And from that time never a word was spoken more loudly than another, never a discussion took place in the town of Quiquendone. There were no more politics, no more clubs, no more trials, no more policemen! The post of the Commissary Passauf became once more a sinecure, and if his salary was not reduced, it was because the burgomaster and the counsellor could not make up their minds to decide upon it. From time to time, indeed, Passauf flitted, without any one suspecting it, through the dreams of the inconsolable Tatanémance. As for Frantz’s rival, he generously abandoned the charming Suzel to her lover, who hastened to wed her five or six years after these events. And as for Madame Van Tricasse, she died ten years later, at the proper time, and the burgomaster married Mademoiselle Pélagie Van Tricasse, his cousin, under excellent conditions—for the happy mortal who should succeed him. CHAPTER XVII. IN WHICH DOCTOR OX’S THEORY IS EXPLAINED. What, then, had this mysterious Doctor Ox done? Tried a fantastic experiment,—nothing more. After having laid down his gas-pipes, he had saturated, first the public buildings, then the private dwellings, finally the streets of Quiquendone, with pure oxygen, without letting in the least atom of hydrogen. This gas, tasteless and odorless, spread in generous quantity through the atmosphere, causes, when it is breathed, serious agitation to the human organism. One who lives in an air saturated with oxygen grows excited, frantic, burns! You scarcely return to the ordinary atmosphere before you return to your usual state. For instance, the counsellor and the burgomaster at the top of the belfry were themselves again, as the oxygen is kept, by its weight, in the lower strata of the air. But one who lives under such conditions, breathing this gas which transforms the body physiologically as well as the soul, dies speedily, like a madman. It was fortunate, then, for the Quiquendonians, that a providential explosion put an end to this dangerous experiment, and abolished Doctor Ox’s gas-works. To conclude: Are virtue, courage, talent, wit, imagination,—are all these qualities or faculties only a question of oxygen? Such is Doctor Ox’s theory; but we are not bound to accept it, and for ourselves we utterly reject it, in spite of the curious experiment of which the worthy old town of Quiquendone was the theatre. MASTER ZACHARIUS CHAPTER I. A WINTER NIGHT.