composure and self-confidence as though he had been accustomed to the management of it all his life.
A considerable trepidation, however, crept over him as he examined it and found its movements intricate and complicated in the extreme; and his hands trembled, and a thick film came over his eyes, as he attempted to charge and adjust the cylinder. No time, however, was allowed for deliberation; he was ordered to apply it instantly; and, terrified by the recollection of the prompt manner in which the Spaniards were accustomed to make themselves obeyed, and the already long and severe imprisonment he had undergone, he set it in motion: an unlucky wire, however, which he did not quite understand, pointed upwards, and he tried in vain to arrange it; he tried again, but was instantly felled to the ground by a tremendous shock, whilst a loud crash of thunder burst with violence over his
