CHAPTER XXVII

IN WHICH DELAPINE FINDS HIMSELF FAMOUS, AND THE PARTY BREAKS UP WITH THE HAPPIEST RESULTS

The evening after the departure of Monsieur Patrigent and Riche for Bordeaux, Delapine and his party left for Paris. The professor had already telegraphed to his colleagues at the Sorbonne informing them of the time of his arrival, but his modesty was such that it never occurred to him that anyone would ever take the trouble to meet him. Imagine, therefore, his astonishment as the train steamed into the station to hear a tumultuous hum proceeding from a thousand throats, and to find the entire Gare de Lyon decorated with flowers and flags.

"What on earth is this huge crowd here for?" he asked Villebois as he looked out of the window.

The doctor had no need to reply, for the moment the crowd caught sight of the professor tumultuous shouts of "Vive Delapine, vive le professeur," rose up in one mighty laryngeal blast. Scores of people stretched out their hands as if to embrace him, while others threw bouquets into the carriage. In fact the crowd was so great that it required a dozen gendarmes to clear a passage for him and his party. It was with great difficulty that he managed to reach the barriers on the platform.

"Look, Henri," said Renée, pointing to a magnificent floral arch at the gateway on which "VIVE DELAPINE SOYEZ LE BIENVENU" was written in huge gilt letters around the curve of the arch.

"I feel the proudest girl in all France," said Renée, beaming.

Delapine was more than surprised, he was electrified, enchanted, bewildered. His eyes flashed with excitement, and he was utterly unable to express his feelings in words.

Such was the fame that the professor had acquired first by his extraordinary and unique recovery from the trance, and then by his astounding play at Monte Carlo, that not only was the station crowded to suffocation, but the approach to it was lined by an enthusiastic crowd, extending as far back as the Column of July, and filling the Place de la Bastille.

A magnificent carriage had been brought to the station for the professor, and so excited were the students that they had removed the horses, and twenty or more of them decorated with red sashes stood with ropes over their shoulders ready to drag the carriage to the Sorbonne.

It was evident that the students had abandoned all thought of work that day, and the professors catching their enthusiasm joined them in a body. Had it been the Czar of all the Russians he could not have caused a tithe of the excitement and tremendous cheering that Delapine evoked as he stepped from the train on to the platform. On leaving the station, Delapine with Renée on his arm and Payot immediately behind them were conducted to their carriage by the senior professors of the university. Immediately behind followed a second carriage with the Villebois family, while Monsieur and Madame Beaupaire with Violette and Marcel occupied a third one. Such a sight had not been witnessed for many years. The cheering was deafening. Delapine was obliged to keep bowing every moment along the route. "Vive Delapine!" could be heard on all sides until the cry became a mighty roar of voices all along the route.

On arriving at the Sorbonne he was ushered into a large room where a special banquet had been prepared for the professor and his party. Scientists were present from every part of France. The scene that ensued baffled all description.

Speeches were made, songs were sung by celebrated divas and tenors specially engaged for the occasion, while the students themselves united in singing a song specially composed for the event.

As the dinner drew towards the end, a deputation from his students presented Delapine with a beautifully carved silver casket containing an illuminated address.

After the health of the hero of the hour had been drunk amid ringing cheers from every part of the room, the professor got up to reply.

"Mes honorables collegues et mes amis," said Delapine, quite overcome by the enthusiasm and affection displayed by his pupils. "I thank you from my heart for these signs of your affection and esteem for my poor efforts on your behalf (cries of 'no, no,' on all sides) and also for your expressions of sympathy with me during my prolonged state of trance, and the pleasure you have shown at my restoration to health. I have, like Ulysses, returned from my wanderings, and I rejoice to be with you once more. (Great applause and shouts of 'hurrah for Delapine!')

"I have not," he continued as soon as silence had been restored, "I have not altogether wasted my time since I left you last if I have been able to prove that a new era is dawning, and that wonders upon wonders are looming up in the horizon of our view. The spirit world is approaching nearer and nearer. Things which were inconceivable to our fathers are becoming commonplace to-day. Our great-grandfathers communicated with each other at a distance by means of beacons and flags; our grandfathers by means of mirrors and the semaphore; our fathers by the telegraph, while we communicate by means of the more convenient telephone and wireless ether waves; but mark me, our children or at least our grandchildren, will communicate their inmost thoughts by the infinitely more rapid psychic waves of the soul. (Deafening cheers followed). Writing and speech will be largely replaced by telepathy and thought transference. Both the past and the future will become unfolded to our mental gaze like a scroll.

"If we follow nature's laws and search into its hidden mysteries with an open mind, we shall march on from victory to victory (shouts of 'Vive la France!') we shall form a compact army of students who will refuse to acknowledge defeat. We shall be able to converse with the spirits of those who have gone before, and passed over to the other side. As my illustrious colleague, Sir Oliver Lodge, so eloquently puts it, 'The boundary between the two states--the known and the unknown--is still substantial, but it is wearing thin in places; and like excavators engaged in boring a tunnel from opposite ends, amid the roar of water and other noises, we are beginning to hear now and again the strokes of the pick-axes of our comrades on the other side.' Gentlemen, it is our solemn duty to search out the 'raison d'etre' of our existence on this planet, and to ascertain whither we are drifting.

