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Page 30
PERRON
Friday the fifteenth! Impossible!
ALEXANDRE
Alas. My concierge is of a precision the most meticulous. For all legal,
financial and military affairs, throughout the French Republic at least,
to-day is Friday the fifteenth. But why should this seem impossible to
you, a scientist and a watchmaker?
PERRON
Only listen, and you will understand why I am tempted to doubt the
calendar of the Church itself. Two weeks ago my wife announced to me that
she had reason to expect the due arrival of a son. She said there could be
no question it will be a son because in her mother's family for three
generations it has been the same, three daughters followed by a son.
Eh bien, although I have always desired a son to follow me in this
honorable and scientific profession, nevertheless I received the news
with a certain consternation. In short, my affairs have not gone too well
of late, and without my wife's assistance by her needle....
That evening I thought much how I might increase my funds, and so for two
weeks--two weeks, mon ami--I have omitted my customary caf� after
dejeuner, which all these years I have not failed to take with a serious
group of friends at the Trois Arts, and even have I smoked no cigarettes.
True, this has not added much to our wealth, though it has been some
satisfaction to realize I have done my possible. My health has suffered
somewhat--I have grown absent-minded, and in the morning my head feels
strange. However, that may not be due entirely to my unnatural abstinence.
However, on Friday the fifteenth July, at three o'clock precisely, as I
sat here in meditation having finished a small work, I saw a telegraph boy
hurry toward me down the street. Then had I a premonition. My heart beat
as it has not these twenty years. In an instant I was reading the message:
my brother, who long ago ran away on adventure to Indo-China, had just
died and left me a fortune in tea.
That was on Friday the fifteenth. And do you know what has happened since?
I have lived two separate lives. Yes, two existences have unrolled before
me. In one I saw myself as I would have been without the telegram. My
business fell away; my son was born a daughter, to my wife's indignation
and my own dismay; and having sold my little shop I sought work in a
cursed factory. Ah me, it was terrible! But the other picture. With my
brother's fortune I made aggrandisements and eventually moved to the Rue
de la Paix. My scientific genius was at last appreciated, and my watches
and clocks became the pride of the haute monde. My son grew into a fine
man, much resembling myself, and after learning the profession opened a
branch office at Buenos Ayres. I won the ribbon. In short, nothing lacked
to make life agreeable and meritorious.
But then it was, just at that point, I came to myself and looking up
recognized my friend the philosopher. Years seemed to have passed--two
separate life times--and startled at finding myself seated in the same
chair and wearing the same clothes, I demanded of you what day it was. And
you answered Friday the fifteenth. How can such a thing be possible?
ALEXANDRE
To think that you, a watchmaker and a petit bourgeois, should experience
what many a saint has died without realizing! I salute you, mystic,
descendent of prophets and seers!
PERRON
But what was it then?
ALEXANDRE
What was it? A mystical experience, an experience of the highest order,
like unto Saint Therese, though in symbols of mundane things. But that is
the fault of the age more than yourself. With more practise your mind will
exhibit even greater power. You must continue in the path. Who knows what
you could do after years of self-denial, when a mere two weeks without
cigarettes have brought you this vision?
PERRON
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