patent no. 14,402 · mlle. h. lestrange · 1909
an instrument for the household weighing of nothing
a small bell-jar enclosing a porcelain pan balanced against a single grouse feather. air is drawn in by hand-bellows; the dust of the parlour, separated from the breath that carries it, settles by gravity onto the pan. a needle on a graduated scale indicates the weight, in fractions of a grain.
mlle. lestrange held that every parlour had a particular dust, and that this dust could be weighed and compared against the house averages of better-kept rooms. her readings, taken weekly from the salons of mantes-la-jolie, are kept in a small black ledger.
the needle moves. it moves equally for dust and for the breath of the person reading it. it moves for the closing of a distant door and for the slow disagreement of the floorboards in the next room. it reads the parlour as a whole — the room's small grief, its rumour, its taste in ash — and reports it all as dust. mlle. lestrange therefore concluded, and few have disputed her, that the parlour is mostly its own dust.
field-note · the feather must be replaced yearly. the previous feathers form a small dust of their own.
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