"Lie flat, all of you; we are dead men!" thundered Spieghalter, as he himself fell prone on the floor.
A hideous shrieking sound rang through the workshops.
The water in the machine had broken the chamber, and now spouted out in a jet of incalculable force; luckily it went in the direction of an old furnace, which was overthrown, enveloped and carried away by a waterspout.
"Ha!" remarked Planchette serenely, "the piece of skin is as safe and sound as my eye.
There was a flaw in your reservoir somewhere, or a crevice in the large tube——"
"No, no; I know my reservoir.
The devil is in your contrivance, sir; you can take it away," and the German pounced upon a smith's hammer, flung the skin down on an anvil, and, with all the strength that rage gives, dealt the talisman the most formidable blow that had ever resounded through his workshops.
"There is not so much as a mark on it!" said Planchette, stroking the perverse bit of skin.
The workmen hurried in.
The foreman took the skin and buried it in the glowing coal of a forge, while, in a semi-circle round the fire, they all awaited the action of a huge pair of bellows.
Raphael, Spieghalter, and Professor Planchette stood in the midst of the grimy expectant crowd.
Raphael, looking round on faces dusted over with iron filings, white eyes, greasy blackened clothing, and hairy chests, could have fancied himself transported into the wild nocturnal world of German ballad poetry.
After the skin had been in the fire for ten minutes, the foreman pulled it out with a pair of pincers.
"Hand it over to me," said Raphael.
The foreman held it out by way of a joke.
The Marquis readily handled it; it was cool and flexible between his fingers.
An exclamation of alarm went up; the workmen fled in terror. Valentin was left alone with Planchette in the empty workshop. "There is certainly something infernal in the thing!" cried Raphael, in desperation.
"Is no human power able to give me one more day of existence?"
"I made a mistake, sir," said the mathematician, with a penitent expression; "we ought to have subjected that peculiar skin to the action of a rolling machine.
Where could my eyes have been when I suggested compression!"
"It was I that asked for it," Raphael answered.
The mathematician heaved a sigh of relief, like a culprit acquitted by a dozen jurors.
Still, the strange problem afforded by the skin interested him; he meditated a moment, and then remarked:
"This unknown material ought to be treated chemically by re-agents.
Let us call on Japhet—perhaps the chemist may have better luck than the mechanic."
Valentin urged his horse into a rapid trot, hoping to find the chemist, the celebrated Japhet, in his laboratory.
"Well, old friend," Planchette began, seeing Japhet in his armchair, examining a precipitate; "how goes chemistry?"
"Gone to sleep.
Nothing new at all.
The Academie, however, has recognized the existence of salicine, but salicine, asparagine, vauqueline, and digitaline are not really discoveries——"
"Since you cannot invent substances," said Raphael, "you are obliged to fall back on inventing names."
"Most emphatically true, young man."
"Here," said Planchette, addressing the chemist, "try to analyze this composition; if you can extract any element whatever from it, I christen it diaboline beforehand, for we have just smashed a hydraulic press in trying to compress it."
"Let's see! let's have a look at it!" cried the delighted chemist; "it may, perhaps, be a fresh element."
"It is simply a piece of the skin of an ass, sir," said Raphael.
"Sir!" said the illustrious chemist sternly.
"I am not joking," the Marquis answered, laying the piece of skin before him.
Baron Japhet applied the nervous fibres of his tongue to the skin; he had skill in thus detecting salts, acids, alkalis, and gases. After several experiments, he remarked:
"No taste whatever!
Come, we will give it a little fluoric acid to drink."
Subjected to the influence of this ready solvent of animal tissue, the skin underwent no change whatsoever.
"It is not shagreen at all!" the chemist cried.
"We will treat this unknown mystery as a mineral, and try its mettle by dropping it in a crucible where I have at this moment some red potash."
Japhet went out, and returned almost immediately.
"Allow me to cut away a bit of this strange substance, sir," he said to Raphael; "it is so extraordinary——"
"A bit!" exclaimed Raphael; "not so much as a hair's-breadth.
You may try, though," he added, half banteringly, half sadly.
The chemist broke a razor in his desire to cut the skin; he tried to break it by a powerful electric shock; next he submitted it to the influence of a galvanic battery; but all the thunderbolts his science wotted of fell harmless on the dreadful talisman.
It was seven o'clock in the evening.
Planchette, Japhet, and Raphael, unaware of the flight of time, were awaiting the outcome of a final experiment.