Professor Aronnax

“ The way of even the most justifiable revolutions is prepared by personal impulses disguised into creeds. The Professor’s indignation found in itself a final cause that absolved him from the sin of turning to destruction as the agent of his ambition. To destroy public faith in legality was the imperfect formula of his pedantic fanaticism; but the subconscious conviction that the framework of an established social order cannot be effectually shattered except by some form of collective or individual violence was precise and correct. He was a moral agent—that was settled in his mind. ”

“ Suddenly the Professor started as if he had been electrified. “Why, I had nearly forgotten the most important part of the entertainment! The Other Professor is to recite a Tale of a Pig—I mean a Pig-Tale,” he corrected himself. “It has Introductory Verses at the beginning, and at the end.”
364
“It ca’n’t have Introductory Verses at the end, can it?” said Sylvie.
“Wait till you hear it,” said the Professor: “then you’ll see. I’m not sure it hasn’t some in the middle, as well.” ”

“ It's everything. When we were at home, Rosamond was a kind of ideal to me. What she thought about anything, decided it for me. But she's entirely changed. She's become Louie. Indeed, she's worse than Louie. He and all this money have ruined her. Oh, Daddy, why didn't you and Professor Crane get to work and stop all this before it began? You were to blame. You knew that Tom had left something that was worth a lot, both of you. Why didn't you do something? You let it lie there in Crane's laboratory for this—this Marsellus to come along and exploit, until he almost thinks it's his own idea. ”

“ Shepard will take more pains to tell all he knows about it. Nobody takes pains to explain things to boys."
"There is a good enough reason for that," said Julia: "how much would such a boy as Felix or Jack listen to explanations? I think you are a kind of a man, Johnny: you only look like a boy. And you don't look so very much like a boy when you have your glasses on. I think I shall call you Professor, as Sue and Felix do."
"It's great if a boy must be called a man and a professor just because he likes to understand about matters! ”

“ I can say with truth, monsieur, that since I became the head of this establishment no master or teacher has ever been dismissed from it.”
“Yet some have left it, mademoiselle?”
“Many; I have found it necessary to change frequently—a change of instructors is often beneficial to the interests of a school; it gives life and variety to the proceedings; it amuses the pupils, and suggests to the parents the idea of exertion and progress.”
“Yet when you are tired of a professor or maitresse, you scruple to dismiss them?” ”

“ "Now, I do not mean to suggest that scientific differences should be settled by universal suffrage, but I do conceive that solid proofs must be met by something more than empty and unsupported assertions. Yet during the two years through which this preposterous controversy has dragged its weary length. Professor Owen has not ventured to bring forward a single preparation in support of his often-repeated assertions.
"The case stands thus, therefore:—Not only are the statements made by me in consonance with the doctrines of the best older authorities, and with those of all recent investigators, but I am quite ready to demonstrate them on the first monkey that comes to hand; ”

“ Know, O incredulous reader! that a master stands in a somewhat different relation towards a pretty, light-headed, probably ignorant girl, to that occupied by a partner at a ball, or a gallant on the promenade. A professor does not meet his pupil to see her dressed in satin and muslin, with hair perfumed and curled, neck scarcely shaded by aerial lace, round white arms circled with bracelets, feet dressed for the gliding dance. It is not his business to whirl her through the waltz, to feed her with compliments, to heighten her beauty by the flush of gratified vanity. ”

“ Blacklock, a poet blind from his birth, could describe visual objects with accuracy; Professor Sanderson, who was also blind, gave excellent lectures on colour, and taught others the theory of ideas which they had and he had not. In the social sphere these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have only heard. We call it intuition. ”

“ But are you sure, Rosie? Rumours do go about, and people like to stir up family differences.”
“It isn’t people, and it’s not rumour. I know it positively. Kathleen’s best friend told me.”
Louie lay back and shook with laughter. “Oh, the ladies, the ladies! What they do to each other, Professor!”
St. Peter was very uncomfortable. “I don’t think I’d accept such evidence, Rosamond. I don’t believe it of Scott, and I think Louie has the right idea. People are like children, and Scott’s poor and proud. I think Louie’s chiffonier would go to his heart, if Louie offered it to him. ”

“ Many of his questions seemed highly out of place to his visitor, especially those which tried to connect the latter with strange cults or societies; and Wilcox could not understand the repeated promises of silence which he was offered in exchange for an admission of membership in some widespread mystical or paganly religious body. When Professor Angell became convinced that the sculptor was indeed ignorant of any cult or system of cryptic lore, he besieged his visitor with demands for future reports of dreams. ”

“ Every year the regents tried to diminish the number of credits required in science and the humanities. The liberal appropriations, the promotions and increases in salary, all went to the professors who worked with the regents to abolish the purely cultural studies. Out of a faculty of sixty, there were perhaps twenty men who made any serious stand for scholarship, and Robert Crane was one of the staunchest. He had lost the Deanship of the College of Science because of his uncompromising opposition to the degrading influence of politicians in university affairs. ”

“ An old maid’s life must doubtless be void and vapid—her heart strained and empty. Had I been an old maid I should have spent existence in efforts to fill the void and ease the aching. I should have probably failed, and died weary and disappointed, despised and of no account, like other single women. But I’m not an old maid,” she added quickly. “I should have been, though, but for my master. I should never have suited any man but Professor Crimsworth—no other gentleman, French, English, or Belgian, would have thought me amiable or handsome ”

“ Bid me make any sacrifice, ask me to perform any work, however delicate or dangerous, and you shall see how much James loves you. Believe me, Professor, I know only one aim and object in life,—that is to further and guard your happiness, or I should say your bodily comfort, for I know you are not happy, though the Gods have given you riches, power and wisdom.
"You are too good a man not to have somewhere in store for you the same amount of pleasure you are always striving to give to someone else. ”

