LITMIR.BIZ

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You must realize what you are pledging yourself to do if you share in my work. Write, Victorien."

      "What, uncle?"

      "A declaration in which you acknowledge that . . . But I'll dictate it to you. That'll be better."

      I interrupted him:

      "Uncle, you distrust me."

      "I don't distrust you, my boy. I fear an imprudence, an indiscretion. And, generally speaking, I have plenty of reasons for being suspicious."

      "What reasons, uncle?"

      "Reasons," he replied, in a more serious voice, "which make me think that I am being spied upon and that somebody is trying to discover what my invention is. Yes, somebody came in here, the other night, and rummaged among my papers."

      "Did they find anything?"

      "No. I always carry the most important notes and formulae on me. Still, you can imagine what would happen if they succeeded. So you do admit, don't you, that I am obliged to be cautious? Write down that I have told you of my investigations and that you have seen what I obtain on the wall in the Yard, at the place covered by a black-serge curtain."

      I took a sheet of paper and a pen. But he stopped me quickly:

      "No, no," he said, "it's absurd. It wouldn't prevent . . . Besides, you won't talk, I'm sure of that. Forgive me, Victorien. I am so horribly worried!"

      "You needn't fear any indiscretion on my part," I declared. "But I must remind you that Bérangère also has seen what there was to see."

      "Oh," he said, "she wouldn't understand!"

      "She wanted to come with me just now."

      "On no account, on no account! She's still a child and not fit to be trusted with a secret of this importance. . . . Now come along."

      But it so happened that, as we were leaving the workshop, we both of us at the same time saw Bérangère stealing along one of the walls of the Yard and stopping in front of a black curtain, which she suddenly pulled aside.

      "Bérangère!" shouted my uncle, angrily.

      The girl turned round and laughed.

      "I won't have it! I will not have it!" cried Noël Dorgeroux, rushing in her direction. "I won't have it, I tell you! Get out, you mischief!"

      Bérangère ran away, without, however, displaying any great perturbation. She leapt on a stack of bricks, scrambled on to a long plank which formed a bridge between two barrels and began to dance as she was wont to do, with her arms outstretched like a balancing-pole and her bust thrown slightly backwards.

      "You'll lose your balance," I said, while my uncle drew the curtain.

      "Never!" she replied, jumping up and down on her spring-board.

      She did not lose her balance. But the plank shifted and the pretty dancer came tumbling down among a heap of old packing-cases.

      I ran to her assistance and found her lying on the ground, looking very white.

      "Have you hurt yourself, Bérangère?"

      "No . . . hardly . . . just my ankle . . . perhaps I've sprained it."

      I lifted her, almost fainting, in my arms and carried her to a wooden bench a little farther away.

      She let me have my way and even put one arm round my neck. Her eyes were closed. Her red lips opened and I inhaled the cool fragrance of her breath.

      "Bérangère!" I whispered, trembling with emotion.

      When I laid her on the bench, her arm held me more tightly, so that I had to bend my head with my face almost touching hers. I meant to draw back. But the temptation was too much for me and I kissed her on the lips, gently at first and then with a brutal violence which brought her to her senses.

      She repelled me with an indignant movement and stammered, in a despairing, rebellious tone:

      "Oh, it's abominable of you! . . . It's shameful!"

      In spite of the suffering caused by her sprain, she had managed to stand up, while I, stupefied by my thoughtless conduct, stood bowed before her, without daring to raise my head.

      We remained for some seconds in this attitude, in an embarrassed silence through which I could catch the hurried rhythm of her breathing. I tried gently to take her hands. But she released them at once and said:

      "Let me be. I shall never forgive you, never."

      "Come, Bérangère, you will forget that."

      "Leave me alone. I want to go indoors."

      "But you can't, Bérangère."

      "Here's god-father. He'll take me back."

      My reasons for relating this incident will appear in the sequel. For the moment, notwithstanding the profound commotion produced by the kiss which I had stolen from Bérangère, my thoughts were so to speak absorbed by the mysterious drama in which I was about to play a part with my uncle Dorgeroux. I heard my uncle asking Bérangère if she was not hurt. I saw her leaning on his arm and, with him, making for the door of the garden. But, while I remained bewildered, trembling, dazed by the adorable image of the girl whom I loved, it was my uncle whom I awaited and whom I was impatient to see returning. The great riddle already held me captive.

      "Let's make haste," cried Noël Dorgeroux, when he came back. "Else it will be too late and we shall have to wait until to-morrow."

      He led the way to the high wall where he had caught Bérangère in the act of yielding to her curiosity. This wall, which divided the Yard from the garden and which I had not remarked particularly on my rare visits to the Yard, was now daubed with a motley mixture of colours, like a painter's palette. Red ochre, indigo, purple and saffron were spread over it in thick and uneven layers, which whirled around a more thickly-coated centre. But, at the far end, a wide curtain of black serge, like a photographer's cloth, running on an iron rod supported by brackets, hid a rectangular space some three or four yards in width.

      "What's that?" I asked my uncle. "Is this the place?"

      "Yes," he answered, in a husky voice, "it's behind there."

      "There's still time to change your mind," I suggested.

      "What makes you say that?"

      "I feel that you are afraid of letting me know. You are so upset."

      "I am upset for a very different reason."

      "Why?"

      "Because I too am going to see."

      "But you have done so already."

      "One always sees new things, Victorien; that's the terrifying part of it."

      I took hold of the curtain.

      "Don't touch it, don't touch it!" he cried. "No one has the right, except myself. Who knows what would happen if any one except me were to open the closed door! Stand back, Victorien. Take up your position at two paces from the wall, a little to one side. . . . And now look!"

      His voice was vibrant with energy and implacable determination. His expression was that of a man facing death; and, suddenly, with a single movement, he drew the black-serge curtain.

      My emotion, I am certain, was just as great as Noël Dorgeroux's and my heart beat no less violently. My curiosity had reached its utmost bounds; moreover, I had a formidable intuition that I was about to enter into a region of mystery of which nothing, not even my uncle's disconcerting words, was able to give me the remotest idea. I was experiencing the contagion of what seemed to me in him to be a diseased condition; and I vainly strove to subject it in myself to the control of my reason. I was taking the impossible and the incredible for granted beforehand.

      And yet I saw nothing at first; and there was, in fact, nothing. This part of the wall was bare. The only detail worthy

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