Laura Read Free Page A

lovers of collections possess and which also interests lapidaries, jewellers …”
    And women! I cried out with an accent of disdainful pity as I saw my cousin, who had just entered the gallery, walking slowly along the glass cabinet that contained the gemstones.
    She heard my exclamation, turned round, threw me a look that embodied the most complete indifference, and calmly continued her examination without paying me any further attention.
    I was going to continue the conversation with Walter, when he enquired if I was not going to offer my arm to my cousin and give her the explanations she might desire.
    No, I replied, loudly enough to be heard. My cousin has seen her uncle’s collection many times before, and the only thing that might interest her here, is precisely the one that interests us very little.
    I confess, Walter went on, lowering his voice and showing me the side of the gallery which Laura was walking along, that I would give all the precious, priceless stones heaped up in those glass cases for the beautiful specimens of iron and coal which lie here, close to us. The miner’s pick, my friend, there you have the symbol of the world’s future, and as for these glittering trifles that decorate the heads of queens or the arms of courtesans, I care as muchabout them as about a wisp of straw. The work on a grand scale, my dear Alexis, the work which benefits everyone and which projects the rays of civilisation far into the distance , that is what dominates my thoughts and directs my studies. As for hypothesis …
    What are you saying about hypo … po … pothesis? the annoyed voice of my Uncle Tungstenius stammered behind us. Hypo … po … pothesis is a term of derision used by l … l … lazy people who receive their opinions ready-made and dismiss the investigations of great minds as if they were chimeras.
    Then, little by little growing calmer in the face of Walter’s apologies and denials, the fellow went on without stuttering too much:
    You will do well, children, never to abandon the governing thread of logic. There are no effects without a cause. The earth, the sky, the universe, and we ourselves, are only effects, the results of a sublime or fatal cause. Study the effects, by all means, but not without seeking the essential reason why nature itself exists.
    “You are right, Walter, not to absorb yourself in the minutiae of purely mineralogical classifications and denominations; but you seek the useful with as much narrowness of thought as the mineralogists seek the rare. I care no more than you for diamonds and emeralds, which are the pride and amusement of a small number of people who are privileged to be wealthy; but, when you lock your entire soul away within the walls of some middlingly rich mine, you bring to my mind the mole who flees from the sun’s rays.
    “The sun of intelligence, my child, is reasoning.Induction and deduction, there is no way out of that, and it matters little to me that you take me round the whole world in a steamship, if you never teach me why the earth is a globe and why this globe has evolutions and revolutions. Learn to strike iron, to convert it into cast iron or steel, I consent to that; but, if your whole life is nothing but an application to material things, you might just as well be iron yourself, in other words an inert substance deprived of reasoning. Man does not live by bread alone, my friend; he does not live completely except by the development of his faculties of examination and comprehension.”
    My uncle went on in this vein for some time, and, without allowing himself to contradict him, Walter defended as best he could the theory of the direct utility of the treasures of science. According to him, man could not arrive at the illumination of the mind until he had conquered the joys of the positive life.
    I listened to this interesting discussion, whose scope struck me for the first time. I had got to my feet and, leaning on a copper rail which protects