“ The reason I give higher wisdom to Professor Huskins' wife's thought is, being unprejudiced, but desirous of wisdom, she draws from my spirit more power to probe and penetrate into the aura of those persons who possess the knowledge requisite to answer the questions from a standpoint of experience rather than theory. ”

“ Any other arrangement is humiliating.”
“Then that was why you didn’t get your fur coat.”
“That may have been one reason. I was not much in the humour for it.”
Mrs. St. Peter went swiftly downstairs to make him a cocktail. She sensed an unusual weariness in him, and felt, as it were, the bitter taste on his tongue. A man, she knew, could get from his daughter a peculiar kind of hurt—one of the cruellest that flesh is heir to. Her heart ached for Godfrey.
When the Professor had been warmed and comforted by a good dinner, he lit a cigar and sat down before the hearth to read. ”

“ I wasn’t willing to slight anything—you, or my desk, or my students. And now I seem to be tremendously tired. One pays, coming or going. A man has got only just so much in him; when it’s gone he slumps. Even the first Napoleon did.” They both laughed. That was an old joke—the Professor’s darkest secret. At the font he had been christened Napoleon Godfrey St. Peter. There had always been a Napoleon in the family, since a remote grandfather got his discharge from the Grande Armee. Godfrey had abbreviated his name in Kansas, and even his daughters didn’t know what it had been originally. ”

“ Crane was wearing a grey cotton coat, shrunk to a rag by washing, though he wasn’t working with fluids or batteries to-night, but at a roll-top desk littered with papers. The room was like any study behind a lecture room; dusty books, dusty files, but no apparatus—except a spirit-lamp and a little saucepan in which the physicist heated water for his cocoa at regular intervals. He was working by the glare of an unshaded electric bulb of high power— the man seemed to have no feeling for comfort of any kind. ”

“ She told me she had long been interested in the study of psychology, and the fame of Prof. Huskins had reached her in several places she had visited. She had always thought she would like to study upon the subject, and the only way to do was to be put to sleep herself. She was not willing to experiment with all persons, but would feel perfectly safe to be mesmerized by such an adept in the science as the Professor. She had likewise been informed that, being a rich man, and only practising the power for his own pleasure, it would be extremely difficult to reach him. ”

“ As he was crossing the park with his sandwiches, he met Augusta coming back from Mass.
"Are you still going to the old house, Professor?" she asked reproachfully, her face smiling at him between her stiff black fur collar and her stiff black hat.
"Oh, yes, Augusta, but it's not the same. I miss you. There are never any new dresses on my ladies in the evening now. Won't you come in sometime and deck them out, as a surprise for me? I like to see them looking smart."
Augusta laughed. "You are a funny man, Doctor St. Peter. ”

“ The Professor climbed to his study feeling quite as though Augusta had been there and brightened it up for him. (Surely she had said that the Blessed Virgin sat down and composed the Magnificat!) Augusta had been with them often in the holiday season, back in the years when holidays were holidays indeed. He had grown to like the reminders of herself that she left in his work-room—especially the toilettes upon the figures. Sometimes she made those terrible women entirely plausible! ”

“ The Professor took a turn in the park before going home. The interview had depressed him, and he was afraid he might be wakeful. He had never seen his colleague in such an unbecoming light before. Crane was narrow, but he was straight; a man you could count on in the shifty game of college politics. He had never been out to get anything for himself. St. Peter would have said that nothing about the vulgar success of Outland's idea could possibly matter to Crane, beyond gratifying his pride as a teacher and friend. ”

“ St. Peter swung in over the window rail. “That is always the cue for the husband to enter, isn’t it? What’s this about Chicago, Louie?”
He sat down, and Marsellus brought him some tea, lingering beside his chair. “It must be a secret from Rosie, but you see it happens that the date of your lecture engagement at the University of Chicago is coincident with her birthday, so I have planned that we shall all go down together. And among other diversions, we shall attend your lectures."
The Professor's eyebrows rose. "Bus-man's holiday for the ladies, I should say." ”

“ The 'Memphis Avalanche' reports that the Professor's course met with pretty general approval in the community; knowing that the law was powerless, in the actual condition of public sentiment, to protect him, he protected himself. ”

“ Ellison I am enabled to furnish particulars of some of them; as given in a very interesting pamphlet by Epes W. Sargent, a well-known American writer.
The catalogue commences with a wand formerly belonging to Professor Anderson, the once famous “Wizard of the North.” Here are found also the wands used by the two Herrmanns (Carl and Alexander) , Buatier de Kolta, Lafayette, Martin Chapender, Carl Willmann and others who tread the stage no more. As regards the living, there is here a memento of nearly every English-speaking conjurer of note: besides many others of cosmopolitan celebrity. ”

“ Peter’s life. When he accepted almost the first position offered him, in order to marry at once, and came to take the chair of European history at Hamilton, he was thrown upon his wife for mental companionship. Most of his colleagues were much older than he, but they were not his equals either in scholarship or in experience of the world. The only other man in the faculty who was carrying on important research work was Doctor Crane, the professor of physics. St. Peter saw a good deal of him, though outside his specialty he was uninteresting—a narrow-minded man, and painfully unattractive. ”

“ This is really very nice," he said, turning back from the window when Rosamond called him.
Louie came and put both hands on St. Peter's shoulders, exclaiming delightedly: "And do you like these rooms, sir? Well, I'm glad, for they're yours! Rosie and I are farther down the corridor. Not a word! It's all arranged. You are our guests for this engagement. We won't have our great scholar staying off in some grimy place on the South side. We want him where we can keep an eye on him."
Louie was so warm with his plan that the Professor could only express satisfaction. ”