The History of a Mouthful of Bread by Jean Macé (great novels to read txt) 📕

which sent the cork flying in that wild way; the carbonic acid which was imprisoned in the bottle, in desperately close quarters with the wine, and which accordingly flew out, like a regular goblin, the moment the iron wire which held down the cork was removed. What sparkled in the glass, making that pretty white froth which phizzed so gently, as if inviting you to drink, was the carbonic acid in the wine, making its escape in thousands of tiny bubbles. What felt so sharp to your tongue was the same carbonic acid, in its quality of acidity, for thence it has its name; the word acid being borrowed from a Latin word signifying the sharp pungent taste, almost fine-pointed as it were, peculiar to all substances which we call acids .

It is carbonic acid also which causes the froth in beer and in new wine when bottled. It is he who makes soda-water sparkle and sting the tongue, and ginger-beer the same, if you happen to like it; and so far you have no particular reason for thinking ill of him. But beware. It is with him as with a good many others who have sparkling spirits, who make conversation effervesce with gayety, and who are very seductive in society when you have nothing else to do but to laugh over your glass, but whose society is fatal to the soul which delivers itself up to them. This charming carbonic acid is a mortal poison to any one who allows it to get into his lungs.

You remember what a violent headache your servant suffered from the other day after ironing all those clothes you had in the wash? She owed that headache entirely to this work which she did for you. She had remained too long standing over the coals over which her flat-irons were being heated. You know already that when charcoal burns, it is from the carbon uniting with the oxygen of the air; from this union proceeds that mischievous child, carbonic acid gas, in torrents, and the poor girl was ill, because she had breathed more of this than was good for her health. Observe well, that the room-door was open to let in the fresh air, and that there was a chimney, to allow the carbonic acid to escape. It was on this account that she got off with only a headache. Unhappily, there have sometimes been miserable people who, weary of life, and knowing this, but not knowing or thinking about the God who overrules every sorrow for good, have shut themselves up in a room with a brazier of burning charcoal, after taking the fatal precaution of stopping up every opening by which air could possibly get in; and when at last, in such a case, uneasy friends have forced open the well-closed door, they have found nothing within but a corpse. Then, too, there are those frightful accidents of which we hear so often, of workmen groping their way down into long disused wells, who have died as they reached the bottom; or of sudden deaths in coal-pits. In general these have been owing to the poor victims encountering the long pent-up carbonic acid gas, whose poisonous breath blasted and destroyed them at once.

You may well ask why I am telling you such horrible stories, and what I am coming to with my carbonic acid? But you have more to do with it than you think, dear child. You, and I, and everybody we meet, nay, and the very animals themselves, since their machines are of the same sort as ours, are all little manufactories of carbonic acid. The thing is quite clear. Since there is a charcoal fire lit in every part of our body, there always arises from the union of the oxygen brought by the blood with the carbon it meets in our organs, that mischievous child we have been talking about; and our throat is the chimney by which he gets away. He would kill us outright were he to stop in the house.

This is how it comes about: In proportion as the blood loses its oxygen, it picks up in exchange the carbonic acid produced by combustion, so that it is quite loaded with it by the time it returns to the lungs. There it takes in a fresh supply of oxygen, and discharges at the same time its overplus of carbonic acid, which is driven out of the body by the contractions of the chest, pell-mell with the air which has just been made use of in breathing. You are aware that this air is not the same at its exit as at its entrance to the body, and that if you try and breathe it over again it will no longer be of the same use to you. That is because it has lost part of its oxygen and brings back to you the carbonic acid which it had just carried off. If you take it in a third time, it will be still worse for you; and in case you should continue to persist-the oxygen always diminishing, and the carbonic acid always increasing in quantity-the air which was at first the means of your life will at last become the cause of your death. Try, as an experiment, to shut yourself up in a small trunk, where no fresh air can get in; or even in a narrow closely-shut closet, and you will soon tell me strange news. There will be no occasion to light a charcoal fire for you in there. Enough is kept burning in your own little stove, and you will poison yourself.

