The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (73 page)

‘An ordinary intriguer,' she explained, ‘would, to frighten Cornádez, have introduced phantoms dressed in winding-sheets to his house, and these would, it is true, have had a certain effect on him. But this would have been dispelled when he had thought about it a little. Busqueros proceeds in a different way. He tries to act on Cornádez entirely through words. Everyone knows the story of the atheist Hervas, which the Jesuit Granada
¹
recorded in the notes to his work. The reprobate pilgrim claims to be his son to make an even greater impression on Cornádez's mind.'

‘Your judgement is premature,' said the old chief. ‘The pilgrim could well be the son of Hervas the atheist and it is certain that the facts which he relates are not to be found in the legend you mention, where what we mainly find are a few details about the circumstances of his death. So please have the patience to listen to the end of the story.'

Then, passing from the inner thoughts of man to the ideas which come to him from things about him, Hervas devoted the second volume to natural history in general; the third to zoology, which is the study of animals; the fourth to ornithology, which is the study of birds; the fifth to ichthyology, which is the study of fish; the sixth to entomology, which is the study of insects; the seventh to scoleology, which is the study of worms; the eighth to conchyliology, or something like it, which is the study of shells; the ninth to botany; the tenth to geology or knowledge of the earth's structure; the eleventh to lithology, or the study of stones; the twelfth to oryctology, or the study of fossils; the thirteenth to metallurgy, or the art of extracting and working metals; the fourteenth to docimastics, or the art of assaying.

The fifteenth volume, bringing the study of man back to himself, dealt with physiology, or the study of the human body; the sixteenth volume dealt with anatomy; the seventeenth was devoted to myology, or the study of muscles; the eighteenth to osteology; the nineteenth to neurology; the twentieth to phlebology, or the study of the system of veins.

The twenty-first volume was devoted to medicine. This was then divided into parts: in the twenty-second volume nosology, or the study of illnesses; in the twenty-third aetiology, or the study of their causes; in the twenty-fourth pathology, or the study of the ills which they give rise to; in the twenty-fifth semiotics, the knowledge of symptoms; in the twenty-sixth clinical medicine, or study of the procedures to be followed at the patient's bedside; in the twenty-seventh therapeutics, or the art of curing patients – the most difficult part of all; the twenty-eighth volume dealt with dietetics or the study of diet; the twenty-ninth with hygiene or the art of staying healthy; the thirtieth, surgery; the thirty-first, pharmacology; and the thirty-second veterinary medicine.

Then, in the thirty-third volume, came general physics; in the thirty-fourth, specific physics; in the thirty-fifth, experimental physics;
in the thirty-sixth, meteorology; in the thirty-seventh, chemistry and the pseudo-sciences which are derived from it, such as alchemy in the thirty-eighth volume and hermeticism in the thirty-ninth. After these natural sciences came those which arise from the state of war, which is also believed to be a state natural to man. Thus the fortieth volume dealt with strategy, or the art of war; the forty-first, castramentation, or the art of siting camps; the forty-second, fortification; the forty-third, underground warfare, or the art of the sapper; the forty-fourth, pyrotechnics, which is the artificer's art; the forty-fifth, ballistics, or the art of projecting heavy bodies. The artillery had lost this art but Hervas had, as it were, brought it back to life through his learned researches on the machines used in antiquity.

From there Hervas returned to the arts of peace and devoted the forty-sixth volume to civil architecture; the forty-seventh to naval architecture; the forty-eighth to shipbuilding; the forty-ninth to navigation.

Then Hervas turned to man in society and devoted the fiftieth volume to legislation; the fifty-first to civil law; the fifty-second to criminal law; the fifty-third to international law; the fifty-fourth to history and the fifty-fifth to mythology; the fifty-sixth to chronology; the fifty-seventh to biography; the fifty-eighth to archaeology, or the study of antiquity; the fifty-ninth to numismatics; the sixtieth to heraldry; the sixty-first to diplomatics, which is the study of documents; the sixty-second to diplomacy, which is the study of embassies and the art of negotiation; the sixty-third to idiomatology, which is the general study of languages; the sixty-fourth to bibliography, which is the study of books and publishing.

Then Hervas returned to the arts of thought and dealt with logic in his sixty-fifth volume; rhetoric in the sixty-sixth; ethics, which is moral philosophy, in the sixty-seventh; aesthetics, which is the analysis of the impressions we receive through our senses, in the sixty-eighth.

Then came the sixty-ninth volume, containing philosophy, which is the study of wisdom in relation to religion; the seventieth contained theology in general, which was then divided into parts: dogmatics in the seventy-first volume; polemics, which is the faculty of considering general points in a discussion, in the seventy-second; ascetics, which teaches the exercise of piety, in the seventy-third. Then, in the
seventy-fourth, came exegesis, which is the exposition of Holy Writ; in the seventy-fifth, hermeneutics, which is its interpretation; in the seventy-sixth, scholastics, that is, the art of conducting a proof completely independently of common sense; and in the seventy-seventh, the theology of mysticism or the pantheism of spiritualism.

From theology, in a transition which looked too daring, Hervas passed to oneirocritics, or the explanation of dreams. This was not the least interesting volume. Hervas demonstrated in it how misleading and irresponsible errors had been allowed to govern the world for many centuries, for we can see from history that the dream of the fat cows and the lean cows changed the constitution of Egypt, whose territorial possessions became at that period royal domains. Five hundred years later we can see Agamemnon telling his dream to the assembly of Greeks. Finally, six centuries after the Trojan war, the Chaldeans of Babylon and the oracle of Delphi were explaining dreams.

The seventy-ninth volume dealt with ornithomancy, or the science of augury, which is divination by birds, practised principally by the Etruscan haruspices. Seneca recorded their rites for us.

