"
"But what is it that you've got?"
"The dickens, papa Dugrand!"
Thereupon I vanished like a flash, to run to my mirror and reproduce to
my sight papa Dugrand, Judge of my astonishment: not only my gesture,
until now so persistently awkward, seemed suddenly metamorphosed and
became harmonious and natural; but, stranger yet, it did not correspond
in the least to what had been prescribed. However, it was nature herself
that had revealed this to me. Then, the movements of my body, but a
moment before so discordant in my eyes, had acquired, under the
influence of this gesture inspired from above, an ease and a grace that
filled me with surprise. Without doubt, I now possessed the truth. An
emotion, spontaneously produced and so deeply felt, could not result in
an error.
This is what had happened under the action of a natural surprise:
My hands were not extended toward the object of my surprise--not the
least in the world. By an anterior extension of the arms, they were
raised high above my head, which, far from being uplifted with the
exultation which I had hitherto simulated, was lowered to my breast; and
my body, stranger yet, instead of bending toward the attractive object,
bent suddenly backward.
What a blow nature had given to my masters! What an overthrowal of all
conjectures! My reason, before this sovereign decision, was humbled and
dumbfounded. What arguments could my instructors invoke in the face of
truth itself?
"What," thought I, "are my masters absolutely ignorant of the laws of
nature?"
"What, does their reason, as well as mine, know nothing of all this?
How is it that this much-praised reason has inspired me with effects
precisely opposite to those that were prescribed? What is reason? Is it,
then, a blind faculty?"
Let us first see what these strange phenomena, whose importance I cannot
deny without denying nature herself, signify.
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