Locus Solus (Chapter I)

On that Thursday in early April, my learned friend the professor Martial Canterel had invited me, with several other close friends of his, to visit the huge park surrounding his beautiful villa at Montmorency.

Locus Solus, as the property is named, is a quiet refuge where Canterel enjoys in perfect intellectual peace the pursuit of his diverse and fertile labors. He is in this lonely place sufficiently safe from the tur-bulence of Paris, and yet can reach the capital in a quarter of an hour whenever his research demands a session in some particular library, or when the time comes for him to make, at a prodigiously packed lecture, some sensational announcement to the scientific world.

Canterel spends nearly the entire year at Locus Solus, surrounded by disciples who, full of passionate admiration for his unending discoveries, support him zealously in the completion of his life’s work. The villa contains a number of rooms opulently converted into model laboratories, which are run by numerous assistants; and the professor devotes his whole life to science, having from the start leveled all the practical obstacles met in the course of his strenuous application to the various goals he sets, through his vast, uncommitted bachelor’s fortune.

Three o’clock had just struck. It was warm, and the sun sparkled in a nearly flawless sky. Canterel had received us not far from his villa, in the open, under old trees whose shade enveloped a comfortable arrangement of various wicker chairs.

After the arrival of the last guest, the professor started walking, leading our group, which followed him obediently. Tall and dark, his countenance frank, his features regular, with a slight moustache and keen eyes that shined with extraordinary intel-ligence, Canterel hardly looked his forty-four years. A warm persuasive voice lent great charm to his engaging elocution, whose seductiveness and clarity made him a champion in discourse.

For a while we had been advancing along a lane whose slope rose steeply.

Halfway up, at the path’s edge, we perceived, upright in a rather deep stone niche, a curiously aged statue, which seemed to be composed of blackish, dry, hardened earth, representing, not unpleasantly, a smiling naked boy. The arms were stretched outwards in a gesture of offering, both hands opening towards the ceiling of the niche. In the right hand, where once it had taken root, rose a small dead plant in the last stages of decay.

Going on absent-mindedly, Canterel was obliged to answer our unanimous question.

"This is the santonica Federal seen by ibn Batuta in the heart of Timbuctoo," he said, pointing to the statue; whose origin he then revealed.