You see now that the dreadful stories I was telling a short time ago have something to do with you, and that it is a good thing to be warned beforehand. And now tell me, when a hundred people-or I ought to say, a hundred manufactories of carbonic acid-are crowded together for a whole evening, sometimes for a whole night, in a space just big enough to allow them to go in and come out; tell me, I say, if that is a sort of thing which can be beneficial to the health of little girls whose blood flows so fast, and who require so much oxygen; and whether, on the contrary, it is not one's duty to keep them away from such scenes?

There may be amusement there, I know; but the best pleasures are those for which one does not pay too dearly. I have seen the very wax lights faint and turn pale all at once, in the very midst of those murderous assemblies, as if to warn the imprudent guests that there was only just time to open the windows.

And this reminds me of a point I had nearly forgotten. Wax-candles arc like ourselves. In order to burn, they must have oxygen, and, like us, they are extinguished by carbonic acid. But like us also-and indeed to a greater extent, because they consume much more charcoal at once-they manufacture carbonic acid. Hence that very illumination which affords the company so much pleasure and pride is plainly an additional cause of danger. Each of those wax-lights which is spread around with such a prodigal hand, the only fear being that there may not be enough of them, is a hungry intruder employed in devouring with all his might the scanty amount of oxygen provided for the consumption of the guests.

From each of those cheerful flames-the suns, as it were, of the festive assembly-shoots out a strong jet of carbonic acid, contributing by so much to swell out the already formidable streams of poisoned gas, exhaled to the utmost extent by the dancers. And wait-there is still something else I was forgetting. You dance. And I told you last time at what cost you have to dance. You have to make the fire burn much quicker than usual, that is, to consume a great deal more oxygen at once, and so you double and treble the activity of the carbonic acid manufacture: and this just at the moment when it would be so convenient that it should go on as slowly as possible! After this, you need not be surprised that people should look fagged and exhausted next morning. What astonishes me is that they are not obliged to lie in bed altogether, after treating their poor lungs to such an entertainment. And even if you have spared your legs, you are not much better off, as you are sure to find out in time, especially if the thing is repeated too often.

When I told you just now that the dance of labor was worth as much as the dance of the ball-room, was I right or wrong? What do you say yourself?

I could repeat the same of theatres-places of entertainment specially adapted for impoverishing the blood, and ruining the health of the happy mortals who go there, evening after evening, to purchase at the door the right of filling their lungs with carbonic acid, not to speak of other poisons. You must see clearly that such places as those are not fit for little lungs as dainty as yours; and this may help you to submit with a good grace when you see people going there without you. Grown-up people escape moreover, because the human machine possesses a strange elasticity, which enables it to accommodate itself-one scarcely knows how-to the sometimes very critical positions in which its lords and masters place it without a thought. But to do this, it is well that it should be thoroughly formed and established; for you run a risk of injuring it for ever, if you misuse it too early in life. Tell this to your dear schoolboy brother, when he wants to smoke his cigar like a man. If his lungs could speak, they would call out to him that it was very hard upon them, at their age, to be so treated, and that he ought at any rate to wait till they had passed their examinations!

But I must not get into a dispute with so important an individual, by throwing stones into a garden which is not under my care. For you, my dear child, the moral of this day's lesson-which to my mind is much more alarming than a hobgoblin tale, since it concerns the realities of every-day life-is clear; and it is this:

Seek your amusements as far as possible in the fresh air. In the summer, when the lamp is lit, bid your mamma a sweet good-night, and go to bed. In the winter do not wait till there is a great quantity of carbonic acid in the room where the grown-up people are sitting, before you retire to your own like a reasonable girl, anxious not to do mischief to that valuable and indefatigable servant, the poor blood! Not to mention that if she were to injure him too much, she would have to bear his grumbling for the rest of her life. We cannot change him as we change other servants.


LETTER XXVI.

ALIMENTS OF COMBUSTION.

We have spent a very long time, my dear child, over the little fire, which goes on burning secretly in every one of us, quietly devouring what little girls eat with such a good appetite, quite unsuspicious of what they are doing it for. However, if I mean to finish the history of our mouthful of bread, I must push on to its last chapter.

The whole of what we eat is not burnt, as you may easily suppose; for, if it were, what would the blood have left to feed the body with, and to repair in due proportion the continual destruction or waste which goes on in our organs?