Free Impressions of Africa (French Literature Series) by Raymond Roussel

which he could now lay aside without fear of where it might point.
    Then, returning to the button stick, he gently grasped the width of cloth and lifted it farther upward.
    This second experiment, identical to the first, produced the flight of a second pencil, the lead of which rammed violently into the invisible silver button that had slipped into the gap.
    After being liberated through the same painstaking process he’d previously employed, the pencil, now capped with a lead protector, was promptly set aside.
    In its turn, the copper button, behind the blue cloth, attracted a third cylinder, which, briskly covered with stanchium, went to join the first and second.
    The two top levels were now missing from the triangular façade initially formed by the stack of pencils.
    Bex continued his unchanging maneuver. One by one, the buttons slid into the opening and drew the amber leads despite the distance; after this, Bex glided them into the upper part of the slot.
    The pencils, having played their parts, were immediately capped and lined up on the ground one by one.
    The last four disks, sumptuously composed of precious stones, corresponded to the lowest rung of cylinders, which alone remained facing the Incomparables’ Theater.
    Their power of attraction was in no way inferior to that of the metals, and the impact of the docile amber leads against them was extraordinarily violent.
    The experiment completed, Bex, addressing us once more, told us of the exorbitant offers that certain banking houses, wishing to exploit his discovery, had thrown at him.
    And indeed, his collection of cylinders, with their ability to locate ore and gem deposits, could have become the source of limitless wealth. Instead of relying on chance to prospect underground, miners, precisely guided by an instrument that could be easily built, would immediately find the richest veins, with no false starts or wasted efforts.
    But famous scientists, motivated by their proverbial disinterest, had long observed a kind of professional tradition that Bex wished to perpetuate.
    Therefore rebuffing the proffered millions and even billions, he had wisely contented himself with his giant button stick, which, in tandem with the cylinders, highlighted his discovery to no practical end.
    As he spoke, Bex picked up his pencils, all ten of them secured by their lead protectors.
    He then disappeared with his burden, preceding Rao, who carried off the promptly uprooted button stick.
     
     
    After a brief pause, we noticed the Hungarian Skariovszki in his tight-fitting red gypsy jacket, wearing a policeman’s kepi of the same color.
    His right sleeve, rolled up to the elbow, revealed a thick coral bracelet coiled six times around his bare forearm.
    He carefully watched over three black porters bearing various objects, who halted with him in the middle of the esplanade.
    The first Negro carried in his arms a zither and a folding stand.
    Skariovszki opened the stand, planting its four feet solidly on the ground. Then, on a narrow hinged frame unfolded horizontally, he rested the zither, which resounded at this gentle impact.
    To the left of the instrument, a metal stem attached to the frame of the stand rose vertically after a slight bend, then split at its end like two tines of a fork; to the right, another identical stem formed its companion piece.
    The second Negro carried, with no great effort, a long, transparent receptacle that Skariovszki set like a bridge above the zither, fitting its two ends onto the metal forks.
    The shape of the new object was ideally suited to this means of installation. Built like a trough, it was composed of four slabs of mica. Two main slabs, identically rectangular, formed a sharp-edged base by joining their two planes at an angle. In addition, two triangular pieces, facing each other and adhering to the narrow ends of the rectangles, completed the diaphanous apparatus, which looked like a yawning, oversized change purse. A gap the width of a