"We must find an answer to the questions put by the immortal Heine:

"Sagt mir was bedeutet der Mensch? Wohin ist er gekommen? Wo geht er her? Wer wohnt dort oben auf goldenen Sternen?[22]

"If you cannot discover the known from the unknown you can at least, like the newly discovered elements, Niton, Thorium, and Actinium, excite activity in others. We must refuse to acknowledge defeat. I do not ask you to waste your precious time in fruitless efforts to win the Wolfskehl prize of 125,000 frs. by attempting to find a positive solution of Fermat's great theorem, that x^n + y^n = z^n[23]. You, gentlemen, can well afford to leave such investigations to the German professors and the students of Göttingen. We Frenchmen have no time for such speculations, so long as rich pastures of fruitful and practical facts await discovery on every hand. Organic chemistry is only beginning to be unfolded and treated mathematically. We know the laws of gravity, but what is the cause of it? How does one body attract another at a distance, with nothing but the invisible and intangible Ether between them? The questions asked by Hypatia, the daughter of Theon, the geometer of Alexandria, fifteen hundred years ago, 'Who am I, what am I, whence do I go, and what is the soul of man?' remain unanswered to-day. If you study the smallest object, or the meanest insect, you cannot help making important discoveries, if you only go about it in the right way. The fields are already white unto the harvest and the labourers are few. If we would spend our lives like men we must work as long as our frail bodies will hold out. Do not let us be put to shame by the tiny insects. Look at the Megachile, the Anthidium, the Halictes and the wild bee Chalcidoma who, as our illustrious naturalist Henri Fabre informed us, work for the very joy of it, until they drop dead from sheer fatigue. So eager are they, that they even allow themselves to be killed rather than give up their work. It is not our business to read history, rather let it be our task to make it. (Deafening applause). I am merely a pioneer in the field of science, (cries of 'No, no'). I have just peeped behind the veil which screens our view from the unknown beyond. It remains for you to tear that veil asunder. Truly it has been said 'Labore est orare.' Let us then work until we die, and when our work is finished:

"O, may we join the choir invisible, Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues.

"Gentlemen," he added, "I have one thing to say before I sit down. My illness has not been without its compensations, for it has been the means of my winning a lovely bride," and he pointed to Renée, who became suffused with blushes.

The rest of his remarks were drowned by terrific applause, intermingled with shouts of "Delapine for ever," "Three cheers for the bride," "Good old Delapine," during which the professor sat down.

Other speeches followed, and it was with difficulty that the professor and his fiancée ultimately managed to reach their carriage and drive away.

* * * * *

A fortnight later Delapine and Renée, together with Marcel and Violette, were married by civil contract at the Mairie, and then a little later the next day the religious ceremony was performed at the Church of La Trinité.

The breakfast took place in the dining-room and séance-room (which were thrown into one for the occasion) at the house of the happy couple's old friend, Dr. Villebois.

"Villebois," said Riche at the wedding breakfast, "I owe all my happiness to meeting you at the café at the corner of the Boule 'Miche' last autumn."

"And I owe all mine to Payot losing his pile," retorted Marcel. "If he had not 'plunged' he would not have met Beaupaire, and I should not have seen Violette."

"And Renée's marriage is all due to that lucky café, for there it was that I met Mdlle. Violette," said Riche.

"You?" said Marcel, astonished, as he ceased for a moment admiring his superb silk waistcoat.

"Yes, it was there that she told me what she saw in the ring, half an hour after I met Villebois there for the first time. And I fully believe it saved Delapine's life, for it was owing to Violette's clairvoyance of the sealed envelope that I persuaded Dr. Roux to cease performing the autopsy."

"Good gracious," said Marcel, "here are three people who go and get married and their wives receive handsome dots all because you happened to sit down and smoke a pipe outside a café. Well! if that doesn't beat the professor's play at the tables I'm a Dutchman."

"I wonder whether we have heard the last of Delapine," said Violette.

"The last of Delapine!" exclaimed Marcel. "Don't worry, you will hear plenty more yet about him."

"Don't you remember he told Renée that when he recovered he intended to dictate his memoirs?"

"Yes, I remember, and in his speech at the Sorbonne he said he was going to make history instead of learning it."

"By Jove," said Marcel, "you are right. We are going to have some fun ahead to look forward to."

"Céleste," said Riche, as he took her little hand in his, "we are nobodies just now. The effulgence of Delapine and Marcel is too dazzling. I think we had better wait a few weeks until everyone is breathing a more sober atmosphere, and then we can have a quiet wedding all to ourselves." And they did.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 22:

"Oh, tell me now what meaning has man, Or whence he comes, and whither he goes, Who dwells beyond upon the golden stars?"]

[Footnote 23: Thus to give a simple case: Let x = 3, y = 4, z = 5, and n = 2. Then 3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2. What the professor had in his mind was a general expression which would embody all cases, in which n may be any integer. It is well-known that Fermat discovered the solution, but it was unfortunately lost, although his papers were searched through at his death. The prize is still open for competition, 1916. All particulars can be obtained from the rector of the University of Göttingen. (G.L.J.)]

The End.

W. JOLLY & SONS, PRINTERS, ABERDEEN