The eightieth volume, more learned than the rest, went back to the origins of magic, in the time of Zoroaster and Ostanes.
²
In it was found the history of that deplorable science which to the shame of our era infected its beginning and has still not altogether been abandoned.

The eighty-first volume was devoted to the cabbala as well as other means of divination, such as rhabdomancy or divination by wands, hydromancy, geomancy etc.

From all these lies, Hervas passed suddenly to the incontestable truths. Thus the eighty-second volume was devoted to geometry; the eighty-third to arithmetic; the eighty-fourth to algebra; the eighty-fifth to trigonometry; the eighty-sixth to stereometry, which is the study of solids applied to the cutting of gemstones; the eighty-seventh to geography; the eighty-eighth to astronomy and its false applications, known as astrology; the eighty-ninth to mechanics; the ninetieth to dynamics, the science of living forces; the ninety-first to statics, or
forces in equilibrium; the ninety-second to hydraulics; the ninety-third to hydrostatics; the ninety-fourth to hydrodynamics; the ninety-fifth to optics and perspective; the ninety-sixth to dioptrics; the ninety-seventh to catoptrics; the ninety-eighth to analytical geometry; the ninety-ninth to the first principles of differential calculus and the hundredth to analysis, which, according to Hervas, was the science of sciences and marked the extreme limit of human knowledge.

A deep knowledge of the hundred different sciences may appear to some people to be necessarily beyond the mental powers given to man. But it is certain that Hervas wrote a volume on each which began with the history of the science and finished with reflections full of wisdom on how it might be added to and how the frontiers of knowledge might, as it were, be driven back.

Hervas was equal to the whole task thanks to an economical use of his time and to a great regularity in its distribution. He would rise with the sun and prepare himself for work in his office by reflections pertaining to the task he had to do there. He would attend the minister half an hour before the rest and would wait for the office hour, pen in hand and his brain free from anything to do with his great work. When the hour struck he would begin his calculations and get through them with amazing speed; then he would go to the bookshop kept by Moreno, whose trust he had been able to gain, would take away the books he needed and carry them home. He would go out again to eat a light meal, return home before one o'clock and work until eight o'clock in the evening. After this he would play
pelota
³
with small children in the neighbourhood, would go home, consume a cup of chocolate and go to bed. On Sundays he would spend the whole day out, thinking about the work of the coming week. Hervas was thus able to devote about three thousand hours a year to the production of his universal work, which at the end of fifteen years came to forty-five thousand hours, at which point the amazing work was actually finished without anyone in Madrid knowing about it; for Hervas was not at all communicative and spoke
to no one about his work, wanting to astonish the world by displaying all at once his vast mass of knowledge.

Hervas's work was therefore finished as he completed his thirty-ninth year, and he congratulated himself on entering his fortieth with a great reputation ready to blossom forth. But he felt at the same time a certain sadness, for the habit of work supported by his expectations had been for him a sort of pleasant companion which filled every instant of his day.

He had lost this companionship, and now boredom, which he had never experienced, began to make itself felt. This state, so new to Hervas, made him act completely out of character. Far from seeking solitude, he was seen everywhere in public places. Once there he would look as though he was going to accost everyone, but knowing no one and not having the habit of conversation, he would go by without saying a word. However, he thought inwardly that soon all Madrid would know him, would seek his company and that his name would be on everyone's lips.

Tormented by the need for distraction, Hervas hit on the idea of going back to his birthplace, an obscure village in Asturias which he hoped he would make famous. For fifteen years he had allowed himself no other amusement than playing
pelota
with the boys of his neighbourhood, and he promised himself the great delight of playing it in the place where he had spent his early childhood.

Before leaving, Hervas wanted to enjoy the sight of his hundred volumes arranged in a row on a single shelf. He possessed a copy in the same format that the volumes were to have once they had been printed. He gave his manuscripts to a printer, instructing him that the spine of every volume should bear longways the name of the science and the number of the volume, from the first, which was universal grammar, to the hundredth, which was analysis.

The binder delivered the work three weeks later. The shelf which was to receive it had already been made. Hervas placed the imposing series on it and ceremonially burned all his rough drafts and incomplete copies. Then he double-locked his room, sealed it up and left for Asturias.

The sight of his birthplace indeed gave Hervas all the pleasure he hoped it would. A host of innocent and sweet memories brought
tears of joy to his eyes, whose springs had been dried up by the twenty years of arid thinking. Our polygraph would willingly have spent the rest of his days in his native hamlet but the hundred volumes called him back to Madrid. He took the road to the capital, arrived home, found the seal fixed to the door still intact, opened the door… and saw his hundred volumes torn to pieces, stripped of their bindings, with all their pages loose and out of order on the floor.

This terrible sight drove him out of his mind. He fell down amid the debris of his book and even lost all sensation of life.

Alas! The cause of the disaster was this. Hervas never had meals in his own room. Rats, which are found in such great numbers in all the houses in Madrid, took good care not to visit his, where they would only have found a few quill pens to gnaw at. But that was not the case when a hundred volumes all glued with fresh glue were brought to his room and the room was on the same day abandoned by its master. The rats were attracted by the smell of the glue, emboldened by his absence and came there in great numbers to create chaos, gnawing and devouring.

On regaining his senses, Hervas saw one of these monsters dragging the last pages of his analysis into a hole. Anger had perhaps never before entered Hervas's soul, but he then felt a first spasm of it, rushed at the destroyer of his transcendental geometry, struck his head against the wall and fell down unconscious once again.

Hervas came round a second time, picked up the shreds which covered the floor of his room and put them into a chest. Then he sat on the chest and succumbed to sad thoughts. Soon after, he was seized by shivering which the very next day degenerated into a bilious, comatose, and malignant fever. He was placed in the care of doctors.