Rivarol came to my aid with many apologies. He touched a spring somewhere, and the Petty-Cash-Adjuster relaxed its horrid hold. I placed myself gingerly in a plain cane-bottomed rocking-chair, which Rivarol assured me was a safe location. “That seat,” he said, “is an arrangement upon which I much felicitate myself. I made it at Heidelberg. It has saved me a vast deal of small annoyance. I consign to its embraces the friends who bore, and the visitors who exasperate, me. But it is never so useful as when terrifying some tradesman with an insignificant account. Hence the pet name which I have facetiously given it. They are invariably too glad to purchase release at the price of a bill receipted. Do you well apprehend the idea?” While the Alsatian diluted his glass of _aqua fortis_, shook into it an infusion of bitters, and tossed off the bumper with apparent relish, I had time to look around the strange apartment. The four corners of the room were occupied respectively by a turning-lathe, a Rhumkorff coil, a small steam-engine, and an orrery in stately motion. Tables, shelves, chairs, and floor supported an odd aggregation of tools, retorts, chemicals, gas-receivers, philosophical instruments, boots, flasks, paper-collar boxes, books diminutive, and books of preposterous size. There were plaster busts of Aristotle, Archimedes, and Compte, while a great drowsy owl was blinking away, perched on the benign brow of Martin Farquhar Tupper. “He always roosts there when he proposes to slumber,” explained my tutor. “You are a bird of no ordinary mind. _Schlafen Sie wohl._” Through a closet door, half open, I could see a human-like form covered with a sheet. Rivarol caught my glance. “That,” said he, “will be my masterpiece. It is a microcosm, an android, as yet only partly complete. And why not? Albertus Magnus constructed an image perfect to talk metaphysics and confute the schools. So did Sylvester II; so did Robertus Greathead. Roger Bacon made a brazen head that held discourses. But the first named of these came to destruction. Thomas Aquinas got wrathful at some of its syllogisms and smashed its head. The idea is reasonable enough. Mental action will yet be reduced to laws as definite as those which govern the physical. Why should not I accomplish a manikin which will preach as original discourses as the Rev. Dr. Allchin, or talk poetry as mechanically as Paul Anapest? My android can already work problems in vulgar fractions and compose sonnets. I hope to teach it the Positive philosophy.” Out of the bewildering confusion of his effects Rivarol produced two pipes, and filled them. He handed one to me.