"How is your mother? You
must go and see my wife."
"And I also could have lived thus," thought Raphael, as he recalled
the learned man from his meditations by asking of him how to produce
any effect on the talisman, which he placed before him.
"Although my credulity must amuse you, sir," so the Marquis ended, "I
will conceal nothing from you. That skin seems to me to be endowed
with an insuperable power of resistance."
"People of fashion, sir, always treat science rather superciliously,"
said Planchette. "They all talk to us pretty much as the _incroyable_
did when he brought some ladies to see Lalande just after an eclipse,
and remarked, 'Be so good as to begin it over again!' What effect do
you want to produce? The object of the science of mechanics is either
the application or the neutralization of the laws of motion. As for
motion pure and simple, I tell you humbly, that we cannot possibly
define it. That disposed of, unvarying phenomena have been observed
which accompany the actions of solids and fluids. If we set up the
conditions by which these phenomena are brought to pass, we can
transport bodies or communicate locomotive power to them at a
predetermined rate of speed. We can project them, divide them up in a
few or an infinite number of pieces, accordingly as we break them or
grind them to powder; we can twist bodies or make them rotate, modify,
compress, expand, or extend them.
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